> No offense was intended, period.
>
> Is humor becoming totally illegitimate to "the left"
I hope not. In fact, I thought I'd noticed things moving encouragingly in the other direction of late, nicely in tandem with some of the the unexpected successes on various fronts. And I wouldn't want to be connected with a humorless left, as I'm disinclined to associate myself with self-defeating enterprises. Well-conceived humor can speed understanding and connection between friend and foe alike.
As for cocksucking, I'm trying to imagine a convincing scenario that might illustrate why it seems odd that a word describing something nice that someone might do for one transforms itself all too readily into a term of disgust and contempt when applied to one's foes. But in a nutshell (so to speak), let us first establish that heterosexual males, by definition, won't generally be found to be cock-sucking. Furthermore, based on our understanding of verbal insults, it's obvious that the term cocksucker when applied by a het male to another het male is an accusation that said foe is no better than, or on an even (implication: lower) plane with, someone who sucks cocks. How else could it function as an effective insult? This in turn paints people in general who happen to suck cocks as being base individuals for their willingness to engage in same, or at the very least less worthy of respect than your average heterosexual male. And it probably confuses the hell out of the people who actually suck cocks if they stop to think about the implications. Which, no doubt, many of them do.
And if the above doesn't make any sense, I'm sure the Aussies on the list can sort things out.
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/ dave / (opportunistic cock kvetcher)