Building A Better Politics

Apparently the dear Dr. Laura had a fit of stupidity while taking an on-air call during her radio show. Some might say she's a racist for repeatedly and intentionally saying the word 'nigger' whilst talking to a black woman about the racist comments of her white husband's friends. I'm taking a TNC approach to this one. Dr. Laura isn't a racist. She's just ignorant.
What we have here is another instance of someone mistaking authorial intent as the beginning and end of how a word is understood. I'm waving my Wittgenstein stick here as I subscribe to his 'meaning as use' theory of language. Since language is a public act words gain meaning through the interaction of at least two people. Dr. Laura could have meant whatever she liked when saying 'nigger'. Doesn't mean a damn thing because that's not how that language game is played. Had she premised her usage of the word on it's regularity in the speech of black men she might have a defensible position. Actually, no not really. All Dr. Laura did was attempt to excuse her usage by citing its usage in a completely different language game.
Stupidity and ignorance reign once again with Dr. Laura. Because she didn't know, or refused to acknowledge, that authorial intent only plays a small role in defining a word she stumbled right into a classic ignorant white person trap. It doesn't matter much that she apologized. The words were spoken. No matter what she intended, the meaning of the word 'nigger' doesn't suddenly change to suit her needs. The word has a meaning that invokes a whole different language game than the one she was playing. With a different game come different rules. Dr. Laura was ignorant of this and ignorance isn't much of a defense.
Thus Dr. Laura was wrong and remains ignorant of exactly why she was wrong. Thus she needs a beating with the Wittgenstein stick.

Building A Better Politics

I'm a little bemused at this post from FrumForum writer John Vecchione arguing for the arrest of WikiLeaks principal Julian Assange. It's not so much the argument itself as it's the strange phrase Vecchione uses in reference to the soldier who gave WikiLeaks some 90,000 pages of classified information on the Afghan war. Vecchione uses the phrase "disgruntled homosexual soldier", the only reference at all to the source of the leak. Now it's fairly obvious that the soldier was indeed disgruntled. When one thinks of 'massive leak of classified information' the idea of a non-disgruntled soldier doesn't readily come to mind. Oh, and the soldier is in fact a soldier. So the phrase 'disgruntled soldier' shouldn't come as a surprise (unless, of course, you're simply stupid). Thus the striking part of Vecchione's phrasing is the word 'homosexual'.
I don't get it. So the disgruntled soldier is homosexual. So what? You would do just as well as saying 'disgruntled blonde soldier'. That the soldier is homosexual shouldn't need pointing out. Such a piece of information adds nothing to the larger purpose of Vecchione's post--namely arguing for the actions the U.S. is and should take with regards to Assange. From Vecchione's perspective I can understand his distaste for Assange and desire to prevent or at least curtail Assange's freedom of movement. I don't share it, but I get it.
So the soldier is gay. Why mention that at all? If Vecchione's intent were to argue for tighter security in handling classified documents then talking about the soldier is only natural. But Vecchione's focus is on Assange. All I can really conclude from Vecchione describing the soldier as gay is Vecchione doesn't like gays. Additional supposition leads me to think Vecchione not only dislikes gays but believes gays are potential security risks in the military.
The obvious, Vecchione's dislike of gays, doesn't necessarily lead to my supposition. But still, why use that phrasing at all? If your argument were against gays serving openly in the military then the orientation of the source leak makes for an easy point of entry. That's not Vecchione's argument here. What it indicates, I believe, is Vecchione's bias against gays. Such a bias appearing so randomly colors the rest of his post. Worse yet, it weakens his argument by injecting an unreasonable position within his wider argument. If something so innocuous as the source leak being homosexual bothers Vecchione then how reasonable is the rest of his argument? It puts Vecchione's objectivity into question when such objectivity is necessary to firmly establish his argument's viability.
What that leaves the reader with is an argument that, whatever its merits, lacks the needed perspective to make it truly persuasive.