SHOUTING POINTS MEMO
: Ed Cone has a downright brilliant column giving into the trend in political discourse these days with a SHOUTING POINTS MEMO. An excerpt of his advice:
I am right, and you are wrong.
You are not just wrong, you and those like you are intellectually insufficient and morally suspect. Why do you hate our country? Think of the children….
You speak in cliches, slogans and sound bites. I speak in pithy phrases and time-tested words of wisdom. You call names, I tell it like it is. You are vulgar, I am colorful.
My candidate is a hero. Yours is a zero. One cannot compare the youthful hijinks of my guy with the youthful wantonness of yours. My guy makes mistakes, yours commits sins of the worst kind. And likes it. My guy was misquoted, or simply misspoke, while your guy was caught on tape saying exactly what I expected him to say….
Your attempt at humor reveals your narrow-minded bigotry. Your reaction to my own attempt at humor shows that you cannot take a joke.
I disagree with what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to tell you so. Jerk.
Enjoy the rest. Mark my words: This is going to be a classic.
If we in this supposedly conversation medium will not stand up for a higher level of discourse, who the hell will?
