I am afraid they did. I have seen quotes from that on the Spectator to defend a pro-abortionist stance, in a text where the actual argument was a pelvic taunting.
Maybe I don't understand what a pretension to cleverness is. I can believe that someone might misquote Seinfeld, or any cultural resource, to appear to lend support to an argument that it doesn't (although why someone would think even an argument actually supported by Seinfeld was made stronger thereby I don't know—the show is famously and intentionally about awful, shallow people). However, to me, a pretension to cleverness involves an attempt to signal some sort of cultural cachet—here, I think of cleverness as being synonymous with a sort of tricky or practical intelligence. Does Seinfeld carry that cachet?
> … in a text where the actual argument was a pelvic taunting.
I don't understand what this means, but I suspect that better understanding it would not make my life any better.
> I don't understand what this means, but I suspect
I interpret it that while afraid, you do not mind me explaining, also/at least for others that may not have understood.
Argument: "We adopt this stance, because it allows X and doing differently would cause Y and Z".
The Spectator, a few months ago: "It is like in that Seinfeld episode where she expressed her concerns and he replied that all [slur] are [slur]. Yeah, take that, [slur], because this [vulgarity] has met your [relative]".
Edit: and when I read that, I thought that the current decadence, each day more evident, is abusing boundaries.
Edit: ...although, I suspect that this type of articles that The Spectator has so horribly decided are acceptable, could actually be tolerated, under the circumstance that they are read and acted by Mike Meyers in a costume.
