Daniel Henninger Can Fcuk Himself Sideways
Civility vs. Decency again!
Having on numerous occasions suggested himself as a scumbag, an asshelmet, a dickhead, a lopsided cum-bubble on the bedsheets of humanity, a wanktard, a pukeface, and in addition a shit-eating monstertwat, Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page says:
The Rebirth of Civility?
A revolt against people who are behaving badly.BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDTAnd so it came to pass in the year 2007 that a little platoon came forth to say unto the world: Enough is enough.
Two leading citizens of the Web, Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales, have proposed a “Bloggers Code of Conduct.” The reason for this code is the phenomenon of people posting extremely nasty verbal comments about other people on Web sites devoted to political and social commentary.
Oh, goody. I think we’ve been through this before. Last time, the ‘code’ was offered by a pompous hypocrite. This time….?
It is appropriate that this line should be drawn in the ether of the World Wide Web, whose controlling ethos up to now has been that speech and expression should remain free, unfettered and–the totemic word that ends all argument–“democratic.” As it developed, too many of the Web’s democrats, for reasons that have provided much new work for clinical psychologists, tend to write in a vocabulary of rage and aggression.
Take politics. In the House of Representatives, Members by tradition address each other as the “gentleman” or “gentlewoman.” These salutations often drip with irony but exist nonetheless to temper the bitterness beneath much political combat. The democrats around the Web regard any such modulating habits as hypocritical.
Unlike the fogies in politics or tradition-hampered media, they describe their opponents as what they believe they are: morons, idiots, fools, sellouts, traitors, liars (perhaps the most used word on the politicized Web), crooks and various other expressions that the touchingly termed “family” newspapers still won’t print.
How horrible it is that bloggers call spades, spades — and in the most earthy language possible! I shall elevate my discourse, then: The right honorable gentleman, Mr. Henninger, is a horrible horrible asshole. Is that better?
The admission of need for something called a Bloggers Code of Conduct is about more than just the Web. The deeper import of what may be happening here should be evident in Mr. O’Reilly’s remark, which was the final sentence in a long New York Times article on the subject last Sunday: “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”
It is difficult for me to imagine a more revolutionary sentence. One might call it “subversive.”
“Free speech is enhanced by civility.” The revolution comes at the end of that sentence. Free speech we know about. Civility we have forgotten. Ask Don Imus.
Ahh, very clever Mr. Wankinger! But actually, the right honorable gentleman, Mr. Imus, was (rather like the Wall-Street Journal) purveying the most indecent politics with his speech. It’s not that he’s earthy or says naughty words that’s the problem; it’s that he’s racist. It’s that he communicated racist code — despicable, indecent sentiment no matter the civility of the language.
After blaming ‘incivility’ on Academe and ‘entitlements’, Wankinger concludes:
There is no evident political coloration to the broader concern that’s arisen about conduct on the Web. The anti-civility trolls are in restaurants, stadiums, theaters, planes, church, the airwaves, in dreams. This is merely a recognition that rules of the road can indeed enhance, not suppress, the flow of truly free expression and minimize the already ample frictions of daily life. Better late than never.
Ahh, but there is political coloration to it. How long have we heard that ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’ is responsible for all the ‘incivility’. Pseudo-anthropologist and National Review hack Peter Wood argues that the dogs with the bees in their mouth who when they bark shoot bees at you are Leftists merely acting on their own congenital pathology. Wankinger himself just blamed it on Universities, welfare, and social security. Fucking hell, there’s no political coloration to it: it comes from the fucking Reichwing.
The argument itself is Rightwing. ‘Civility’ — which we proudly fucking abrogate — is about taste; ‘decency’ — which the right honorable fuckface Mr. Henninger and his ideological comrades habitually shit on — is about morality:
Like the politicians [George] Will set out to study, his words must be taken seriously. Two words are key to his thought — “decent� and “civility� — his shorthand for different political mentalities. “Decent� arises in his language as something bad about Democrats: “There hangs about the Democratic party an aura of moral overreaching. A symptom is the use of words like ‘decent’….as in ‘a decent society requires this or that.’� “Civility,� according to Will, is what will be restored when the Iran-contra scandal is swept away. But the meaning of these words, as Will uses them, is broader.
