CNN’s John King has apologized for guest Andy Shaw’s use of the now-forbidden word “crosshairs” in describing the Chicago mayoral race.
Bravo! Let’s just ban all non-literal speech, metaphors and colorful language of any kind. Let’s ban not only guns, but even the word “gun.” Better safe than sorry.
Let’s have a competition in who is holier-than-thou in making sure that his or her words could not possibly inflame a single human being to even think of violence. Because we all know that violence comes from people hearing words such as “crosshairs.”
While we’re at it, Allahpundit makes a good point:
Am I hallucinating or didn’t this same network [CNN] once have an entire show devoted to heated political debate called … “Crossfire”? With a crosshairs logo? How did the republic survive while it was on the air?
CNN might reply that now it’s doing it’s mea culpa for that sin. It might also reply that it was really William F. Buckley, a conservative, who started it all with “Firing Line,” which was on PBS for decades. The term “firing line” refers, of course, to battle, to “the line of positions from which fire is directed at a target.” It also has a secondary meaning, “the forefront of an activity or pursuit.”
“Crosshairs” is an even more eclectic word. It indeed describes the scope in a firearm, but it actually refers to any optical device with that sort of sighting marker. The more general word is “reticle“—next on the banning list?—of which “crosshairs” is the most common and simple type.
Let’s learn what crosshairs actually means before we kiss it goodbye:
A reticle is a net of fine lines or fibers in the eyepiece of a sighting device, such as a telescope, a telescopic sight, a microscope, or the screen of an oscilloscope. The word reticle comes from the Latin “reticulum,” meaning “net.” Today, engraved lines or embedded fibers may be replaced by a computer-generated image superimposed on a screen or eyepiece. There are many variations of reticles; this article concerns itself mainly with a simple reticle: crosshairs.
Crosshairs are most commonly represented as intersecting lines in the shape of a cross, “+”, though many variations exist, including dots, posts, circles, scales, chevrons, or a combination of these. Most commonly associated with telescopic sights for aiming firearms, crosshairs are also common in optical instruments used for astronomy and surveying, and are also popular in graphical user interfaces as a precision pointer.
The word “crosshairs” has been widely used in politics till now. But it’s been newly-banned due to the MSM’s and other politicians’ need to differentiate themselves from the heinously coldblooded Sarah Palin, the only person who’s ever used it before (“we have always been at war with Eastasia”) and who obviously inspired the demented Jared Loughner to gun down 20 people in Tucson.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
January 19th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Neo,
It’s just too much to expect the excellent researchers and reporters at CNN to know about Wikipedia.
January 19th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
What are we going to do about it, other than complain?
It’s the same old story: they maka da rules, we just playa da game. (Thanks to Earl Butz for that, and his other words, which cost him his job at the dawning of the PC era).
January 19th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
I modified Butz’s words to suit my purpose.
January 19th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
We had a similar problem with the news story about the Danish cartoons. The media allowed themselves to say, “…cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad” but you could not see the offending images. Now, political campaign maps with graphical cross hairs are shown on TV, but they can’t say the word cross hairs. This is not progress.
January 19th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Sarah Palin can’t use the word “God” without certain individuals making up stuff about them…
^^^^^^^
January 19th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
We’ll see how far this will go. Obviously it is meant to keep the accusations against Sarah Palin nice and fresh and sweet to eat. But there are unintended consequences and one consequence of imposing speech rules will be a further look at the Constitution. Horowitz and FIRE have already done a lot of work combating speech codes in the universities. And slowly but surely, there will be a rebound nicely timed for Sarah’s presidential bid.
January 19th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
This is surreal. Certainly one of the tipping points our grandkids will look back at and say “Ummm, and it never dawned on anyone you were dealing with symptoms among liberals that surpassed those of Mad Cow disease and lead poisoning?”
January 19th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
From Byron York at The Washington Examiner. An excerpt follows.
This is further proof that the “toxic rhetoric” meme that the MSM and the lefties pushed after the Tuscson shootings was a bunch of baloney. If CNN and others really believed the “toxic rhetoric” line, they would never have used those words in the first place. CNN is just trying to CYA after all the pushback from the right on the “toxic rehtoric” nonsense.
Neither CNN nor Sarah Palin nor Daily Kos nor anyone else is encouraging killings by using such words as “crosshair” or “crossfire.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/113467/ Hat tip to Instapundit
January 19th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
It’s just the political equivalent of “this year’s record snowfall is due to global warming.” while just 3 years ago they were saying to prepare for snowless winters.
After awhile their hypocrisy and ridiculous flip-flops get even the attention of the least politically aware. I mean, come on…! The words ‘crossfire’ and ‘crosshairs’ breed violence? Sounds like SNL material to me… but even they are now PC.
January 19th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
Bravo! Let’s just ban all non-literal speech, metaphors and colorful language of any kind. Let’s ban not only guns, but even the word “gun.” Better safe than sorry.
Control language and history and you control our connection to reality. It doesn’t matter if people today know its a lie, tomorrow its truth is confirmed by picking out the confirming images, and phrases, and letting the rest fade away.
