Mr Murphy is a lovable old curmudgeon -- much like my goodself -- and a stickler for proper usage of the Queen's English -- ditto. He also refuses to drink the fashionable progressive koolaid, which makes him a pretty good judge of what passes for political discourse in the Excited States of America. Here are a few snippets from his review of the alleged debate.
As soon as it had ended, various commentators, the Twitter horde, the blogs and the panoply of our present-day communications services, were going on, in severely disparaging terms, about the gentlemanly Vice-President Mike Pence’s “mansplaining.” They clearly were not pleased with Pence’s decorous performance, and just as clearly thought that accusing him of “mansplaining” was a real winner of a rebuke.
["Mansplaining" is] what I'd call a "combat" word, whose purposes is not to describe an exchange, but to put down one of the parties to it. The definition for this application of the word is as follows:
Mansplaining. (n.) a derogatory term called up by feminist ideologues to vainly rebut the actual facts of any matter that, in those rare circumstances where a more intelligent man is debating a less intelligent woman, the man has indubitably presented the better argument. Or, any incontestably superior male response to any inferior female argument.
I hope I have demystified...mansplaining and shown that it is a verbalism of last resort used by sore losers and inadequate debaters. If any should be so mischievous as to colour this column as itself a model of mansplaining, I will simply offer prayers for her recovery.
