1) I'm not quite sure which people you mean here. But I do consider people trained in interpreting other texts to be perfectly qualified to interpret the bible. It's just the people the feminist media analysis community is a subset of the larger text interpretation community.
2) True. He's a lying scumbag.
I think she can defend it. I just think that the different audience point isn't a particularly effective defense. I think she's better off just saying "I meant generally interpreted by feminist critics, I said this was a feminst critique at the start after all." I was annoyed by the rumors that she was going to be fired and I generally approve of the counter-punch approach. It's just that while I think your defense is accurate, I don't think focusing on the audience question is effective at convincing the large public.
And I'd disagree with your point that "Nobody's expected to act like things that aren't written to a general audience are written to a general audience." I think opposition researchers will be happy to go through past controversial statements of any public figure and find things that sound like they might be controversial. Now there's probably a lot of things that would go over the heads of a general audience, but those statements aren't likely to be controversial unless they sound crazy pretentious.
no subject
2) True. He's a lying scumbag.
I think she can defend it. I just think that the different audience point isn't a particularly effective defense. I think she's better off just saying "I meant generally interpreted by feminist critics, I said this was a feminst critique at the start after all." I was annoyed by the rumors that she was going to be fired and I generally approve of the counter-punch approach. It's just that while I think your defense is accurate, I don't think focusing on the audience question is effective at convincing the large public.
And I'd disagree with your point that "Nobody's expected to act like things that aren't written to a general audience are written to a general audience." I think opposition researchers will be happy to go through past controversial statements of any public figure and find things that sound like they might be controversial. Now there's probably a lot of things that would go over the heads of a general audience, but those statements aren't likely to be controversial unless they sound crazy pretentious.