Casting Aspersions Quotes

Green is a soothing color, isn’t it? I mean Gryffindor rooms are all well and good but the trouble with red is — it is said to send you a little mad — not that I’m casting aspersions . . .

A spirit of freedom governs our conduct; not only in public affairs, but also in managing the small tensions of every day life, where we show no animosity at our neighbor's choice of pleasures, nor cast aspersions that may hurt even if they do not harm.

Gain fame, and the paparazzi or media waits and watches for them to slip, just to shame their name.

Tongues were wagging. Aspersions were being cast like dandelion spores on hot gossipy winds.

How about this?” he asked, seething. “Rika is my earliest memory, and I’ve loved her forever. The sun rises with her. It always has. And everything we do, we do together. Everything.” He bared his teeth. “No one judges us, and we’ll roll right over anyone who tries. You got that? Look in the fucking mirror the next time you want to cast aspersions on her character. All you’ll see is your own self-hate and jealousy. What you don’t know about us is a lot.

god, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts. the doubts of past convictions only cast aspersions on present assurances and maliciously suggest that those, too, shall pass into the realm of the null and void...

While I hate to cast aspersions on the humble army cutters, their knowledge tends toward the practical, and their approach is often... blunt. If the problem cannot be removed from the patient with a bone saw, they are often at a loss.

Our northern summers, though, are versions Of southern winters, this is clear; And though we’re loath to cast aspersions, They seem to go before they’re here! The sky breathed autumn, turned and darkled; The friendly sun less often sparkled; The days grew short and as they sped, The wood with mournful murmur shed Its wondrous veil to stand uncovered; The fields all lay in misty peace; The caravan of cackling geese Turned south; and all around there hovered The sombre season near at hand; November marched across the land.

Dissing disabled people is crap behavior, even if the disabled person in question happens to be an asshole who whacks his son and casts aspersions on your mother.

Why does humanity always cast aspersions on others simply out of regret for their failure to understand the consequences of their own decisions?

most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man’s wives and daughters so that they are packed with sex and violence. Even worse are those writers of the breeze-and-moonlight school, who corrupt the young with pornography and filth. As for books of the beauty-and-talented-scholar type, a thousand are written to a single pattern and none escapes bordering on indecency. They are filled with allusions to handsome, talented young men and beautiful, refined girls in history; but in order to insert a couple of his own love poems, the author invents stereotyped heroes and heroines with the inevitable low character to make trouble between them like a clown in a play, and makes even the slave girls talk pedantic nonsense. So all these novels are full of contradictions and absurdly unnatural.

warned him against your play. I said that it was too peculiar for a modern audience and that nobody would understand what you were trying to get at. Is it a comedy? Is it a thriller? What is it, exactly? But he had complete faith in you, and now you turn up with your detective friend and cast aspersions on a man who is absolutely blameless and wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone.

In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants. During the debate, Coolidge told the American people: "Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action... We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.

Moreover, it seems plausible that the word “eunuch” could have been used by Jesus’ opponents as a derogatory epithet against him and his followers “to cast aspersions on their masculinity.”10 Theologian Halvor Moxnes suggests that “‘eunuch’ in Matthew’s contextual world could have been a slur leveled against those young men in the Jesus Movement who left home and household and followed him, thus putting themselves ‘out of place’ and ‘represent[ing] a provocation to the very order of the community.’”11 As an unmarried man in a traditional culture, Jesus may have been subject to many of the same slurs as people who were sexual minorities in his culture. Yet, as Moxnes observes, “Jesus picked up the word [eunuch] and accepted it.”12

