It's times like this when I'm proud to be p.c. Earlier this week, I noted that a prominent warblogger had made a derogatory remark about Jews and the handicapped, either in jest, in irony, or in just plain bigotry, about Charles Krauthammer. Although I disagree with just about everything Mr. Krauthammer has written (he seems to belong to that strain of neo-conservatism that always seems to blame African-Americans first), I would rather get fitted for testicle piercings than refer to him, or anyone else, as a "crippled Jewboy". In any event, I figure that was what "fiskings" are all about, except this time aimed at someone who wasn't Arab, black or leftist, and I decided to get on with my life.

Which was probably a big mistake, since I immediately got e-mail from people who pointed out that the article in question is mostly a defense of Krauthammer, and that therefore calling him a "crippled Jewboy" was ok. Apparently, the belief is that if you actually like and admire someone, you have open season to fire racial or ethnic slurs at them, in much the same way Quentin Tarentino might use the word "nigger" a couple hundred times in one of his scripts. Sorry, I'm not buying. Besides the fact that the slur is only tangentially related to the rest of the piece (in the comments section, fellow blogger Max Sawicky points out that Krauthammer's religion is not otherwise mentioned in the underlying article, and his handicap mentioned only indirectly), there just something about his choice of words that's just so, so snobbish: the writer reminding you of the differentness of the target, even a target he happens to like, while he himself is "normal".