What is wrong with these people?
It’s hard to understand how this kind of thing gets published in a world that includes editors, higher cognitive function, and/or common decency.
My favorite bit from the comments, defending the author’s use of a definition of lynching that limits it to hangings:
“Regardless of the dictionary’s definition, English is considered the most nuanced of languages because each word has a specific, unique meaning giving context and emotion to any written or spoken idea or statement. I don’t need a dictionary to instruct me on the accepted meaning of the word ‘lynching.’”
See also Yglesias.
C’mon. Somebody has to stand up for the honor and reputations of Southern segregationist murderous mobs.
I thought that was Robert Stacy McCain’s job?
McCain is also a contributor to The American Spectator.
I can’t believe that someone could say “She is lying. The man was handcuffed, beaten, thrown bleeding in a jail cell, and ultimately died in the hospital, not lynched,”
Since an actual description of what happened to Bobby Hall is probably more troubling than just saying he was lynched, it is almost as if Lord is accusing her of downplaying Hall’s demise.
Are you really going to trust a liberal dictionary to tell you how to talk? Bah!
Regardless of the dictionary’s definition, English is considered the most nuanced of languages because each word has a specific, unique meaning giving context and emotion to any written or spoken idea or statement.
Unlike, say, French, where any word can mean absolutely anything. I know I thank God every day that I don’t speak one of those inferior foreign languages, where sometimes a device called sarcasm can lend different, even opposite, meanings to utterances. If English was good enough for Jesus Christ to speak, then it is good enough for me.
Heaven forbid anyone tell Jonah Goldberg about this iron rule of semantic meaning.
One of the lynchings (in Coatesville, PA) that led to the impetus for anti-lynching laws occurred by burning. If only Lord had a time machine, he could go back and explain to people that it didn’t matter that the man was beaten and then burned to death, or that children played with the unburnt parts afterward, because no rope was used.
[...] going to try and smear this woman before some sense of shame or decency kicks in?”) and Paul Campos (“It’s hard to understand how this kind of thing gets published in a world that includes [...]
Somehow I know that two relatives of mine are going to bring this up, and now I am going to take every opportunity to use both the correct aggregate term and the specifics. “Sherrod’s father was lynched, or if you prefer a different description, he was beaten to death by three men with the help of local authorities, an event made possible only because he was a black man in a racist South.”
God, I hope this ‘it’s not lynching, prove it was lynching’ thing does not catch on. Utterly depressing.
Actually, the death of her relative Bobby Hall at the hands of Claude Screws is distinct from the murder of her father. They were both killed violently, but the lynching was an earlier event.
Sadly, Mr. Lord removes all nuance from the word “idiot”.
Boggles the mind. Lynching is extra-judicial murder, by any means. E.g., the Mormon patriarch Joseph Smith was lynched by an Illinois mob, without benefit of rope. Just one example.
In a vacuum — let me repeat that, in a vacuum — I’m not wholly unsympathetic to the argument that lyching equals hanging. I suspect at this point in time, a lot of people would think so, regardless of what the dictionary says.
What I don’t get, and what seems to be getting a little lost in all the dictionary citing, is what kind of a MONSTER would set out to make the argument that “he wasn’t lynched, he was just beaten to death by 3 law enforcement officials using fists and a metal bar.” WTF doesn’t begin to capture it.
It’s like saying Hitler (sorry, Godwin’s law violation, but necessary) didn’t really send 6 million Jews to the ovens, because some of them starved to death, were shot, or died of disease.
And your point is?
what kind of a MONSTER would set out to make the argument that “he wasn’t lynched, he was just beaten to death by 3 law enforcement officials using fists and a metal bar.”
Almost any movement conservative.
In a vacuum — let me repeat that, in a vacuum — I’m not wholly unsympathetic to the argument that lyching equals hanging.
Speaking as Mr. Not-A-Lawyer it would then be hard to imagine the utility of the word in matters of law.
Well, yes, I can imagine that many people do equate lynching with hanging. But if you’re going to accuse someone of lying when they say someone was lynched, you better make darn sure that the word means what you think it means and not what they think it means. (Or see if it might mean both.)
When I studied journalism over 30 years ago, we had something called “Editors.”
What ever happened to these people? Were they the first one let go?
Who, and how, could anyone print this?
My sense is that the Weekly Standard pays its contributors per word, not per fact. Jeffrey Lord must be making out like a logorrheic bandit.
Also (or ergo), c u n d gulag, any resemblance between the Standard and journalism is purely obfuscatory.
This is the American Spectator, not the Weekly Standard.
R. Emmett Tyrell? Well that just, um, reinforces my point. Yeah, that’s it.
Good point. However, when “Mad Magazine” has higher editorial standards than “The Spectatory,” we really need to revamp media. FAST!!!
It’s hard to understand how this kind of thing gets published in a world that includes editors, higher cognitive function, and/or common decency.
The problem is that you assume that editors, or anyone else in the corporate media, are possessed of the last two attributes.
How does this happen? It would be irresponsible not to speculate how this happened. Lord, in his younger days, liked to go around with a bunch of white friends seeking out black men just to beat them to death and watch them die. But he’d never think of himself as the sort who would actually lynch a black man or be a racist. His editor was one of the friends in on the beatings. Hence the absurd and erroneous semantic nitpicking.
Unrelated: Did you know that the program you use to generate your RSS feed includes ads at the bottom of each article, without (I hope) your editorial oversight? On this article, I got an ad for “AfroRomance”, which is probably what it says (a singles site) but looks like it could also be a prostitution site. Screen shot 1. Just the ad. I wonder if the word “lynching” is what picked this one.
LGM is probably sufficiently monetized that you are not eager to reduce the amount of advertising on your RSS feed. But, while I am thrilled with the content here, I am not thrilled with such ads (I have also seen problematic drug ads), and may unsubscribe.
I dunno if I’m late to this and maybe something’s changed, but the RSS feeds are currently free of ads.
In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States, with the basic facts of the case agreed to by all nine Justices in Screws vs. the U.S. Government, says not one word about Bobby Hall being lynched. Why? Because it never happened.
when the supreme court doesn’t express an opinion about something one way or the other, it never happened. his logic is watertight.
[...] Paul Campos: It’s hard to understand how this kind of thing gets published in a world that includes editors, higher cognitive function, and/or common decency. [...]
In related news, Thomas Sowell’s column this week talks about how awful the NAACP is for calling the Tea Party racists and how terrible Obama is on race, but somehow never gets around to saying anything about the Sherrod case.