Alright, I admit I was playing a little dumb. From SterlingNorth’s question, and Milo’s answer, I knew it was a comment on how to deal with the terrorists.
I guess I was trying to say that I didn’t think the OP was a really good metaphor/allegory/whatever. (So, I was being as obtuse as Milo with what I was trying to say )
Ohhhh…
Why not, you trickster, you?
samclem - I didn’t apologize. I should apologize for your inability to grasp irony?
Green Bean - Whenever you’re ready, explain why it isn’t a good analogy.
I don’t think this is a good analogy.
I have read a boatload of those terrorism posts (before I got so fucking sick of them) and I didn’t see anyone who said that the dead people are to blame. I did hear people suggest that AMERICA may have played a part in contributing to the ire of the attackers by its arbitrary support of despotic governments and unjust treatment of certain groups. That’s different than saying any of the 6,000 victims in these attacks provoked them. America is not dead. America is not destroyed. Those people are. Nicole Brown is.
But maybe I stopped reading too early.
I’d ask you to point me to some examples, but let’s face it…if anyone suggested that the victims themselves brought this on themselves, I’m sure we’d all find it so laughable it isn’t even worth a pit thread.
I don’t believe I said anywhere here that Nicole brought this on herself.
Murder is bad. It is inexcusable.
I said we know why O.J. was angry with Nicole. And, given some of what we know about her, to a certain extent, O.J. may have had some points.
But that in no way justifies what we believe he did.
We need to address the rage that the O.J. Simpson types feel, and change our actions in the hope that they don’t feel that way anymore.
Oh, and we should catch whoever did it, too. Don’t want to forget to mention that.
I think Nicole’s mistake wasn’t getting OJ pissed off, it was associating with OJ in the first place. Think about it. Of all the potential OJ’s in the world, Nicole would have been with someone else and OJ would never have been able to control her with his jealousy to begin with. His assets would have been frozen right away. The monster would never have been created.
Actually, Cranky, someone did make a comment along the lines of “the capitalist pig dogs in the WTC are responsible because if it weren’t for the imperialistic nature of capitalism we’d never have been messing around in Bin Laden’s neighborhood” or some other nonsense in one of the threads. To be fair, I think it was a troll who’s since been banned, still I’m sure there’s some halfwits out there who would agree with that statement.
Hindsight is 20-20, Dale.
Except when you’re dead.
Here’s where your analogy falls apart, Milo: Nicole didn’t train and pay OJ to become a wife beater.
She didn’t profit from him beating other wives, either.
It isn’t a good analogy because it is extremely inflammatory, and contains factually incorrect information.
If the analogy is inflammatory enough, and contains enough factually incorrect information, the message will be lost. The reader will be caught up in the inflammatory remarks, and thrown off track by the incorrect information.
I assume you know why the remarks were inflammatory.
Here are two examples of factually incorrect statements:
And Ron Goldman? If you mess around in the territory of a hot-headed, jealous ex-athlete long enough … well let’s just say the last look he should have had on his face was surprise when the knife was unsheathed.
AFAIK, Goldman was not “messing around in OJ’s territory” for a long time. He was just doing a one-time favor for someone he barely knew by returning her glasses.
But if we don’t try to understand what O.J.'s motivation was, how can we keep this from happening again to, say, the beer cart girl at some suburban L.A. golf course?
It is common knowledge that most homicides of women are committed by their current or ex-romantic interests. It is also common knowledge that an abusive partner is likely to use deadly force. We already know how to prevent it from happening to the beer cart girl. (Not that efforts at prevention are too successful, but that’s another story.)
Frankly, we all know too much about the Simpson case for it to be used as an allegory for much of anything else.
For example, to say “How can we even be sure that it was O.J.?” is not a good analogy for us not being sure that it was Osama Bin Laden. With OJ, we went through years and years of court cases and legal battles and DNA evidence and “if the glove don’t fit you must acquit”–all trying to answer the question of whether it was OJ, or at least trying to prove that it was him. With OBL, we have not been subjected to that kind of evidence analysis. All we have is a couple of weeks of terse reports in which crucial information is surely being withheld for reasons of national security.
All in all, the analogy was too problematic to be effective.
No need for that qualifier, Tuckerfan.
The discussion of Nicole’s history, her misdeeds, and the amount of culpability assigned to Nicole in this thread - without flat-out saying she had it coming - is analogous to what many posters have had to say post Sept. 11. Not trolls.
I threw in all of the requisite, tepid qualifiers about how she didn’t have it coming, murder is bad, O.J. is responsible, then it’s off into further examining her and what she should have done, and what others like her should do, to find a solution to quell the O.J.-style maniacs.
So certainly we should jail perpetrators of domestic violence and murderers. Should we also examine the dynamics of how and why this happens so that we can predict it and educate people about it? Not to place blame or decide who gets punished. But to get a sense of the big picture and why this keeps happening. Maybe we can raise some more little boys who won’t do it.
I understood immediately what Millossarian was trying to do with or without the Sontag thread.
It’s called don’t blame the victim. The U.S. is the victim in this matter. Saying that our policies caused * in any way* this mass murder is blaming the vicitm. I never tried to understand what went on in the mind of a bully who picked on me when I was a mere lad. I knew why he did it: I was any easy target. But I never tried to explain or even cared about what went on in the mind of the bully.
Milo, tell me you’re being ironic again. Please.
JillGat, IMHO we should, but we should also bear in mind that sometimes sick fucks just appear for no apparent reason and had better take precautions against them. There are things that we can do to reduce terrorism in the world (such as helping to improve the living standards of other countries), but that’s not going to stop terrorists from being created. In fact, that might create terrorists! (You think Bin Laden would be happy if everyone in the Middle East was living as well as we Americans do? I seriously doubt it.)
hansel:
**
The U.S. paid and trained people to hijack American airliners and crash them into American buildings and kill thousands of American citizens?
Holy fuck, have I got to start paying better attention to the State of the Union addresses!
Green Bean:
**
… as opposed to all of the comments critical of American foreign policy, as we try to figure out what to do about groups of people (and, perhaps, nations) that just slaughtered our fellow citizens.
**
There is some evidence to the contrary.
However; isn’t what’s most important what O.J. thought? How O.J. felt? We can gain understanding if we know how he interpreted the two of them there together as he was stabbing and slashing.
**
Cite, and cite?
**
How?
And did you just say, “We know how to stop it; it just doesn’t work very well?”
Forgive the Nicoles if they want a more … aggressive … approach than that.
**
You mean you haven’t.
Jill:
You talk about understanding why the O.J.s act, but all I hear you* saying are bad things Nicole did in the past that raised his rage. It’s tasteless, it’s inappropriate, it’s not helpful to stopping raging, jealous maniacs. It’s also different than what you just said you wanted to do, and what your stated goals are.
(* You doesn’t really mean you, as I’m sure you are aware.)
Poor sam.
Aw, Milo, I’m not gonna get into a line-by-line with you.
I think I’ll sum it up by saying:
If the people are discussing the analogy more than the point you were trying to make with it, then it wasn’t a very good analogy.
Love, Green Bean
p.s. Where have you been lately?
So wait, are you saying O.J. was responsible for the WTC disaster? I thought it was Chandra Levy.