Huerta88 - your handle hurts you

The BBQ Pit
1

I remember a long-ago segment on the Howard Stern show involving a feud between comedian Sam Kinison and some other celebrity, whose name I no longer recall. They traded increasingly furious barbs back and forth, vicious personal attacks. Finally, the other player lambasted the stocky Kinison as a “fat-ass tub of lard,” or something along those lines.

Kinison sighed. “I gotta lose some weight,” he mused. “It’s my only vulnerable attack point.”

Of course, in the world of reason and debate, such as the one that univerally reigns here on the SDMB (pause for dutiful chuckle), it’s absolutely irrelevant how much your opponent weighs. Such a comment would be instantly recognized as a classic ad hominem, a logical fallacy the seeks to distract from the merits of the argument with a personal attack on the rhetor.

But in some areas, rhetors here are vulnerable to distractions that, like Kinison’s weight, can detract from their effective debate.

It is even so with Huerta88.

I have found Huerta88’s posts, in general, to well well-written, logically constructed, and supported by relevant citation to authority. But on more than one occasion, I’ve seen speculation about the meaning of the 88 contribute to a distraction that should not occur in a realm of pure sweet reason.

I have no idea if the 88 in Huerta’s name is a sly reference to the eighth letter of the alphabet - ‘H’, which in doubled turn would be a sly reference to the phrase ‘Heil Hitler,’ which in turn would identify Huerta88 as a Nazi sympathizer.

It strikes me as unlikely, but I’ve seen stranger things, like Dennis Kucinich running for President.

So - Huerta88, I invite you to consider that your name may be causing an unnecessary distraction. How you might go about mitigating that distraction, should you even choose to, is obviously up to you.

2

I think parody threads require a link

3

Bizarre. I have heard (mostly on these boards) of “88” being a code for Nazi sympathizers, but it’s certainly not something that typically crosses my mind when I see that number.

My closest association with “88” is the fact that it was the favorite “random number” of my own late father, a Jewish WWII veteran and certainly no Nazi sympathizer! I still smile when I think of him saying “I’ve told you kids eighty-eight times that…” and “Why do we need eighty-eight different kinds of cereal for…” etc. etc. etc.

When asked why the random number was always 88, he would always confidently reply “It’s the number of keys on a piano”. This never really answered our question, of course, since Dad couldn’t play the piano and didn’t have an especial affection for piano music or anything like that.

Anyway. While I of course don’t approve of people being Nazi sympathizers or advertising Nazi sympathies in their usernames, I’m a little taken aback to learn that the number 88 is now considered so un-PC that people are advised to avoid using it even if they’re not Nazi sympathizers.

Just curious, Bricker—would you offer the same advice to a poster with a username like, say, “NonNiggardly”?

Oh. Well, that’s me whooshed, then! :smack: Nevermind.

4

It’s not a parody. I’ve thought the same thing, especially when he first started posting here. At some point I believe he explained the derivation of the 88 but I’ve forgotten.

88 really is used by Nazi sympathizers and Neo-Nazis. A few years ago some company had to withdraw t-shirts printed with 88 prominantly featured in the design.

5

I’m aware of this particular Nazi “code,” but it’s hardly the first thing I think of when I see the number. I’d never made the connection with Huerta’s name, and even if I had, I’d still wait until I saw something specifically racist/fascist in his postings before I assumed that the 88 had that specific meaning to him.

6

I too recognized in passing the ‘88’. I guess I wrote it off, since I consider my knowledge of that little bit of sub culture trivia to be an obscure one. I figured less people know 88’s murky history on the internet than 4:20. But since the addition of ‘88’ to message board monikers is a rather common usage, I guess I too gotta question the usage, in hindsight.

7

Since I’m at work, I thought I’d share a part of the chart of “Recognizing Hate Symbols” titled “numeric codes”, in case anyone cares, or doesn’t believe that 88 is a neo-nazi affiliated code.

88 - “HH” or Heil Hitler, as described in the OP

14/88 - 14 words/Heil Hitler, shorthand for the racist slogan “We must secure the existence of our race and a future for our white children”

311, 33/5, or 33/6 - Klan symbology uses combinations of 3 and 11 to represent the KKK (3 times, K is the 11th letter

4/19 - anniversary of the Waco raid on the Brach Davidians

4/20 - Hitler’s Bday.

I’m not saying any of this is related to the OP, just throwing it out as information for doper consumption.

8

I like to think of it in connection with Football HOF-er Lynn Swann myself.

9

So I guess I’d better not buy that Delta 88 I’ve had my eye on.

10

But for mercy’s sake, “Huerta” is a Hispanic name, isn’t it? Aren’t Latin Americans part of what the Nazis would have considered Untermenschen or inferior races? Those brown folks, y’know.

Are there really so many Hispanic Nazi sympathizers out there that people are seriously inclined to suspect someone with a nick like “Huerta88” of being one?

11

Well, I want to thank the OP for decoding NASCAR driver Dale Jarrett’s real sympathies. And he seemed like such a nice man…

I’ll just also mention that I started out on this board as Rocket88, without having a clue about the neo-Nazi connection. Sieg Heil, y’all.

12

**Bricker

-Squink **

13

Well, Nazism is the first thing I think of when I see 88, and I do think it shades his posts a little. Not that he should “have” to change it, but yeah, it’s my first connotation.

14

Nitpick:

You mean ad hominem attack, not simply* ad hominem.* I point this out because saying, for instance, that Bush would make a better president because he just makes you feel like you can trust him personally, is an argument ad hominem too; it’s just not an attack. Ad hominem is when the personality of the individual(s) is given weight over the substance of the argument, whether in a negative fashion or a positive fashion.

I bring this up because, more and more, people assume if you use the term ad hominem, then you are implying an attack, which is not always the case.

I now return you to your originally scheduled pitting.

15

I always think of 88 as the number of keys on a piano, but . . .

http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/numbers_88.asp

At least one white-nationalist poster who dropped in on this old thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=244236 – had a handle ending in 88 (later changed to 89, apparently).

16

There’s hispanic as in brown people and hispanic as in white people from Spain, some of which consider themselve “pure” european stock.

Funny world, ain’t it?

17

I’m familiar with the 88/Nazi connection due to this board, but I wouldn’t associate it with Huerta88 if people didn’t keep asking. It’s a shame, because I think 88 is a very cool number.

18

Huerta was the name of a Mexican dictator, though I don’t know of any connection, tenuous or not, to Hitler.

19

I had always just assumed that Huerta88 was a young’un and was following the pattern common among AOL’ers of putting his birth year at the end of his username.

20

Given my experiences on other boards, “neonazi” is the first thing that comes to mind when I see 88 in someone’s name.

Neonazis tend to be less than clever.