Ah, excellent. I don’t know if I have enough indian blood in me to qualify for a casino, but I’ll hunt down and drink the blood of an eskimo if it gets me the job.
Hey, Beryl, I have posted in a few other threads here. I’m not going to go around the whole board posting all around the place to get boost my “cred”. If someone wants to think I’m Mrs Rooves, fine. Then I’ll get half his stuff in the divorce. Stuff is awesome.
Whether Amerigo Vespucci ever really sailed to “the New World” is (and was) open to dispute.
Nevertheless, even going by Vespucci’s own claims, he never set foot on what is now known as the United States of America, and so, whatever he claimed to have observed of the natives of his future namesake continent(s) can only be applied to the late 15th-century/early 16th-century inhabitants of present-day South America, and so, doesn’t really belong in this particular flame-thread, which seemingly was posted in defense of the Original “Americans” north of the border…
:: heavy sigh ::
Rooves - go back and look at the first two posters to this thread (excluding the OP). Now - imagine which direction this thread COULD have gone if you hadn’t rushed in. Learn to just stay away from your own Pittings, man!
Oh, and I’ve got some Choctaw blood (maybe 1/16 or so) - white man completely raped the all the native Indians, fucked up the land, and laid waste to everything in sight. Whether or not the Indians were less sophisticated is irrelevant - they were treated in a horrible manner.
A bit of advice for Rooves. You freely admit that your assertions are based on ignorance. You further freely admit that you have absolutely zero interest in doing anything to dispel that ignorance. This board was started to fight ignorance, so engaging proudly in willful ignorance will win you no friends here.
And since people here tend to have little to no respect for the willfully ignorant, they’re not going to have any compunctions about being free with their less-than-flattering opinions on your posts. Their responses will contain valid arguments, indeed, but they’ll also contain the opinion that you’re a goat felching ignoramus. That’s just how the board works, and whining about people calling you names will win you even fewer friends than willful ignorance. (No, really, that crap was old even back in your bit of trollery about the cats.)
Rooves – please, please listen to Blonde. I say this as one, like her, who believes you are a smart guy with a lot to offer this board – if you can take a deep breath and walk away from the keyboard when you get pissed off.
You’ve shown in previous threads that you CAN learn from other posters and change your mind about things. You’ve shown that you ARE big enough to admit it and apologize when you’ve been proven to be in error. But you’ve also shown a distressing tendency to stay embroiled in an argument way longer than is good for you. I have to say that CrazyCatLady makes good points in her criticisms as well.
Please, don’t take this as a flaming or put-down. I’m not speaking as one who thinks she’s superior to you. There are posts on the SDMB where I’m very sorry I hit “Submit Reply”. Had I taken a deep breath and mulled it over before responding, I’d have saved myself from looking like a jerk.
Some of what you’ve said in this latest brouhaha is defensible; some of it – I really hate having to say this – is not wise. I repeat: listen to Blonde. She’s a smart lady with a caring heart, and she wants you to be and do your best.
And I don’t dislike you, even for the cats thread. 
Rooves–I semi-agree with you about the whole ‘whining about how much whitey is a bastard because he crushed the Indians’ thing although I really have to say that being proud of being willfully ignorant is just silly. Educate yourself, then formulate an argument/opinion on what you’ve learned. It’s the most sophisticated way of conducting oneself, after all!
I stand behind everything I wrote in this thread.
Someone please show me where I specifically referred to myself as “ignorant” inside this thread. Please read back and post a quote.
Someone called me “ignorant”, another reinforced it by also calling me ignorant and suddenly I’m “admittedly ignorant”.
I said that I sometimes choose to use sweeping generalizations and I also said that I never studied Native American culture specifically. Does that void me from having an opinion on these people as occupants of the Earth in general? I don’t feel that by using sweeping generalizations that I’m wrong. I also didn’t say that it was the only way I thought. Originally I was arguing about hypocrisy.
