1,703 words.
Christ, what an asshole!
That is the amount CNN columnist, John Blake used to express what could have been expressed in four: Lynn Patton is a coon.
Progressives, typically academics, as well, often labor under the delusion that they can mask their slimy, bile-coated race-hatred with verbosity. Indeed, the laconic honesty of a simple racial or ethnic slur hurled in impotent rage seems refreshing to utterly craven attempt at slur through obscurantism.
What rankles the most, however, is that not only will Blake continue to build a career out of dehumanizing black and brown folk who don’t march in lockstep with his radical left-wing societal and political views, but he will continue to be well-compensated for serving as hatchet-man for the vastly majority-white CNN editorial board by running interference for one of their newest poster-children, Rashida Tlaib who, to the delight of progressive media,has helped to successfully bring Jeremy Corbyn ‘Wolf-Who-Cried-Boy’-style antisemitism to American politics. Blake represents just one member of a brigade of CNN’s house, ahem, ‘slaves’ that at the order of their paymasters rushed to spew racial grievance and divisiveness all over its Op-Ed page in a frantic attempt to steer their narrative out of its nosedive after Tlaib beclowned herself at Michael Cohen’s first appearance before the congressional committee by unwittingly insulting the (Democratic) chairman’s “best friend,” which prompted Elijah Cummings to speak eloquently against the identity politics trafficked by this newest crop of elected sea-monsters that make up the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
And this dusty ass lookin’ motherfucker has the balls to call Patton a ‘token Negro’? This is all I have to say about that, and notice I took only 290 words to say what I could have said in two.
Mr Rogers wouldn’t even be my friend so I’m still looking. I’d take a token even
Wow, what a piece of shit. Just like that he removed all agency from Ms. Patton in the name of enforcing racial authenticity. But that’s not racist because of reasons.
The original “birther” story came the same place as the Russia collusion story -Team Clinton.
Obama milked it hard in order to make questioning the giant gaps in his backstory a forbbiden topic.
Elijah Cummings to speak eloquently against the identity politics
I was stunned. Hearing Steve Jobs rail against smartphones is about the only thing I can think of that might be equivalent.
I was also equally shocked.
I am not Elijah Cummings’ biggest fan, being from Maryland and not thrilled with his political positions, so I’m surprised to hear that he said that. I can’t find the audio, but I’m going to choose to believe a Pollyanna-esque version where he has become so horrified by the open, overt racism being spewed by the Progressives in his party that he has fundamentally changed as a person.
Race hatred from the left has been old news for a generation. But now, enough Democrat politicians are so offensive to normal people that they’re scaring too many sane folks into voting for Trump and the Republicans. The party establishment is trying to muzzle the race mongering crazies.
The Republicans have stayed quietly subservient to the race hustlers. They know that white people vote but are sick with fear that somebody might catch them noticiing it. This attitude could change.
Some of the most racist people I ever met were hard core proggies that thought because you (me in this case) were a conservative/libertarian you also HAD to be one, let loose and said what they really believed in a moment of candor. I can’t say I am shocked when it happens, but I am always saddened that these people think if you are not proggie asshat, you have to be as racist as they are.
While he wouldn’t have said anything if he weren’t a close friend of Meadows’, I’m still shocked that he said anything anyway, so good for him.
Is there a link to this? I tried to find it myself but failed.
Have not played the video as I’ve either been at work or on the train. Although that doesn’t seem to stop most people on the train anymore…
https://pjmedia.com/trending/rep-tlaib-blows-up-cohen-hearing-racist-for-republican-mark-meadows-to-bring-a-black-prop/
Thanks.
The Old guard and the Red Guards are fighting for power.
Progressives, typically academics, as well, often labor under the delusion that they can mask their slimy, bile-coated race-hatred with verbosity.
-Chesterton
I took only 290 words to say what I could have said in two.
“Fuck off, slaver” is three words, by my count.
Only one if you make it a hashtag.
Still, hella good closing. Quick pace, wastes no time, strong finish – quite a nice piece of writing.
“Nigga please” is only two.
HM, the Corbyn link is broken
but adding, “… you work for UPS!” is 6 – but is it really 8, since ‘UPS’ is pronounced You Pee Ess?
(for everyone who didn’t grow up listening to early hip-hop, I apologize for the confusion).
Two interlinks articles in one day?
There were links
Interlinks – between the links. We’ve had a morning, then two articles before the afternoon.
This piece has links.
It has links but is not a links article.
Still is a links piece.
Why do you hate our bounty?
I am being pedantic. It is not exactly unheard of here.
But your pedantry is wrong. A links article has links in the title. Having links does not make it either a mourning lynx or one of the PMs Lynx.
But they’re HM links.
Okay, IF, you win.
Never click HM links at work….
/speaks from bad experience
The most frustrating thing about race peddlers is that once they label a person as racist, that’s it. There is no going back, there is no way to prove otherwise and refute that claim. Every attempt to do so is labeled as another racist act.
