Does anyone remember this?
In April 1989, in New York City, violent crime rates - murders, rapes, and robberies - were out of control, and people were afraid to walk city streets. The Central Park jogger case set a record (and served as a symbol) for brutality--it was a violent rape in which the victim was also badly beaten, leading to a lengthy hospitalization.
Five teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 16 years, who had been implicated in a separate series of muggings, were questioned about the rape. The boys were black; the victim was white. Some say that things began to go wrong right there--that the race factor trumped a search for the truth. The idea of a roving gang of black boys brutally beating and raping a white woman fit the schema of the public's fear of African-Americans and of teenage gangs.
All of the boys made statements to the police, though not one of them admitted to actually having intercourse with the victim. The search for the perpetrator stopped.
These teenagers should have been given the same kind of celebrity support that the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama received, especially in light of one little-remarked upon fun-fact:
On December 5 of [2002], the Manhattan district attorney's office made a rare move: It asked a judge to dismiss all charges against five men it had earlier prosecuted.
As teenagers, the men had been convicted and incarcerated for raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989, and they had since served years of jail time for the crimes. Now, however, the actual perpetrator, an older man named Matias Reyes, has been linked to the victim with DNA evidence - after confessing to the rape and assault earlier this year.
Not only did this incident receive national attention because of the heinous nature of the crime - the woman's head was crushed with a stone after the rape, but fortunately for her, she did not die - but a cottage industry of conservative social commentary emerged, with this "incident" being the linchpin example, of the kind of social breakdown people were bemoaning (all discussed in re communities of color in urban areas, of course). Around the time Reyes confessed and the case against the five previously convicted teens-now-men began to unravel, the following article appeared in New York Magazine appeared, with the following statement:
The case also changed the city itself. Bigger trends -- the crack plague, the economic bust and then boom -- played dominant roles in the story of the nineties. But the symbolism of the Central Park case altered everything from two mayoral elections to the reaction when a knot of teenage boys appeared on a dimly-lit sidewalk.
The "symbolism" of the case. Rather than treat it as a unique event, and pursue the case using actual evidence, the cops and prosecutors, succumbing to a combination of general social fear, racism, and a zeitgeist of anxiety concerning the perceived crumbling of "their" city, saw this case as a "symbol". Five young men became victims of a criminal justice system distorted by fear and racism no less than a young woman became the victim of a serial rapist and murderer who managed to escape justice because the cops and the prosecutors wanted to treat this as a "symbol". The case also introduced a phony right-of-passage to our parlance:
Police officials told reporters that the boys had coined a new term, wilding, to describe beating up random victims, and that while in a holding cell the suspects had laughed and sung the rap hit "Wild Thing."
Now, none of the events the police alleged occurred that night. There was no "wilding". These five teenagers did not brutally rape and attempt to murder a young woman. Yet, the cops, the prosecutors, and commentators took that term - "wilding" - and invented a whole new way of talking about the social breakdown of the underclass. If you type "wilding central park jogger case" in Google, you get "about 21,000" hits.
Except for later articles describing how the real perpetrator of the crime confessed and was convicted with the aide of DNA evidence (blood evidence was never introduced at the first trials of the five young men, because their coerced confessions were considered enough to prosecute them; defense attorney were never given access to the simple fact that only one person's semen was found in the woman, and it didn't match any of the young men who "confessed"), there is not one single article that says the cops, the prosecutors, journalists, commentators, and ordinary citizens invented the entire "wilding" business. Five young men paid with ruined lives as much as one young woman did, because of racism, and the desire to see a crime as a "symbol".
Fear in the face of rising crime rates, exploding drug use, and a general sense of social unease is perfectly natural. Yet, precisely because police and law enforcement in general is thought to be "professional" should require them to be held to a higher standard, not so much of "truth seeking", but at the very least of treating each crime as a unique event, rather than "a symbol". The press, too, should not seek to figure out "what it all means", especially in light of the facts in this particular case.
We all paid a terrible price because one young woman was the victim of a serial rapist in 1989. Certainly not as high as she has, or the five young men who were wrongly convicted of the crime. But the pursuit of ideological coherence absent facts takes a toll. Just consider, to repeat, that "wilding" exists as a term, describing something that, in reality, doesn't exist.
