Chris Matthews to Rep. Steve Cohen (D. Tenn) last week on Hardball
Topic: Apologizing for and the Possibly of Offering Reparations for Slavery
Matthews: “I mean you’re from Tennessee. Maybe you should apologize first before you ask the rest, the rest of the country. Why should Pennsylvania apologize for something it fought and died – You’re laughing – It’s not funny --Why should anybody apologize for your sins – For any state – New York, Vermont --they didn’t have slavery – had some of it.”
New York had slavery for 215 years including, of course, years before it became a colony and state. Pennsylvania, Mr. Matthew’s home state, had slavery for 201 years including years before it became official. Tennessee, Rep. Cohen’s home state, had slaves from the time of its earliest permanent white settlers until the end of the Civil War – a period of about 100 years. East Tennessee was well known for supporting the abolitionists. CiteCite
I grant that the Union fought and died for a just cause. I have no quarrel with who was right. It’s the claim that New York and Pennsylvania had no slavery that is jaw-dropping.
OK, either I’m being whooshed, or I’m in severe cerebral flatulence mode, but I don’t see the oxymoron, either. Where does it say the girl doesn’t have a uterus and why does that make “hysterically crying” an oxymoron?
Please explain it to me as if I’m from the planet Ork or someplace similar.
It took me a while and a few searches about relative humidity, but 100% relative humidity doesn’t mean it is raining. Maybe one of our learned friends could explain it?
Ugh, God yes. I had recorded the Today Show yesterday because a friend was going to be performing during the 10-11am time slot, so I had to fast foward through all that crap. Even scanning through it fast I couldn’t believe how much time was spent just walking through rooms in Neverland.
However, PA abolished slavery (kind of) before the Union even existed, and New York abolished it in 1827. The only reason they had it for longer is that they were founded much earlier.
You realize that Enderw24 wasn’t the source of the original oxymoron quote, right? That was Jackknifed Juggernaut. Enderw24 was just making an obscure etymological joke.
Fine. Forget Enderw24’sjoke. I’ll move on and admit defeat. I still don’t see the oxymoron in Jackknifed Juggernaut’s post, either with or without the joke. Continuing on with my day.
Perhaps I can help. At one time the uterus was believed to go off on unscheduled road trips around a woman’s body at time of stress: these uteruses gone wild triggered a wild emotional surge known as hysteria.
In which case, “crying hysterically” makes perfect sense. The two words used together do not contradict each other, thus they do not constitute an oxymoron.
Examples of oxymorons would be phrases like “army intelligence” or “congressional ethics.” Hence all the confusion.
I think a lot of people confuse oxymorons, or self contradictions, with tautologies, or repetitive redundancies: brutal elegance is an oxymoron; frightened coward is a tautology. Crying hysterically is neither, since it is quite possible to cry without being hysterical, and it is equally possible to be hysterical without crying.
Either way, it pales in comparison with the woman at work who announced that she wasn’t going to succumb to swine flu because she’d made up an aromatherapy antidote. She’s a really sweet lady, but sometimes I’d like to seize her by the shoulders and shake her roughly.
