{"id":10198,"date":"2006-04-24T19:13:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T23:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2006\/04\/24\/10198.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:54:50","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:54:50","slug":"rumtum-tummitynih-nawh-nooni-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2006\/04\/24\/rumtum-tummitynih-nawh-nooni-n\/","title":{"rendered":"Rum-tum tummity\/Nih nawh noo\/Ni! ni! ni!\/Wayoooooo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now, Gentle Readers, you all know that I am not averse to profanity. Far from it. I have a tremendous respect for profanity, and for the poetics of profanity. I even, on occasion, use some myself. So I don’t think that my reaction to the story of The Emperor's New Clothes and the Fucking Blogger<\/a> is entirely motivated by prunes and prism. But really, did any of you have the reaction I did, which is that it was an effective satire on itself? I mean, if you wanted to make the point that Thersites and his fellows have no clue about political rhetoric, wouldn’t you tell a story about how their profane hostility prevented them from persuading the crowd that the Emporer had no clothes even while the Emperor was standing in front of them buck naked? I mean, if his idea of moral suasion is “what the FUCK is wrong with you fuckers?”, it’s not really a surprise that he’s not winning any elections, now, is it?\n

That said, I have the greatest sympathy for Thersites and for anyone who is reduced to asking WTFMFWTFAYT?<\/a> I get that. And I get that, on a strictly logical basis, profanity is scarcely an indicator of an argument’s inferiority. Or superiority, for that matter. Also, I suppose, there’s an argument to be made that the old f-bomb should be retired as profanity, because everybody uses it these days, and that the restriction against it no longer serves the purpose of making it special and transgressive, and so on. But come on, boys and girls, if you call somebody a fucker, the fucker are likely to take offense, and then the fucker may not weigh your arguments very carefully. Furthermore, these little words still are a marker of Who You Are, and Who You Are is still one of the most important and powerful parts of persuasion.\n

Look, when Thomas Jefferson went to the trouble of writing the Declaration of Independence, do you think he didn’t want<\/I> to point out that not only was the Emperor’s dick hanging out, but that the Emperor had a distressing tendency to spend his days with his bare ass on a piano bench playing an imaginary Hammond B-3? In fact, old TJ took great care in establishing himself as a reasonable, educated, calm man, much like his reader (who was, presumably, pleased to find himself reasonable, educated and calm, much more so, anyway, than to find himself a dumbfuck), who was compelled, by the great sweep of history, to present the case against the Emperor, detailed below, after the list of his qualifications to present it. I’m not saying we each to be Thomas Jefferson, I’m just saying that if we want to be persuasive<\/I>, we need to learn how persuasion works, and use that knowledge, rather than relying entirely on being right.\n

I mean, it’s nice to be right. Thersites is right. Being right isn’t enough. You don’t hold all your opinions just because they are all right. Oh, I’m sure they are<\/I> all right, but that wasn’t enough. Rhetoric is about that extra stuff, the stuff that brings being right<\/I> up to the level of winning. And if you hold that in contempt, then you don’t really get to whinge about the village fuckheads and how they won’t listen to you. Or, rather, you do<\/I> get to whinge about them, but you still have to live under the government they elect.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now, Gentle Readers, you all know that I am not averse to profanity. Far from it. I have a tremendous respect for profanity, and for the poetics of profanity. I even, on occasion, use some myself. So I don\u2019t think…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17737,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10198\/revisions\/17737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}