48 comments:
GKS, which of the following facts are in dispute for you regarding Michael McLendon?
That, in complete difference to your long and winding scree about wilding, Mr. McLendon did in fact do this thing.
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That:
He was white.
He applied to the Marines as was turned down.
He applied to be a Samson policemen, was accepted, but could not finish the first day of basic training camp.
He lived in Samson, AL, where “the downtown is crumbling and half-empty, the textile jobs were shipped overseas years ago and a sign at a hardware store asks passers-by to ‘make an offer.’ Samson is so poor, several residents said, that the national recession is not even noticed.”
His parents were divorced, the family was split. He was warned by a lawyer from another family member to cool it in his aggressive attempts to get the family bible.
He worked at a metal fabrications plant for a while and then at a sausage making plant. On his kill list were those at the sausage plant who reported him for not wearing earplugs and made him spend four hours clearing out the meat grinder.
His mother worked in an egg and poultry plant.
He killed ten people.
Among them, he killed his mother and her dogs, place them all on around the couch in her eight hundred square foot home set up on cinder blocks, poured lighter fluid on the bodies and lit it.
He was mentally unstable but motivated by reasons of his own that may or may not have had a basis in reality.
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That we knew these things a week ago.
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That he was a redneck.
And if it is this last, would you not agree that the category of “redneck” is a multi-valent abstraction and not a diagnosis and therefore no fact or set of facts ever provide the foundation.
It is a descriptive qualifier that serves different purposes.
For me, the pejorative sense of redneck (which is not the only sense) fundamentally means a poverty of moral reasoning in the white community and is often fostered and accompanied by economic and educational poverty. Therefore being a redneck is a product of lack of access and opportunity that may influence psychological and moral development as situated in the context of white cultural biases.
These are sociological definitions, based on judgment, not on fact, because there are no facts, per se, about being a redneck – except for Mr. Foxworthy’s criteria.
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So, tell us, babbler, why the hell you are blowing so much hot air?
What is this wildingly scattered defensiveness really about?
I am not defensive about anything.
You list as "fact" that he was a redneck, when such is not the case. Moreover, your HUGE leap from, (a) the fact that he murdered his family; and (b) he had some failures in life; (c) his is southern to your label "nigger redneck" a la Bigger Thomas is one of the wildest leaps in the dark I have ever seen. It is, quite literally, mindless.
What you miss in this entire thing, apparently, is like the journalists and later social commentators and even sociologists who invented a cottage industry trying to explain "wilding" (which never existed), you leap beyond all available facts to try and explain the events in southern Alabama in racial terms, in this case using the term "redneck" as a label when neither one of us has any idea whether or not Mr. McLendon considered himself such. Furthermore, in the original comment from which this criticism is taken, you added the racial component, based solely on geographic association - he was working class, southern, and white, therefore he had thus-and-such thoughts and feelings about African-Americans, and his own social status vis-a-vis them as a group, which contributed both to his expressed feelings of depression and perhaps (perhaps!) to his murderous rampage.
None of the initial facts you state are in dispute. He did, indeed, get booted out of the Marine Corps, for lying on some paperwork. He did indeed wash out of training for the State Police. He did indeed express feelings of sadness and feeling down, specifically because of these failings. The trigger for the event, however, was a family dispute (thus the brutal attack on his family). We will never know why he escalated in to random killing (some victims were killed because they were sitting on the porch of the house next door to his grandmother, another intended victim).
It is not a question of which facts are in dispute. It is the way you tie them together which, as far as I'm concerned, actually hurts understanding because we get bogged down in discussing nonsense like this.
In the Central Park jogger case, there were facts not in dispute. A group of African-American teens was in the park, and mugged some people. In the general are where these attacks occurred, a young woman was found brutally raped, beaten, and left for dead. These undisputed facts were then linked together through a combination of racism and the then-zeitgeist of fear of social breakdown (some of it warranted, most of it not and itself a product of racism) to not only link these teenage boys to this brutal crime, but to raise the entire event, as one article linked above said, to "a symbol". It wasn't a symbol. These were dumb kids in the wrong place at the very wrong time doing illegal things, to be sure, but hardly brutal, heartless rapists. With the invention of "wilding" to tie it all together as part of some grand theory of social dislocation, anomie, and nihilism among disenfranchised youth - because some kids were singing the song "Wild Thing"! - we have a wonderful example of the way the human mind invents connections among disparate events that seem so plausible, but are really just a bunch of crap.
