Julia Keller wrote a column in the Chicago Tribune today asking which fighting words would provoke you. She began like this: "Let's say we wanted to make you fantastically angry. Incandescently angry. So angry that you'd leap up and out of your chair and charge across the room, fists balled and trembling, eyes blazing, blood pressure spiking."

For example, she says, for Aaron Burr it was the word "despicable," which he said was derogatory to his honor. For the recent head butt in the World Cup, no one knows what Marco Materazzi said, though it is believed his remarks concerned Zinedine Zidane's sister and mother. The World Cup's governing body must know because while Zinedine Zidane got suspended for 3 matches, Materazzi got suspended for 2. Keller also cites linguistic professor Deborah Tannen, from Georgetown University, as saying, "Under the right circumstances, everybody could be driven to lose it, if they heard the right words."

So what would do it to you? Insults to your gender? Your looks? Your family? Your race? Your intelligence? Your sexuality? Your politics? A profanity, a slam, a slur, a joke, a threat...what???

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

Kalleh--nobody's answered this!

Maybe that means this is The Peacable Kingdom.

My writing ability

As I am the country's most resoundingly unpublished writer

I hear people talking bad,
About the way we have to live here in this country.
Harping on the wars we fight,
And griping about the way things oughta be.
And I don't mind 'em switching sides,
And standing up for things they believe in.
But when they're running down my country, man,
They're walking on the fightin' side of me.

They're walking on the fightin' side of me.
Running down the way of life,
Our fightin' men have fought and died to keep.
If you don't love it, leave it!
Let this song I'm singin' be a warning.
If you're running down my country, man,
You're walking on the fightin' side of me.

I read about some squirrely guy,
Who claims, he just don't believe in fightin'.
And I wonder just how long,
The rest of us can count on being free.
They love our milk and honey,
But they preach about some other way of living.
When they're running down my country, hoss,
They're walking on the fightin' side of me.

Yeah, walking on the fighting side of me.
Running down the way of life,
Our fighting men have fought and died to keep.
If you don't love it, leave it!
Let this song I'm singin' be a warning.
If you're running down my country, man,
You're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

- By Merle Haggard

Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
by John Prine

While digesting Reader's Digest
In the back of a dirty book store,
A plastic flag, with gum on the back,
Fell out on the floor.
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside
Slapped it on my window shield,
And if I could see old Betsy Ross
I'd tell her how good I feel.

Chorus:
But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Well, I went to the bank this morning
And the cashier he said to me,
"If you join the Christmas club
We'll give you ten of them flags for free."
Well, I didn't mess around a bit
I took him up on what he said.
And I stuck them stickers all over my car
And one on my wife's forehead.

Repeat Chorus:

Well, I got my window shield so filled
With flags I couldn't see.
So, I ran the car upside a curb
And right into a tree.
By the time they got a doctor down
I was already dead.
And I'll never understand why the man
Standing in the Pearly Gates said...
"But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."

For me, "fighting words" are provoked when someone says something against my family or loved ones. I am extremely loyal, and I just can't stand that. Oh...and the same goes for Wordcraft.

Now, mind you, I can criticize them; it's just that I hate it when others do!

Just three little words: "The liberal media." The term's been spun into something negative, and it angers me very much.

Me too because when all is said and done, at least in the U.S., I believe the media is more conservative than it is liberal. I travel across the U.S. a lot and try to read all the local newspapers and listen to their news reports, so I have some data on which to base this opinion.

On the other hand, I suppose I am a bit biased, as we all are, on what is liberal and what is conservative.

And...another one, "You've missed the point!"

I find that very arrogant, and it raises my ire. Who's to know what the "point" is, indeed?!

When someone accuses me of being racist, or when someone is blatantly and unashamedly racist themselves. Same for sexist.

However, since I am equally appalled and outraged by violence of any kind, there are very few issues that would actually provoke me to fight. I would be most likely to resort to flight.

Most people are "appalled and outraged by violence." It's just that we hear about the outliers way too often.

But don't you think that our society is careening towards greater violence every day? Maybe it is just the culture in which I am immersed where I work. But maybe not . . . check out this article in the BBC and this from CNN.

