Via a news roundup on Daily Kos, Gail Collins, a columnist at the New York Times attempts to rescue extremist Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell with a subtle but vicious slur against his opponents. Check this out (emphasis mine.)
The country may have moved to the right, but conservatives tend to underestimate the amount of blue that’s still out there. The new Republican governor of Virginia seemed stunned that his state reacted badly to his call for a Confederate History Month that did not mention slavery. But really, the very definition of a purple state is a place where, when you devote an entire month to recalling the glories of the confederacy, you have to give some time to the bondage angle.
Let’s read that last sentence again, this without that middle clause. “But really,the very definition of a purple state is a place where … you have to give some time to the bondage angle.”
If you’ve got access to Nexis or Lexis could you do me a favor and look for historical references to slavery as “the bondage angle?” Because when I Googled the phrase at 8:00 AM Pacific Time it was pretty much wall-to-wall references to BDSM. (Google suggested I instead try “bondage-angel,” for which there are 1,400,000 matches compared to “bondage-angle” for which there are only 84,000!)
There you go. Some four centuries of slavery reduced to an eyeball roll for the offended sensibilities of perverted New York and San Francisco liberals. Talk about the “very definition of a purple state!”
Instead I’m… pretty sure that in addition to insulting men who wear chaps and vote for Barney Frank, Gail Collins may also have insulted oh, say, any number of the 41 million U.S. citizens who’s ancestors were brought to labor as slaves in McDonnell’s beloved Confederacy.
Her column was titled “Running on Empty,” but Collins is so full of it she should wipe her nose with toilet paper.
Actually, I’m pretty
Submitted by sera (not verified) on Sat, 2010-04-24 12:11.Actually, I’m pretty unpersuaded that comment has anything to do with BDSM.
First of all, the word bondage does, in fact, umambiguously refer to actual historical slavery. The definition on Merriam-Webster lists three senses of the word, with the first two referring to the condition of slavery of servitude, and only the last touching on BDSM practices. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bondage). If you’d done your search for “bondage” on Google SCHOLAR instead of on Google, you’d have found that all of the top references were to the historical condition of slavery—the top hit being Frederick Douglass’s “My Bondage and My Freedom”. No need to resort to fancy Lexis-Nexis.
Second, I’m not clear that Collins is a very funny or clever writer, but I don’t think you’ve fairly characterized. You say: “Some four centuries of slavery reduced to an eyeball roll for the offended sensibilities of [strikeout]perverted New York and San Francisco[/strikeout] liberals.” But a “purple” state is quite clearly one that ISN’T full of liberals. Virginia has never been a liberal state; it’s one that’s split between the rather liberal Northern Virginia suburbs (blue) and the old South tobacco country (red)—which makes it purple. Purple, in this context, does not refer to leftist city folk—it refers to a political culture that’s what passes for moderate these days.
I almost always agree with you, but I don’t see it here, and I’m sort of insulted at the suggestion that I think you’re projecting onto Collins’ work. I’m willing to be persuaded, but I don’t see it, and I really have a problem with the idea that the BDSM community has a lock on the word bondage.
[If I could be confident that more people used Google Scholar than regular Google I’d be more willing to agree with you, Sera. But I’m pretty sure most people use regular Google. And while I agree that the BDSM folks don’t have a lock on the term Google’s index algorithms might have locked it for them — non-BDSM association are very few and far between on the single keyword “bondage” and even less common on the keyphrase “bondage angle.” And maybe if I wasn’t so sensitive to genteel David-Brooks style dogwhistling I’d just think referring to slavery as “the bondage angle” was just a very peculiar choice of terms. And just to be clear, if she’d said “ignored the human bondage angle” I wouldn’t have gone on alert. Maybe she just left it out, or maybe a copyeditor mis-transcribed it or something and it was all about me just being touchy. If so I’ll apologize for tarring her with the NYT’s overall very-conservative op-ed staff brush. Final point, though: 20% of Virginia’s population is African-American and not too many of them, even as far south and west into tobacco country as Bristol, vote “red.” So it’s not just north-Virginia liberals that McDonnell, or Collins, was slighting. —fl]
I the problem is less with
Submitted by Rebecca (not verified) on Sat, 2010-04-24 16:46.I the problem is less with the use of the word “bondage” which I think Sera is generally correct to suggest doesn’t have to be a BDSM reference* than with the word “angle” which makes the comment seem flippant and undermines the seriousness of whatever word you stick it after. Even if you replace bondage with slavery in the above sentence it still sounds worse than if you just said slavery. Using the phrase “the X angle” trivializes X and makes it seem more like some sort of fringe concern. Compare:
“But really, the very definition of a purple state is a place where, when you devote an entire month to recalling the glories of the confederacy, you have to give some time to the slavery angle.”
to:
“But really, the very definition of a purple state is a place where, when you devote an entire month to recalling the glories of the confederacy, you have to give some time to slavery.”
*On the other hand whether one is happy about it or not bondage is going to have certain connotations slavery does not.
[“Using the phrase “the X angle” trivializes X and makes it seem more like some sort of fringe concern.” That too, Rebecca. Given that about one in five Virginians is of African-American heritage, and that very, very many of their earlier relatives were owned by people who’s descendants wish to celebrate it, I just don’t care for her “poor old Bob, he forgot how touchy that bondage angle (or even slavery angle) is to those touchy Virginia northerners” —fl]
You’ve already addressed
Submitted by chingona (not verified) on Sun, 2010-04-25 06:41.You’ve already addressed this, so no need to respond again, but I, too, think this isn’t a fair reading. Gail Collins has no history of being a conservative apologist (not even in a Maureen Dowd way) and there’s no reason to think she’s playing that role here. The phrasing is a little flip, but it’s pretty consistent with her writing style, which is not exactly LOL-funny but a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit snarky. I don’t think her intention is to minimize slavery as “that bondage thing” but to mock conservatives who want to wave it away as “that bondage thing.” You can argue about whether this wording was the best way to make her point or too open to misinterpretation, but I really don’t think she’s doing what you accuse her of doing.
Who doesn’t wipe their nose
Submitted by Red (not verified) on Sun, 2010-04-25 08:34.Who doesn’t wipe their nose with toilet paper?
In my family buying tissues instead of just using toilet paper was always considered “putting on airs” and some sort of snobby affectation, long, long before eco-consciousness came into it!!
Also Virginia is a “Purple State” by virtue not only of a lot of immigrants and people from other parts of the country there, but also because they elected that utter scumbag, James Webb to the Senate.
James Webb is a lying hypocritical hawk and has been one of my sworn enemies since the 1990’s when he was still a hard Republican. I’ve also made a strong case to an author and long time member of VVAW, that the Virginia Senator largely invented to the “Dolchstosslegende” that grew up in the US after the Vietnam War. And he was quite grateful for the information I provided.
But Virginia has historically been very much a part of the Old South. Whose legacy includes not just slavery and racism, but equally importantly has ALWAYS been the hot-bed and bell weather of American militarism. It’s no accident that America had it’s LEAST militaristic period in the decades after the Civil War, when the South got a political neutering. And that after WWII and the Civil Rights movement when the South came to dominate both parties, that the country went right back to some of its worst militarism.