"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 20 April 2012

By Any Other Name

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Clarification":

Could somebody please tell me what a "rube" is? Is it an in-joke that I am not privy to?
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A rube is a derogatory term , normally used by a person who doesn't have the sense he was born with, to describe another whom he regards as his inferior.

Of course he isn't . Nobody is more inferior than a person who lets everyone know what a fool he is by  describing in writing.  the  entire community he lives in,  as a  bunch of rubes and advising others like himself to go and live elsewhere where they would undoubtedly be more welcome and offering to help them move.

Particularly those who don't have to move because  they already live somewhere else.

The dictionary describes a rube as someone who lives in the country and is not sophisticated;   a hick...a hayseed...a country bumpkin. 

I think the dictionary may be due for review.

If the measure of a rube is  lack of sophistication or basic common sense, I  know a couple or ten townies who fit the description quite
adequately.

Conversely,  many people  live in the country.  are completely sensible and  have no need to think of themselves as sophisticated.

It would be too gauche. Not the least  divine, darling.

To answer the question; it is not an in joke; it is a  serious faux pas
on the part of the person who coined the word under the circumstances.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Christopher has given Aurora a present in April. Check it out.

Anonymous said...

Since Ballard was raised in King, there is a very real possibility that he genuinely considers everyone in Aurora to be a rube.

Anonymous said...

are rubes permitted to cross the Rubicon?

or are they physically restricted to an area?

are they related to cubes?

Anonymous said...

Since we Aurorans have all been declared to be rubes, it is only fitting that Evalinea, Morris and Ballard trot out their families so that we could see what we should attempt to achieve. Actually the former Council never revealed any family details. The three letter writers who see themselves as arbiters have to show and tell.