{"id":738,"date":"2008-10-08T09:18:39","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T17:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=738"},"modified":"2009-09-25T21:54:09","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T05:54:09","slug":"finding-the-devils-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=738","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Devil's Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago, I was dealing with a verbal thug in an Internet politics forum, and I called him a <q>thug<\/q>.  At which point one of his allies jumped-in and claimed that my calling him this was an act of anti-Semitism, insofar as <q>thug<\/q> was used by Palestinian militants as as a codeword for Israelis, and I <q>knew<\/q> the fellow to be an Israeli.<\/p> <p>One immediate problem was that I <em>didn't<\/em> know or believe that the fellow was an Israeli (I'd formed no opinion about his nationality); and, indeed, it developed that I <em>couldn't<\/em> have known such a thing, because the fellow simply <em>wasn't<\/em> an Israeli.<\/p> <p>I'd also never heard or read of the word <q>thug<\/q> being used by Palestinian militants for any purpose (albe&iuml;t that it wouldn't surprise me if they'd <em>exhausted the lexicon of insults<\/em> when it came to Israel).  I'd called the fellow a <q>thug<\/q> for the simple reason that he was a <em>goddamn'd thug<\/em>.<\/p> <p>The deeper problem was simply the accusation that someone was using <q>codewords<\/q>, where there isn't any need to produce a codebook, or demonstrate that a pattern has been meaningfully fit.  It's a perfectly <em>craven<\/em> line of attack.<\/p> <p>I mention this now in response to this story: <div style=\"padding-left: 1em ; padding-right: 1em ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/2008\/politics\/black-congressmen-declare-racism-palin-s-rhetoric\"><q>Black Congressmen Declare Racism In Palin\u2019s Rhetoric<\/q> by Jason Horowitz in <cite>the New York Observer<\/cite><\/a> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\"><q>They are trying to throw out these codes,<\/q> said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.<br \/><br \/><q>He\u2019s <q>not one of us<\/q>?<\/q> Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. <q>That\u2019s racial. That\u2019s fear. They know they can\u2019t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.<\/q><\/blockquote><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Years ago, I was dealing with a verbal thug in an Internet politics forum, and I called him a thug. At which point one of his allies jumped-in and claimed that my calling him this was an act of anti-Semitism, insofar as thug was used by Palestinian militants as as a codeword for Israelis, and [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,104,4],"tags":[404,403,405],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-news","category-public","tag-eristicism","tag-polemic","tag-sophistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}