He uses “civility� to mean manners masquerading as morals, a category of form referring less to the rule of law than to the rule of etiquette; it is more an unspoken social, rather than ethical, code. Correct behavior may make the good possible, it is not goodness itself.
By contrast, “decency,� which Will belittles, actually is about morals. And there is some history behind the word and its content. The introduction of the word “decent� into the political vocabulary can be attributed to George Orwell. In his essay on Charles Dickens, he defined the essence of the great novelist’s sensibility as “decent.� In an age of totalitarians, Dickens’s message was still contemporary. Orwell wrote: “The central problem — how to prevent power from being abused — remains unsolved…’If men would behave decently the world would be decent’ is not such a platitude as it sounds.� Since Orwell’s use of the word, a number of liberals, intellectuals, and reformers have taken it up. “Decent� connotes a tempered moral position, one that carefully avoids righteous absolutism; it also suggests compassion and patience. The word is precisely the opposite of elite condescension, the opposite of hauteur.
So suck my fucking cock, Mr. Henninger. Better to be rude & moral & honest than be ‘nice’ and immoral and continually proffer tissues of fucking lies, you diarrhea-faced, fart-sucking, syphilitic cretin.
[Even Special Ed can see the silliness and dishonesty of the WSJ’s demands in light of its (frequently immoral) economic dogma.]
Fuck him. Fuck him with a spoon.
“Civility,� according to Will, is what will be restored when the Iran-contra scandal is swept away.
When the scandal is swept away? As in, Ollie North and, ahem, all other criminals/beneficiaries who have so far gotten off scot-free, will be tried and convicted of doing extremely naughty things, and banged up in jail for yonks?
Or as in, those wicked, foul-mouthed, uncivil liberals just shut the fuck up about it?
What does ‘scot-free’ really mean, anyway? Personally, I quite like Scots. Billy Connolly is one of the funniest men alive. And Scots make Scotch, which is not something the world should be without. So why is it a good thing to be scot-free?
Just wonderin’…
What a truly wankerific fucking idiot. He expects us to coo to him while he and the other asshats bend us over and fuck us. He wants to bring back the fucking gilded age where the peasants knew their place. Slim fucking chance.
Cock-gobbling, fuckface, scumbag, asshelmet, dickhead, lopsided cumbubble on the bedsheets of humanity, wanktard, pukeface, shit-eating, monstertwat
Really, I think “lopsided” is a bit much.
Hmmm, I do believe that Cock-gobbling, fuckface, scumbag, asshelmet, dickhead, lopsided cumbubble on the bedsheets of humanity, wanktard, pukeface, shit-eating, monstertwat is much more civil than traitorous, treasonous, America hating, defeatists and French.
But hell, I’m one of those intellectuals and I’m just sure that I don’t fucking get it.
It’s rude to call someone a thief just because they just grabbed your purse and ran off with it. The cops won’t listen to someone that uncivil.
My Conservative to English dictionary’s definition of civility.
Calling for the deaths of liberals without using profanity.
I do have one general pique with all the profanity to be found on the web, liberal web sites in particular since we are ostensibly the intellectuals, and that is the proper term is ‘god-damned,’ not ‘god damn’ (unless you are exhorting a higher being to condemn someone or something) or ‘goddamn’ (no such word exists) or, even more reprehensible and a signifier of redneck roots, goddam(m).
Please get that one right.
Other than that, I think you forgot one of the proper descriptives of such proponents of clean language as Henninger: Santorum-greased.
The NYT article was so painfully stupid and nonsensical that it only follows that the WSJ would follow up on it.
And what is especially interesting is that the WSJ doesn’t use the entire quote of Mr. “I INVENTED WEB 2.0!” O’Reilly’s. This is what he said:
Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact,managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,� he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.�
I fisked the NYT article here.
War is Peace, motherfuckers.
For RoonDog.
AkaDad said,
April 12, 2007 at 16:30
My Conservative to English dictionary’s definition of civility.
Calling for the deaths of liberals without using profanity.
DING DING DING! We have a winner!
Looks like I’m not the only one who remembers John Derbyshire’s calling for the murder of Chelsea Clinton. Not Bill, not Hillary — Chelsea. Their daughter.
And he did so without using a single vulgarity.
