File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-16.044, message 34


Date:         Sun, 13 Apr 97 20:16:35 EDT
From: Walter Daum <WGDCC-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: M-I: PANIC LEFTIST: FRAME FIVE


On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 00:54:56 +0300 Zeynep Tufekcioglu said:
>     [...]
>
>nit-picking, but I am beginning to notice a pattern. I didn't really care
>much about these misspelling, but I first noticed how Adolfo and Mark Jones
>started consistently misspelling the names of people they tried to insult.
>Then Lou (P) wildly misspelled Rahul's name, I guess he also thought that
>was insulting. Now, Stephen misspells Yoshie's name. I am beginning to think
>there is a pattern here, since nobody seems to misspell names like Jonathan
>or Kelly. Somebody enlighten me, is this how one insults another in the
>first-world, or is it just lack of common decency that just surfaces when
>first-worlders are angry?
>

Zeynep has a point. With all due allowance for honest errors with
unfamiliar names, there is also a whiff of imperialist arrogance here.
Reagan, Bush & Co. used to like mispronouncing the names of their
Libyan, Iranian and Iraqi antagonists. The U.S. State Dept. for years
refused to call China's capital Peking (when it was so spelled), but
used its name as a non-capital city, Peiping. Lots of U.S. journals
refused to call Mohammed Ali by that name when he adopted it.

Walter Daum


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