My first reaction to that is to make a political statement, which I promised myself I wouldn't do. I will merely say that leaders must be very cognizant that they are also role models.

So...I will go the other way. My daughter's boyfriend recently saved the life of a bleeding young man on the street. The man's lung was punctured, he couldn't breathe, and he was losing blood quickly. The paramedics put them on hold! My daughter's boyfriend applied pressure, closed the hole in his chest, and tried to calm him (the injured man only spoke Spanish), and waited with him until the paramedics finally made it. The paramedics think he will survive and said he most certainly would have died without the help he received.

Will this get reported in the LA Times? Absolutely not. The media loves violence.

quote:

On the other hand, I suppose I am a bit biased, as we all are, on what is liberal and what is conservative.

The meaning of the terms in the UK is quite different. We do have a Conservative party and a Liberal Democrat party, and the terms could be used to apply to their policies (when the terms would be capitalised).

However, the pejorative use of the term "liberal" is almost unknown here. The word liberal simply means (as it should mean) "...showing or characterized by broad-mindedness...". An admirable quality I would suggest.

The term "conservative" simply means "...resistant to change, preferring to stick with the tried and trusted...".

To call someone a "...lousy tree-hugging liberal..." as I was once referred to by an American, means very little here and is certainly not a massive insult.

quote:

Will this get reported in the LA Times? Absolutely not. The media loves violence.

Bad news is good news; good news is no news.

quote:

But don't you think that our society is careening towards greater violence every day?

The media likes to suggest this and there might even be a grain of truth in it on occasion.

But if you look at the figures for violent crime in the UK and look beyond the headline "Violent crime up by 14%" and see what the numbers say, as opposed to the percentage increase, then the picture's not so black. In a quarter of the year, the total number of crimes of violence was 289,500 - a large figure, of course. But in a population of 60,441,000 that's less than 0.005%. Not a very large figure in truth.

Gun crime, oft trumpeted as being out of control, is even more miniscule. 81 firearms deaths in a year is a vanishingly small 0.0000013% of the population.

Unfortunately the CNN article does not give actual figures so I can't do a similar exercise based on their statistics - but I have researched this in the past and can say that, although the US gun crime figures are far higher than those for the UK (the USA is the 8th most trigger-happy country in the world - SOURCE: Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems), the total of gun deaths is still relatively low as a precentage of the population - around 0.0028%.

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it if I were you.

I note that the previous two posts treat "media" as singular. Being the curmudgeon that I am, I disagree with that! "Medium" is singular, dagnab it!

"Medium" is singular

You're both wrong. Everybody knows that Media is the country, in present-day Iran, that was inhabited by the Medes. It was singular, even in Latin, Greek, and Persian.

Agree w Asa, curmudgeon and prescriptivist that I am

Au contraire, zmj, you and I are right. But then "media" could also be Latin for "middle," as in mare in media terram, aka Mediterranian in today's parlance.

Mesopotamia

The name comes from the Greek words m?soV "between" and πotam?V "river", referring to the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris (the Arabic term is Bayn Nahrain "between two rivers").

Yep, I should have said, "The media love violence." So sorry.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

quote:

On the other hand, I suppose I am a bit biased, as we all are, on what is liberal and what is conservative.

The meaning of the terms in the UK is quite different. We do have a Conservative party and a Liberal Democrat party, and the terms could be used to apply to their policies (when the terms would be capitalised).

However, the pejorative use of the term "liberal" is almost unknown here. The word liberal simply means (as it should mean) "...showing or characterized by broad-mindedness...". An admirable quality I would suggest.

The term "conservative" simply means "...resistant to change, preferring to stick with the tried and trusted...".

To call someone a "...lousy tree-hugging liberal..." as I was once referred to by an American, means very little here and is certainly not a massive insult.

Would we just say left- or right-wing?

Even then, at least here in the U.S., you can get into trouble with the issues. However, we don't take the words "liberal" and "conservative" as literally as Richard does, so generally "liberal" and "conservative" work for us. The operative word is "generally."

Speaking of fighting words, here is an editorial from the Tribune on a fighting word for politicians..."fancy." No matter how rich they are, they want people to think they are an "average Joe." They certainly don't want to be thought of as coming from the "fancy" side of town.