Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:14:18 11/23/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 23, 2000 at 10:39:54, Ratko V Tomic wrote: >> It isn't known who complained, and you are attributing >> political beliefs to this unknown person that haven't >> been evidenced. > >No I don't know the name(s) for sure, but few who joined into the >thread openly in support of the PeeCee censoring do fit the bill. >Also I have run into the same self-anointed hypersensitive thought >police here before. And many other places, too, the same types of >arguments, the same underlying assumptions and value system. Clusters >of traits do have tendency to go together (otherwise the whole reality >would be a disconnected random sequence of unrelated perceptual blips). If you want to hear a defense of PC, you aren't going to want to listen to me. This is a world where someone tries to bring a 300-pound pig into first-class on an airplane, arguing that it is a "companion animal" that they need to have with them in order to combat chronic apprehensiveness. No, I'm not making that up, it really happened. Amazingly, they allowed the pig on the plane, even though she told them it weighed 12 pounds when she made the reservation. I think that in this instance, declaring that the whole group has gone PC is too much. We have various personal animosities here, and we have probably a hundred people or more reading posts. If you use a nasty word in a title, if you talk about people shooting people, and so on, etc., someone is going to complain, because there are a few people out on the fringes of the bell curve. That doesn't mean that everyone is out there, nor does it mean that the people who have to deal with complaints from bell-curve fringe people are out there, either. If my title includes a bad racial reference, and someone complains to the moderators (or if a moderator sees it), it will be deleted. If my title contains a reference to beer, and someone complains to the moderators that an alcoholic parent had made their childhood a living hell, and therefore any reference to beer will upset them, and asks for the post to be deleted, I hope that the moderators have enough sense to comfort the person while they direct the complaint to the null device. This stepchild case is an obvious example where people will disagree about complaint validity. The one that happened last year I would have (carefully) sent to the null device, and/or made the argument in the group or via email that controversial metaphors are apt to derail discussion of what you want to discuss, but one of my co-moderators did something more drastic. That's life. This is obviously a borderline case, and near borders there is apt to be disagreement. A border doesn't necessitate that people on one side are good and people on the other side are evil. >> The simile has nothing to do with alternate lifestyles, > >Really. If you take all practicing believers of the "alternate >lifestyles" and all practicing believers of the traditional morality >based lifestyles, which group would you guess will have larger >number of step-children (say, normalized per 100,000 children). I would be willing to be that the metaphor originated in an earlier time, when children became often becamse step-children because one parent had died and the other one married again. I suggest this because I think that a metaphor about beating children would be less likely to become well-known today. Nobody who is complaining about the metaphor is doing so because they think it is an attack on the idea of gays adopting/having children or people being able to divorce and remarry for whatever reason. >The latter group places stigma on any behaviors contributing to >the breakup of traditional families (thus the behaviors which increase >the proportion of step-children). The former group places stigma on >anyone not embracing or celebrating sincerely enough (to say nothing >of actively opposing) the same "traditional family"-breaking >behaviors. > >It is pretty self-evident that the former, the group promoting destruction >of "traditional family" (male father, female mother taking care of their >biological offspring), will have fewer traditional families, hence greater >proportion of step-children than the traditionalists. > >The metaphor points out the plain fact that step-children are >abused much more than biological children. The implication brings >the proverbial skunk at the anti-traditionalists party -- by simply >pointing out a bit of unpleasant reality behind the long standing >traditions. Unfortunately, there are tangible, painful reasons for >all those stigmas and moral codes. > >And that's why, whenever you see someone pointing out such >plain facts of life, especially through a sly implication >as the metaphor did (where the reader is induced to arrive >at the conclusions, consciously or otherwise, increasing thus >their impact on the reader), you will immediately hear a panicked >loud cackle from the predictable quarters. They know well who >the sting of the satire was aimed at. And, perfectly predictably >again, they will immidately call for the censorship of the >non-PeeCee speech, all "for our children," of course. I think that you sound deeply dissatisfied with some aspects of post-war American life, and that you have used this thread as a place to unload all of this. I don't think that this thread should have triggered that. And really, I suspect that if I had to sit between a PC person talking about PC stuff into one of my ears, and you talking about "morality-based" lifestyles into the other, I'd go insane on both sides of my brain at extremely rapid and yet approximately equal rates. bruce
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