Home > Politics > Ranting

Ranting

October 2, 2006

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.

Categories: Politics
  1. October 2, 2006 at 11:19 | #1

    Problem as I see it is that most of what I see coming from the so called “liberal” is indeed rants in the classic sense. The left wing always ignores logic..unless one believes that there is a free lunch is logical.

  2. October 2, 2006 at 19:29 | #2

    Guyk: if what your saying is true, I take it the majority of you information comes from Faux News.  I recommend something like NPR, Daily Show, or Colbert Report.  You might get some insight into the Liberal=illogical issue.

    Anyways, hey DOF did you send that to Faux News, I bet they would enjoy it.  Or Media Matters, they might actually read it.

  3. October 2, 2006 at 22:39 | #3

    GUYK, tomay-to, tomah-to.  You say ‘free lunch’ I say ‘investment in human infrastructure’.  Of course it can be stupidly applied, as in cash welfare payments to nonworking people but there are lots of other programs that really pull their weight in society and we’d be worse off without them.

    Webs – Send it to Faux news or Media Matters?  Nope.  Let them write their own editorials. ;-)

    (You do know that TDS and Colbert Report are comedy, don’t you?  As opposed to NPR, which is actual news and analysis…  Just seems weird to have them in the same sentence.)

  4. October 2, 2006 at 23:00 | #4

    I didn’t mention them for necessarily their news quality, which I think each one does a great job at covering stories (or in the case of the later two, the stories they do cover, are done well).  But because Guyk seems to be confused as to the logic of liberalism.  Or the logic behind liberal thinking.  Thought he might be interested into some info.

  5. October 3, 2006 at 07:37 | #5

    The only confusion I have ever had about the left wing is why they call themselves liberals..there is a difference between liberals and socialists. I am a liberal by the defintion of liberal in the dictionary. The left wing is socialist and I reject socialism for various reasons but primarily because it is not compatable with individual freedom.

    Any type of forced income redistribution is nothing more than legalized extortion. I have said before and I say again that I have more respect for the thief who robs me at gunpoint than I do a left wing politician who robs me with law. At least the thief is admitting that he is a thief. The left wing politician is hiding his greed for what I have behind law

Comments are closed.