Phil: What sort of communications professor shouts 'Racism!' when challenged? Well, an academic who views argumentation as performance, I suppose.Is there an ideological inference here? An unremarked elephant of Nietzschean resentment at the symposium?
A sixteen year old told me that his high school health class was about people with disabilities. "Midgets and cripples?" I provoked. "Bearded ladies? Cyclops mutants with flippers?" "Yes," he told me. "We aren't supposed to call people with disabilities names."
"Why?" "They didn't say why. Just that it might hurt their feelings.""Why worry about their feelings? What's an angry dwarf going to do," I provoked. "Stab you in the ankle?"
[laughter] "Could it be that all people have the same right to dignity?""Sure," he said. "They just didn't tell us that. They only said we shouldn't call them names." "What do you call imbeciles?" I provoked. "You know, doofus kids who wear shorts and flipflops?"
"They are mentally challenged," he said. "What about smart people? Are they mentally challenging?" [laughter] "They didn't say anything about smart people, did they? What to call them?" "No." "They didn't say anything about smart, healthy, strong people, did they?" "No." "Why? Can't you hurt their feelings?" "They probably wouldn't care," he replied. "Why?" "They just probably wouldn't care." ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html