Isn’t Derb the one who has the creepy fixation with young girls? That makes this even more creepy. Euw.
tigrismus,
Fucking hell! I’ve been wrong all these years? I guess I’ll have to update from my 1875 version of Oxford’s Standard…
Thanks.
Ooh, that one is gonna get ya on the ‘cuss count list’ for sure.
Obviously, this Code thing is just sour grapes from a bunch of tight-asses who don’t know how to cuss creatively and effectively. Cunts.
Take politics. In the House of Representatives, Members by tradition address each other as the “gentleman� or “gentlewoman.� These salutations often drip with irony but exist nonetheless to temper the bitterness beneath much political combat. The democrats around the Web regard any such modulating habits as hypocritical.
Or as Dick Cheney would say, “Fuck you.”
Someone should point that errant knave to Pam O’Shrill, the hate-speech queen of the whole intertubes, and then politely inform him that he is by all means free to have anal intercourse with himself.
I’m sick of every day being fucking Opposite Day. If you want to know what sort of perfidy the right is up to, just look at what they’re falsely accusing Democrats of, and there’s your answer.
Fuck their fucking civility. It doesn’t kill civilians like their fucking policies do. They should get some fucking priorities, the fucks.
[/just had to]
When will these people learn that “civility” is more than just the type of words you use?
you diarrhea-faced, fart-sucking, syphilitic, cretin.
actually that should be “syphilitic cretin”. no comma.
just trying to keep you proper and civil. ahem. and ya might consider putting on an ascot. just sayin’.
didn’t get outta the itallics. sorry.
how uncivil!
But… but… but…. he uses the word ‘ethos’! That means he must be smart and therefore right!
Right?
i like how they mix up the issues: women getting death & rape threats from misogynist trolls = liberal bloggers calling bush a lying sack of shit. yeah, exactly the same issue, right.
the problems inherent in conversations on the internet are the same problems inherent in the dominant culture. there’s a worthwhile debate already in progress regarding “hate speech” laws; and of course we already have laws against libel, etc. as far as self-policing goes: don’t threaten to rape and/or murder women ever. do we really need a “code of civility” to agree to something like that? it boggles the mind.
if we’re going to enact some sort of universal code to eradicate internet trolls, somebody better alert karl rove……there’s probably a whole building in langley VA that’s going to have to be shut down……
Well, for some reason, I get to say what no one has said yet:
That you can measure the extent to which one side has less and less to base the rightness and value of its position on, on how much it starts carping about the terms of the exchange.
One of the things that made the epic marital fight between Tony and Carmela Soprano so great, a few seasons ago, was when Tony was reduced to saying,”Oh yeah? Well at least I don’t…(etc.)”.
When they’re reduced to “well at least we’re CIVIL,” the bankruptcy of their position is visible even to them.
As for “free speech is enhanced by civility,” uh, S’ly, no. The condition of “civility” (and by whose definition?) being optional is what “free” means.
This reminds me of what some kid in high school told me when the principal objected to his (the kid’s) long hair. (That’s how old I am.) “We respect your right to wear your hair as long as you want,” this worthy told him. “But you have to respect our right to tell you how long you can wear it.”
I love it…” a little platoon”… he really wants to think of himself as a soldier… as long as he can fight with a keyboard from home.
These people haven’t an ounce of self-awareness.
Every time a conservative calls for civility, a fairy dies. Fortunately, HTML Mencken is there to revive the victims with a litany of fucks!
George Carlin would be proud.
Heh indeedy-doodly-diddly-fucking-doo!
And that goes for the word police of the anti-sammich brigade over on the Stalinist Left, too. ‘Cos what was important in that argument was not that we called out a wreck of a biped for being a chickenhawk piece of shit, but that we called him a fatty-fat.
*sings* Incivility, FUCK YEAH! Comin to slay the morality-fuckers today! Incivility, FUCK YEAH!
r@d@r, not Langley, VA, but Laurel, MD, I am sure. Every time I drive past Fort Meade to get some PF Chang’s takeout, I swear they add extra police patrols just to make sure that MY head doesn’t turn left or right and see the apparatuses pointing at this country.
MrWonderful, hasn’t this been at work for some years now with their consistent reference to Hussein’s atrocities and religiously-inspired beheading as the moral bar which we must hurdle?
