> Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
>
> > They're much
> > happier being big, meta-politically-correct fish in mighty small ponds.
>
> Paul, I agree with your post, but I don't think leftists should *ever*, for any
> reason, use the rhetoric of "PC." (It is, incidentally, an anciently identified
> rhetorical ploy which has always been condemned for good reasons: it is called
> poisoning the well of discourse."
The term "PC" was an invention of the left that served an excellent self-critical purpose -- attacking self-serious narrow- and literal-mindedness particularly around identity politics.
The theft of the term by the right and its re-selling through the corporate media was a back-handed compliment to the wit that created it.
I'm simply trying out an act of re-appropriation here.
As for "poisoning the well", well, well, well, I'm the one who's claiming that pollution matters, now aren't I? But it's hardly poisoning the well just to use a particular term at the end of presenting an argument. The Nizkor Fallacy has this to say about it (just the beginning of the entry):
+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ Fallacy: Poisoning the Well
Description of Poisoning the Well
This sort of “reasoning” involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person. This “argument” has the following form:
· Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented. · Therefore any claims person A makes will be false.
+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++
A far cry from what I did.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"