When this same idea didn’t work with feminist math, they keep trying it in every way and every idea to see if the underwear sticks to the wall. (person hole covers ring a bell? chairperson replaces chairman, etc).
and in math…
no one was going to ‘attack’ a problem
Seize upon a solution
battle with the conundrums
before you say “No Way!!!” read about Luce Irigaray and her well regarded (in elite circles) mathematics and thoughts on scientific progress. you wont see it mentioned in wiki (of course). heck you may have even heard later derivative stuff claim Mileva Einstein did the work (completely ignoring the woman Einstein did give credit to Noether)
from a review of her work in PN Review, no. 128, June 1999..
the lack of relevance of the flaunted erudition is a constant finding in Intellectual Impostures: it is there merely to impress and terrorize. The appearance of relevance is sometimes sustained by treating metaphors as if they were literal truths. This is particularly evident in the writings of Luce Irigaray.
if you know the pedigree of their thinking (and quite a lot of ours now), you wouldn’t be surprised at all.
The sexism of science, Irigaray argues, explains why fluid mechanics is not as well developed as solid mechanics. The inability of (masculinist) science to deal with turbulent flow is explained by the association of fluidity with femininity: whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Hence male science cannot cope with fluid dynamics.
if you can wade through stuff like this, you would realize the foundations upon which they built their framework of reality (and how much of what is done is a refusal to accept the traditional reality in favor of this new one, of which not acceptance is just holding on to the status quo, thinking as the oppressed want you to, and dozens of others. like when they say its impossible go out and do it).
the post modern progressives really hate science, they injected all kinds of stuff that then facilitated laws which then shaped how we think vs how we used to think (with the break up of the family removing the ‘other’ for comparison and consideration).
There is a bitter irony in the deployment of so much mystification and intellectual dishonesty to bien pensant ends only to discover an unexpected commonality of view with the rednecks. The reason that Luce Irigaray has not attracted the anger of ordinary oppressed women is the obscurity in which the works that have brought her international fame among academics are wrapped.
so its like two worlds, one in which one side whose ideas of reality are all in this post modern progressive socialist mish mosh and feel superior for cogitating it and knowing it when others dont (and miss the references, and hints and such).
the rubes dont note this jabs on them, nor do most believe they are there. they certainly wont read the texts that contain them and would clue them in. so the jokes kind of stay private.
they USED to read those texts and recognize the stolen this or that and frown and act upon such skulduggery.
i leave you with this one
to know the foundations of what we find normal today is to really wonder (and wonder more when people defend it all without knowing).
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet…..
January 19th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
The convenience store on the edge of Austin was robbed last night…must have happened because of all this uncivil talk about cross hairs.
This stuff about uncivil talk causing crime is just plain silly.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Maybe we need an updated version of George Carlin’s ‘Seven words you can never say on television.’
January 20th, 2011 at 12:13 am
“Don’t bother to examine a folly, ask yourself only what it accomplishes.”
–Ayn Rand
January 20th, 2011 at 12:18 am
CNN’s apologizing for saying “crosshairs” keeps alive the idea that uncivil discourse was somehow responsible for the Arizona shootings.
It’s devious and dishonest.
January 20th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Well, shoot! I don’t know how to respond to this without providing ammo to those who are firing shots in this piece. If I was armed with more firepower, I would try to aim my criticism more directly at the target. However, I will try not to explode and scatter shells on this topic.
Oh, I am soooo sorry.
January 20th, 2011 at 2:55 am
This is exactly what happened to the distasteful “n-word” during the OJ Simpson trial. Before that trial, there was no such phrase as “the n-word”. If you ever said “the n-word” before that trial, no one would know what you were talking about. The word “nigger”, while clearly vulgar, was never embargoed, actively censored, or spoken about in hushed words as if it had dangerous powers of its own.
But you see, Mark Fuhrman had to be cast as an uber-villain, and in order to do that, what he had done in the past (used a distasteful word) had to be made a crime worse than murder, and he had to be seen as a monster beyond comprehension or reason, so the idea that “the n-word” itself could never be uttered out loud (except by monsters like Fuhrman) was presented by OJ’s defense, and the banner was eagerly picked up by a media complex always looking for new ways to be even more politically correct.
And what do we have to thank for this? Newly censored versions of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer for our children to read in school, among other things.
Do I like the word? No. Do I think it belongs in the “Seven (now eight) Deadly Words that Cannot be Uttered on Television” list? Puh-leaze. And now we can add “the ch-word” to the list, and we can all break our arms patting ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come as a society. Yipee. Newspeak is alive and well. Orwell would be thrilled.
January 20th, 2011 at 10:41 am
I suppose one could say that failure to get metaphor is indicative of retarded development or of Asperger’s.
That wouldn’t be all that incorrect, would it, neo?
Just say it with a hint of concern.
January 20th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Politics is war by another means. It is, after all, about acquiring power. That’s why we see all the military terminology. I can’t wait for the 2012 election – just to see the likes of CNN twisting themselves in knots in their campaign coverage. Oops! Campaign! Another word with military(violent) conotations. This could be fun.