Checking up on an old slogan

[nancylebov]

What do you think of

A Purple Heart means you were smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive

?

A non-combat vet told me the slogan was deeply offensive-- possibly appropriate for vets to say to each other, but a wrong thing for civilians (especially when there's a war) because it implied that people with Purple Hearts were stupid. I don't think that's a reasonable reading of the slogan, but I'm not going to step on people's toes for no reason.

On the other hand, to some extent she's being indignant for other people, and that's less likely to be accurate than being indignant for oneself.

In re "Some people just like feeling insulted": As far as I can tell, sometimes I'm genuinely outraged, and sometimes I'm looking for trouble. The whole thing is subtle and messy and I'm not going to start by assuming that inconvenient outrage is always something to be ignored.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

It strikes me as potentially offensive. Two of the three qualifiers demean the recipient.

In many cases it isn't even true in a loose way; the recipient might have been shot while doing nothing special.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

It comes across to me as nothing but a joke, and not something that anyone should even consider taking seriously. The outrage seems like a tempest in a teapot. *shrug*

[madfilkentist]

I wouldn't expect massive protests, but even if all it causes is annoyance, what's the point?

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I have no evidence that the annoyance is widespread, and I am not willing to let the uptightness of a (very) few control the language of the many.

There are, of course, obvious exceptions.

[siderea]

Joke and insult aren't mutually exclusive categories. 'Taint nothing wrong with it among comrades who have the established rapport to contextualize a little ribbing, but for outsiders to use it is mighty presumptuous. A fellow soldier might someday earn a Purple Heart, but some sideline civilian isn't ever, and that give the same words from civilian mouths a nasty edge of "what you can have and we can't, we'll run down".

I mean, saying, "Oh, it wasn't anything," oneself, is humility. Saying, "Oh, it wasn't anything," of someone else, is a put down.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

It is presumptuous for an outsider to use it. I don't think I'd say it to someone who had a Purple Heart (unless I knew them quite well), but that's not because I think the phrase itself is necessarily insulting. It's because the phrase is too glib; the fact of making a joke out of someone else's trauma is (potentially) far more insulting than anything the joke itself might contain.

Had the unnamed objector to this phrase specified that the joke shouldn't come from civilians, I'd give that view far more credence than what I understood her to say, which is that the joke is insulting and shouldn't be used, period.

[siderea]

But that's exactly what she said, according to the OP: "A non-combat vet told me the slogan was deeply offensive-- possibly appropriate for vets to say to each other, but a wrong thing for civilians (especially when there's a war) because it implied that people with Purple Hearts were stupid."

Didja need a shovel? You seem to be bent of keeping on digging.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

*laff*

Whoops. No, apparently I just scanned it instead of actually, uh, reading what it said.

*is deeply embarrassed now*

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The actual situation had to do with whether I should sell a button with the slogan to a store which had ordered it.

It seems unlikely to me that a civilian would be interested enough to buy the button, but I obviously have no control over who'd buy it, wear it, or quote it.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Two of the three qualifiers demean the recipient.

Wait, what? Smart, stupid, lucky: I don't see either two of those as being demeaning.

[madfilkentist]

"Lucky" implies survival by chance rather than preparation.

You may think people are "uptight" when they object to being called stupid; I think it's a reasonable objection.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

The inability to differentiate between a joke and an insult is one of the definitions of uptightness so far as I can tell.

If we were talking about groups with a large power difference, there would be a whole 'nother layer of meaning there. But we aren't. And so far as I can tell, we're not even talking about groups; we're talking about one person who, if I read the OP correctly, isn't even in the class of people that she is "defending."

That last clause, BTW, is one of the main reasons I'm blowing off her objection and brushing her off as "uptight" rather than considering what she has to say. If I hear this from people that the comment is actually aimed at, or if I hear it from a significant number of interested parties, I'll consider taking the objection seriously.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I'm keeping these conversations separate because it's easier for me to do it that way.

"Lucky" implies survival by chance rather than preparation.

So what? There's always an element of chance in life (triple in an active combat zone), and I've never, ever seen or heard anyone use "lucky" as a derogatory comment. Envious, probably, but derogatory, never.