Admittedly, this is an extreme example of the phenomenon. It is only different in degree, however, rather than kind from your to my mind specious attempt to have figured out Michael McLendon's state of mind. The "why" in this latter case will, in all likelihood, never be clear, and while that is hardly satisfying for the relatives of the victims, I see no reason in the world why those of us at a remove from the case, reading about it in the paper/seeing it on television should make any pretense to understanding when we have no more than the facts available to the general public. Understanding may just exist beyond us here. While sad, it also may be the case. Usually in life, when random stuff like this happens, evil coming and dumping all over some small group somewhere for no reason apparent immediately, its relationship to "reasons" is always tentative anyway. Reaching beyond all available facts in a claim to understand the perpetrator's sense of himself socially, socio-economically, and racially does nothing more than muddy the waters.
That's my problem, dude. Your track record on guessing others' lives, states of mind, etc., etc. is pathetically bad, and if you had an ounce of reflective honesty you would admit perhaps not all that, but at least a little that you have yet to make a statement absent given facts (at least about me) that bears anything close to a resemblance of me, my life, etc. At first it bugged me; then it truly pissed me off; now, it just irks me that, having been called out on it, you simply ignore it, miss the point I am making here - bullshitting one's way through some kind of grand theory about events in life is still, in the end, just a pile of cow patties - and try to make out that I am being obtuse.
I honestly couldn't care less about your opinion about me, Feodor. You have proved, for me at least, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are a narrow-minded individual, impressed by your own erudition and education, neither of which impress me much at all. In any individual. You are judgmental, harsh, prancing and preening your feelings of superiority for no other reason than you can, for all intents and purposes. It does me no harm that you do so, but I tire of such antics quickly, and showing off is showing off whether in an educated adult male of undisputed intelligence or in a small child seeking attention.
If you miss the point still (which wouldn't surprise me in the least, because like Marshall Art you are so convinced of your own correctness you refuse to listen to others, preferring other read your dazzling words and insightful analysis and shake their heads in wonder), I shall be blunt. Your whole "nigger redneck" business was offensive to me for a variety of reasons, not least of which because it had nothing at all to do with the facts of the case. While certainly not as bad as the whole "wilding" or miscarriage of justice that sent five young men to prison for a crime they did not commit, it is of a piece with the Central Park Jogger case in that it took disparate pieces of evidence not in dispute and tied them together with a ribbon make of shit. One can be impressed with the knot of the ribbon, how it sits there just so, but that doesn't disguise the reality that it is still, in the end, shit.
F:'...“redneck” is a multi-valent abstraction and not a diagnosis and therefore no fact or set of facts ever provide the foundation' and 'These are sociological definitions, based on judgment, not on fact, because there are no facts, per se, about being a redneck.'
GKS: 'You list as "fact" that he was a redneck, when such is not the case.'
Apparently, you're the one who things 'redneck' is an ontological category that can be determined by facts.
So, I guess, obtuse it is. You're a winner whinner! And a long winded one at that.
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GKS: 'offensive to me for a variety of reasons..."
I knew there were axes being silently ground. So, I guess, passive aggressive it is. You're an amazing winner for a second straight time!
But, of course, you are free to deny that you are obtuse and passive aggressive.
After all, it is impossible to verify the facticity of such a judgment (just like the judgment of "redneck").
But it sure does makes sense.
"you added the racial component... therefore he had thus-and-such thoughts and feelings about African-Americans, and his own social status vis-a-vis them as a group, which contributed both to his expressed feelings of depression and perhaps (perhaps!) to his murderous rampage."
