Hi, not entirely a question… could you please not repeat that blah about Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. It’s not true and shows a lack of insight into (that kind of) dance. The relationship between leader and follower is a complex one (and one in which the leader doesn’t really lead and the follower certainly doesn’t follow), not symmetrical in the way that quip suggests. Poor quips devalue the statements they’re meant to support.

To be clear, you’re referring to this post.

While I believe your objection is probably on the nose–I know NOTHING about ‘(that kind of) dance’, I would offer two supplemental points:

There’s that other quip about not making fun of people who mispronounce words because you can ascertain that as long as the are using the word appropriately, that they learned it through reading. I heard the quip about Rogers and Astaire as a result of being stuck in an airport that was playing Obama’s first official endorsement of HRC on all the monitors. In other words, I was attempting more to match context and tone. Lame probably, but that’s how I roll when I’m sleeping 20 hours a week, working 40 at a shit desk job and spending all the rest of my time I’m not scrambling to put posts together for this blog caring for a dear friend who is suffering from a debilitating illness.

Quips are–as you rightly point out–fundamentally flawed. It’s one of the reasons we’ll never–sadly–see peace in Palestine because we live in a world where everything has to be distilled to a 5 second sound bite and to understand the situation in the middle east requires volumes upon volumes of context most people lack. (To apply it to this example: if one knows ‘(that kind of) dance’, the quip is a nuisance; but does that make the statement invalid because it’s a nuisance to the person who actually knows what they’re talking about on the matter?) I keep thinking of another quip about how to tell King Snakes from Coral Snakes: red and yellow: kill a fellow; red and black, friend of jack.

A herpetologist can (and trust me: will) take issue with the overly simplistic and arguably misleading nature of the statement. I was taught it in sixth grade. I’ve never used it–and just like foraging for mushrooms I don’t know enough to trust my judgment. But the one point the quip reminds me of is that not all snakes are necessarily venomous. You should respect them and steer clear unless you know the difference from across the way. To me that’s not a valueless bit of knowledge.

Anyway, I’m going to link your objection in the actual post. I appreciate your taking the time to convey it.