MuddyFuddyDuddy (ETF), thank you for your advice. I find a lot of what you observed about my posts to be true. I don’t take what you’re saying as a flame because you worded it thoughtfully. I’m not expecting you to go back and study all of my posts but perhaps you’ll notice that I’ve been courteous to everyone who’s been courteous to me, without exception.
Blonde, My last response to this thread was over a month ago. I’ve been good.
I think CrazyCatLady gives a lot more away about herself in her post than she says about me.
Wabbit, I never said I was proud or willfully ignorant but I understand what you’re saying. Thanks I guess.
Rooves - I owe you an apology, since I have now looked up and seen how ancient (in internet terms) this thread is – good luck in continuing to be good. Recognize, though, that CrazyCatLady is a revered SDMB poster with more intelligence than you or I. In other words, choose your battles wisely, and understand the terrain.
Goodnight from Texas, y’all.
What Blonde said! 
Sorry, buddy, you’ve said it yourself: you are uninformed, and thus ignorant, about Amerind cultures. That’s pretty much what ignorant means, ya know. And you’re apparently not interested in changing that ignorance, which I’m afraid makes you willfully ignorant. If you don’t like those terms, don’t bitch at me; I didn’t write the damn dictionary.
I also didn’t set the social standards and mores of the board; those were well-established long before I ever heard of this place. I’m just pragmatic enough to accept that if you say stuff that sounds antagonistic, or insulting, or just plain stupid, people are going to call you on it. And the less liking or respect people have for you, the more likely it is that those posts will contain phrases like “moose-felching crack-whore”. It’s just the way it is around here. If you can’t take the heat, and all that shit.
Also, there’s a board rule against altering other posters’ names, and I think you’ve been warned about that before. If the mods see you doing that again (as in your above post), they’re liable to land on you like a duck on a June bug. I’m not trying to play Junior Mod, I’m just saying that continuing to do that probably isn’t your wisest course of action.
I’ll hop to Rooves’ defense on the name-altering, CrazyCatLady because he was making an inside joke to me about a different thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=208728 – where I talked about that bit of board etiquette. I think his response to my hijack of my own thread indicates that he got it, and I took “MuddyFuddyDuddy” here as a wink and nudge (and maybe a thank-you) for what I’d said there.
That said, I agree with your comments on going with the SDMB flow. I think Rooves is bright enough to learn from the past and become a productive citizen of our society. Lord knows I’d hate to revisit some of my own initial blunders on this board.
Exactly ETF. Thank you for remembering that thread!
If I was going to alter anyone’s name as an insult it would’ve been CrazyCatLadys but I didn’t. Call me “High road Rooves” from now on.
Catlady, with all due respect this issue was already dropped (over 1 month ago) and I received all the "constructive” advice (or admonishment) needed. Anything more appears “antagonistic”, especially since your post seems to be worded in a condescending manner. It’s already been established that if you’re going to attempt to be “helpful” then you should be at least courteous.
Each of your “helpful” posts have passive aggressive insults in them (moose filching crack-whore) (???)Which makes me question the true nature of your post to begin. That coupled with the fact that I already thanked Blonde and ETF and confirmed that I understood what they meant and their good intentions.
I’ve read enough books (and still continue to) on history, human nature, science and cosmology be at least able to form my own opinion on a matter without necessarily having to take a college course on it.
If you look back, my initial criticism was one of hypocrisy by modern day “Americans” who continue to use the land “stolen” by their ancestors. Do I need to study Native American culture for that?
Here’s what I meant by “sweeping generalizations”
Twist it any way you like.
If one of my tools is to step back and look at things as a whole, over a long period of time I don’t think it qualifies me for “ignorant”.
Have a lovely day.
While i have no particular bone to pick with CrazyCatLady, i’d prefer, Blonde, if you’d speak for yourself regarding who is revered and who has more intelligence around here.
As far as i can tell, CCL is just another SDMB poster with a little over a thousand posts to her credit. Last time i looked, this did not automatically make one revered or accord one a special status on the boards. I think it’s rather silly to go cautioning people against making arguments just because the other person might have more posts than they do.
