The whole country feels southern to a city-dweller. Pick-up trucks and hound dogs, and hell, even confederate flags, are part of what seems to be a universal American redneck stereotype.
I lived in upstate New York for years, and there were country boys up there who could spit a stream of Skoal just as far as the hicks from North Carolina.
I agree. There’s nothing like a little controversy to stir up interest and attention.
Perhaps not, but it’s not as slam-dunk as “of course”.
I think it is. The alternate position would lead to the ridiculous conclusion that the vast majority of people prior to, say, 1800 were inhuman monsters because they condoned slavery.
That’s not fair Zoe. I said I don’t know anything about Vick’s background. I was arguing that explanation is not defense, not that what Whoopi was saying was particularly accurate. I believe I said earlier, even if she is wrong about the facts, she wouldn’t have merited this pitting.
You’ll note that my reference to living in Georgia was to point out that I *too *didn’t encounter any dogfighting. To try to turn that around on me like I was somehow holding myself up to be an expert on the South is just unfair. More to the point, surely you recognize how these subcultures could exist without you encountering them, don’t you? I know what I read, and the sociology that talks about dogfighting talks about it being *centered *in the South. I do believe that there are subcultures there and elsewhere in which animal welfare is not a recognized good.
Except the fighters have a choice.
And, as has been pointed out, nobody electrocutes or strangles boxers for losing.
I think anyone who invests emotional energy over Whoopi’s comments needs a big heaping cup of Get a Fuckin’ Life with a side order of Cry Me A Fucking River, Brittany. Have we gotten to the point that anything said about Vick that is less than he’s an evil rotten bastard who deserves public disembowelment must be spun as being a defense of his behavior? Before anyone accuses me too of defending Vick–who I wouldn’t know from Adam if he came into my office right now wearing a football jersey whilst doing a touchball dance–let me say that I despise dog fighting along with the best of them. But the reaction I’m seeing to Whoopi is so bizarrely out of proportion.
I join Miller in saying that this is a ridiculous statement. “By definition”, an explanation provides clarity, to make something that is hard to grasp more comprehensible. That’s not the same thing as excusing or defending that action. Check out that link to dictionary.com and count how many times the word “excuse” or “defend” show up as synonyms. It’s a big fat whopping zero times for both. So I’m not quite understanding how “by definition” an explanation is an excuse for anything.
Gotta wonder if you ask people non-ironically “Why do you hate America?” when they point to the stupid things our country does that exacerbate things in the Middle East. In this conversation, you might as well replace “Why do you hate America?” with “Why does Whoopi hate sweet little puppy dogs?” You come out looking the same way.
I would say, yes.
Not in my opinion, no. If I’m not to be hard on Johnny, then I guess I’m being asked to be easy on him. Give him a lighter sentence for instance. But if his behavior is truely being excused then I shouldn’t need to give him any punishment at all. However, in this example, his behavior is still bad and the statement at no time says that it wasn’t. He is stll deserving of punishment.
I could easily use the same explanation to come up with a different reaction:
“Johnny’s parents taught him to steal. We should give him a greater punishment to undo that teaching so that he learns stealing is not acceptable.”
The explanation is not an excuse. It says nothing about the badness of the behavior and your reaction to the explanation can go anywhere.
Short of drawing you a Venn diagram, I’m not sure how to respond to this. I suppose some explanations can be excuses. Just off the top of my head:
“Johhny stole the money because Mr. X strapped a bomb to Johnny’s chest and told him that he’d detonate it if Johnny didn’t steal the money.”
But I’m not seeing anything like that here.
So, *no *explanations are *ever *excuses, and vice versa?
By definition:
You say “explanations” are the same thing as “excuses” and to prove this you give the dictionary definition of “rationalize?”
Did you really expect that load of crap to slip by unnoticed?
Look again. I think it’s you sanding in the load of crap. You may want to read the whole thread before you stick your foot in your mouth.
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
I don’t really know what you’re getting at because the link for me goes to Goolgle’s main page.
The line you quoted above is the definition of “rationalize.” It seems you are taking synonyms for “excuse” and using their definitions to draw a link to “explain.” Or something. It doesn’t work that way.
Sorry. Try this.
Is that a definition of the noun “an excuse” or the verb “to excuse”?
I’m not sure what a dictionary definition is supposed to proove. Doesn’t that just show how we use language - which is none too precise to begin with.
I think it can show that there is some connection between “excuse” and “explain,” which was why I used it. It also can be used as a response to another dictionary cite. Dueling dictionaries, as it were.
It just seems like so much, much longer than that. Whenever talented actors have enough sense not to touch a project with a pole of any length, producers know Goldberg or that other slightly less egregious Queen Latifah will take nearly anything thrown at them.
It drives me mad when people say the phrase “indicative to”. It’s especially irritating when they use it to mean “inherent to”, “indigenous to”, “characteristic of”, or “prevalalent in”. It’s a sign that the speaker is trying to appear more educated than they actually are. It could have been worse, though, she could have said “indicative as per”. :shudder:
If my complaint doesn’t make sense to you, saying “dogfighting is indicative to the South” in correct usage would be “dogfighting is indicative ***of *** the South”. That would actually mean: “If you look around and see dogfighting, you’re probably in the South.” Dogfighting is of course more common in the South, but the presence of dogfighting doesn’t necessarily imply that you’re in the South.
Okay, Whoopi says she was not condoning dog-fighting. She was completely against animal cruelty in any form. She was using the culture issue as a discussion topic and was not saying she agreed with it at all.
So now this thread can turn into another “pit bulls are dangerous” hijack.
What makes you look stupid is your insistence that an explanation, by definition, is an excuse. But then to prove that, you go to all this trouble to define the word “excuse”. And in a disingenious manner at that, since your posts neglect to mention that fact until after someone calls you on it.
Let’s agree that all excuses are explanations (of a sort). It does not follow that all explanations are excuses. Insisting otherwise is fallacy. Real simple. No Venn diagrams are necessary to illustrate the madness of your argument.
You have a bad habit of playing the dueling dicitionaries game, but you completely suck at it.