3 ms·

Do you want to elaborate?

unethical_ban 8y ago
Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
- cm2012 8y ago
  It's refreshing. Call a spade a spade.
  - jaredklewis 8y ago
    https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...
    - cm2012 8y ago
      No one but etymologists would think of the phrase that way, so the origin doesn't really matter.
      - azhu 8y ago
        Did you look at the linked article? The point is that it reinforces a potential implicit bias. "Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together." No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
      - jaredklewis 8y ago
        Perhaps I should have clarified that I wasn’t accusing the parent of being racist, but I do think it is an incidentally racist phrase we can probably do without. Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic. Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.
        cm2012 8y ago
        Fair, I've never heard of that and will drop the expression.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  That's a reference to a particular person not a group.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  >The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. And that’s why America is where it is today!
  - dang 8y ago
    Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to Hacker News? You've done it a fair bit and we're trying for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece. It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces. > The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.

Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.

cm2012 8y ago
It's refreshing. Call a spade a spade.
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...
  - cm2012 8y ago
    No one but etymologists would think of the phrase that way, so the origin doesn't really matter.
    - azhu 8y ago
      Did you look at the linked article? The point is that it reinforces a potential implicit bias. "Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together." No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
    - jaredklewis 8y ago
      Perhaps I should have clarified that I wasn’t accusing the parent of being racist, but I do think it is an incidentally racist phrase we can probably do without. Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic. Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.
      - cm2012 8y ago
        Fair, I've never heard of that and will drop the expression.
maxerickson 8y ago
That's a reference to a particular person not a group.
knuththetruth 8y ago
>The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. And that’s why America is where it is today!
- dang 8y ago
  Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to Hacker News? You've done it a fair bit and we're trying for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Rarely would a non-op-ed refer to a group holding an opinion has blowhards that some people inexplicably take seriously. While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece. It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces. > The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this. The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.