Are you really going to carry me up those stairs?" "Yeah." Gennie cast a look at the winding staircase and tightened her hold. "I'd just like to mention it wouldn't be terribly romantic if you were to trip and drop me." "The woman casts aspersions on my machismo." "On your balance," she corrected as he started up. She shivered as her wet skin began to chill, then abruptly laughed. “Grant, did it occur to you what those assorted pile of clothes would look like if someone happened by?” “They’d probably look a great deal like what they are,” he considered. “And it should discourage anyone from trespassing. I should have thought of it before-much better than a killer-dog sign.” She sighed, partially from relief as they reached the landing. “You’re hopeless. Anyone would think you were Clark Kent.” Grant stopped in the doorway to the bathroom to stare at her. “Come again?” “You know, concealing a secret identity. Though you’re anything but mild-mannered,” she added as she toyed with a damp curl that hung over his ear. “You’ve set up this lighthouse as some kind of Fortress of Solitude.” The long intense look continued. “What was Clark Kent’s Earth mother’s name?” “Is this a quiz?” “Do you know?” She arched a brow because his eyes were suddenly serious. “Martha.” “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. He laughed, then gave her a quick kiss that was puzzlingly friendly considering they were naked and pressed together. “You continue to surprise me, Genvieve. I think I’m crazy about you.

Even when a word has been in usage for a long time, those whop are suspicious of what that means in terms of gender are quick to claim the change is too fast. 'They' has been used as a singular pronoun in English for hundreds of years; we find examples of the singular 'they' in the works of Shakespeare, Austen, and Swift. But trans people like me, who use the pronoun 'they' as a gender-neutral alternative to 'he' or 'she,' are often mislabeled in the media by editors who struggle with its usage. By implying that trans people are faddish and difficult about words, writers can cast aspersions on the validity of our language - and our selves. By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that we are too hard to understand, and suggests that there's no point in trying.

Soldiers nervously patrolled the streets, cheered by many people who had wished for the government’s defeat. Some of them, emboldened by the violence of the past few days, stopped all men with long hair or beards, unequivocal signs of a rebel spirit, and all women dressed in slacks, which they cut to ribbons because they felt responsible for imposing order, morality, and decency. The new authorities announced that they had nothing to do with actions of this sort and had never given orders to cut beards or slacks, and that it was probably the work of Communists disguised as soldiers attempting to cast aspersions on the armed forces and make the citizenry hate them. Neither beards nor slacks were forbidden, they said, although of course they preferred men to shave and wear their hair short, and women to wear dresses. Word

I get the uneasy suspicion that you're holding something back, Mr. Reading," she said. "Or were you simply going to cast more aspersions on my threadbare wardrobe?" "I'm afraid you're so pretty that I hadn't even noticed your wardrobe, Miss Harriman. Your sister doesn't have the advantage of your beauty." "If that's supposed to make me feel better it's failed," she said, finally getting angry. "My sister is very striking, and only shallow gentlemen would fail to realize that." "I'm very shallow, Miss Harriman. You enchant me. Your sister terrifies me." "Good," she said. Then realized how it sounded. "I mean, good that my sister terrifies you, and I would certainly wish that I could do the same." He looked at her. "In fact, you do terrify me, Miss Harriman, for quite different reasons." "I can't imagine why." His twisted smile was far from reassuring. "I think you would prefer I not mention it to you," he murmured. "I don't understand." "You don't need to.

This popular ideology contends that the religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, tender and delicate; it is an enchanted stream for embittered souls and still waters for troubled spirits. The person “who comes in from the field, weary” (Gen. 25:29), from the battlefield and campaigns of life, from the secular domain which is filled with doubts and fears, contradictions and refutations, clings to religion as does a baby to its mother and finds in her lap “a shelter for his head, the nest of his forsaken prayers” and there is comforted for his disappointments and tribulations. This Rousseauian ideology left its stamp on the entire Romantic movement from the beginning of its growth until its final (tragic!) manifestations in the consciousness of contemporary man. Therefore, the representatives of religious communities are inclined to portray religion, in a wealth of colors that dazzle the eye, as a poetic Arcadia, a realm of simplicity, wholeness, and tranquillity. This ideology is intrinsically false and deceptive. That religious consciousness in man’s experience, which is most profound and most elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascends to the very heights, is not that simple and comfortable. On the contrary, it is exceptionally complex, rigorous, and tortuous. Where you find its complexity, there you find its greatness. The consciousness of homo religiosis flings bitter accusations against itself and immediately is filled with regret, judges its desires and yearnings with excessive severity, and at the same time steeps itself in them, casts derogatory aspersions on its own attributes, flails away at them, but also subjugates itself to them. It is in a condition of spiritual crisis, of psychic ascent and descent, of contradiction arising from affirmation and negation, self-abnegation and self-appreciation. Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs, and torments.

