Can We Just DUMP all social issues?

[Alan]

I suppose each of us is free to interpret if "targeting" is the same as using crosshairs. Personally I don't think so. I have accounts at work that I am targeting to get as clients. I never think of them as in my crosshairs. The two words are quite different to me.

I'd consider it a distinction without a difference. Whether I am targeted or in your crosshairs, I'm sure to have your attention.

[bae]

Crosshairs are not used widely for anything other then to represent weapon sights for aiming. The two words are quite different to me.

Crosshairs are widely used in astronomy and surveying instruments. Focusing reticles or crosshairs for photographic equipment. Etc.

Not weapon-specific, but aiming/attention/focusing specific.

See Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665.

[mtnlaurel]

I suppose each of us is free to interpret if "targeting" is the same as using crosshairs. Personally I don't think so. I have accounts at work that I am targeting to get as clients. I shop at a store called Target that even uses a target as it's icon. . Marketers constantly are discussing target markets. Crosshairs are not used widely for anything other then to represent weapon sights for aiming. The two words are quite different to me.

If any of the elected Repub. officials in Alan's posted Dem. graphic would have been assaulted by bow & arrow as the archer's target graphic might somehow suggest if literally interpreted by a lunatic, then there would be something to talk about.

Instead an elected official was gunned down following the unfortunate timing of the SarahPac graphic with the gun crosshairs.

Did Palin want a nut to go out and gun down Gabby Giffords, of course not.
Would that crime have happened without the SarahPac graphic? Probably, if not definitely.

Let just all thank our lucky stars that Palin has somehow been contained and we are not all subject to her logo'd bus tour family vacations any more.

[jp1]

Crosshairs are widely used in astronomy and surveying instruments. Focusing reticles or crosshairs for photographic equipment. Etc.

Not weapon-specific, but aiming/attention/focusing specific.

See Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665.

I stand corrected. Although, unlike the many common uses of target that most people are familiar with, I'd suspect that the most common association people have with crosshairs is with guns and not with astronomy and surveying instruments. And combining crosshairs and targets makes a very clear image of 'we're preparing to shoot you'. I doubt that astronomers target the planets they've got in their crosshairs...

[bae]

I doubt that astronomers target the planets they've got in their crosshairs...

They do if they want to get a good image.

Actually, this nice lady I know is the longest-range target shooter I am acquainted with. She shoots at the moon, with a giant laser she feeds back through the telescope it is mounted on, and reflects it off the small reflector squares left by the Apollo missions, and uses that to calculate the earth-moon distance, which varies constantly, and feeds her data to the cosmologists.

The large box is the laser she bolted onto the telescope:



Here's the target, or a spare copy of one they forgot to leave on the moon:



And the business end of the telescope:



The telescope is used to aim the laser instrument, and then to focus it on the way out.

[iris lily]

If any of the elected Repub. officials in Alan's posted Dem. graphic would have been assaulted by bow & arrow as the archer's target graphic might somehow suggest if literally interpreted by a lunatic, then we there would be something to talk about.

Instead an elected official was gunned down following the unfortunate timing of the SarahPac graphic with the gun crosshairs.

Did Palin want a nut to go out and gun down Gabby Giffords, of course not.
Would that crime have happened without the SarahPac graphic? Probably, if not definitely.

Let just all thank our lucky stars that Palin has somehow been contained and we are not all subject to her logo'd bus tour family vacations any more.

I have to admit, this post made me laugh.

[mtnlaurel]

They do if they want to get a good image.

Actually, this nice lady I know is the longest-range target shooter I am acquainted with. She shoots at the moon, with a giant laser she feeds back through the telescope it is mounted on, and reflects it off the small reflector squares left by the Apollo missions, and uses that to calculate the earth-moon distance, which varies constantly, and feeds her data to the cosmologists.

The large box is the laser she bolted onto the telescope:
The telescope is used to aim the laser instrument, and then to focus it on the way out.

So Bae, if we follow what you are proposing....

The crosshairs on the SarahPac graphic could be interpreted as the crosshairs of survey/astronomy/photography equipment
and she was employing this metaphor for her followers to study, size up the representatives in the targeted districts

?????

That metaphor doesn't make sense.
The aim of the crosshairs metaphor is to take out the opponent.

I personally love colorful sport/hunting/over the top language, but I am from the South - that's the way we do it, a la Carville to point to a Dem operative.

It just totally angers me to see you, Iris Lily and Alan have to go the mats constantly for complete nincompoops like Palin, Rush, Herman Cain, and whomever else.
I just saw Iron Lady about Margaret Thatcher --- whom I really didn't know a whole lot about.... where is our Margaret Thatcher?
Why is the US Conservative movement today so enmeshed with all of these clowns that any of us could take out in a Trivial Pursuit game?

[bae]

I'm not going to the mats for any of those folks, sorry.

I'm just objecting to partisans continually making mountains out of molehills, polluting our civil discourse. On any/all "sides".

It's no wonder people of quality rarely decide to step up and participate in the political process.

[LDAHL]

I have to admit, this post made me laugh.

It does require something of a leap in logic doesn't it?

Would that crime have happened without the Angry Birds app? Probably, if not definitely.

[Gregg]

The crosshairs on the SarahPac graphic could be interpreted as the crosshairs of survey/astronomy/photography equipment and she was employing this metaphor for her followers to study, size up the representatives in the targeted districts

Not so terribly long ago (in my life) having someone "in my crosshairs" had exactly that meaning. It still does to me. There are several in my family that refer to a soda as "pop". The urban dictionary gives "to shoot" as an alternative meaning to that same word. I do not duck and cover when someone asks if I want a pop. That would be just as ridiculous as if I built a bunker because someone told me I was the "target" of a marketing survey. Colloquialisms are part of life in the USA (and presumably most other places). I don't know when our collective sphincter slammed shut so tight that we now have no appreciation for (as mtnlaurel perfectly described it) colorful language.