Quit Using Bad Platitudes!
Kerry Howley | July 25, 2008, 3:52pm
The Dongcheng District Propaganda Department has prepared a helpful list of things not to say to Olympic tourists, lest they figure out that they're in a foreign country:
Rules for Interacting With Foreigners
Don’t ask about income or expenses, don’t ask about age, don’t ask about love life or marriage, don’t ask about health, don’t ask about someone’s home or address, don’t ask about personal experience, don’t ask about religious beliefs or political views, don’t ask what someone does.
Etiquette for Interacting With Handicapped Athletes
Pay attention to avoiding taboo subjects, quit using bad platitudes, and do not use insulting or discriminatory contemptuous or derogatory terms to address the disabled. Say things such as, “You are amazing,” or “You are really great.” When chatting with the visually impaired, do not say things like “It’s up ahead,” or “It’s over there.” When chatting with athletes who are paraplectic in their upper body, do not say things like “It’s behind you.”
Via Peaceful Rise.
GILMORE | July 26, 2008, 9:09pm | #
Totally off-thread -
The NYT ran a story today about the League of Empowered Female Bloggers, "BlogHer"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/fashion/27blogher.html
... on this comment, i immediately thought of Kerry (oh you stop lyin, you were thinking about her anyway)
Other prominent female bloggers who did not attend the BlogHer conference agreed that there are unique challenges that women in the blogosphere face. “Women get dismissed in ways that men don’t,” said Megan McArdle, an associate editor at The Atlantic Monthly who writes a blog about economic issues. She added that women are taught not to be aggressive and analytical in the way that the political blogosphere demands, and are more likely to receive blog comments on how they look, rather than what they say.
I think this is a little unfair. There are probably many profoundly unattractive female bloggers out there who've never received so much as a single "yowza".
But I felt a twang of sympathy for kerry, who is consistently one of the most insightful people on the net, but yet must put up with constant juvenile comments about her hotness, or her hot factor, or how shes smart (and hot!), whether she's in a relationship, how hot she is, and other totally irrelevant details.
I mean, those people are such jerks.
But thats not really my point. My point was this BlogHer conference thing seemed pretty gay.
There were tears at many emotional panels, and also much hooting and applause, whether in response to news that Michelle Obama had just written her first blog post on the BlogHer Web site or that Michelin would be giving away a set of tires.
Tires? WTF.
It just makes me feel like people are stuck in some stupid 1990s-liberal-arts program of gender-identity-politics fluffing. I think the younger generations are already pretty over this type of shit. I think the assumption of a "blogging glass ceiling" makes for a tired rhetorical routine these days. Then again this is the NYT. There was a story last week that headlined =
"Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy"
Also, I hear minorities also affected. Anyhoo.