Corruption has become a short-cut accusation, a term used by those who are angry at the system to express dissatisfaction and cast aspersions. It is a (rhetorical) weapon of the weak – all the more credible as there indeed is a lot of corruption in Burundi. This is related to what we ended the previous section with, where we said that Burundians desire ‘better people’ rather than ‘better structures.’ Corruption as described by Burundians is a ‘bad person’s’ fault – not a structural issue. Corruption, then, is in part to the masses what human rights are to the well educated. Both are ways to ‘stick it to the man,’ terms whose currency in protest and dissatisfaction is useful. Hence, more than simply accurate descriptions of a social fact, talking about these things is a political act – a way the jargon of the international community has become reappropriated in local political struggles. Given that in Burundi both corruption and human rights violations are indeed prevalent, this makes understanding these discourses very complicated.

... P doth protest to much. It would be one thing if P were merely silent about Midian. But P is hostile to Midian. Its author tells a story of a complete massacre of the Midianites. He wants no Midianites around. And he especially wants no Midianite women around. This author buried the Moses-Midian connection. We can know why he did this. Practically all critical scholars ascribe this Priestly work to the established priesthood at Jerusalem. For most of the biblical period, that priesthood traced its ancestry to Aaron, the first high priest. It was a priesthood of Levites, but not the same Levites who gave us the E text. Some, including me, ascribe the E text to Levites who traced their ancestry to Moses. These two Levite priestly houses, the Aaronids and the Mushites, were engaged in struggles for leadership and in polemic against each other. The E (Mushite) source took pains, as we have seen to connect Moses' Midianite family back to Abraham. That is understandable. E was justifying the Mushite Levites' line in Israel's history. And it is equally understandable why their opponents, the Aaronids, cast aspersions on any Midianite background. That put a cloud over any Levites, or any text, that claimed a Midianite genealogy. We all could easily think of parallel examples in politics and religion in history and today.

Elizabeth glanced up as Ian handed her a glass of champagne. “Thank you,” she said, smiling up at him and gesturing to Duncan, the duke, and Jake, who were now convulsed with loud hilarity. “They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves,” she remarked. Ian absently glanced the group of laughing men, then back at her. “You’re breathtaking when you smile.” Elizabeth heard the huskiness in his voice and saw the almost slumberous look in his eyes, and she was wondering about its cause when he said softly, “Shall we retire?” That suggestion caused Elizabeth to assume his expression must be due to weariness. She, herself, was more than ready to seek the peace of her own chamber, but since she’d never been to a wedding reception before, she assumed that the protocol must be the same as at any other gala affair-which meant the host and hostess could not withdraw until the last of the guests had either left or retired. Tonight, every one of the guest chambers would be in use, and tomorrow a large wedding breakfast was planned, followed by a hunt. “I’m not sleepy-just a little fatigued from so much smiling,” she told him, pausing to bestow another smile on a guest who caught her eye and waved. Turning her face up to Ian, she offered graciously, “It’s been a long day. If you wish to retire, I’m sure everyone will understand.” “I’m sure they will,” he said dryly, and Elizabeth noted with puzzlement that his eyes were suddenly gleaming. “I’ll stay down here and stand in for you,” she volunteered. The gleam in his eyes brightened yet more. “You don’t think that my retiring alone will look a little odd?” Elizabeth knew it might seem impolite, if not precisely odd, but then inspiration struck, and she said reassuringly, “Leave everything to me. I’ll make your excuses if anyone asks.” His lips twitched. “Just out of curiosity-what excuse will you make for me?” “I’ll say you’re not feeling well. It can’t be anything too dire though, or we’ll be caught out in the fib when you appear looking fit for breakfast and the hunt in the morning.” She hesitated, thinking, and then said decisively, “I’ll say you have the headache.” His eyes widened with laughter. “It’s kind of you to volunteer to dissemble for me, my lady, but that particular untruth would have me on the dueling field for the next month, trying to defend against the aspersions it would cause to be cast upon my…ah…manly character.” “Why? Don’t gentlemen get headaches?” “Not,” he said with a roguish grin, “on their wedding night.” “I can’t see why.” “Can you not?” “No. And,” she added with an irate whisper, “I don’t see why everyone is staying down here this late. I’ve never been to a wedding reception, but it does seem as if they ought to be beginning to seek their beds.” “Elizabeth,” he said, trying not to laugh. “At a wedding reception, the guests cannot leave until the bride and groom retire. If you look over there, you’ll notice my great-aunts are already nodding in their chairs.” “Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly contrite. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” “Because,” he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, “I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery.