I think they’ve successfully over-deployed the term into meaninglessness. The only people who take accusations of racism seriously at this point are the truly devoted morons and for those people, the specifics don’t matter anyway.
When someone proposes depriving a race of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, or otherwise denies the humanity of a race of people then they are a racist, otherwise shut up about it.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
The more you know…
That’s a great article.
That “Jussie Smollett’s race card is about to be declined” is breathtaking. You know when a piece is so internally inconsistent, you just throw your hands up because you don’t even know where/how to begin to parse it?
That must be a legitimate technique in rhetoric. It works well.
Whatever. Clarence Thomas bad.
Nvm. Once you realize that this is a shitty throwaway paragraph, and the article isn’t actually about “authentic” versus “inauthentic” blackness and the mysterious unseen authorities thereon (you know, like Blake), it’s all a bit clearer:
“Lynn Patton is a coon”
Is this worse than oreo? Should I request a melanin shading chart from Blake?
I meant to Brook this.
Sure you did…
I’ll just continue to soldier along, knowing in my heart that I’ll always treat everyone regardless of race, creed or color as an individual but I’ll be damned if I stop calling Brazil nuts “Nigger-Toes
“I’ll always treat everyone regardless of race, creed or color as an individual”
That’s pretty hateful of you to ignore group identity shields.
I know you are joking, but if I am forced to judge people by groups I will have to hate everyone. I prefer to go by the individual for the very reason that I don’t have to paint everyone in a group as being a bag of dicks just so I can legitimately avoid the ones that are bags of dicks.
It’s way more difficult to treat people as individuals. Grievance monsters and racists are just lazy.
Oh, I suspect this is a massive factor in why they are proggies: you can be intellectually lazy and get away with believing some of the dumbest shit possible without having a moral quandry.
Social signalling is way more popular than intellectual rigor. Why do you hate democracy?
From a purely Bayesian point of view, having black, Jewish, etc friends is actually pretty damn good evidence for a lack of hostility to black, Jewish, etc folk.
But I guess if you can do math, you don’t end up as a news anchor.
I’ve been tapping keys, trying to describe really complex shit for about 20 years now if you include the second half of undergrad and grad school. There are a few things that require verbosity. The ability to crystallize down to short sentences with short words is a sign of intellectual rigor. Long sentences and diversions are either a sign that the author doesn’t think well, or that he thinks you don’t.
*nods In agreement*
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
C’est la merde!
Or, more concisely, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Any way to tighten that up?
No, I stole it from some dead guy who had a way with words.
Before or after the guy died?
After. I have less qualms looting the intellectual vaults of corpses.
That guy didn’t have any problem looting from his contemporaries.
He was also dead before I was born.
Wait, this was the joke thread. Forgive the argumentative tone.
I didn’t read you as argumentative.
I was just sayin’.
Well, when someone coins a useful turn of phrase, it is useful to “take inspiration” from it.
While I agree in some ways with your thesis, I would point out that this is also why nuance gets lost. General principles can be concise, actual cases have nuance.
There is a difference between nuance and logorrhea
There is also a difference between thought and automatic contrariety.
You demonstrate this point well.
Good writing conveys nuance with an economy of words. That’s, like, the entire point of poetry. And its why some poets get jacked up on speed and stare at a blank page for days just so they can pick the correct twenty or thirty words.
Adam Smith was a great philosopher, but a shitty writer. Bastiat could convey the same idea in 4 pages that took Smith four chapters to covey, and Fast Freddy B did it with *more* nuance, not less.
Good writing conveys nuance with an economy of words. That’s, like, the entire point of poetry.
Poetry thrives on ambiguity. Fiction and Religion can as well. Legal cases and philosophical examinations not so much. I recognize you gave this a nod with”There are a few things that require verbosity.” in your original post and I am not really disagreeing with your post, just articulating the limit (to get Hegelian the antithesis) of your thesis. Concision is not the only goal.
Let me throw out an example:
1. Thou shalt not kill.
Nice concise but also not accurate.
2. Thou shalt not do murder.
Concise and accurate but for it to be more than minor improvement over 1, It needs to be unpacked, which will take several sentences.
3. Thou shalt not kill another human being unless that human being first initiates the use of force against you or another human being.
Much better, possibly not exhaustive, but still more clear and concise than the legal code.
I don’t understand.
Legal cases and philosophical examinations not so much.
I see you’ve met some of my outside counsel. They’re actually quite talented. They can write 15 pages without saying anything definitive.
Actually, its the algorithmic and mathematical where you find things that require greater verbosity. There is just no way to explain a FFT, a hidden Markov model, or an autocatalytic reaction chamber in enough detail to be usable without extensive language.
Legal rules and philosophical inquiry are exactly the places where simplicity leads to clarity and complexity leads to opacity. For the philosophical, I’m just going to cite back to Smith vs Bastiat. For the legal, got compare any random page of the CFR to any random opinion by John Roberts or Kagen.
