Who’s to argue?
I’ve been quite angry of late. One-note. Almost shrill, you could say. I’ve been incensed at what I saw as the British public’s ability to ignore the horrible suffering, torture and death of others.
So it was good to pick up the Times today and see other people making a fuss, getting angry and otherwise complaining about the terrible treatment of another person.
“We were concerned at the use of violence to resolve problems.”
I allowed myself a short, jaded laugh.
Posted on May 16th, 2005 at 10:48 am
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“I’ve been incensed at what I saw as the British public’s ability to ignore the horrible suffering, torture and death of others.”
Oh dear! So what, exactly, are we supposed to do about it? From my meagre studies of the history of mankind, there has *always* been “horrible suffering, torture and death”, and so far, no-one has come up with a way to stop it.
I suppose I could go on a demo …
For Christ’s sake, David. It was a dig at myself. You know, a short wry grin and move on kind of thing.
You don’t really want me to deconstruct what was a weak and rather self-indulgent joke, do you?
Sorry, that’s the danger with written irony, it gets misunderstood.
Irony and sarcasm………… thank God the blogosphere can cater for this in written pieces.
I once wrote an article about misinterpretation of irony on the web once, and the related rise of emoticons, including this anecdote:
A friend used to moderate a BBS for Carolina basketball. So many flaming wars broke out over misinterpreted sarcasm that he suggested that any posts that were tongue in cheek should be formatted as orange text. In this way, he hoped to remove confusion and add a tone of voice. Of course, there was a prompt slew of responses saying “Great Idea!” in orange text. It never really caught on.
PS that would have been funnier if blogger allowed more HTML tags.
The British people don’t seem to have come to terms with their terrible legacy of imperialism and colonialism.
Hence we think we have the right to pontificate about the suffering others cause and ignore what we have done, and continue to perpetuate.