| | Oh dear, personally I don't use "Bah!"
I use * * <wave> (sarcastic gasp) I name her "The Inara Dismissal"
I prefer rolling my eyes with a contemptuous toss of the head and a dismissive wave, accompanied by a frustrated exhalation of lost patience; I borrowed the gesture from Inara of Firefly, a most excellent companion (and the word is not a euphamism, as some fans think... it's a translation).
I culturally sympathise with progressive critiques of power-relations, and I hesitated long on employing this sort of aristocrat's prerogative, but eventually just got tired of evaluating the sort of comments I've gotten used to; and decided- 'tis better a touch of classism than to trudge an eternal sewer of moralism's time-wasters. And here, as is other things: aristocrats or democrats, in the end the choice is slight.
I love Dilbert, BTW; Scott Adams is the Thomas Nast of our time; as a social critic he is worth twelve doctored sociologists. OK, his epistemology is awful, terrible, but he is a very, very impressive practitioner of his craft qua cartoonist.
A curious girl opines: never mess with a cartoonist; the comic is the art of succinct narrative via visual symbolic economy; it is the writing of Archimedes.
regards,
Jeanie Ring )(*)(
P.S. The original Dogbert Dismissal, below:
When we had got to this point in the argument, and every one saw that the definition of justice had been completely upset, Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said:
Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse?
Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be answering?
Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose....
(Plato, Republic, trans. Jowett, unfortunately)
P.P.S. Watch out for Mr. Adams and his rhetorical like. Adams is a conscious admirer of Machiavelli and the Greek sophists.
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