…I’ll explain why I thought your remark in this thread was out of line.
You stated:
What is this “Box of Punishment” you refer to? Is that a figurative term? For the sake of your stepchild(ren), I hope so. Please explain what you mean. This is the Pit, and you have as much responsibility to back up your statement as I have to back up my challenge of it.
Admitting, or at least implying, that you are an abusive stepparent is not “amusing”. If you did mean this literally, that’s just wrong. POWs and concentration camp inmates are put in “boxes”. If you joke about doing this to your stepchild(ren) (do you say this to their face?) you must not love or even like them much. If—I’m not accusing you of doing so—you actually do this, then what has been said about Calhoun and Atkinson would apply to you as well. Does the child(ren)'s mother know and approve of your attitude about discipline?
I don’t know Miller, so I don’t know why he responded as he did. But the offense of your statement is not offset by one poster calling you a “funny, evil motherfucker”.
If you were indeed making a “joke”, you were in the wrong thread. We were discussing a very grim subject, and one that hits close to home for some posters. Of course you’re allowed to express your opinion, but your post sounded off-the-cuff and insensitive. Again, you should have been prepared to defend your position. And I hope you can defend it now.
It’d do a great thing for my attitude. I’d be determined to mortally wound my parents. And if I couldn’t knife them in their sleep, I’d leave and never look back. So I guess it could be a way to teach determination.
That isn’t disapline. That doesn’t teach anything except that if you are bigger and stronger you have the ability to hurt others.
There are few things that are not funny in my world. Child abuse is one of them. If that makes me a sitck in the mud with no sense of humor, well then, I’ll live without being the life of the party.
Or, in other words, not funny. Very inappropriate.
Okay, has no one else here ever heard of laughter as a defense mechanism? Is this a new idea? Get off your high horse, Rilchiam. This wasn’t a GD, or someone relating a personal incident. It’s a Pit thread about a news report. Yeah, it’s a terrible subject. You either laugh at it or you shoot yourself. I think Badtz injected some much needed levity into a very grim subject. Just because he (or me, for that matter) wasn’t in there wailing and moaning and gnashing his teeth doesn’t mean he is any less concerned than you are.
I know all about laughter as a defense mechanism. But I also know how to inject humor into a situation.
Let’s recap. We have a discussion of a news story about a horrible situation involving a child who will probably never fully recover, mentally, physically or emotionally, from the sub-human abuse she received from her mother and stepmother.
Posters are expressing their horror at the situation, their animosity towards the adults, and their helplessness in the face of the knowledge that the system will probably fail to serve the child or the adults as they should be.
Then Badtz pops in with a post that seems to translate into “Hey, she might have deserved it. I have (a) stepchild(ren) too, and I see nothing wrong with locking them in a “box” for a week or so. Keeps them from developing that pesky self-esteem.” What part of that expresses concern?
I’ve already said that Badtz is the one who should have expected that any comment in the Pit can and will be challenged.
I have also said that the link he posted would not have been entirely inappropriate as a way of breaking the tension. But he didn’t post the link. He made a statement that implicated himself as an abusive step-parent.. The proper thing to do would have been to start another thread saying, “Here’s a link to an anecdote that has a kind of grim humor in light of the Texas news story. Warning: some people may not see the humor in this, so if the story itself was as much as or more than you could take, don’t click.”
One could find the anecdote morbidly humorous in the sense of “What kind of parent would do that to their kid? Did this person ride the short bus or what?” But there is no humor to be derived from the damage that would be done to a child by the actions described.
I am an abuse survivor. There are things that make me laugh, where better-adjusted people would not, but that’s because I’ve been there, and they’re seeing or hearing something utterly foreign to them. I do not, however, berate people for being upset by Callahan cartoons, or Titus, or whatever I’m laughing at. Rather, I envy them for their psyches which are not scarred as mine is.
If having empathy for a child who has been treated inhumanely puts me on a high horse, then giddyup.
And I still want to know how Badtz disciplines his stepchild(ren).
This is true. This also applies to your posts, and to my posts. Your point is?
Which, of course, would have completely killed the joke. This seems to contradict your first point.
This wasn’t the point of the joke. You actually highlighted the point of the joke earlier: “He made a statement that implicated himself as an abusive step-parent.” See, its funny because he is taking a pose of someone doing something unspeakably evil, who is so clueless as to the nature of what he’s doing that he admits it on an internet board. This isn’t about the abuse, it’s essentially a spoof on the character and intellect of people who abuse their children. What made it especially funny is that it came in the middle of a very depressing discussion of a very real evil. It was a relief to laugh, to release some of the tension generated by the OP. In other words, it was an appropriate and welcome insertion of humor.
I’m really confused here. Isn’t this supposed to be my argument? Some people have darker senses of humor than other people. It doesn’t make them “evil” or insensitive or abusive. You don’t berate people who don’t get your humor. How nice of you. So why do you berate people whose humor you don’t get?
Its not the empathy, its the way you pretend your the only one around here who’s got any.
That’s it, Rilchiam. I didn’t want to do this. So far in my posting history I’ve avoided it. But you’ve finally made me use the rolly-eyes: :rolleyes:
In college, I got into a conversation with a fellow who had Hiroshima on the mind; he’d just done a thesis on it, or had learned that it wasn’t just “FLASH! city is dead” quick horror, it was shadows seared into concrete, children with seared flesh hanging from skeletons yet still living horror. I saw several options: a) begin weeping, or b) do a bad Homer Simpson impression of hysterical knee-slapping laughter and “It’s funny because it’s true!” I chose option b; the look in his eyes for the split seconds before he understood what I was doing was priceless. If those split seconds had lasted longer, I’m sure it wouldn’t be quite so positive a memory.
When you’ve got a sense of humor that veers into dark territory, part of that territory is occasionally taking flack from displaying it. Certain topics will inevitably spark it, sure as rain falls down and not up–this is one of them. Life goes on.
Some of you need a big thwacking with the irony-stick.
But to aid you with future inter-human relations, here is an idea: try not assuming the worst of people when you read their posts. Assume that they did mean it as a joke and that they are not the inhumane, cruel bastard the line could imply and we’ll all be a lot happier. Especially when the poster has 2,500 previous examples of how he is not totally psychotic. If they genuinely are disturbed, it’ll be revealed in subsequent posts.
Please, for the sake of my eyes - they can’t stand being rolled too much in one day.
BADTZ! I’d like a link that confirms this statement is a joke or else be prepared to defend yourself to the thousands of children (LIKE MYSELF) who were in fact tormented with scorpions for not eating the Orange Roughy.
My humble apologies to Badtz for misspelling his name. And that should have been “slack-jawed amazement”. I will accept any punishment my fellow Dopers deem suitable for my egregious lack of proofreading.
[Strother Martin voice]
No preview? Ya spend a week in The Box. Wet your bed? A week in The Box. Don’t eat your orange roughy? A week in The Box. With scorpions.
[/Strother Martin voice]
Or we could make the obligatory Simpsons reference (containing the obligatory Other Classic 60s Movie reference) and imagine Badtz’s stepdaughter sucking on her pacifier and bouncing a ball off the side of the playpen while the theme from “The Great Escape” plays.
On the whole, Rilchiam, I appreciate your concern for the welfare of children who are or might be abused, but Badtz’s “joke” shows that a wealth of pop culture knowledge is needed to realize that some of the jokes here are jokes.
PHEW! I’m so glad I decided against that ‘mommy dearest’ reference I considered posting to the original thread. Reading this brought a Charles Lamb quote to mind. “Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.”
Lighten up Francis.