Way to keep it classy, folks. Is this type of opporoborium appropriate for what yes, yes, a cruel thing to say? Isn’t this also a form of cyberbullying?
On a different note, Emily Bazelon, who has done some other excellent work on cyber-bullying, provides some context for the Palins’ brouhaha in the context of typical teenage Facebook flame war.
I still don’t think that this is worthy of national media attention, but since it is, I think that Bazelon’s thoughts are the most constructive I’ve seen so far. Certainly, it’s most constructive than making personal attacks against a teenage girl and her parents.
Look, I’m not going to sit here and defend the use of homophobic slurs, but on the same note, the use of those slurs among teenagers is still disturbingly common — and the context here doesn’t demonstrate any clear homophobia. So instead of making some sort of partisan attack (and for the record, a President Palin would almost certainly cause me to expatriate myself for the 2-1/2 years that’s she’s President), let’s instead try to make a more constructive case for taking those words out of our vocabulary.
And personally, I think there are a lot more constructive ways of doing that than by use of a sexist slur like “trashy b**tch.”
