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"Rich [gratuitous homophobic slur removed] have reserved the hottest of their fires
of hatred for unionized labor and collective action because they
know that's the biggest threat to their dominance of the country.
I mean, think about what unions actually demand: Decent wages,
security on the job, in sickness, and in old age, respect,
reasonably safe working conditions, and a voice in the economic
enterprise. How in the living fuck is any of that controversial?
That shit is the bare minimum of what a decent life in an advanced
economy should be. But it means that these fucking cartoon
supervillians might suffer--not a loss, oh no, but a slightly
lower profit margin." -- Jude, First Draft,
2011-02-27 [thanks to
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realinterrobang for
quoting it earlier]
[I'm editing this entry to remove harmful use of a word that added nothing to the meaning of the quote. (It added emphasis, but only by means of its implicit harm.) A discussion of the matter can be found in the comments to this entry. I may write a separate entry about it later.]
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"Never suggest any bill that takes money out of my pocket."
That thinking goes double for executives.
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weasel words
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I considered eliding the word with an elipsis, though I figured most readers would assume it was merely an uncharacteristic aversion to profanity rather than something more significant. In hindsight, perhaps I should have added a footnote pointing out that while I agree with the gist of the quote I wish the author had picked a different insult -- but that did not occur to me last night.
[1] For the sake of later readers startled by this thread: yeah, 'cocksucker' can also be used to slur sexually active women, but I'm pretty sure that in this context the relevant aspect was the (more common for this term) implied homosexuality with the attendent reinforcement of the cultural norm of that being insulting, or at least negative. It's at least as problematic as kids' saying "that's so gay" as a generic putdown. If the author did not harbour some (possibly unconscious[2]) "gay is bad and calling someone gay is a major insult" memes, then "cocksucker" would not have seemed insulting enough to use there -- if it were neutral, it would have seemed extraneous, breaing up the flow of the rant, and would have been omitted. By using it here, the author has[3] reinforced the gay=insult meme, which warrants
[2] Unconscious in the "we don't notice it until it's pointed out, because we're swimming in it" sense -- the author may have heard "cocksucker" used as a generic insult so many times that its roots and the source of the word's power failed to register. Not that having failed to examine this yet really excuses the act of using the slur that way, since the effects of the use remain despite how often, "But I didn't mean it that way," is the response to criticism. See: "Intent! It's Fucking Magic!".
[3] As did I, by quoting it without drawing a red circle around it. I think I'm mostly okay on the grounds that I was accurately quoting someone else and "had a good reason" for doing so ... but I'm also aware that "I had a good reason" is used as a rationalization nearly as often as "I didn't mean it that way", so I'm stuck second-guessing myself. When I added this quote to the queue I thought that, on balance, leaving the quote intact was the more correct approach, and at 14:55 this afternoon I still do, but I was not and am not 100% certain of that, and am not declaring the matter closed.
re: 3
replace cocksucker with different slurs especially more slurs that have beena pplied to yourself, and i think you'll see it's not ok.