Going back to Aristotle and Nietzsche, Western philosophy's cute couple, a good and general rule of thumb is that, unless you are having a discussion about philosophy, if someone starts trying to link the topic under discussion to the superstars of Western thought, you should probably have your internal Mr. Sulu raise the Pretentious Twaddle Shield to maximum and then brace for impact. It's not that the fellow is wrong (Feeney's overall point that macho is not automatically homoerotic is largely correct), it's just that going there is probably unnecessary on the rhetorical level, and the only reason to do it is to impress an editor or to show off to your conversational partner that, indeed, you got one of them there edumacations (showing off your book learning? That's so gay). It might seem impressive at first blush but what it really suggests is a certain lack of rhetorical sophistication, and the lack of awareness of every cultural thing between the quotidian subject under discussion and the giants of philosophy. Something in between is likely to be more relevant and on point.
Somehow this seemed supremely relevant to the original article SN wanted debunked.
no subject
T linked me to this John Scalzi post the other day:
http://scalzi.livejournal.com/6069.html
Most relevantly,
Going back to Aristotle and Nietzsche, Western philosophy's cute couple, a good and general rule of thumb is that, unless you are having a discussion about philosophy, if someone starts trying to link the topic under discussion to the superstars of Western thought, you should probably have your internal Mr. Sulu raise the Pretentious Twaddle Shield to maximum and then brace for impact. It's not that the fellow is wrong (Feeney's overall point that macho is not automatically homoerotic is largely correct), it's just that going there is probably unnecessary on the rhetorical level, and the only reason to do it is to impress an editor or to show off to your conversational partner that, indeed, you got one of them there edumacations (showing off your book learning? That's so gay). It might seem impressive at first blush but what it really suggests is a certain lack of rhetorical sophistication, and the lack of awareness of every cultural thing between the quotidian subject under discussion and the giants of philosophy. Something in between is likely to be more relevant and on point.
Somehow this seemed supremely relevant to the original article SN wanted debunked.