Yeah, in his defense I must say that there is little indication that he is a fuckface, asshelmet, dickhead, lopsided etc, wanktard, shit-eating pukeface monstertwat.
I like how the supposedly “liberal media” frames it…
Calling someone “fucknuts” is out of bounds and despicable,
but calling for genocide and dictatorship -in a civil manner-…
well, THAT is entirely appropriate!
Hey, America!
Yeah, just wanted to tell ya,
yours was an intriuging experiment while it lasted.
Glad I’m not there with you.
Never had a liking for sinking ships.
Wait, hold on. Did Henninger say that the anti-civility legions are “in dreams“? Is he saying his dreams are haunted by foul-mouthed liberals? Because, dude, if that’s the case, no code of conduct is going to help you with that. Try Ambien.
Freer Speech???? Huh? I’m sorry, the meds make me dizzy sometimes. I coulda swore that idiot said freer speech. I’m trying to visualize a scale upon which the relative free-ness of speech is measured.
Now, according to this fucktard, I could say “President Bush is a fucking idiot” and that would rate a 4 on the speech freeness scale. However, if instead I was to say “you know, that President Bush has some ideas and policies that I sometimes feel I must disagree with” then that statement garners an 8. Of course, in communication effectiveness, the values would have to be reversed. I’m just not sure how this is supposed to be helpful.
Huh? Oh, it’s not? Then that means what he really wants is…
Wow.
mikey
“Cock-gobbling, fuckface, scumbag, asshelmet, dickhead, lopsided cumbubble on the bedsheets of humanity, wanktard, pukeface, shit-eating, monstertwat”
This is offensive to cock gobblers, fuckfaces, scumbags, asshelmets, dickhead (c’mon, if you had a dick for a head, would you want someone making fun of you?), lopsided cumbubbles, wanktards, puke faces, shit eaters, and, mostly, monstertwats.
I don’t know how you can live with yourself, Mr. HTML. You decide to pick upon the lowest of the low. Any ‘Decent’ human being…
Nah, Fuck It. Bring on the celery.
Why does Teh Left feel it has to use so much vulgarity, anyway?
I mean, just because Teh Right is bending the Constitution over and roughly inserting a non-greased broom handle into its rectum, is that any reason to use terms like “fucking our civil rights up the ass”?
And just because the major policy advisers are recommending programs and tactics that are only comprehensible to recreational drug users from another planet who also suffer from severe brain damage from their spaceship crash, does that give Teh Left the right to describe them as “clueless fucktards on acid”?
It’s just uncivil.
I’d like to call for clarification on the difference between ‘civility’ and ‘political correctness’.
Another good point Vic.
I think they need to get me on TV and ask me what I think about this idea of ‘Internet Civility’. I’ll explain that a hypocritical bitch like Henninger doesn’t deserve civility, and would not even understand real civility, nor respect, if it were offered to him.
In the House of Representatives, Members by tradition address each other as the “gentleman� or “gentlewoman.� These salutations often drip with irony but exist nonetheless to temper the bitterness beneath much political combat. The democrats around the Web regard any such modulating habits as hypocritical.
Hey, now!
Whenever any of you fuckers refer to me as ‘Gentlewoman,’ you had better fucking mean it, if you fucking know what’s good for you. None of that fucking ‘dripping with irony’ crap, either, assholes.
And HTML, you forgot to say that Daniel Henninger can fuck himself sideways with a fucking chainsaw, which is the proper, fucking, commonly-accepted and completely fucking civil phrase.
Fuckin’-A right!
There shouldn’t be a comma after “syphilitic” in that last line.
Otherwise, yeah….. 🙂
How civil is it, really, to get 3000 Americans and 600,000 Iraqis killed based on lies? If the mass murderer wears a tie while he commits mass murder, does that diminish the crime?
How in the name of the ungodly did either the NYT or WSJ get their reputations? I’ve never read such pig-headed twaddle in my life. If I were a New Yorker I’d hide my head in shame!
Bat Guano said,
April 12, 2007 at 16:00
What a truly wankerific fucking idiot. He expects us to coo to him while he and the other asshats bend us over and fuck us. He wants to bring back the fucking gilded age where the peasants knew their place.
