Sunday, April 25, 2010

In other blogs (April 25, 2010 edition)

  • And on a roll, The Korean handily deals with the Lousy Korea blog fiasco in the comments section of Korean Rum Diary (here, here, and here). While no one deserves threats of injury or death for what they write (and I'd really like to see some of what was we're talking about before I totally sign off on that, as it appears that some other threats in the NSET universe may not have been genuine), the site itself was an exercise in hate speech masquerading as free speech and there should be no surprise that it attracted equally stupid and hateful response.
  • Ampontan addresses the lawsuit against President Lee (dismissed, but apparently being appealed), saying that Lee should be impeached for asking Japan's then-PM Fukuda Yasuo to wait a bit for the Ministry of Education to release guidelines for junior high school textbooks saying that Tokto is Japanese territory. 

4 comments:

  1. "the site itself was an exercise in hate speech masquerading as free speech and there should be no surprise that it attracted equally stupid and hateful response. "

    EQUALLY? I only ever browsed her blog once, but I haven't heard that she ever made threats against specific people or posted photoshopped images depicting a violent attack on someone. Shunning, yes. Threats, no. There are appropriate and lawful and inappropriate and unlawful ways to deal with hate speech. Period.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fair enough. I have not seen the links in question, and I have a niggling feeling that, like the ATEK death threat, there may be more (or less) than meets the eye.

    I also shouldn't have used the word "equally" simply because it's intellectually sloppy: Two situations stemming from two different sources are rarely "equal," though they might be of similar degree or structure.

    So what should I replace it with? "Similarly"? "In kind"? "In retaliation"? No adverb or adverbial phrase at all?

    ReplyDelete
  3. How about not making the statement at all? People who publish speech that neither you or I would label hate speech but manages to offend some easily offended people get threats, too. You're right that Lousy Korea should not have been surprised since other less critical K-bloggers like Brian Deutsch and Robert Koehler have been threatened.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I've been threatened, too. Plenty of times, in fact. I guess I'm not a good cause célèbre that warrants much support, though, because the people physically threatening me, hacking into my email, or trying to smear me in real life so I don't get scholarships and TAships are often of the native English-speaking variety. I guess it's only appalling when KoKos and kyopos are doing it.

    ReplyDelete

Share your thoughts, but please be kind and respectful. My mom reads this blog.