I know you’re just kidding here, but I’m barely keeping my head above water as it is, and the all-caps bit was just to make sure nobody thought I actually said that, as it is 180 degrees from what I’ve actually been saying and/or actually think.
Yes, I know, and it was funny. Except for that one little part, and I just didn’t want to let it lie there for the reason I just explained.
Yes, I understand, Sol. I really do. That’s why I went to such pains as I did when I used it to try to make sure the context was obvious. But apparently there is no suitable context when it comes to this word, and since it’s an obvious fact that you and others here find it so objectionable I’ll back off both from the use of it and from trying to explain further what I meant by it.
Recently, a poster by the name of Calm Kiwi showed me a lot of sensitivity regarding my sadness at the passing of Ronald Reagan. She acknowledged that while she obviously didn’t see him the way I did, it clearly wasn’t the time or place to go into it and she graciously backed off, saying she just thought I needed some time to grieve and that she was sorry she had said anything.
I think same kind of attitude is a good thing for me to adopt here. I see that using the word was a mistake, and for that matter I think I probably brought a lot of this on myself by saying “So, chill” at the end of my first post. That was clearly out of line and even I ( :eek: ) can see it was condescending.
So I apologize to you and the other posters here who’ve taken offense as a result of my use of these terms.
I’m reluctant to bring this up, but in the interest of (hopeful) clarity…
I realize that I said “‘normal’ is a bad word.” I really shouldn’t have, because that’s just not the case. Personally, I can’t imagine being so hyper-sensitive that I’d be offended at being called “normal.” So ignore that part of my post, and pay attention to the part where I say “it’s not some meaningless semantic argument.”
It’s not just objectionable terminology, it’s that it’s typically used in an objectionable context. I’m not trying to be a martyr, or the PC police, or waiting for some straight guy to come in and slip up in his phrasing of something so I can pounce all over his words and scream “how dare you! Don’t you know how offensive that is to me after all I’ve been through?!?” Yes, there are people who will take genuine offense at your choice of words. I’m not one of them, as long as I can tell what you’re saying.
Really, all I’m trying to do is drive home a point that took a long, long time to sink in with me: whether homosexuality is “natural” or not, or whether gay people could change and be “normal” or if they’re hard-wired from birth – it’s all pretty irrelevant. Gays shouldn’t be “granted” rights because at some point we’ll have shown everyone that we’re just like everybody else. We’re born with rights, and we shouldn’t have them taken away because we’re not like everyone else. Because the only thing anybody – gay or straight, male or female – has in common is that we’re all different.
I don’t think that it is. I think that the vast majority of posters on this board manage to do this just fine. You’ve said yourself that people are misreading what you’ve said alot, not just in this thread, and not just on this subject. Along with my own observations in this thread, that indicates to me that the problem is in the broadcast, not the reception.
Not at all. All you need to do is stop being so defensive when people misread your posts. If someone says, “Hey, what you just wrote is patronizing!” don’t come back and say “No it isn’t.” Instead, stop saying whatever it is that people are objecting to. How hard is that? Try and find a different way of addressing the subject, and if you can’t find one, maybe consider that the attitude you’re trying to project may, in fact, actually be patronizing, even if you didn’t mean it to be that way.
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there. That’s what’s known as “empathy,” and it’s a vital part of being able to communicate clearly. Empathy is a skill, it’s something anyone can learn how to do, and I think it’s something that you really need to practice. I can understand how, from your perspective, the things you’re saying aren’t at all offensive. What you need to learn how to do is to understand how, from our perspective, they are indeed offensive.
Actually, my interactions with you in this thread have done a lot to raise you in my esteem. Prior to this thread, I’d written you off as another reactionary troglodyte like milroyj. Nothing I’d seen from you previously (although I admit I hadn’t been paying a whole hell of a lot of attention to you before) gave me any indication that you had the goodwill and open mindedness you’ve been (somewhat ineffectually) displaying here. Hell, if it weren’t for the fact that you were friends with the inestimable EddyTeddyFreddy, I probably would’ve written you off two pages back, like Mockingbird evidently has. In short, thanks to this thread, I think I’ve for the first time gotten an idea of the sort of person you actually are, which is diametrically opposed to the sort of person you’ve “shown” yourself to be. You seem like a genuinely good guy to me, but I think you’re wildly over-estimating how well you come across on the boards.