Here you misunderstand me. I wasn't imputing to Mr. McLendon any racist or even race thoughts. My use of of the phrase redneck nigger was to conflate the influences of a poverty of reason and economic access on his life with that portrayed novelistically in Bigger Thomas. I am suggesting that the kinds of things that go on in Bigger Thomas' mind -- and the evidence it gives of how the world has handed him an unjustly narrow horizon of possibilities -- may direct us toward understanding the kinds of attenuated mental landscapes of what someone else's blog calls "rednecks."
It was my move to join the two ideas. It was not my thinking that race had anything to do with Mr. McLendon. Though he was of working class in a very poor region in an inescapably white way.
Too bad I don't know more pop music. Then I could draw experiences my audience was familiar with.
But then, as Bad as Marvin Gaye was, his songs don't give us a native son. He was the picture of self-liberation.
Mr. McLendon could have used some of what Mr. Gaye had.
I understood the reference. I just found it inappropriate to the context, and misleading.
Everyone could use what Marvin Gaye had, and had violently taken away from him. About that there is no dispute.
I think you're right Geoffrey. In everyone's haste to figure these tragedies out, we end up hearing only random theories based on the latest movie of the week or armchair psychobabble based on a psychology class someone took in high school.
Then the trial begins and we get a whole host of other notions, usually proffered by the defense, which, of course, likely have little resemblance to the reality of why these criminals perpetrated their crimes.
Then come the magazine spreads, the book deals, and the Lifetime movies. But rarely any clarity or real answers.
Oh well. It was probably just too many Twinkies.
We weren't figuring out the tragedy, we were parsing the uses of "redneck." Mr. McLendon was not the point. The point was the poverty of true rednecks, socio-structurally leading to psychologically and morally.
And for two guys who disparaged the thread, claimed that nothing was in it, didn't even want to be there (and Alan repeatedly counting the dicks in hand), you two sure made a lot of nothing out of it all.
Feodor, I've gotten to the point of only skimming/ignoring your comments. I've decided that engaging with you is a waste of time.
My comment above had nothing to do with yours, I wasn't referencing your comments in any way. Instead I was commenting on Geoffrey's post and the points he was making about the easy answers people come to in the face of these sorts of tragedies.
I've decided that it'll be much easier to simply ignore you wherever possible since disagreement with someone as clearly brilliant, witty, and infallible as you is clearly silly. And no one as brilliant, witty, and infallible as you are needs agreement from the lowly likes of me.
You can be assured that, in the future, if any comment I write has anything to do with you, I'll mention you by name. Otherwise ... and I know this is impossible to believe ... you can assume that my comments actually have nothing to do with Almighty Feodor, the Center of the Universe and Supreme Intellectual, Blessings Be Upon Him.
GKS has now posted twice on the basis of my comments on ERs site. All the points he's tried to make have to do with a number of things he's not clear on, one thing he is mistaken about, and one simple point that he has right but keeps burying.
So your declaration of purity here is rather like swimming in the lake he made by damming my river and saying you never noticed the river running for the last two days by the road you took to get here.
Either you are the obtuse twin of your heavy brother or you're not credible.
I think you're not credible because you keep using teen camp movie dialogue.
I honestly don't care what you think, which is why, unless you address me directly, I will ignore you.
I know this is shocking to someone as much of a self-important ass as you, but yes, I have read his previous post, and yes I read your comments, and yes my comment above had nothing to do with yours, but was based on this comment of Geoffrey's, "The press, too, should not seek to figure out "what it all means", especially in light of the facts in this particular case."
Obtuse. Not credible. See? Why even bother responding to someone as incredibly stupid as I am? I'm sure Your Eminence has better things to do with His time.
One is only passive-aggressive if one is avoiding conflict directly, but continuing it indirectly. I do believe that (a) you misunderstood my initial complaint, and my revision and subsequent extension; (b) wish to attempt to make some point, and simply side-step my own complaint, viz., your launch in to outerspace with the "redneck" comment, the reference to Bigger Thomas (as if it had relevance because both Bigger and McLendon were employed and still killed people); (c) you continue to argue a point I find neither valid nor even worth much consideration at all, precisely for the reasons I have stated, repeated, and elaborated upon.
