This is from the NY Times, an excerpt from an article concerning bribery in China. Thought it was amusing.
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With the public increasingly aware of government corruption, there has been talk of creating a national register to track the family assets of all government officials, in the hopes of weeding out bribe-taking relatives.
The problem is that officials in China appear to be addicted to European luxury brands.
In January, a land confiscation official in the southwestern city of Chongqing was sentenced to 13 years in prison for accepting kickbacks. The government confiscated 200 pairs of luxury shoes, 100 luxury suits and a luxury car.
At his sentencing in January, the official, Ding Meng, expressed no remorse about his expensive tastes.
He even scolded the prosecutor for her poor taste in fashion. “You’re a woman and you don’t even wear better luxury shoes than me,” he sniped. “Maybe you can spend $25 and buy a tube of shoe cream.”
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11 comments:
I love it. Ha!
Chinamen and Chinawomen have expensive tastes on a beer budget - hence the problem with bribery.
Have you seen the Slate article on "Kindle"?
http://www.slate.com/id/2214243/?GT1=38002
Sorry Pierce that it took a week to publish your comment.
Ever since that 'thought police' bitch posted the pedantic remark on my blog for me using the word 'retard' I went on 'moderate comment' default which means I pick and choose what comments are published. 99% of the comments get published. Afterall, is my fortress so weak?! As long as one is not politically correct and not boring, the comments are published. That bitch was a bore.
Actually, I thought she was one of your most thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate correspondents. And as I recall at the time, several others wrote that they agreed with her too.
Your justification of your use of the word "retard" was disturbingly self-serving and specious.
And now you have banned her from your blog. Hmmm. I don't think that's a good thing to do. If I inadvertently used the word "retard" and someone called me on it, I'd thank them and tell them I appreciated that sort of challenge. It is the mark of one who is intellectually alive to question one's suppositions.
Not all calls for "politically correct" behavioral changes are wrong.
Hold on a second, you make me sound like an insensitive cretan.
If you re-read the 'Retard' blog comments, you'll see that my first reply to her was an apologetic one and I approached her exactly the way you prescribed, that is, I showed my appreciation for her sensitivity.
But once I googled her, I noticed that she patrols various blogs and drops pedantic comments and I concluded that she was a 'thought police.' I basically, in the end told her to piss off and I was rid of that Harpie.
Btw, I consider the words 'retard' and 'moron' to be interchangeable (synonymous). A slow learner, an idiot, to me, is a retard (e.g. Sarah Palin per my past blog.)
Moron and "retard" are by no means synoymous, whether or not you consider them so.
Moron is a legitimate word for person who intellectually developmentally disabled. It has,however, taken on a slang meaning, used as an insult for a person who (in the opinion of the speaker) has behaved in a stupid fashion, but is not actually clinically disabled. Because of this slang connotation, it is usually avoided in polite speech, rather than run the risk of unintentionally hurting a person with sensitivites about disabilities -- such as the parent of a developmentally disabled child, for instance. "Moron" is now almost exclusively used as an insult, and this evolution of its meaning really must be acknowledged by avoiding it is all but the most special circumastances. (Such as this discussion.)
"Retard" is purely a slang expression, and would probably be categorized as such or worse if it were to appear in a dictionary.
It is probably formed from the participial adjective "retarded" which is still sometimes used to describe an intellectually disabled person. Most people avoid it. I do, however, have elderly friends in their 80s with a child who is severly diabled and has been in an institution for many years. They visit her, and she comes to see them; they clearly care about her very much and they often refer to her, with affection, as "our retarded daughter".
I do not find your correspondent's remarks at all pedantic in the context of so much potential for emotion and unnecessary pain.
OK. Fck it then. I acquiesce. I'll just stick to "Phillistine" or "Cretan" then. Less charged words.
But don't hold your breath. I'm still trying (mildly) to get the 'N' word out of my inventory... :()
Meant 'Cretin'
Philistine and cretin are also words with entirely different connotations.
A philistine can actually be very intelligent, but just has no use for the aesthetic or intellectual. As a defense, he is often smug and condescending in expressing these opinions.
A cretin (for a moment I thought you were putting down residents of Crete, with some oh-so-hip neologism.) is a person with a particular develpmental disabilty. It's from the Latin word for Christian, as I guess you know, and I believe it originally meant a sort of helpless, unfortunate victim.
Both words are very interesting. Check them out in the OED, as I will tomorrow.
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