Sick People
With the recent chatter about that long-time bigot, Marty Peretz, many people are belatedly coming to understand that bone-marrow-deep hatred is not confined to Muslim extremists. Welcome to the brave new world of batshit tribalism where Western Fundie Jews hate Middle-Eastern Fundie Muslims and vice-versa, the clock perpetually stopped at sometime in the Middle Ages, each side convinced of the other’s innate wickedness and subhumanity.
Above: According to Wingnuts, only Muslims
consider this a potential vehicle of Satan.
But my point is not to go through all that again; rather, I just want to say that Peretz is not unique. Peretz-level bigotry has been the editorial stance at Commentary since the late sixties. And since the eighties, it’s been everywhere in Greater Winguttia — National Review, David Horowitz’s various publications, Weekly Standard, The New York Sun, The New York Post, etc. Patient Zero of the ‘Peretz Affliction’ is not Marty Peretz but Norman Podhoretz; the vector through which the ‘Peretz Affliction’ is spread is not Republicanism or Judaism but neo-conservatism. The ‘Peretz Affliction’ is a pandemic on the Right; close your eyes, point within a crowd of wingnuts and odds are you’ll hit a carrier.
Daniel ‘Crack’ Pipes is one such carrier — well, okay, he’s more than that, so monomaniacly does he fixate on the general subhumanity of the filthy wogs. He doesn’t just carry the ‘Peretz Affliction’; he’s in the advanced stages of it. Turns out that he must be on a wingnut-welfare vacation — he’s not updated his site in a while — but here’s a token entry from last month, the gist of which is that Muslims are so Stone Age, so pig-ignorant backward and disgusting that they can’t even deal with the accoutrements and everyday procedures of modern medicine. Muslims, already morally diseased, are so filthy, so steeped in depravity that their bodies and persons have begun to mirror their minds and ideology! They won’t use hand-cleaner because it contains alcohol! Disgusting! Female Muslim doctors won’t treat males; male Muslims often forbid their wives and daughters to be treated by male doctors; thus disease goes rampant! Etc. Blah blah blah.
Now of course these stories, if true, are problematic. But the point is Pipes’s bigotry. Religious nuts causing problems in the medical field is no ‘Muslim-only’ thing, but from reading wingnuts like Pipes, you’d think it is. Pipes isn’t about to mention Christian Scientists who eschew all medical care, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions, or the whole Fundamentalist Christians vs. stem-cell-research thing or (especially not) the spread of herpes through a disgusting Orthodox Jewish ritual. Of course not, because these examples come from people who are allies with, or of no concern to Pipes — after all, Christian and Jewish Fundies are most likely to subscribe to neoconservative foriegn policy. So what can be ignored when done by Pipes’s friends is, when done analogously by Muslims, seized as evidence of Muslims’ subhumanity.
You will know a bigot by his double-standards, and the medical example illustrates one of the wingnuts’ most basic bigoted beliefs: that Muslims should wholly assimilate to ‘modernity’ but everyone else is entitled to their forms of resistence to it.
To simplify, the Pipes-Peretz-Podhoretz position goes something like this: ‘We can wear our yarmulkes, our Christian friends can wear their crucifixes, but we declare war at the sight of your headscarf’. Bigots.
I try to laugh, I really do, but I grow increasingly depressed reading about these shitheads. Thank you for exposing them.
*Pipes’
just pre-empting the obvious wingnut critique of your article
You will know a bigot by his double-standards, and the medical example illustrates one of the wingnuts’ most basic bigoted beliefs: that Muslims should wholly assimilate to ‘modernity’ but everyone else is entitled to their forms of resistence to it.
There’s more here, and that’s the Ugly American assumption that everyone who doesn’t have/follow X has a decent shot at X.
The pipes don’t fall far from the organ.
There’s got to be an enemy for the people to hate and fear, since war is peace.
*Pipes’
just pre-empting the obvious wingnut critique of your article
It’s an ongoing argument. Neither is wrong, but I prefer HTML’s.
Sorry, cokane, you’re wrong, and I’m kinda psyched I get to correct someone on this, because I’m one of those guys, y’know?
It’s apostraphe blank if the possessor is plural (“the Powerline bloggers’ sophisticated take on things”), it’s apostraphe s if the possessor’s a singular that happens to end in s.
But yeah, it’s so common now I won’t even use it right unless I can stick around to defend it. Jesus’ General kinda solidified it for this whole subculture.
And don’t get me started on “comprise.”
It’s an ongoing argument among those who don’t know better. The rule is that if a word ends in s, it gets an apostrophe and an s, unless it ends in s because it’s a plural, in which case it ends in an apostrophe only. Marie Jon’ notwithstanding.
Hey, anonymous with many n’s (a disputed usage of the apostraphe itself), lookit us being language dorks at the exact same time.
The really pathetic part of all this is that Alex Cockburn and Jack Schafer(then of the Washington City Paper, now of slate) made this very clear in the 1980s. In so much as anything happened, people cared as little then as they apparently don’t care now.
New Orleans’s?
United States’s? (okay maybe that’s technically plural)
Emily Dickens’s ???
nope ur wrong wingers. Won’t you come to grips with reality????
http://essayinfo.com/sguides/possessives.php
lol gg nubs
lol Emily Dickens pimf
I’m down with HPV (Yeah you know me!)
Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition, 6.24-30 says:
The general rule for the possessive of nouns covers most proper nouns, including most names ending in sibilants (but see exceptions in 6.26-27 and alternatives in 6.30). Kansas’s; Burns’s poems; Marx’s theories; Dickens’s novels
[…]
For names ending in silent s, z, or x the possessive, unlike the plural, can generally be formed in the usual way without suggesting an incorrect pronunciation: Margaux’s bouquet; Descartes’s works.