I do believe we are talking past one another, either inadvertently or by design (intelligent design? unintelligent design?) and do not wish to continue this, because I have made my points, and as in all such cases where it devolves in to repetition, I am nipping such in the bud. Should you wish to construe this as avoiding disagreement, go for it.
No, being passive-aggressive is engaging directly in conflict but doing so with very indirect communication so that, at first, it doesn't seem like conflict.
Example: presenting points, then saying you have no further interests in point making, then saying you are done and the other participant can do whatever they want because you don't care.
And then repeatedly saying you are done.
A teenager is in the house.
"A teenager is in the house." Very good, Feodor, you've got personal snark down well.
I'm afraid you've been bogged down in blogging so long you've forgotten the difference between snark and satire.
I thought he was just declaring his presence here. As in, "Yo! A teenager is in the house!!" ;)
Kids these days. Who knows what they're talking about any more? :)
I could have mentioned the various contortions in the Mathew Shepard murder case. The young mens' defense was that they were so horrified by another man hitting on them, they temporarily lost the ability to tell right from wrong. Unfortunately, before they left home, they told their girlfriends they were going to roll some gay folk for fun. The sworn statements and later testimony of the girlfriends in this regard was important.
Later, on appeal, there was the invention of the whole "drug-deal-gone-bad" theory, which was as made up as the whole "anti-gay psychosis" defense, because no one before conviction had mentioned drugs at all. This bogus story was peddled all over hate-radio and the right-wing intertubes, and lives on even though there isn't a shred of evidence to support it.
William Ockham was correct when he said that the simplest explanation is, perhaps, the most plausible - these were two fag-bashers out to get their hate on, and sadly, Mathew Shepard crossed their path.
I'm waiting to have my Ockham paraphrase corrected. . .
"This bogus story was peddled all over hate-radio and the right-wing intertubes...."
And 20/20.
I'd hate to disappoint and not feed your thrill for basing your pietist nobility or being more mediocre than the next guy:
I had a seminar on Duns Scotus and Ockham with Marilyn McCord Adams.
Go ahead, now piss on it.
I do believe you betray some redneck tendencies. Northern Tier variety, according to my encyclopedia.
(I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre episode. Matthew Shepard? And you thought I was ringing in from Saturn. You're all hat and no cattle. Ten gallons of air.)
I'm done camping with Yahoos. If I'm the Marshall of the left... you're Mark.
I actually own and have read McCord-Adams two-volume study of Ockham. Why would I piss on it? On the other hand, I continue to ask - so what?
This is not yahooism. It is an honest question. Alan is a chemist. You are a minister with a philosophical bent. I am a clergy spouse with a theology degree, have studied philosophy at the graduate level. Our readings certainly reflect our interests and dispositions, but I would hardly consider them qualitative differences between us. I continue to read philosophy and theology; I continue to struggle with my faith, existentially and intellectually. I continue to be challenged by life, by the ways others from Justin Martyr to Miroslav Volf try to figure out what it all means, if anything. I continue to be fascinated by the human urge to give shape and even substance to the flow of events we encounter.
I just don't think that means that I'm better than anyone else, or smarter than anyone else, or gives me an edge over others. I seek to learn from all sorts of people on all sorts of things, knowing that what I do not know will always be greater than what I do know. I am a life-long student of what it is to be a human being, and whether it's St. Bonaventure or Richard Rorty or the people I work with at Wal-Mart who have never been to college I find it all fascinating and seek to not so much "get it right" as I do to remember it isn't about getting it right, but just living.
I don't think my education is a club with which to beat others over the head. I am not impressed by those who do. If Alan started spouting all sorts of technical chemistry-ese and also expressed the thought that, in so doing, he was better than the rest of us, I might have some problems with it.
It isn't the fact that you are well-educated, well-read, or have integrated that in to your life with which I have a problem. It is the way you express yourself, your constant desire to (a) argue when none is necessary; (b) wish to win these arguments by any means necessary; (c) your occasional forays in to guessing about my life, my thoughts, my background, and even my responses (go piss on Marilyn McCord Adams?) have been so way off base I honestly wonder how you do in one-on-one situations.
