I can’t think of any other particularly good explanation for his continued abuse of the term ‘Zombie’ in talking about whatever persistent untruths are bugging him (today) about his chosen profession, Economics.

A field which seems to be slightly less scientific than, say, Baron Mardi’s magic sombrero ritual to raise the dead.

We’ve previously seen how the so-called Liberal Blogosphere is fairly redolent with intolerance for the Differently Animated here and here.

Other than a catchy and defamatory term, do these instances have anything in common, are they in some way Zombielike? No, not really. As previously discussed, ‘Zombie’ banks are much more like Vampires, in terms of the raw mechanics, though that too is unfair to our Undead allies in the non-Sparkly camp. I mean, Vampires have style. Vampires can be sexy.

When’s the last time anyone thought their credit card company had style, let alone sex appeal? The very idea repulses me.

Now we’re on from bashing ‘Zombie banks’ to ‘Zombie ideas’. That, as I mentioned on Twitter, is an even more inane construction. Ideas cannot die, so they cannot rise, and therefore cannot be Undead. Accepting the slightly broader, Differently Animated Construction, ideas are not animated, and therefore cannot be ‘Differently’ so. An idea is an idea is an idea. ‘Zombie’ is not a synonym for ‘discredited’. Don’t believe me? Check your dictionary. It’s not in there.

Now that we’re seeing the classic semantic drift of bigotry, in which gradually the hated race or ethnicity or, here, Living/Unliving Status, becomes responsible for all of a chosen bigot’s woes. First, it’s just that the guy with the darker skin, or lacking a heartbeat, gets the better cubicle at the office. Next it’s his fault your daughter got pregnant and your son’s dropping out of college to join a band. Finally, there’s a grand conspiracy to bring down your personal ethnic group by shadow manipulation of international finance, or perhaps, a Zombie Apocalypse.

Can’t these people see how their hatred and small-mindedness blinds them? I expect better out of Nobel Laureates myself.

For shame, Paul Krugman, and for shame on the New York Times for continuing to provide him a platform for his Anti-Zombie hate.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, December 20th, 2010 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.