Traditional exceptions to the general rule for forming the possessive are the names Jesus and Moses: in Jesus’ name; Moses’ leadership…”How to form the possessive of polysyllabic personal names ending with the sound of s or z,” says CMS, “probably occasions more dissension among writes and editors than any other orthographic matter open to disagreement.”
[…]
The University of Chicago Press prefers the procedures outlined above. It is willing, however, to accept other ways of handling these situations if they are consistently followed throughout a manuscript.
I actually own the fucking book, for fun.
Righteous Bubba,
Traditional exceptions to the general rule for forming the possessive are the names Jesus and Moses: in Jesus’ name; Moses’ leadership…�How to form the possessive of polysyllabic personal names ending with the sound of s or z,� says CMS, “probably occasions more dissension among writes and editors than any other orthographic matter open to disagreement.�
Random trivia from my teaching and editing days: the rough guideline “don’t add the s if it makes three sibilant consonants in a row” seems to cover most cases. It will be interesting to see if that becomes a “rule” at some point.
I actually own the fucking book, for fun.
Ooooooh. Preeeeeeetty! I’m limping by with the 13th edition at work, but I’m in Marketing now where no one really cares if the details are right. (I’m lucky if I can convince them that no, they don’t have to have a capital letter every seven words for “balance” or some such nonsense.)
Of course, if you say you own the current edition of the OED, too, I may have to come live with you!
Cokane, I accept that your way gains legitimacy through constant misuse, thus worming its way into “Essay Info,” but it is, technically, “Emily Dickens’s.” It looks weird to me too, which is why I’ve looked into it.
Thanks for that link though. I’m going to correct them too, because that’s the kind of ankle-biting usage nerd I am.
Aren’t we supposed to be talking about Peretzeses’ bigotry?
You know, I’m something of a nerd myself, but we’ve gotten into some deep nerd territory here . . . .
Of course, if you say you own the current edition of the OED, too, I may have to come live with you!
Well, I’m off the hook as I currently do not own a decent dictionary. Check this site out though: the kookiest and ugliest dictionary on Earth, ever expanding in foreign languages including Sherlock Holmes dancing men.
You may also need this (sexism alert of course, but stodgy Englishers blah blah):
Dialogue:
In the past, talks or discussions on important subjects were
considered to be satisfactorily described as talks or discussions.
Nowadays the two sides in a dispute, for instance, are apt
to be engaged in (wait for it) a meaningful dialogue. The first
element of this phrase is an absurdity, since no dialogue is
meaningless, and the second illiterate, since any reasonable
number can take part in dialogue or a dialogue. More charit-
ably, perhaps, it can be said that we sympathise with the
wish to assure reader or hearer that these talks or discussions
are designed to get somewhere, not just to fill in time, but
we have seen often enough what becomes of even well-
formulated intentions. And anyway the whole meaningful-
dialogue expression looks and sounds unbearably pompous.
Nevertheless one would not wish to be deprived of a phrase
that so unerringly points out its user as a humourless ninny.
Aside to cokane: Right, Dickinson. I just learned what “pimf” means.
And now I retire for the night, content in the knowledge that I’ve given something back to the world that’s given me so much, by being a dick about a minor stylistic quirk while not knowing the name of a literary giant.
A giantess is what I’d be
If the choice were up to me,
And just as large would be the fee
I’d fine per stray apostrophe
I think the World – Things Small and Great –
Are mine – to Wholly Hyphenate –
Dashing Dasher – Donner – Blitzen –
Em-dash Cat — and En-dash Kitzen –
Is mine. Fuck that preview button that didn’t force itself under my cursor.
Talk about obscure grammatical/usage rules all you like – the conversation is distracting me from the troubling mental image of old bearded guys sucking infant dick.
Just keep talking.
You know, I’m something of a nerd myself, but we’ve gotten into some deep nerd territory here . . . .
Say, I notice you used the ellipses-and-full-stop convention (four periods rather than three after a discrete sentence), and also the ellipses-with-spaces-between-the-periods one.
Now if the…
the conversation is distracting me from the troubling mental image of old bearded guys sucking infant dick.
Oh wonderful, so much for sleeping tonight.
I’m confused with this whole meme. I thought we wanted to be more like them so they wouldn’t attack us? I hope I haven’t been taken off the Rightwing talking points fax list.
I’m confused with this whole meme. I thought we wanted to be more like them so they wouldn’t attack us? Golly, I hope I haven’t been taken off the Rightwing talking points fax list because of this.
I really do think sometimes that wingnutitis is a congenital disease. So many of these kooks have daddies who were kooks. I’m just consistently amazed by this…..
Daniel Pipes is the spawn of Richard Pipes, whose fixation was not evil islamofascists but evil Communists. Pipes Sr. was so far gone that to this day he pushes the “Lenin was a paid German agent in 1918” meme (which, among Russian historians, gets you looked at like you’re David Icke pushing the Lizard People hypothesis).
Norman Podhoretz spawned our own beloved J-Pod.
This goes on and on……I swear, there’s a Nobel in medicine waiting for the guy who finds the gene malformation responsible for this condition.
It’s curious. I remember that Pipes used to be the Alpha Wingnut in 2003, but he’s dropped off the radar. I wonder if he’s actually discovered shame?
Daniel Pipes spoke at Brandeis during my senior year there. While there was some protest from certain elements of the student body and faculty (which Horowitz immediately turned his unblinking eye of idiotic opprobrium on), I can say Pipes had a much easier time booking Brandeis than former fucking president Jimmy Carter.
Pipes’s daughter was a student at the time. I don’t know if she caught this strain of wingnuttia from her dad, but there was so much open bigotry towards Muslims while I was there that it would have hardly stood out.