3 ms·

> For people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in the south, it was a generic symbol of rebellion or regional rivalry. Remember, Dukes of Hazzard, which aired

by dctoedt 8mo ago

> For people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in the south, it was a generic symbol of rebellion or regional rivalry. Remember, Dukes of Hazzard, which aired in the 1980s .... For people who grew up in the south in the 1960s (me, mostly), the Confederate battle flag was indisputably and unambiguously a symbol of white supremacy and keeping "the coloreds" in their supposedly-proper place. I really don't think it changed that much in the 1980s and 1990s.

rayiner 8mo ago
I’m talking about a completely different generation that grew up decades later. Dukes of Hazzard was not a white supremacist TV show. It was a top rated prime-time show on CBS. You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. I once use the phrase “atomic bomb of patent law” half a dozen times in a brief to describe inequitable conduct doctrine. It’s a quote from a line of federal circuit cases. Co-counsel from Tokyo sent us a polite email asking if we can reduce the number of times we say “atomic bomb” out of consideration for the Japanese company that would be co-signing the brief. The Federal Circuit obviously didn’t mean to suggest that inequitable conduct findings vaporize entire patent families the way the atomic bomb vaporized hundreds of thousands of Japanese families—even though that’s the only thing atomic bombs have ever been used for.
- dctoedt 8mo ago
  > You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. So: What a symbol means to the writer (or speaker) is supposedly more important than what the symbol means to readers — who (according to the writer) must accommodate themselves to the writer's mindset instead of vice versa. This sender-oriented approach is in contrast to the writer's seeking to serve his readers — and the writer's intended message — by using the readers' language, if you will. (I'm curious whether you've found the sender-oriented approach to work when writing a legal brief for a court or agency — in our joint line of work, the received wisdom is that it's decidedly suboptimal.)

by dctoedt 8mo ago

rayiner 8mo ago

I’m talking about a completely different generation that grew up decades later. Dukes of Hazzard was not a white supremacist TV show. It was a top rated prime-time show on CBS. You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. I once use the phrase “atomic bomb of patent law” half a dozen times in a brief to describe inequitable conduct doctrine. It’s a quote from a line of federal circuit cases. Co-counsel from Tokyo sent us a polite email asking if we can reduce the number of times we say “atomic bomb” out of consideration for the Japanese company that would be co-signing the brief. The Federal Circuit obviously didn’t mean to suggest that inequitable conduct findings vaporize entire patent families the way the atomic bomb vaporized hundreds of thousands of Japanese families—even though that’s the only thing atomic bombs have ever been used for.

dctoedt 8mo ago
> You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. So: What a symbol means to the writer (or speaker) is supposedly more important than what the symbol means to readers — who (according to the writer) must accommodate themselves to the writer's mindset instead of vice versa. This sender-oriented approach is in contrast to the writer's seeking to serve his readers — and the writer's intended message — by using the readers' language, if you will. (I'm curious whether you've found the sender-oriented approach to work when writing a legal brief for a court or agency — in our joint line of work, the received wisdom is that it's decidedly suboptimal.)