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Topic History of: George Pell
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Misa |
honey!oh, I don't think I've ever heard it used to refer to an inanimate object, but it makes perfect sense. I guess we would have said, 'It was right in front of your nose," in the same situation.
A quick google comes up with a short story, by Edgar Allan Poe, called The Purloined Letter in which, "the Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it."
The story's epigram is Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. (Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness.)
"Hiding in plain sight" is a pretty clever trick to discredit people who saw nothing untoward because nothing untoward was happening. And from there it's only a small step to convicting someone of a crime which even the supposed victim insisted never happened.
Heaven help us. |
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Barney |
honey!oh sugar sugar. wrote:
hordes of people could look into a room where a priest was wrestling children into indecency and not notice though
You know this how?
Media comments from across the world.
Yes, a bit of a stretch...
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honey!oh sugar sugar. |
Misa wrote:
Thanks, JK. I do think we tend to buy into these ideas without necessarily stopping to consider whether they really fit with our own experience (i.e. real knowledge). It's easy to repeat and, so, reinforce them. This all then forms part of the background of our 'general knowledge' and so-called 'common sense'. As we've seen, the Savile case has consistently been used in the UK to prove that pretty outrageous – virtually unimaginable – behaviour is perfectly plausible.
Over the last couple of years I've caught up with quite a lot of Brit and US TV drama from the past decade or so. It seems that, if there isn't a paedo-killer on the loose, the protagonsist's usually haunted by dark memories of childhood abuse. If our writers can imagine nothing else, it's perhaps not surprising that we as a society are so quick to accept that a) childhood sexual abuse is exremely widespread, b) it's always hugely damaging, c) we must do something!
One thing you (or readers) might just be able to help with. When did 'hiding in plain sight' become an established trope? It cropped up in Breaking Bad – Gus, of the fast-food restaurant/drug business was "hiding in plain sight". Do you know whether the expression has a history much before then?
We used to use it to describe the phenomenon of being blind to things you dont expect to see, like when you cant find your socks and they turn up on top of the piano, even though you have been looking at it and couldn't see them.
It is a bit of a stretch that hordes of people could look into a room where a priest was wrestling children into indecency and not notice though.
"Hiding in plain sight" is a pretty clever trick to discredit people who saw nothing untoward because nothing untoward was happening. |
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JK2006 |
Hiding in plain sight is one of those silly expressions like Grooming and Closure which has always annoyed me. Brexit means Brexit. Yes Prime Minister. |
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Misa |
Thanks, JK. I do think we tend to buy into these ideas without necessarily stopping to consider whether they really fit with our own experience (i.e. real knowledge). It's easy to repeat and, so, reinforce them. This all then forms part of the background of our 'general knowledge' and so-called 'common sense'. As we've seen, the Savile case has consistently been used in the UK to prove that pretty outrageous – virtually unimaginable – behaviour is perfectly plausible.
Over the last couple of years I've caught up with quite a lot of Brit and US TV drama from the past decade or so. It seems that, if there isn't a paedo-killer on the loose, the protagonsist's usually haunted by dark memories of childhood abuse. If our writers can imagine nothing else, it's perhaps not surprising that we as a society are so quick to accept that a) childhood sexual abuse is exremely widespread, b) it's always hugely damaging, c) we must do something!
One thing you (or readers) might just be able to help with. When did 'hiding in plain sight' become an established trope? It cropped up in Breaking Bad – Gus, of the fast-food restaurant/drug business was "hiding in plain sight". Do you know whether the expression has a history much before then? |
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