Decrepit Old Fool

For a nation of immigrants, this does not bode well:

Seth Stein is used to jetting around the world to create stylish holiday homes for wealthy clients. This means the hip architect is familiar with the irritations of heightened airline security post-9/11. But not even he could have imagined being mistaken for an Islamist terrorist and physically pinned to his seat while aboard an American Airlines flight – especially as he has Jewish origins.

Yet this is what happened when he travelled back from a business trip to the Turks and Caicos islands via New York on 22 May. Still traumatised by his ordeal, the 47-year-old is furious that the airline failed to protect him from the gung-ho actions of an over-zealous passenger who claimed to be a police officer…

“This man could have garrotted me and what was awful was that one or two of the passengers went up afterwards to thank him,” said Mr Stein. He has since been told by airline staff he was targeted because he was using an iPod, had used the toilet when he got on the plane and that his tan made him appear “Arab”.
- Humiliation at 33,000 feet: Top British architect tells of terror ‘arrest’

After 9/11, I had a Turkish grad student working for me – a wonderful guy, though as he put it; “Look like terrorist!” from his swarthy skin to the single dark eyebrow that spanned his face.  He occasionally encountered awkward moments, such as a when a number of police cars were summoned when he asked one D.C. cop for directions.  He felt it was understandable in light of recent events.  I thought he was an exceptionally good sport about the whole thing.

But it isn’t ‘understandable’.  As FDR said in his first in his first inaugural address, fear itself merits a skeptical review.  It can lead us to do stupid things we later regret, both as individuals and as a nation.  While promoting fear may be an effective strategy for keeping legislative seats or winning presidential elections, it guarantees an erosion of common sense and of confidence in our freedoms.

(from ***Dave)

I used to hear the word “rant” applied to incoherently angry speech: “The wino was ranting at passers-by”.  It is a term that has come to be used, perhaps consciously, as a pejorative to discredit rather than to answer political speech, applied to people who are really not ranting.

A certain news network is famous for this:  “Barbara Pelosi was ranting about gay rights or something,”  “Clinton’s ranting at Chris Wallace”  – or anytime the speaker says something one does not want to hear.

Because true rants may be safely dismissed as irrational, calling someone else’s political speech a rant is an economical way of avoiding having to answer hard questions.  In particular it skirts the issue of whether the speaker’s anger might be entirely legitimate.

A boundaries of ranting are not simple to define, though as the late Justice Potter Stewart said in reference to pornography, “I know it when I see it”.  Ray Nagan’s famous “Pissed” speech after Katrina came close to being a rant as it is nearly free of logical content and the speaker not only wasn’t thinking clearly, he wasn’t even breathing regularly.  I attended many fundamentalist churches when I lived up in the mountains in Tennessee, and saw plenty of rants there.  And, quite a number of well-considered but angry sermons, too. 

The trouble is that others “see” ranting in speech that contains actual points that call for consideration.  Now it refers to any slight raising of the voice, or quickening of words – by that token, Bill O’Reilly rants at least five times each evening.  But a person can be wrong without ranting, and even be visibly angry without ranting.  A rant begins when they are only throwing catch-phrases and pejoratives around without actually making any points.

Because of such misuse, the word “rant” has lost its usefulness.  It is applied – excuse the term, please – liberally to otherwise legitimate and logically supported angry speech rather than to identify someone who truly is out of control.  It is shorthand for “Oh, those liberals!”  So much easier than facing the unpleasant possibility that the other guy might be making a legitimate point that deserves an actual answer.

A word so indiscriminantly overused needs a vacation.

Update, 03 Oct 06
Here’s a good “rant” – ***Dave looks at the War On Terror in Allow me a brief rant, if you will.