My impression is that when someone starts a sentence "Oddly enough," and then goes on to talk about a identifiable and often-political group - such as "intellectuals" - the writer of the sentence is pretty often trying to imply something about someone's dark motivations while maintaining plausible deniability that they couldn't maintain if they said it outright.
Statement: "Oddly enough, we've only heard Democrats complaining about the voting irregularities." Implication: they're complaining because they're Democrats, they have some other agenda than just wanting fair elections, and the complaints should be discounted to at least some extent for that reason.
Statement: "Oddly enough, Ayn Rand's point of view is especially popular among teenage males." Implication: they like that point of view because they're teenage males, have some interest or intellectual limitation unrelated to whatever real issues Rand purported to address, and their support should be discounted to at least some extent for that reason.
Statements like those sound sneaky and dishonest to people who recognize how they're constructed. Your statement sounds like one. Even if you didn't intend it to be, I'm not at all surprised that it may have been misinterpreted as having that kind of implication.
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Date: 2008-07-06 09:46 pm (UTC)Statement: "Oddly enough, we've only heard Democrats complaining about the voting irregularities." Implication: they're complaining because they're Democrats, they have some other agenda than just wanting fair elections, and the complaints should be discounted to at least some extent for that reason.
Statement: "Oddly enough, Ayn Rand's point of view is especially popular among teenage males." Implication: they like that point of view because they're teenage males, have some interest or intellectual limitation unrelated to whatever real issues Rand purported to address, and their support should be discounted to at least some extent for that reason.
Statements like those sound sneaky and dishonest to people who recognize how they're constructed. Your statement sounds like one. Even if you didn't intend it to be, I'm not at all surprised that it may have been misinterpreted as having that kind of implication.