But I had no need to suppose anything of the sort, she might well have disdained the use of her eyes to ascertain what her instinct must have adequately enough detected, for, throughout her service with me and my parents, fear, prudence, alertness and cunning had finally taught her that instinctive and almost divinatory knowledge of us that the sailor has of the sea, the quarry of the hunter, and if not the doctor then often the patient of the disease. All the knowledge she was in the habit of acquiring would have astounded anyone for as good a reason as the advanced state of certain areas of knowledge among the ancients, given the almost negligible means of information at their disposal (hers were no less so: a handful of chance remarks forming barely a twentieth part of our conversation at dinner, gleaned in passing by the butler and inaccurately transmitted to the staff quarters). Even her mistakes resulted, like theirs, like the fables in which Plato believed, from a false conception of the world and from preconceived ideas rather than from an inadequacy of material resources... But if the drawbacks of her position as a servant had not prevented her from acquiring the learning indispensable to the art which was its ultimate goal – the art of confounding us by communicating the results of her discoveries – the constraints on her time had been even more effective; here hindrance had not merely been content not to paralyse her enthusiasm, it had powerfully fired it. And of course Françoise neglected no auxiliary stimulant, like diction and attitude for instance. While she never believed anything we said to her when we wanted her to believe it, and since she accepted beyond a shadow of doubt the absurdest things anyone of her own status told her which might at the same time offend our views, in the same way that her manner of listening to our assertions pointed to her incredulity, so the tone she used to report (indirection enabling her to fling the most offensive insults at us with impunity) a cook’s account of threatening her employers and forcing any number of concessions out of them by treating them like dirt in public, indicated that she treated the story as gospel truth. Françoise even went so far as to add: ‘If I’d been the mistress, I’d have been very put out, I can tell you.’ However much, despite our initial dislike of the lady on the fourth floor, we might shrug our shoulders at this unedifying tale as if it were an unlikely fable, its teller knew just how to invest her tone with all the trenchant punch of the most unshakeable and infuriating confidence in what she was saying. But above all, just as writers, when their hands are tied by the tyranny of a monarch or of poetic convention, by the strict rules of prosody or state religion, often achieve a power of concentration they would not have done under a system of political freedom or literary anarchy, so Françoise, by not being free to respond to us in an explicit manner, spoke like Tiresias and would have written like Tacitus.5 She knew how to contain everything she could not express directly in a sentence we could not denounce without casting aspersions on ourselves, in less than a sentence in fact, in a silence, in the way she placed an object.

Clearly, the weight of research in refereed scholarly journals indicates that the basic results have been replicated, which is a central scientific criterion for evaluating an argument. Critics of the more-guns-less-crime thesis have not been content, however, to limit themselves to whether the basic findings stand up against legitimate examinations by others. Instead, they have sought to find chinks in the armor. When even that has not succeeded, they have engaged in misrepresentations and the casting of aspersions. To be blunt, the debate, such as it is, has unfortunately become personalized rather than sticking to the merits of the case—on which my opponents have no case to make.

Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both Progressivism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

In Poland, the newly elected far-right nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) has attempted to rewrite Poland’s World War II historical record. Any person or institution that casts aspersions on Poland’s wartime record of battling the Nazis is attacked. Museum curators who have tried to present an accurate portrait of Poland’s behavior during the war have been fired.3 Exhibits at various government-sponsored museums have been reconfigured to stress Polish battlefield heroics and erase any evidence of complicity with the Germans.

Instead of casting aspersions at the process, why don’t you redirect your energy towards something more advantageous, like finally completing the Program!

