And in attempting to disentangle them, critics are obstructing the ability of the film to strike a colossal and highly public blow against the pernicious Lost Cause.
The death of Christopher Hitchens, one of the most prolific adversaries of pernicious superstitions, is a big blow, especially to a continent where children and elderly women are subjected to physical harm on suspicion of witchcraft.
Symbolically, Folt and other UNC chancellors can deal a lethal blow to the most pernicious provision by enforcing the law across a 17-campus system having hundreds of thousands of students, faculty and employees.
Political figures say the potential for any quote to blow up at any time has the pernicious effect of making them more cautious, forever conscious that the next words out of their mouth could become a weapon against them.
These pernicious puzzles, the Herald goes on, "have dealt the final blow to the art of conversation, and have been known to break up homes".
In a 1999 report, a judge-led inquiry struck one of the harshest blows in the history of Britain's most famous police force, accusing Scotland Yard of "pernicious and persistent institutionalized racism" in its handling of the case and in other matters involving Britain's nonwhite population.
But the most pernicious rationalization of all is this one: That children can watch hundreds of people shot, stabbed, eviscerated, blown-up, beheaded and electrocuted every week and yet suffer no effect to their psyches.
A pernicious change in legislation from the government which sought to limit the number of miscarriages of justice victims eligible for compensation was a blow to us.
Domestic abuse is pernicious.
