And incidentally, Scylla, I also do not see how you can call someone a toady and a dupe and then say it wasn’t a personal attack. It sure as heck was not a compliment or a neutral comment, and was clearly disparaging and I believe intended to be so. This is not an official warning, because I consider those comments in the “offensive but acceptable due to their possible validity in a debate” category with such terms as “liar” and “coward” and “weasel”, but you sure as heck were labelling the poster, not the poster’s argument, with an unwelcome and offending label.
Yuck-o-rama! I’m like having one of those “Crying Game” moments, a quick dash to a technicolor yawn.
Frankly, I liked it better when you just rapped us across the knuckles. Got five bucks says Blacksheepsmith feels the same way.
Ooooh, gotta go! Condoleeza’s on TV, and she’s the hottest Republican since…uh…well, for a really long time.
elucidator:
Don’t hedge. You’re questioning my integrity in this post.
Note, that I have no bones about calling you a liar when you deny this is so.
Yes, of course. Toady and dupe are as you say and fall into the category of being more personal disparagements. (although dupe is an unwilling accomplice and I’m not sure it’s disparaging in all usages.)
Oddly elucidator has chosen not to take personal umbrage at thatpersonal disparaging remark, and has instead fixated wholly on my “verbal diarrhea” remark of an earlier thread, which was not a personal insult but rather a descriptor of the content of one of his posts.
I’m confused. I wasn’t telling elucidator what he should do to himself. I was asking (demanding?) that he just please cut to the chase with Scylla and speak plainly.
Now, it may be that he was being awfully cute in his response to me, by implying what I should go and do as well as Scylla.
That’s fine. I knew very well what kind of reponse I was inviting when I phrased it the way I did. And he didn’t disappoint, no matter how you look at it.
I don’t have any absolute evidence of what was in his mind, though, above and beyond a gentle suspician that it was just too easy a thing for him to resist.
Still, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because I’m just that freaking great a person. And as he’d no doubt point out, this way I get to have the best of both worlds! I get to take the high ground and chop-block him!
Hooray!!!
So I guess what I’m saying is, what’s sexual about any of it?
I’d post a smiley if I knew how.
Y’gotta hold your mouth right when you hit “submit”.
Like this:
Blacksheepsmith:
You were suggesting that elucidator tell me to “stick it up my ass,” yet gratuitous personal insults are not allowed in Great Debates.
I don’t think you’re being warned so much as notified that this is the case.
And upon careful reflection you may have committed a “faux pas” worthy of a warning, because by telling elucidator to tell me to stick it up my ass you were inciting him to break board policy.
So, somehow you share in the guilt for his crime by suggesting it.
My guess, FWIW.
and when you’re posting, above the box you write in is a hyperlink that tells you to use smilies.
Gaudere:
Just out of curiosity, can I ask for a letter ruling on the use of the putz smilie in GD? 
No. I used the word “arse,” which I believe carries a different connotation than “ass.” “Arse,” it seems to me, is much more light hearted, at least to an American, and my decision to use that word instead of “ass” was quite deliberate. My intention was that it would help demonstrate the spirit of my post.
Moreover, I wasn’t suggesting that he attack (or counter-attack, because I really don’t care who was mean first) you, merely that if he was going to do it, well, by God, he should just go ahead do it.
I was pushing for brevity. I don’t think that is gratuitous. Four, or five, or six paragraphs that exist for no other reason than to veil or cast a fog over a personal attack is, from my perspective at least, gratuitous.
elucidator is far from the only one guilty of this, myself included.
You really think so? I don’t feel particularly guilty.
I’d say “complicit” might a better way of describing it, though still not accurate.
Blacksheepsmith:
Yeah, I know what you mean about the brevity, the endless stream of gratuitous run on is what lead to my term “verbal diarrhea” in the first place.
Me neither, but it’s best to be careful when dealing with Gaudere.
As they say:
She’s on the case
can’t be fooled
any objection is overruled
Don’t try to tempt her
you’ve no hope
She don’t like men
she don’t take dope
You’ve got your tricks
Good for you
But there is no gambit
she can’t see through.
