I'm just an unfrozen caveman lawyer...

...your modern ways frighten me.

Lawyer calls jurors 'cave dwellers'

A little lesson on thinking first, talking second:

The Associated Press
10/14/2003, 7:31 a.m. CT

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A federal prosecutor in a high-profile vote fraud trial has struck a nerve with eastern Kentucky residents by describing some potential jurors in the mountain region as "illiterate cave dwellers."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Taylor made the remark in his effort to persuade a judge not to move the trial of former state Sen. John Doug Hays and several of his supporters back to Pikeville from London, about 90 miles west.

Pretrial publicity has been so rampant in the region, Taylor said, that many potential jurors in the Pikeville area would have to be disqualified because they have formed opinions. "All that would remain to try the case would be illiterate cave dwellers." [...]

Technically, probably accurate--he wasn't saying that the good citizens of Pikeville ARE cave dwellers, just that due to the high level of publicity, the only way somebody could not know about the defendant and his crime is if they could not read and were cut off from all outside communication. Of course, nothing like a good witch hunt (almost as much fun as CIRCUSES!)

Residents of the mountain region have long been sensitive to anything that smacks of the old hillbilly stereotype. And the furor that erupted last year over the planned CBS reality series "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" has made some even more vigilant.

"When you say something like this among your buddies at the country club, it's one thing. But when you go out in public and make this kind of statement, you've got to be stone-cold stupid," said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies, a group that has led the fight against such stereotypes.

Yep--it was probably an inapt choice of words, but now it seems us redneck cracker hillbillies have now done clumb aboard the Victim of Vicious Verbal Discrimination Bandwagon, so that any poorly drawn analogy or stupid turn of phrase automatically rises to the level of Intentional Stereotyping of an Oppressed People, or even the dreaded Hate Speech. Eek.

And it's interesting to note that nowadays it's not enough to simply call someone down for making such a remark, but we have to throw in a little class consciousness in there, too--the little crack about "buddies at the country club" fairly well smacks of the same stereotyping, and if you twist your panties enough, I think you could say that it's a slap in the face of Pikeville. How dare the Center for Rural Strategies intimate that THEY can't belong to a country club!

Yes, the lawyer used a dumb analogy, but that's it. Get over it.
posted by Terry at 9:09:00 AM