Rooves, if you want to think I’m condescending, knock yourself out. I don’t really much give a shit, as I’ve been called much, much worse with much, much more reason. (For the record, I’ve yet to insult you. I’ve merely included a few examples from various pittings. Goat- or moose-felching has become almost as trite around here as “hi, Opal” or “When come back, bring pie.” Trust me, if I were going to insult you, there’d be absolutely nothing passive aggressive about it. )
As for the name thing, I don’t know that I’d want to risk the mods in this forum remembering an old thread from another forum and cutting me slack based on that. It seems like a hellacious good way to get a mod on your ass to me, but whatever makes you happy. If you want to insult me, go ahead. After years of dealing with verbally abusive customers, that shit doesn’t faze me a bit.
mhendo, I have to agree with you about the revered or intelligent part. A lot of the animal-oriented people seem to like me, though, because I give out lots of free veterinary advice, and it seems terribly rude to contradict someone who’s paying you a compliment. Besides, I’ve been exposed to a lot of rabies suspects this week, and I’m not vaccinated, and my cats have been rolling around on the scrubs I was wearing when dealing with a cat who’s been diagnosed with panleukopenia. I could use the boost, frankly.
A moderate or high post count doesn’t automatically make one right. (Being a member of my family does, but the Right Gene is a topic for another time.) Nor does it exempt them from being called on any bullshit they pull. It does, however, usually indicate that someone’s been around long enough to understand the lay of the land around here. When to speak up, when to keep one’s trap shut, how to word things to avoid misunderstandings, how to resolve misunderstandings without getting oneself Pitted, that sort of thing. Arguing with someone like that about the conventions of the board is pretty fruitless, since they’re generally right. I think (hope) that is what Blonde was getting at.
I’m all for etiquette on the SDMB and all that but I don’t think constantly being told what to say or how to say it or if and when I should say it is very tolerant. I don’t understand exactly why I keep being warned that if I don’t yield to other members then I will not be respected or my future posts will have lesser value.
All of my posts are fitting for the subject in which I posted them.
Mhendo and I disagreed earlier in this very thread but are able to still discuss poker in another thread. ETF and I have posted in other threads since the cat thread without incident. And Blonde and I didn’t quite see eye to eye in the Cat thread but since then I have discovered that she’s a very cool person. I also had a chance to apologize to Libertarian for making too quick a decision on what I thought about him.
So I feel that these people along with myself have continued to be open minded. That’s one of my favorite qualities a person can have. You’re implying that if I get people mad that they will no longer respect anything I say. That goes back to what I said before about your posts telling more about YOU than about ME. You said that you don’t much give a shit what I think.
Perhaps we too will end up having a more friendly conversation. All we have to go by is our dealings with each other so far to this point. I don’t remember warning you about how to act.
This thread has been a good thing in one respect: It’s a perfect illustration of why one of the SDMB rules is, if you want to reopen the discussion on a thread that’s old, you should open a new thread with a link to the old one. Blonde, CrazyCatLady, Wabbit and I missed the fact that gluteous maximus on 9/7 was reopening a thread last posted to on July to address a particular historical point. (At least, Blonde and I did; I shouldn’t repsume to speak for the others.)
I for one will try to remember in future always to check the dates in a thread, not only of the latest post, but of enough preceding posts to avoid this sort of unnecessary dustup again.
ACK… That’s “on July 30th” and “presume”.
I also meant to comment that this has been yet another learning experience for me. Add to the lessons learned: Always use “Preview Reply”. 
mhendo - In retrospect, I should have added IMHO to my original statement.
You seem like a pretty sharp one, too.
One minor quibble:
Check the FAQ. The suggested time period for that idea (start a new thread with a link) is for a thread 3 months old or more, and the last post to this one wasn’t, when resurrected.
However, in the case of a thread where a heated exchange has taken place (of one degree or another) I’d agree that a new one can be the better way to go anyway, to attempt to avoid ruffled feathers.
Or, y’know, just send a quick email, if you think the post will have that effect.
[sub]Provided that the member in question has allowed open access to an email address in their user preferences.[/sub]
You have a point. From this point on I will.