I'm beginning to see the attacks on Greenwald, Miranda, Assange et al as homophobic slurs

[tblue37]

128. Because I am aware of the supposed antisemitic association,

I would never use the term--even if I wanted to indicate revulsion over a lawyer's sleazy behavior, because I would realize that the term refers not just to a certain unsavory lawyer type, but might also be an antisemitic slur.

However, there is no real evidence that the term actually is or ever was antisemitic. I would avoid it simply because I know that many people would take it as antisemitic, and certainly I do not want anything I said to carry such associations for anyone, even if those associations are not historically (etymologically) accurate.

But I honestly doubt that most people nowadays realize that anyone thinks is any such antisemitic intention in the term, so I doubt that most people who use the term intend it to be antisemitic.

Since some people do think it is antisemitic, it is better to avoid the term rather than to insult people or hurt their feelings, even inadvertently.

BTW, I suspect that a major reason why some people take the term to be antisemitic is that they (probably wrongly) associate it with Shakespeare's Shylock (in The Merchant of Venice). But if that is the source of the antisemitic association, then we can be fairly sure that most people are unaware of it, since most people read only the Shakespeare plays they are forced to read in school--and The Merchant of Venice is not a play that is assigned reading in most high school or college English courses that are general literature courses, not specifically about Shakespeare's plays.