She’s the Moderator
and she knows best
She’s impartial don’t push her
she’s unimpressed.
*my apologies to ABBA, of course.
What do you think about this whole Aristotle thing?
My intention at the start of this thing was to make a large blunder, and retract it graciously when it was pointed out. I had hoped that this might serve as an example as some of the parties in this thread have a great problem conceding even the minorest of points, no matter how clearly they have been shown to be wrong.
The funny thing is, that the blunder I purposefully made went completely unnoticed (I’m not about to point it out now, but you can probably find it,) and that huge Aristotle mistake (which is really quite bad,) was made entirely by accident.
Ironic.
Fuck!
You now owe me a new hypocrisy detector. This one just exploded.
Well, not so odd, really. You used those terms to describe people who had the gall to chime in with support for your dearest Betty Noyer (aka The Stoidster) At that point, I wasn’t even posting, as I was so enjoying Xenophon tearing you a new one.
Weaselspeak. Which is to say, Balderdash, Sir! Tommyrot!
To make amends, you must perform the Ancient Tasmanian Ritual of Self-Abasement, accompanied by a chorus of bitter Virgins, intoning dirges of Woe and Humiliation.
Not ABBA, is it? You’ve altered the “Arbiter” song from Chess. I believe Tim Rice wrote those lyrics.
I think he was pretty smart, too. Could you be more specific?
Here’s another one worth thinking about:
If I’m to be considered guilty of anything, it must be because I turned elucidator into my patsy by goading him into breaking the rules of this board. And more than that, I did it right in the middle of a discussion about what constitutes a “toady” and a “dupe,” to boot.
Come on. I’m not Machiavelli. Who are we kidding here?
Really? Where have I been clearly proven wrong, and failed to concede the point (and this is not a popularity contest kind of thing, I mean where have I been proven to make a factual error?)
If I missed one, and failed to concede it, please point it out and I’ll promptly do so.
I’ve probably conceded points or apologized or retracted a statement at least 50 times (more like 100, but I want to be conservative.)
On the other hand you seem to be mangling semantics in your quest to avoid a concession. Mayhap you brought that hypocrisy detector to close to yourself? Willingness to concede a point is a matter of intellectual honesty and fair debating technique.
A few posts ago you’re saying I’m a stand up guy, now you’re accusing me of being a hypocrite. Which is it?
Is this just a cheap shot, or are you capable of backing up this assertion.
Put up or shut up.
Ho hom … the grass is green, the sky is blue. Tell us sump’n new, already!
(But … but, you don’t get it! No one’s been clearly shown to be wrong! It’s a matter of opinion! Opinion’s can’t be wrong, now can they?)
Blacksheepsmith:
I forget, but I know some members of Abba were connected with the music. Maybe they arranged it. I’ll check.
In terms of applying his forms of rhetoric to GD.
KAISER SOZE!! KAISER SOZE!!
Let me state this as unambiguously as I possibly can. Conceding a point you’ve deliberately made in error for the express purpose of “graciously” conceding the point is not intellectually honest.
Hey, new data has been presented since then. I’ll admit I was wrong in my previous characterization.
Why waste the effort? You’ve hung yourself already.
You didn’t read it correctly.
The Aristotle mistake was genuine (though it would be nice to pretend I wasn’t that dumb.)
So, the concesion was real.
My intent though was to plant and concede a factually innacurate point (though a smaller and less embarassing one,) though so I am guilty by intent of whatever it is that you think is wrong with this.
I also let my daughter win when we wrestle, and the Ewe’s Sluts story isn’t literal either. I’m also not really a pirate.
What’s wrong with providing an example, and why is this intellectually dishonest?
xenophon:
let’s see: I’ve also argued a stance I didn’t necessarily beleive in in order to make a point or show a flaw in an opponent’s stance.
Is that intellectually dishonest, too?
I’m reminded of all the episodes of the original *Star Trek * where Captain Kirk tricks an ultimate-type computer into accepting two things that he later shows to be in complete contradiction to each other.
Inevitbly, smoke starts coming out of the thing, it starts shaking, and eventually it explodes.
As I said, I’m not Machiavelli.