but the issue i am trying to highlight is not so much who may have first found a way to disparage conscientious young adults through name-calling and bad logic, but how the technique is used today. surely you do not deny that the right wing uses such criticism (suburban white teenage angst) as a bogus way to deflect the real issue?
--ravi
to do a pugliese on pugliese, an obscure slightly related link: ;-)
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/2001----.htm
> At a conference on great apes a few years ago, I spoke to a woman who
> had visited Camp Leakey, a rehabilitation center for captured
> orangutans in Borneo run by Birute Galdikas, sometimes referred to as
> "the Jane Goodall of orangutans" and the world's foremost authority
> on these great apes. At Camp Leakey, the orangutans are gradually
> acclimatised to the jungle, and as they get closer to complete
> independence, they are able to come and go as they please. While
> walking through the camp with Galdikas, my informant was suddenly
> seized by a large male orangutan, his intentions made obvious by his
> erect penis. Fighting off so powerful an animal was not an option,
> but Galdikas called to her companion not to be concerned, because the
> orangutan would not harm her, and adding, as further reassurance,
> that "they have a very small penis." As it happened, the orangutan
> lost interest before penetration took place, but the aspect of the
> story that struck me most forcefully was that in the eyes of someone
> who has lived much of her life with orangutans, to be seen by one of
> them as an object of sexual interest is not a cause for shock or
> horror. The potential violence of the orangutan's come-on may have
> been disturbing, but the fact that it was an orangutan making the
> advances was not. That may be because Galdikas understands very well
> that we are animals, indeed more specifically, we are great apes.
> This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural,
> whatever those much-misused words may mean, but it does imply that it
> ceases to be an offence to our status and dignity as human beings.