I apologize." "For what, exactly?" One long look into his grey eyes told Patience she was not going to escape lightly. She narrowed her eyes anew. "For casting unjustified aspersions on your character." She could see him considering, matching that against her unwise words. Rapidly, she did the same. "And your motives," she grudgingly added. Then she thought again. And frowned. "At least, some of them." His lips twitched. "Definitely only some of them." His voice had regained its purr; a shivery sensation slid down Patience's spine. "Just to be clear, I take it you rescind absolutely all your *unjustified* claims?" He was teasing her; the light in his eyes was definitely untrustworthy. "Unreservedly," Patience snapped. "There! Now what more can you want?" "A kiss.

On the sixty-fifth page the rabbis are arguing about King David and his ill-gotten wife Bathsheba, a mysterious biblical tale about which I’ve always been curious. From the fragments mentioned, it appears that Bathsheba was already married when David laid his eyes upon her, but he was so attracted to her that he deliberately sent her husband, Uriah, to the front lines so that he would be killed in war, leaving Bathsheba free to remarry. Afterward, when David had finally taken poor Bathsheba as his lawful wife, he looked into her eyes and saw in the mirror of her pupils the face of his own sin and was repulsed. After that, David refused to see Bathsheba again, and she lived the rest of her life in the king’s harem, ignored and forgotten. I now see why I’m not allowed to read the Talmud. My teachers have always told me, “David had no sins. David was a saint. It is forbidden to cast aspersions on God’s beloved son and anointed leader.” Is this the same illustrious ancestor the Talmud is referring to? Not only did David cavort with his many wives, but he had unmarried female companions as well, I discover. They are called concubines. I whisper aloud this new word, con-cu-bine, and it doesn’t sound illicit, the way it should, it only makes me think of a tall, stately tree. The concubine tree. I picture beautiful women dangling from its branches. Con-cu-bine. Bathsheba wasn’t a concubine because David honored her by taking her as his wife, but the Talmud says she was the only woman David chose who wasn’t a virgin. I think of the beautiful woman on the olive oil bottle, the extra-virgin. The rabbis say that God only intended virgins for David and that his holiness would have been defiled had he stayed with Bathsheba, who had already been married. King David is the yardstick, they say, against whom we are all measured in heaven. Really, how bad can my small stash of English books be, next to concubines? I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.

Misogyny, like Roman Catholicism, is an institution built on faith. It has hierarchy, jokes, language, periodicals. Its believers insist on a theory with no proof. With proof to the contrary, even. Built into the system of maintaining the status quo is an ingenious method of casting aspersions on nonbelievers, and reasons why the “proof” must remain unseen.

We’re not supposed to do anything that would cast aspersions on the office.” “C’mon, Rita. You’ll make an exception for me, won’t you? I’m not used to being honorable. Maybe it’ll grow on me.” “I’ll tell you what. You make sure you wear some nice tight pants at least twice a week and I’ll see what I can do.” “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were sexually harassing me.” “And when can I expect you to do the same?” “Sorry, Rita,” I said, holding up my

I’m not casting any aspersions here.” “Okay.

I am never one to judge others; I am so eccentric myself that I have no right to cast aspersions. A person may or may not like a thing, and I have little to say other than I love it too or how could you dare not like it please die promptly, but I leave everyone to find their own niches in time. We are all avid about certain things; I happen to rave over many subjects, all of which have a place in the Kingdom of Nerdonia, and whenever I hear someone unjustly disparage a thing I consider sacred, I lay it down that the person is either mistaken or a dunderwhelp, the latter being the likeliest of the two. There is a great difference between knowledge accompanied by bias and ignorance accompanied by gallantry, and while all tastes may be what they are, there are bare necessities that will immediately define a character and relationship, these things usually being how many Monty Python lines one knows and whether or not they know what Iocaine is. The strength of lasting friendships rests on whether one can sing the theme to Neverending Story.

In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The new law effectively closed the United States to most Jewish immigrants. During the debate, Coolidge told the American people, Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action…. We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.