Bingo. It should also be noted that “they” are becoming increasingly afraid. They know that, in general and as with individual confrontation, harsh language usually a direct precursor to physical confrontation. Wealthy, high-society wingnuts are scared shitless because they know where the mounting outrage, expressed by average folk who would normally not engage in such rhetoric, will ultimately lead. When common folk such as my 80 year old grandmother, who never once cursed in front of me for any reason, calls President Bush a “lying asshole”… well the writing is on the wall.
The truth of the matter is that once BushCo and all of its sycophantic enablers are dealt with (marginalized or otherwise) the harsh language will, for the most part, disappear. They are the reason for it in the first place.
.
I’d like to call for clarification on the difference between ‘civility’ and ‘political correctness’.
Vic, my dictionary lists:
political correctness: a rope used to trip your critics when you get caught saying something fucking stupid. (e.g., “The crucifixion of Don Imus is just political correctness run amok.”; from Ancient Toddler, “wah”, meaning “to be disciplined, particularly for teasing or tormenting someone else”)
civility: a club used to beat your critics when you get caught saying or doing something fucking stupid. (e.g., “How can we give any weight to the critics of Don Imus when they lack even the most basic civility.”; from Middle Toddler “mom-mi”, meaning “to distract, primarily by whining” )
Hope this helps.
Respect and civility have to be earned.
Fucknuts like Henninger have proven that they don’t deserve it, not from us.
If I have to choose between puckered assholes like him and Halle Berry saying ‘fuck’ on teh Daily Show last night, I know which side I’m going to come down on…. and it won’t be with the pursed-lip moral scolds.
Someone please explain how the political party that’s supposed to represent NASCAR, gun culture, and everything else “manly” gets all weak-kneeded and weepy when foul language gets tossed around.
Henninger wants civility? I’ll give him civility in the language of diplomacy: Aristos a la lanterne!
Civility, my fucking arse. The likes of Jimmy Wales want a blogger code of conduct because they want to act like cunts and have no one call them one. Maybe a better approach would be to just not be one.
There shouldn’t be a comma after “syphilitic� in that last line.
Quite right. The correct usage is “syphilitic colon”. Schools these days, I don’t know…
How civil is it, really, to get 3000 Americans and 600,000 Iraqis killed based on lies? If the mass murderer wears a tie while he commits mass murder, does that diminish the crime?
Bingo, you win today’s star prize: a some-expenses-paid trip to the Middle Eastern war zone of your choice.
Of course just a tie won’t diminish a mass murder, though. You need the right nobby parents and preferably a nepotistic position in gubmint to diminish a mass murder. Remember, the peasants commit crimes, the nobility have peccadillos.
And if I might be permitted a whiny rant of mine own, one of the reasons that we on the previously-mostly-civilised-and-civil-port-side-of-politics get so fucking irate is that we’ve been fucking well deprived of any other fucking options by those bastard weevils on the ratsarse right.
Really, if every time one opens one’s mouth one is shouted down with childish taunting (including accusations of treachery and sympathy for turr’rists); if one continually reads stories of little old ladies getting off the bus at a protest march and running smack into a black van that takes them off to Ye Olde Cavitye Searche Hostelry; if the fucking dick-sucking, limp-wristed, bend-me-over-and-call-me-Mavis media whores obediently echo these pathetic accusations; then, I believe, one has .
Jesus fucking christ on a stick, people, do they really expect us to continue to take what they’re offering? Shittyarseholebuggeryfuck, they complain about a little rough language, but sodding condone the slaughter of innocents, and that’s supposed to be civil?
The likes of Jimmy Wales want a blogger code of conduct because they want to act like cunts and have no one call them one. Maybe a better approach would be to just not be one.
Absolutely fucking right, my son. Being a cunt is quite civil, but being called on it is not.
Fuck fuck fuckity fuck, what happened to the rest of my sentence? That creeping weevil of evil, the ratsarse right, has stolen the rest of my sentence! I enjoyed that sentence. That was a good sentence. And they’ve stolen the best bit.
Uncivil cunts.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Tim O’Reilly isn’t talking about political blogging, and anyone who treats it as such on either side is part of the damn problem.
[…] Devils, & Heaven » Sadly, No! Has . . . By Sean Paul Kelley, on April 12th, 2007 . . . some thoughts for our new avatars of civility. Rather funny, if you ask […]