Not yet. I still need to throw bouquets at Miller but time is a constraint at present.
And thank you, ETF. Sometimes after the battle has died down and I can look at things more objectively, errors become easier to see.
(And yeah, I hoped the paintings might help us get through this. For a while though I was thinking, "Man, I’m really gonna have to crank out some good ones to get outta this!)
[QUOTE=milroyj]
And what a one-trick pony you are. Is everything about gay marriage with you?
No, everything is about gay marriage with me. With Mockingbird, everything is about telling them to shut the fuck up.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what not being an “isolationist” is. Check out a dictionary sometime; it’s great reading. Not everybody acts purely out of self-interest, you know. The people of Oklahoma should consider the sensibilities of people when choosing their next Senator, whether or not that candidate’s bigoted agenda affects them directly or not. I’d get pissed if I found out the people of Saskatchewan voted a blatant homophobe into office, and I can’t even point that place out on a map.
I can read the dictionary, the question is, can you?
Isolationism: “A national policy of abstaining from political or economic relations with other countries.”
Isolationist: “an advocate of isolationism in international affairs.”
So what do the beliefs of a candidate for Senator from Oklahoma regarding gays have to do with international political or economic affairs?
Well, the Taliban were people, too, and they pushed over walls to kill gay people. Should we consider their sensibilities when electing our Senators as well?
If Oklahomans are supposed to consider foreign sensiblities when electing their Senator, [an idea I reject] what, in your mind, makes Canadian sensibilities about a particular issue more important than the Taliban or Saudi sensibilities? Just because the Canadians tend to agree with your own left progressive ideals? So what?
I say, let the Okies vote for whom they want to, based on their own ideals,
Canadians, Taliban, and Saudis be damned.
Yeah, but you’re in Illinois. SolGrundy lives in California. Therefore, what business is it of yours if a guy in California is worried about how people in Canada think about politicians in Oaklahoma?
“either you’re with us, or you’re against us in the fight for freedom”
“We are resolved to rout out terror wherever it exists to save the world for freedom”
Some nice quotes from Bush. Starving Artist, I trust that you see the relevance of these quotes to the attacks you made earlier in this thread.
If I remember correctly, you were so incredibly positive that terror was not a threat to freedom, but rather to safety, that the fact that someone else thought that terrorism was considered a threat to freedom prompted you to go into a rage and threaten to leave the thread forever.
And yet, these quotes from Bush do not say “the fight for safety”, do they?
You may never have thought “you know, maybe I am just bad at understanding people’s motives. Maybe I don’t always read things correctly. Maybe I am too confident in my own interpretations, and too quick too assume that everyone who doesn’t agree is a malicious liar.”
Perhaps now is the time to start.
Miller didn’t misinterpret anything any more than Bush himself, though you are certainly free to fly into another rage and threaten to leave the Republican party if Bush doesn’t recant.
I long for the days when polls (which are at least some form of recognition of the populace) were more important than fundamentalist extremism.
The only problem with polls is that you have to make tough decisions, such as not outing extremely valuable undercover agents because polls show people are not buying your terror warnings anymore.
I said that Coburn never said gays were worse than al-Qaeda. (Which is not to say I’m taking up for him. Quite the contrary.) But people either say what they said or they don’t. This is a don’t. To say otherwise is the reader’s interpretation. Miller clearly believes this and that’s his right. I don’t, and that’s my right.
I said terrorists were a threat to our safety, not our freedoms.
I still say both.
I said–after hours of discussion in which the thread had come full circle and was back where it started–that I was therefore leaving. I said nothing about forever. I said nothing about (or to indicate) I was leaving in a rage, as anyone who wants to bother going back and reading the post can easily see for him/herself.
