On James Kavanagh

Can I just say that he seems like the kind of guy who air-quotes?(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quotes) We all know "that guy/girl" who feels the need to physically display his/her blatant sarcasm, despite the fact that his/her underlying satirical undertone is hardly obscured. Conversational air-quoting is a desperate cry for validation. It is as if one is screaming, "PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE MY SELF-PROCLAIMED WITTY PUN/EUPHEMISM/MISCELLANEOUS SARCASTIC VERBAL MORSEL. I DESPERATELY NEED TO DRAW ATTENTION TO MY PREDICTABLE, WITLESS HUMOR BY USING WORM-LIKE FINGER GESTURES AS A LURE TO MENTALLY CAPTURE LISTENERS WHO CAN POTENTIALLY RECOGNIZE HOW FUNNY I THINK I AM."

In spite of my strong feelings toward the air-quote, I feel that Kavanagh's sarcasm is justified. It is not an attempt to be humorous, it's just mighty tricky to project sarcasm into one's writings. It simply reminded me of how much I hate air-quotes, which got my panties bunched enough for me to make a post concerning the topic.

For those of you who haven't read the essay, this is what i’m yammering about:

"In this sense, Ideology is a distinctly pejorative term, usually identifying someone who wishes to impose an abstract, extremist, intellectual-political obsession on a "moderate" mainstream political system. Thus, there are a few people on the right and left( like Robert Bork or Fidel Castro) who "have" an ideology, and who are *therefore*(asterisks=I have no idea how to italicize) likely to mess things up,and there are the great majority of sensible people(and politicians) who get along quite well because they do not "have" one. "Ideology", in this language , works as the opposite of "pragmatism", "common sense", or even of "reality."

Murry-UH