I noted above that when I refer to an idea as unworthy of consideration (or words to that effect that might sound a bit harsher in context) I do not intend to cast aspersions on the intelligence or character of the one holding the unworthy belief. I must qualify that disclaimer. When I see or hear of anyone murdering strangers because they believe such acts please their god, I consider not only the idea but the one holding such an idea to be unworthy of any sympathetic consideration. How anyone could come up with the idea that an almighty being would be pleased by causing as much misery as possible escapes my imagination. Such a person also escapes my capacity for mercy.

These young men said they had plenty of friends of different tribes back in “uni,” but up here, it was different. “Why is it different?” I asked. “Because this is about family,” one said. For years, politicians on all sides had stoked their bases by casting aspersions on other ethnic groups, talking about dangers to “the community.” There was tinder lying everywhere in Kenya. The stolen election became the fuse, and the result was front-page news around the world.

it’s known for its conservative teachings and the staggering success of its alumni in business and government. Which means if this Rafe guy went there, he’s either a monk or a deviant. Not that I can afford to cast aspersions on either of those fronts, because while I may outwardly be the former, I suspect the thoughts I entertain when I’m alone in my bed make me the latter in reality.

Bose was correct in identifying Vallabhbhai Patel as his main opponent within the party. The two had an old rivalry, at once personal and political. Their relationship rapidly deteriorated after the death of Vallabhbhai’s elder brother Vithalbhai in 1933. Bose had nursed Vithalbhai during his last illness. In his will, the elder Patel left three-fourths of his estate to Bose, to be used ‘preferably for publicity work on behalf of India’s cause in other countries’. Vallabhbhai now cast aspersions on the authenticity of the will. A long legal battle ensued, which ended in a triumph for Vallabhbhai, with Vithalbhai’s next of kin getting the money instead of Subhas. This familial history apart, Patel was also opposed to Bose’s militant socialism. When, in 1938, Gandhi decided to propose Bose’s name for the presidency of the Congress, Patel opposed it. Gandhi overruled his objection. In 1939, when Bose sought a second term, Patel opposed him again, unsuccessfully. ‘I never dreamt,’ wrote Patel to Rajendra Prasad, ‘that he [Subhas] will stoop to such dirty mean tactics for re-election.’ In another letter, he told Prasad that ‘it is impossible for us to work with Subhas’. The resignation of the working committee members in February, and Pant’s resolution at Tripuri in March, were both approved of—if not instigated by—Patel.

The choice to be oneself requires courage and vulnerability as you put yourself out there for the world to judge and cast aspersion on you. It is far easier to copy others and risk standing out, but that path leads to unhappiness as you say No to yourself and Yes to others. I chose to be authentic, to be real and to know that I do not let the opinions of others define who I am or limit my greatness.

Even after casting aspersions on a BJP Chief Minister – Narendra Modi – in 2002, NDTV got its own TV channel license in 2003, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister.  After eating out more than a $100 million from Star News partnership, in 2003, NDTV flipped the bird to media baron Rupert Murdoch. Knowing NDTV’s clout in Delhi, Murdoch did not file any case of cheating against them, as by that time Arun Jaitley had become the Law Minister with hands in several other portfolios and had persuaded Atal Bihari Vajpayee to let NDTV and Prannoy Roy have their way despite the strong ideological opposition of Swaminathan Gurumurthy.

Pelosi would create a special House committee to investigate the insurrection. A few weeks later, the House considered a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to every officer who defended the Capitol on January 6th. It was a simple, apolitical gesture of recognition. The Congressional Gold Medal bill did not call for any kind of investigation or cast aspersions on anyone. It merely honored the officers who risked their lives to stop a violent insurrection. Even so, twenty-one Republicans voted against it. For the historical record, here are the names of those twenty-one spineless fucks: Andrew Clyde, Paul Gosar, Jody Hice, Lauren Boebert, Barry Moore, Ralph Norman, Matthew Rosendale, Chip Roy, Warren Davidson, Scott Perry, Mary Miller, Andy Biggs, Thomas Massie, Andy Harris, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Michael Cloud, Greg Steube, Bob Good, and John Rose.

In academic circles influences by Said, any reference to acts of 'terrorism' was soon regarded as off-limits, a reflection of Zionist efforts to discredit the legitimate aspirations of a subject population by casting aspersions on their so-called freedom fighters. In this way, 'blaming the victim' was deployed as an ideological weapon that might constrain debate.

