the New Sincerity

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Sep 10 23:39:04 PDT 1999


Peter Kilander wrote:


> read http://www.civmag.com/articles/C9909E05.html
> for an argument against conformity and for irony

The text Peter refers us to (by Hitchens) contains the following passage:

When, for example, did you ever see the word bipartisan

employed as anything other than an approbation? Or the word

partisan used as other than disapprobation? A sample sentence

might say something like -- and this in a news story -- "Hopes rose

yesterday of an end to the recent outbreak of partisanship on the...

In 19th century U.S. there was a different word for "independent" or "nonpartisan" -- it was Mugwump, someone who sits on the fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other and can't tell the difference.

Carrol



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