low culture

“They are cheap, easily concealed, small enough to hoist on a shoulder and can shoot a passenger jet out of the sky. And now, it appears, terrorists may have access to another 4,000 of them…”

More missiles for terrorists?, USA Today, Nov. 7, 2004

David Brooks lectures his liberal colleagues among the “commentariat” today for fostering simplistic narratives about the slim majority that voted Republican last Tuesday. As Brooks explains, things are more nuanced: “there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families,” he says, and “the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views.”

So that means that grossly simplified socioeconomic stereotypes are not accurate or useful, and are, in fact, sloppy social analysis used by lazy journalists looking to make a buck? Talk about lowering the scales from our eyes! Thanks for disabusing us of our unsophisticated illusions, Mr. Brooks. Gee, I wonder where we ever got them in the first place…

By way of the Associated Press’ breaking coverage of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat’s death-but-not-death, it’s come out that:

French television station LCI quoted an anonymous French medical official as saying Arafat was in an “irreversible coma” and “intubated” – a process that usually involves threading a tube down the windpipe to the lungs. The tube is often connected to a life support machine to help the patient breathe.

In other words, “brain dead, but not physically shut down.”
Cursed word games! It’s much like trying to pick apart the distinction between, say, a “security fence” and an “imprisoning wall“.