Word: rascoff
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...good and noble of Mr. Rascoff to protect the sensibilities of his readers! Peninsula has done something Bad, and the evidence is too horrible to be revealed. Mr. Rascoff's refusal to say exactly why he was so upset by the photographs conveniently relieves him of the responsibility for making any reasoned criticism of them. (How easy the life of a Crimson columnist must...
Secondly, Mr. Rascoff writes that the kind of conservatism represented by Peninsula "has utterly aborted the project of serious debate and nuanced argumentation. It prefers easy pictures and tidy slogans to the knottiness of words." Peninsula, he writes, is a magazine for "picture-readers...
...Rascoff is wrong. The issue he criticizes contains five articles, all made up of words, with arguments, about various subjects. (One of them--Polly Langendorf's "His Truth Is Marching On"--was even about abortion...
Thirdly, Mr. Rascoff argues that our liking "the 'Great Books' approach to learning" implies "a reverence for the fantastic power of words to shape our cultural horizons." That is true. He then criticizes "Peninsula's decision to go beyond words, or rather below them...
There are only two logical conclusions to this line of reasoning: 1) that images are incapable of conveying serious meaning or 2) that the particular images in question did not do so. The first conclusion is absurd. The second conclusion is arguable, but Mr. Rascoff does not provide any argument (see above...