I say none of this with either rancor or anger. On the contrary, it's nice to have someone of similar education and interest. The only thing is, I am saddened by the simple, and repeatedly demonstrated, reality that there is no accord with you. There is no meeting of the minds. There is no discussion or acceptance of difference. Now, here I am going out on a limb and probably sawing it off behind me, but I believe you think there is some necessity in others who have read the same books, taken similar courses, thought about the same issues with the same intellectual tools as you to be as you are. I, on the other hand, delight in difference. That is the source of my early, and now-admitted naive, attempts at dialogue with the fundies on the 'net. I wanted to learn from them. I did, but mostly I learned they were small-minded bigots who hated me with a passion precisely because I disagreed with them.
There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of intellectual discourse. Your oft-stated lament that none seems to occur on blogs, however, shows you miss part of the point. This medium isn't really designed or geared toward such, and struggling against that current is difficult in the best of circumstances. I don't take myself seriously at all, and many of the subjects that appear here or on other blogs I frequent I find either humorous or annoying rather than a source for serious reflection. There are exceptions, such as the horror show I linked to above in South Africa, but they are rare.
Not everything is, or should be, fodder for "Deep Thoughts". Not every thought one thinks is deep really is. Just as Freud remarked that a cigar is, sometimes, just a cigar, so, too, a link to a bank advertising itself as "The Redneck Bank" is an occasion for humorous back-and-forth, rather than remonstrance on the social and racial undertones and inherent pathology in such a creature even existing.
While I do not take myself seriously at all, and for good reason, I do take my God, and my life outside of blogs, and my family, very seriously. My struggles, my intellectual curiosity, my occasional sense of "Huzzah!" when I figure something out - well that's my private business between me and my God, not fodder for discussion unless specific points are raised by me in this blog. These are the lines I draw.
1. Not working as a priest. Haven't for years.
2. You're the one who hates it when I resource my sources and have said so many times (though you put a brave face on it now).
2. If the subject were chemistry, you'd better bet I'd be listening to Alan 99% of the time. Especially since he isn't going to Bob Jones U... or even -- not so much pejoratively as ad hoc program quality judgment -- Wichita State.
3. This is the difference between natural sciences resting largely on empirical procedures and a vast storehouse of knowledge and human sciences which are grounded in hermeneutical operations open for judgement each step of the way.
4. So if you can't swallow the part of the discussion re "redneck" that was going along perfectly thoughtful lines before you yelled "Bob Jones thinking!" "Bob Jones thinking!" but really only having "Wichita State" in hand, and then taking it to your own blog... twice... then I suggest you simply say you disagree with the overthink and not undercook so much overthought and overlooked passive aggressive irritation.
Columbine?
Virginia Tech?
Wilding?
Matthew Shepherd?
You killed a bug with starlings and now look what you have.
"If the subject were chemistry, you'd better bet I'd be listening to Alan 99% of the time.
Well, unless I dared to disagree with you about something chemistry-related. Then it'd just be more insults about how stupid I am, compared to your gigantic, massive, possibly mutant-level IQ.
No one who really wants dialogue as much as you say you do resorts to immediate knee-jerk insults and snottiness when they meet either disagreement, or as in the case of my comments above, someone who simply has a different take on a topic than you have.
You sure do get pissed when you get corrected. You must have been a mamma's boy.
Or are you protecting your pet?
I resort to insults (though, admittedly, not ones in galactic language) when met with them. Like just now.
I corrected your misunderstanding when I said that we were not trying to understand the tragedy but were discussing the topic, aspects of "redneck."
That's when you jumped over your mohair rug.
You use parody (in fact, almost without using any straight forward prose at all). Get parody back and then point to me and call to teacher.
Both of you show immaturity.
Like saying you aren't talking to me and then do.
Not to mention your grudge is showing.
I think it's ridiculous, and beside all points, to say that one would not listen to a graduate student in chemistry about chemistry.
You are better than me in chemistry. In language you prefer: by light years... whole star systems.
But human sciences aren't natural sciences. Human sciences trade in reasoning from experience and eternally competing theories about who we are, how we behave, and how to structure ourselves as a society.