From your examples, you are confusing *detail* with *nuance.* These aren’t the same thing. In fact, from a mathematical point of view, they are the opposite. Detailed prose is characterized as having a very low semantic density (or low agreement with semantic density of a reference corpus). Nuanced prose is characterized as having a very high semantic density (or a high agreement with semantic density of a reference corpus.)
Your number 1 is neither nuanced nor detailed. Your number 2 is nuanced, but not detailed. Your number 3 is detailed, but not nuanced.
For the legal, got compare any random page of the CFR to any random opinion by John Roberts or Kagen.
I am not sure which you are saying is concise or nuanced. Neither would fit my definition.
Then you are either operating with your own definitions, or you are letting your deployment in the culture war bias you to the point that you can’t see some pretty clear distinctions.
Then you are either operating with your own definitions, or you are letting your deployment in the culture war bias you to the point that you can’t see some pretty clear distinctions.
Ok, I am still not sure which one you are calling the concise nuanced writing, the hyper detailed CFR that takes half a page to explain how to mail a letter to DHS, or Roberts verbal gymnastics. I suppose that is due to my culture war deployment, but if either of them strikes you as nuanced in the same way your quote from Amos is nuanced I would be interested to hear how.
http://volokh.com/2013/07/08/the-supreme-writer-on-the-court-the-case-for-roberts/
Guberman, an industry-leader on legal writing, makes the case here.
Witty sure, but that is far from concise.
If such a shoe exists, the parties have not pointed to it, there is no evidence that Already has dreamt of it, and we cannot conceive of it. It sits, as far as we can tell, on a shelf between Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Perseus’s winged sandals.
Is funny, witty, well crafted, effective but not concise way of saying, “No evidence of such a shoe has been presented.”
Here’s another example: Amos 5:15
Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.
I could spent dozens of pages talking about the difference between “good” and “justice in the courts” and why a blinded pursuit of “good” by those charged with keeping “justice” in the courts leads to the degradation of society. But it won’t be as hauntingly nuanced as this passage.
Too simple. It’ll never catch on.
Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.
Beautiful language, lovely poetry, effective religion, but no content until you define good, evil and justice, which takes up much of the rest of the Bible.
That’s what nuance is. It is evocative of larger concepts with more parsimonious words. In this case, the reader has (or should have) a lot of info about what evil, good, and justice are, and the nuance here is to 1) show that there are situations (the court) where a sharp contrast must be maintained (the health of society) even though “good” and “justice” are very similar concepts.
Nuance is subtle shading of meaning. It is not a synonym of figurative or of concise. Florid writing can be nuanced.
Can you provide any examples of what you are talking about?
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fr Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fr Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fr Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
“Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
“Must never hope to reproduce the faint
“Half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
“Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
“Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Browning is florid, but conveys a great deal of subtle meaning in the poem.
And would you consider Browning to be typical of poetry, or would you say that he lives out on the tail of how verbose poetry gets? Because my sense is that he’s the exception, not the rule.
I would agree that he is an outlier. I am not arguing with your preference for conciseness, just initially pointing out that it should not come at the expense of clarity, and at this stage of the discussion disputing the claim you made that nuance requires conciseness. I agree that Bastiat is more effective, particularly to a modern ear than Smith. But Bastiat is also more effective than Joe Blow on Twitter saying “Free Markets rock!” Again, I like concise writing, just don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, clarity is the baby.
I think this micro disagreement comes because you are talking about nuance in the diction and I am talking about nuance in the idea. You can write a more nuanced word savor vs taste. But you can also add nuance by adding more words, since nuance is about meaning.
It’s the difference between explaining and defining.
You only have to explain until the idea is understood, thereby causing economy to be prized.
Defining can be nearly endless in that you can define all the words being defined and then those words and so on, because the meaning of words are elusive.
Well said. But definition is often important. Good to the modern left means promotes the immediate wants of the more marginalized victim. Evil means something like anything that disagrees with them. Justice means equality of outcome (or possibly superiority of outcome for the most marginalized victims, I am not sure anymore). That is not what those words historically meant.
Definition is important, of course. I was just pointing that it was apples and oranges to compare explicating an idea and defining a term or phrase.
But then nothing can stop a willful misreading. “Congress shall make no” is a clear as it can be. Only bad faith makes it murky.
“Shhh”
‘The black’ friend is usually one of those black white supremacists they’ve been talking about to.
I have black and Chinese friends, but not any Irish.
Them’s… not really fightin’ words.
/Irishman
HAH!
Can’t blame you there. Met too many
SpaniardsIrish./runs off sobbing.
You have this one.
If you don’t see any Irish in the room, you are the Irish.
What if the room is a temperance hall?
I’m sorry to hear we aren’t friends.
No mead for Tundra.
Ugh. You People!
Wasn’t there a time when white people accused of racism we’re challenged to answer if they had any black friends?
The only appropriate response to being accused of being a racist anymore is “Being called a racist by the likes of you is a badge of honor, though I doubt you understand why. Now, go blow it out of your ass somewhere else.”