I’m very saddened but not surprised that, yet again, the so-called ‘Liberals’ of the online world have taken to defaming Zombies in the pursuit of scoring political points.

Basically, as I understand their serial misuse of the term, it works like this:

-Certain untruths or factual misunderstandings are particularly pervasive in the field of politics and/or economics.
-Since they can’t manage to ‘kill off’ these factual errors, they are therefore ‘Zombie’

I’ve mentioned this misuse of language before, from a similar recurring use of the term last year dealing with the Public Option in health care (which, one must note, did in fact die when deals were cut with the big industries in the health sector who wanted it gone). It was unacceptable then, and it’s unacceptable now.

What’s worse is how quickly the rhetorical abuse of Zombies spreads in today’s heavily quoted, heavily linked online world. From today’s column by Nobel Prize Winner (and Anti-Zombie Living Supremacist?) Paul Krugman, we have the following:

It must have sounded like a good idea (although not to me): establish a bipartisan commission of Serious People to develop plans to bring the federal budget under control.

But the commission is already dead — and zombies did it.

OK, the immediate problem is the statements of Alan Simpson, the commission’s co-chairman. And what got reporters’ attention was the combination of incredible insensitivity – the “lesser people”??? — and flat errors of fact.

But it’s actually much worse than that. On Social Security, Simpson is repeating a zombie lie — that is, one of those misstatements that keeps being debunked, but keeps coming back.

…

So what does it mean that the co-chair of the commission is resurrecting this zombie lie? It means that at even the most basic level of discussion, either (a) he isn’t willing to deal in good faith or (b) the zombies have eaten his brain. And in either case, there’s no point going on with this farce.

So, Mr. Krugman, if you disagree with someone it’s because ZOMBIES ATE HIS BRAIN? What an awful stereotype, and terrible slander against the entire Differently Animated community. Mr. Krugman must either be convinced he’s living in a ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ or he must encounter remarkably little disagreement in his life, if he believes all those who stubbornly disagree with him or mislead the public are brain-munching victims.

From Patient Zero Krugman, the meme spread around the blogosphere.

Famed liberal blogger Digby repeated the slander and demonstrated her own Living Supremacist tendencies:

I’m of the opinion that zombies ate his brain some time ago and that he has never been willing to deal in good faith. He’s a misanthropic coot put on the commission to persuade his fellow seniors that they have nothing to fear from the reforms and reassure them that this is aimed at the ungrateful kids who were given everything in life and now can’t even find the time to call.

This is a new one; conflating Zombies with elderly curmudgeons. I guess that, when all you have is a rhetorical shotgun, every problem looks like a zombie to you, Digby? Ugh.

Fellow liberal economist Duncan Black got in on the action too:

These commissions are bad ideas anyway, and this one is extra bad, so I imagine that zombie debt commissions, like zombie lies, are rather hard to get rid of.

I for one am disgusted. Aren’t liberals and Democrats supposed to be the tolerant ones in our society? More open to new ideas, new people, new ways of thinking? More multicultural, more flexible, more friendly to immigrants? Why is that the tolerance shown for gay Americans and recent immigrants from outside our borders isn’t shared with immigrants from beyond the mortal coil?

It’s a sad commentary on our society that a person’s heartbeat matters more than their personal honor and decency. For shame, all of you in the commentariat, who bash the Differently Animated as casually as those in an earlier era might bash the Irish or the Italians or the Poles. For shame.

Tags: Social Justice

This entry was posted by John Sears on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. 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.