It's interpretive. Almost anyone can participate. And certainly among all of us, at least college educated, participation is part of the process. Disagreement part of how the whole moves forward if it moves forward at all. There is precious little periodic table of givens.
My thought, is if you don't feel a thread is moving forward, either pitch in with what you have -- and have the guts to be disagreed with without giving up -- or disregard and stay out.
But I find that you mostly pitch in with non-sequitur and distractingly snide asides; and recently perseverating about swinging dicks.
It's tongue in cheek, obviously, but I wonder if that tongue can do anything else?
And clearly, from your response to having these things suggested, you cannot take what you give.
Corrected? Sorry, no where have you corrected me because you and I aren't even talking about the same things here.
"I resort to insults (though, admittedly, not ones in galactic language) when met with them. Like just now."
Or when someone disagrees with you, or even (as we saw above) when someone dares to have a different take on a topic than you.
I commented on this post, my comment had nothing whatsoever to do with you (and certainly didn't insult you or even mention you) and yet I'm called either a liar or stupid.
So when you state that you resort to insults when met with them, you're clearly either a obtuse or not credible.
"Like saying you aren't talking to me and then do."
I'd love to start ignoring you again if you'd do me the favor of not referring to me in any way that requires a response to correct your lies.
"You must have been a mamma's boy."
LOL
While I don't have a problem with that statement because it's true ... I had great parents and am proudly both a mamma's boy and a daddy's boy. But the obvious implication of your statement seems to have escaped your mighty intellect, which seems rather odd for someone as uber-PC as you.
Oh well, at least you didn't call me a sissy, because then I'd have to hit you with my purse.
"Disagreement part of how the whole moves forward if it moves forward at all."
I agree. I have disagreed with other folks, ER, Geoffrey, etc., with no problems at all.
But you? Any disagreement with you leads immediately to insults and mocking. Clearly you don't think that's true, but since that is my perception and you disagree with it, that's simply cause for more mocking and more insults.
I don't, BTW, care about either the the insults themselves. Oh gee, someone anonymous guy I've never met and whom I'll never meet called me a name on the interwebs. Golly, whatever shall I do?
The reason I mention them is because I find them ironic coming from someone who pretends to be interested in discussion.
If you deal in parody, I'd think you should be able to recognize it.
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Alan:"I think you're right Geoffrey. In everyone's haste to figure these tragedies out..."
The subject of GKSs remarks was me. The haste he describes begins with his take on what I said at ERs.
You've now been corrected twice on the same thing.
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Alan: "I honestly don't care what you think, which is why, unless you address me directly, I will ignore you."
I wasn't addressing you this morning, was I? And yet here you are.
Corrected again.
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Tell me this isn't getting trite and tiring.
Please go back to ignoring me.
Geoffrey: "The press, too, should not seek to figure out "what it all means", especially in light of the facts in this particular case."
Alan:"I think you're right Geoffrey. In everyone's haste to figure these tragedies out..."
Feodor: Quit talking about me! Waaaaah!
You've now been corrected twice on the same thing.
"I wasn't addressing you this morning, was I? And yet here you are."
" If the subject were chemistry, you'd better bet I'd be listening to Alan 99% of the time. "
No, you really wouldn't.
"Please go back to ignoring me."
By why would I want to do that? You've convinced me that these disagreements with you are *so* useful! ;)
I never said I was never talking to you.
Immaturity? On the contrary. I've been straightforward, and honest to a fault. I find it hilariously funny that you call my responses immature, all things considered.
As for parsing the word "redneck", you began it, and I do believe I said on more than one occasion that I found some of your points both correct and interesting. I fail to see where, in general, you might have a problem with that.
To restate, again, my complaint. You raised the mass murders in Alabama and insisted, repeatedly, the perpetrator was a redneck. There is no evidence he either so self-identified, or might have been so identified by others. Because of the admittedly loaded nature of the terminology, especially as you have described it, I thought it wrong to do so, and said so. That you then made several huge leaps of analysis about him, and the case in point, his possible state of mind, without any reference to mutually accepted facts, was also wrong, and the topic of this and an earlier post.
This is not, nor has it ever been, about parsing a particular culturally loaded term. It is about your penchant for leaps in the dark, Feodor.
