The limits of being polite

From a really interesting interview/discussion on racism in fandom.

(hat tip: sparkymonster)

"There's just no way to politely challenge privilege, because the privileged party defines politeness."

I remember first coming across a similar line by John Ralston Saul, although he phrased it more as a command to be rude. I prefer the above phrasing by coffeeandink because it gets into why making sure to "be polite" has limits.

Colbert takes on Corporate Personhood

A couple of days ago, Stephen Colbert devoted a couple of segments to the ever-pernicious concept of corporate personhood and the likely result of the Citizens United vs the FEC case which the Supreme Court is ruling on.

dday sums it up (with video link and transcript) here.

(Since hulu doesn't play in Canada, I provide this additional link.)

I even learned something, as I had not known that the court reporter who added the statement on 14th amendment protection applying to corporations, J.C. Bancroft Davis, actually had been the owner of a railroad.

Read dday's summary, since it covers most of the issues involved (including Colbert's long history of commenting on this in one form or another).

I keep thinking I should try and find out what the state of corporate personhood is here in Canada (and in other countries).

The citizen's job is to be rude

Pursuant to the earlier post, I found the quote I was thinking of.

An obsession with polite or correct public language is a sign that communication is in decline. It means that the process and exercise of power have replaced debate as a public value. The citizen's job is to be rude — to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. Politics, philosophy, writing, the arts — none of these, and certainly not science and economocs, can serve the common weal if they are swathed in politeness. In everything which affects public affairs, breeding is for fools.

—John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion, 1994

Interestingly, I also found this essay of his on uncertainty that is well worth reading.

It includes this further quote on politeness:

The problem begins when we start confusing middle-class manners with the superficial public smoothness of corporatist loyalty. That is where corporatism and democracy go wrong - when any action which is not polite is considered to be a default in democratic terms. And we're quite far down that road today.