For one reason, because, as I said I-don’t-know-how-many posts ago, a proper apology is not something someone *requests *because they are butt-hurt. A proper apology is *offered *by someone who is contrite.
Anybody who calls someone 20 years after the fact to ask them to consider an apology about anything is tone-deaf. Just common-sense-wise … if you haven’t gotten an apology yet, what makes you think leaving a passive-aggressive message for someone is going turn the tide?
If the story came out that Hillary had left a message like that on either Jones’s or Willey’s answering machine last week, I wouldn’t have thought she was tone-deaf; I’d have thought she was crazy. For one thing, can you imagine the endless inundation we’d be subjected to from Fox ‘News’ under that circumstance?
NOW you’re concerned with physical evidence? When you invoked your Elizabeth Smart analogy, you included an assumption that no corroborative evidence existed, which was so far removed from reality that multiple posters objected on that basis.
Would they? Why does Hillary’s (or Virginia’s) request lead to that assumption? It continues to escape me why an accusation of lying should cause one to assume a lie has been told. I guess it might lend one to assume a lie might have been told (in a “he said, she said” case, this is always a possibility), but there’s also the emotional and personal involvement of the spouse to consider and that the spouse of the accused has an incentive to challenge the accuser or harbor long-term resentments.
Well, this depends on one’s definition of “tone-deaf”, of course. My position toward Hillary would be comparable to mine toward Virginia:
[ul][li]Your husband weathered the storm, bruised but intact[/li][li]People made up their minds long ago and aren’t likely to change them now[/li][li]There’s nothing to be gained by putting the issue back into the public eye (and putting your husband’s behaviour back under the microscope)[/li][li]It’s unfortunate that biographies written about your husband, even decades or centuries from now, will always include this chapter[/li][li]The accuser has no incentive to recant, and in fact quite a disincentive[/li][li]There’s nothing you can really do about it, anyway, and the attempt turns you into Jon Stewart fodder, since he’d just love to recycle all the various dirty jokes that were told about your husband when the scandal first broke[/li][li]So let it go, already.[/li][/ul]
And if the OP had said, “Regardless of how you feel about the truth of Hill’s testimony, expecting her to apologize now is just crazy,” then I’d have agreed.
But I didn’t agree with “tone-deaf,” and it appears you wouldn’t either.
I’m starting to wonder about it, myself. Will finding such a trivial flaw (i.e. the situation doesn’t quite match the official definition of “tone deaf”, assuming there is such a thing) in the OP really matter? Will it vindicate Thomas? Demonize Hill?
If this was argued in court, would the judge have said by now “Noted, counselor. Now move your line of questioning along or I’ll order this cross-examination at an end.”
If someone had just said Ginnie Thomas was a raving nutball on page one, we’d be on to a completely different nit-pick by now.
Crazy? Sure.
Nuts? Absolutely.
Divorced from reality? No doubt about it.
Tone-deaf? Where do you get that nonsense from?
Not quite. The combination is what creates my disagreement – the combination of “tone deaf” with “regardless of politics or what actually happened…” Someone calling her tone deaf, alone, would not have sparked my meter. Someone calling her “crazy,” alone, would not either. But the idea that she’s tone deaf even if Hill fabricated her testimony is absurd.
So I *just now *figured out that “when it hits the Supremes” wasn’t some sort of newfangled version of “when the shit hits the fan” involving The Supremes. :smack:
Dude doesn’t *know *that they’re actually lesbians and not two hot college co-eds who think they may be bi and are into experimentation.
No one cares about your questions, you disgusting bigot. Why the hell are you still on this forum?
This is what I think we’re in disagreement over. There is *no way *someone not involved in either incident could *know *who was lying without having access to some additional evidence, which if they had they would be sharing publicly. Ms. Thomas cannot *know *that Hill was lying; Rodham Clinton could not *know *that Jones was lying. They can suspect, but they cannot know, because they were not the ones being potentially lied about.
What the hell?! What the hell does “tone deaf” mean, then, if not “unable to anticipate a negative reaction to your words that everyone else sees as obvious”? You agree that there’s no way this was going to end in an apology, but you don’t think Thomas is tone deaf? You’ve agreed that the VM can’t be reasonably classified as an olive branch; you’ve agreed that you’d have to be crazy to think you were getting an apology.
So which is it, then? Is Thomas shit-stirring, or is she tone deaf? Or do you have some *reasonable *explanation for a third option?
You’re attacking Brickers hypothetical because it contains certain beliefs built in to it? Aren’t they suppose to be suppositional or conditional argumnents?
And yet I search in vain for the “tone deaf” condemnations of Ms. Clinton when, as First Lady, she claimed a vast right-wing conspiracy was responsible for her husband’s accusers’ actions. None exist, because the standard you attempt to apply doesn’t exist; people (including me, although I was no fan of the Clinton administration) understood that she believed her husband and was acting based on that belief.
If those are the options, then she was shit-stirring.
How about none exist because this board didn’t exist?
Jesus, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone get this hand-wringingly pedantic over one mild pejorative while swallowing much worse insults.
You embody tone-deafness. You’re so busy trying to parse the precise denotation of every word that you are utterly deaf to the connotation of the entire exchange.
It’s true that the board didn’t exist in its present form, although I think the AOL version was going strong in 1998 when Mrs. Clinton said that a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
But the board appeared in its Internet version soon after – in March of 1999, I think – and Mrs. Clinton’s comments were the subject of several conversations over the years, most posters sympathetic to her. Including, as I said, me. In a 2003 thread questioning whether Mrs. Clinton should apologize for flasely claiming the accusations were untrue, I said:
And in 2002, in response to the claim that it was valid to attack Hillary for her defense of Bill, and that she must have known he was lying, I said:
Funny how I was considered so calm and reasonable back then, when I was simply behaving in precisely the same way as I am now. Why? Because then, my defense of Mrs. Clinton resonated with the majority of the readers; today my defense of Mrs. Thomas does not.
I apply the same methods and reach the same result. When they favor a liberal, I am fair-minded and honest. When they favor a conservative, I am a blind partisan.
Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court on October 15, 1991; Thurgood Marshall didn’t die until January 24, 1993.
So, any shambling he woud have done would have been as a setient being, albeit at 84-years-old, there might have been some decay already setting commencing were he to have interrupted the proceedings by stepping forth with a “J’accuse!”.
Yes, thank you. See that thing you’re studiously not looking at? It’s called “a point.”
Let’s try it again, with more emphasis and avoiding any distractions.
I said: we didn’t see too many people accusing Ms. Clinton of tone-deafness; the general tone was sympathetic.
You said: because the board didn’t exist when she said her line.
I said: Wrong, it did exist on AOL, moved to the Internet shortly thereafter, and hosted many conversations about Ms. Clinton’s behavior, in which the general tone was sympathetic. Several of those posts were mine.
Didn’t say *how many *considered him calm and reasonable. May be just him, but somebody still considered him calm and reasonable. Which is all he said, that he was considered calm and reasonable.
Bricker can parse a water buffalo into a daffodil.
I had a long post all written up, and then I realized that if posted it I would be dooming myself to reading the replies. Since I barely can stand to skim your posts on the best of days, Bricker, I’ll just say fine–you win. As far as I’m concerned, you may make any claims you like about AOL days, how the established a binding precedent, how tone deaf really means a purple howdah, or whatever you want. Congratulations.