After Zeidy’s heavy footfalls fade down the stairs, and I watch from my second-floor bedroom window as my grandparents get into the taxi, I slide the book out from under the mattress and place it reverently on my desk. The pages are made of waxy, translucent paper, and they are each packed with text: the original words of the Talmud as well as the English translation, and the rabbinical discourse that fills up the bottom half of each page. I like the discussions best, records of the conversations the ancient rabbis held about each holy phrase in the Talmud. On the sixty-fifth page the rabbis are arguing about King David and his ill-gotten wife Bathsheba, a mysterious biblical tale about which I’ve always been curious. From the fragments mentioned, it appears that Bathsheba was already married when David laid his eyes upon her, but he was so attracted to her that he deliberately sent her husband, Uriah, to the front lines so that he would be killed in war, leaving Bathsheba free to remarry. Afterward, when David had finally taken poor Bathsheba as his lawful wife, he looked into her eyes and saw in the mirror of her pupils the face of his own sin and was repulsed. After that, David refused to see Bathsheba again, and she lived the rest of her life in the king’s harem, ignored and forgotten. I now see why I’m not allowed to read the Talmud. My teachers have always told me, “David had no sins. David was a saint. It is forbidden to cast aspersions on God’s beloved son and anointed leader.” Is this the same illustrious ancestor the Talmud is referring to? Not only did David cavort with his many wives, but he had unmarried female companions as well, I discover. They are called concubines. I whisper aloud this new word, con-cu-bine, and it doesn’t sound illicit, the way it should, it only makes me think of a tall, stately tree. The concubine tree. I picture beautiful women dangling from its branches. Con-cu-bine. Bathsheba wasn’t a concubine because David honored her by taking her as his wife, but the Talmud says she was the only woman David chose who wasn’t a virgin. I think of the beautiful woman on the olive oil bottle, the extra-virgin. The rabbis say that God only intended virgins for David and that his holiness would have been defiled had he stayed with Bathsheba, who had already been married. King David is the yardstick, they say, against whom we are all measured in heaven. Really, how bad can my small stash of English books be, next to concubines? I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.

Firstly, it’s more accurate. When you’re describing a large group of people whom you don’t know, it makes sense to define them by what they’re doing (which you can be reasonably sure of) rather than why they’re doing it (which you can’t). Migrant is the most efficient way of achieving this: in its purest sense it simply means someone on the move – and casts no aspersions, positive or negative, on why they set out in the first place. Secondly, many of those who push for the use of ‘refugee’ do so by defining refugees in opposition to migrants. Refugees, they say, deserve rights, whereas migrants don’t. Refugees had good reason to leave home; migrants did not. This is a problematic differentiation. In attempting to separate the two groups, we imply that it is easy to distinguish between them. In reality, as I’ve attempted to explain in earlier chapters, it is increasingly hard to do so. There is often overlap, and many people’s experiences might fit the definitions of both categories.

There was a crowd of maybe twenty people in front of the store, plus two cops, all of whom were watching an argument between a middle-aged woman who Nina recognized from the store (historical fiction) and a younger woman who was wearing a long, fringed skirt, a top made of birds’ wings and macaroni, and a large felt hat with a brim the size of Poughkeepsie. Birds could have perched comfortably on it, if they were able to forgive the bird wing corset. “I question your assumption that makeup is less culturally valid than literature,” the young woman was saying, as Nina and Lydia got close. Ah, thought Nina, it’s a Larchmont Liberal Street Fight. The older woman frowned. “I am not in any way questioning the validity of your products, culturally or otherwise, and far be it from me to cast aspersions on the career goals of a fellow woman, but this bookstore has been here for nearly eight decades and is a cornerstone of our community.” “Progress is inevitable,” replied the woman. “That is both true and irrelevant to our discussion,” said the older woman, whom Nina was mentally referring to as the Reader. “We don’t need another beauty products store on Larchmont, and we certainly don’t need a pot shop.” “We’re not a dispensary,” replied the other woman, whom Nina had internally named Bird Wing Betty. “We create makeup infused with potent botanicals that make you feel as good as you look. We are one hundred percent organic, local, and legal.