Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:20:21 11/22/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 22, 2000 at 12:26:01, Ratko V Tomic wrote: >>>> It can be taken as a reference to child abuse. >>> >>> By whom? A mechanical translator from English to Russian? >> >> By anybody that can read the English language. > >So when you hear, say, that Britney Spears is a flash >in a pan, you understand that the subject of conversation >is physical properties of hot pans with flashes in them? > >What you, or whoever whined to you via email, is _really_ >objecting to is the plain factual observation behind the >metaphor, that on average the step-children _are_ abused >by their step-parents much more than are the children by >their natural parents. Like it or not, that's the way >things are. Just as with pans and flashes, the plain >facts are that flashes don't last very long. At least >it works so down here on real earth, below the high up in >the clouds ivory towers of academia (or Hollywood), far >away from their PeeCee speech codes and thought police. Off we go again. If I said "beat it like a rug", nobody would object. If I used a racist metaphor, probably a lot of people would object, and my post would be deleted, and I'd have to deal with yelling admins and probably a few pieces of email from other members. No problem in either case, I think. This particular metaphor is somewhere in the middle, and people have different levels of "sensitivity" about this kind of thing. Whether or not this is "fine" in this group is an interesting point, but one thing that is certain is that this is predictable, especially since this same metaphor caused a problem last year. The metaphor doesn't bug me. Perhaps it bothers people who are bothered by PC transgressions. Anyone who uses a metaphor like that is putting the moderators in a bad position, because it can be easily predicted that they are going to get complaints from people of high "sensitivity". And if they do something about it, or even mention the issue here in the group, they are going to get complaints from people who want to barf whenever someone gets PC. The metaphor is close enough to the offensive category that it causes trouble if it's used. If someone got upset about the zero-sum nature of chess, and suggested that we modify the game so that is more cooperative, and tried to get all "competitive" posts removed from the group, they wouldn't get anywhere with the moderators, and they would get excessively laughed at if they tried that in the group. But this one is a little *closer* than that to what I expect we could both agree is some line that exists out there somewhere. The best thing to do is avoid the issue by not using that metaphor in titles, or metaphors that are likely to cause controversy and direct discussion away from the subject of the post. This doesn't have to be so much a moderation issue, it is more an issue of how to communicate with any large audience that has the power (and occasionally the will) to shout you down. You want to get your point across, you don't want to get side-tracked arguing about the content of your metaphors. bruce >Obviously, some folks do not wish to be reminded of these >plain facts (and many others like that), since they wish to >convince the kids that all kinds of families are equally >fine (as I relized by looking at my kids' "education," e.g. >the "celebration" of the "gay month" at my kids' school, here >in the People's Republik of Massachusetts), that traditional >family which sticks together is no better than a "family" >with two mommies or three daddies or with four times re-married >couple, each with several kids from earlier marriagies. They >are all supposed to be equally fine "alternative lifestyles." > >Of course, everyone (with his head outside the pink cloud) >knows they aren't, but PeeCee dogma holds they are, and so >you moderate when someone uses a metaphor reminding you (or >whomever that whined about it via email) that it ain't so >in the real world, but you don't moderate when someone >reminds you of facts about flashes in the pan or anything >else not contradicting the PeeCee dogmas.
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