Norm has a must-read post up here:
If something’s bad, it’s bad, and if it’s very bad, then it’s very bad, right? If something bad or very bad occurs, then people noticing it might say, ‘That’s bad’; they might condemn whoever is responsible for it, right? Well, sometimes. But other times what they do instead is they make the prelude move. Regular visitors to this blog will be familiar with a common variant of the prelude move. It consists of acknowledging the badness of the bad thing but only as a prelude to adverting to the (real or alleged) background causes of that thing, in the hope of concentrating attention there and so diverting it from whatever was the bad thing covered in the prelude.
There is, however, another variant that has been more current during this last week. It’s the prelude move as focused, not on root causes, but on regrettable responses.
You can guess what he’s talking about, can’t you?
PS: I like the use of ‘ag pleez’.
