Editing Oxymoron (section)

=="Comical oxymoron"==
{{anchor|comical oxymoron}}{{anchor|opinion oxymoron}}"Comical oxymoron" is a humorous claim that something is an oxymoron. This is called an "opinion oxymoron" by Lederer (1990).<ref name="Lederer" /> The humor derives from implying that an assumption (which might otherwise be expected to be controversial or at least non-evident) is so obvious as to be part of the [[lexicon]]. An example of such a "comical oxymoron" is "[[educational television]]":   the humor derives entirely from the claim that it is an oxymoron by the implication that "television" is so trivial as to be inherently incompatible with "education".<ref>"Hosted for 33 years by the conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., the show [''[[Firing Line (TV series)|Firing Line]]'' taped its final installment [... in 1999.] The show was spawned in the earnest mid-'60s, before popular culture swallowed up the middlebrow and 'educational TV' became a comical oxymoron." ''Time'' Volume 154, [https://books.google.com/books?id=jSHgAAAAMAAJ Issues 18-27] (1999), p.  126.</ref> In a 2009 article called "Daredevil", [[Garry Wills]] accused [[William F. Buckley]] of popularizing this trend, based on the success of the latter's claim that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron".<ref>According to Wills, Buckley has  "poisoned the general currency" of the word oxymoron by using it as just a "fancier word for 'contradiction'", when he said that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron".  Wills argues that use of the term "oxymoron" should remain reserved for the conscious use of contradiction to express something that is "surprisingly true". {{cite web |url=http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Wills-watching-7069 |title=Wills watching by Michael McDonald |publisher=The New Criterion |access-date=27 March 2012}} {{cite magazine |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/daredevil/307546/?single_page=true |title="Daredevil" - Garry Wills |magazine= [[The Atlantic]] |date=1 July 2009 |access-date=27 March 2012}}  However, the usage of "oxymoron" for "contradiction" is recorded by the [[OED]] from the year 1902 onward.</ref>

Examples popularized by comedian [[George Carlin]] in 1975 include "military intelligence" (a play on the lexical meanings of the term "intelligence", implying that "military" inherently excludes the presence of "intelligence") and "[[business ethics]]" (similarly implying that the mutual exclusion of the two terms is evident or commonly understood rather than the partisan [[Anti-corporate activism|anti-corporate]] position).<ref>"Saturday Night Live transcripts." Season 1, Episode 1. 11 October 1975. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75acarlin2.phtml.</ref>

Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the lexical meanings of the word "civil").<ref>Discussed by L. Coltheart in Moira Gatens, [[Alison Mackinnon]] (eds.), ''Gender and Institutions: Welfare, Work and Citizenship'' (1998), p. 131, but already alluded to in 1939 by John Dover Wilson in his edition of William Shakespeare's ''King Richard II'' (p. 193), in reference to the line  ''The King of Heaven forbid our lord the king / Should so with civil and uncivil arms Be rushed upon!'' :"A quibbling oxymoron: 'civil' refers to civil war; 'uncivil' = barbarous".</ref>

Other examples include "honest politician", "affordable caviar" (1993),<ref>"This opened up an oxymoron too dreadful to contemplate: affordable caviar" (''The Guardian'', 1993).</ref> "happily married" and "[[Microsoft Works]]" (2000).<ref>Lisa Marie Meier, ''A Treasury of Email Humor'', Volume 1 (2000), p. 45.</ref>