No Disrespect
by Scott Hardie on July 23, 2019
One of my pet peeves is people saying, "Have you ever noticed that the phrase 'no disrespect' is immediately followed by something disrespectful?"
Well, YEAH. That's the point of the phrase. It's intended to provide context, so that you don't take the next statement as a deliberate insult. If I said, "you should see your barber for a refund," it would sound like an insult about an ugly haircut. But if I said, "I don't mean any disrespect, but you should see your barber for a refund," it would sound like constructive advice about how to handle bad service.
Do the people acting clever by pointing this out think that the phrase is supposed to be followed by a nice statement? "No disrespect, but you look terrific today" would sound incongruously weird, like someone was sarcastically suggesting that you look bad. You'd puzzle over it for a moment, not sure what to think.
Pointing out that "no disrespect" is followed by something disrespectful is just so oblivious as to purpose. It's like pointing out, "Have you ever noticed that people opening their umbrellas is followed by heavy rainfall starting?" What did you think the point was?
Besides that, the joke is a cliché by now. I've heard it at least a half-dozen times. That's why I was doubly disappointed to hear it come up on the new season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Two longtime professional comics should not produce such a lazy, pointless, and hackneyed joke.
One Reply to No Disrespect
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Bad for Business
CNN Money published an interesting look at the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business in the year 2006. Go »The Honeymoon
After our wedding, it was time for Kelly and I to enjoy our honeymoon: Ten days in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the coastline between them. We (really I, with Kelly's signoff) spent weeks researching and scheduling to pull it off, and the effort was definitely worth it, as we had ten days of bliss. We rode new rides at Disneyland, toured a movie studio and historic ship, saw whales and dolphins up close, ate lunch atop a mountain, hiked among the redwoods, explored Chinatown and Alcatraz, and along the way ate some amazing food. Go »The Aggravation of Blog Readers by the Movie-Spoiler Scott Hardie
The upcoming Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has looked appealing to me for a while now. (I originally used a pic of Brad Pitt in character for the Jesse James goo.) Great cast, great photography, great old-fashioned title. Go »This Blog Post Definitely Doesn't Conform to NPOV Standards
I once coined a rule that you couldn't read more than three complete articles on Wikipedia without running into a reference to some obscure joke from The Simpsons, Monty Python, or most commonly, Family Guy. Seriously: I just now clicked two links and landed at Anarcho-syndicalism of all things, and sure enough, there's Holy Grail in the "trivia" section. Should it be plural like that, since no one is ever going to enter another item of trivia? Go »Thorough Performance Reviews
I'm not around much this week because it's time for the annual performance reviews at work. I'm staying up till the wee hours each night writing the reviews so that the two-day marathon of face-to-face chats at the end of the week will go well. It's a win-win: For the employees doing a great job, it's my chance to offer serious praise without it sounding phony or arbitrary. Go »
Aaron Shurtleff | July 24, 2019
I'm not racist, but...