Again, this is like dealing with Marshall. I'm repeating myself, treated immaturely while called immature, attempting to change both the tone and direction of the conversation and greeted with the rhetorical equivalent of a foot-stamping, and have words imputed to me that I never even thought.
What I have wrought is an attempt to make my central bone of contention with you something that is between us, here on my own site, away from ER, who is far too indulgent to ask us to take our fight somewhere else.
I dearly love the whole passive-aggressive label, considering the on-going discussion we are at least attempting to have, even as, I said before (yet again) we continue to talk past one another. If you believe that not addressing the issue on your terms is passive-aggressive behavior, then I suppose I am guilty, somewhat, but that's only because I don't play games by rules other people set. I set forth my argument, expounded, expanded, and offered an analogical example of my main point of disagreement, and have had all of it - all of it - duly ignored, as you continue to wend your way through your points in almost total ignorance of what it is I have been trying to say.
As an aside, I'm not really sure what you were trying to say with your aside on the differences between the sciences and humanities. Since I am one of those pomo types who thinks the differences are merely those of method rather than some intrinsic qualitative distinction, the difference as you describe it is, to my mind, meaningless. If you raised the point because I mentioned Alan's background as a chemist, then, once again, you missed the point.
If I encountered an interlocutor who was an accountant, and berated all those who didn't understand GAAP, or cost accounting, as anti-intellectual peons who had no grasp of the subtleties of numbers and their relations, I would laugh out loud, as would most people. If I encountered an individual who insisted that I was less of a man than I claimed to be because I didn't know the difference between various kinds of methods of welding, I would wonder what in the world was wrong with this individual.
When someone comes along and insists that their grasp of theology and philosophy makes them superior to others - and those are words I initially imputed to you and you accepted - I see no reason in the world why such an individual should be treated with any less derision. Learning to read philosophy is like learning to do accounting, becoming an auto mechanic, or a chemist. The differences, as I have encountered them, are that most philosophers and not a few theologians tend to be great bores who believe themselves far above the rest of us mere mortals.
At least, if I learned arc welding, I would be able to reattach my muffler if it fell off, a far more practical accomplishment than coming to grips with various dead erudite men.
Now, I realize you see such comments as yahooism run amok, anti-intellectualism (a term I abhor, by the way) run amok. Oh, well. I can chastise intellectual non-entities like Neil and Marshall Art for their gross lack of any intellectual ability whatsoever, and chide you for overthinking things a bit for the same reason - both are extreme forms of a similar disposition, viz., the will to be right in all circumstances. They say, "I don't care what you say, or what the facts of the matter are. I know I'm right." You say, "I took a seminar from Marilyn McCord Adams. Go ahead and piss on that." The end result is the same, a rueful shake of the head on my part.
ER and GKS loves you more than I do.
You're not challenged by them. No doubt I'm competitive. No doubt I love being in challenging discussion. No doubt my threshold for challenging discussion is a lot higher and longer than many.
But you can't say I come to your blog and crap all over what you post there. Yet you interject that the discussion ER and I were having was pointless. Well, apparently not to us.
You did what you claim I do.
And here I am because GKS took it here, too. As you well know and now what to appear as if you didn't know.
You can't see these contradictions? Really?
Apparently, you can't:
Addressing you would mean saying "Alan, I would listen to you about chemistry."
Addressing GKS about his statement about you would mean saying, "GKS, I'd listen to Alan about chemistry."
Now which did I say?
(God, this is so trite).
And you parody me by with the line, "F: 'Quite talking about me! Waaaah!'"
And now you jump in with the histrionics because GKS and I were talking... t r i v i a l l y...
about you.
The Queen is in overdrive this Friday and getting remedial, pedantic responses.
Well, if the slingback fits.
"You're not challenged by them. "
Actually I am. Quite often, as it turns out. But they are generally reasonable and polite, and they also have another trait I value quite a bit: a sense of humor.
"But you can't say I come to your blog and crap all over what you post there."
No, you haven't. Instead, you go to my blog and crap all over what I post here. LOL I believe you were saying something somewhere about how my blog is only about "Battlestation Galactica: or some such BS (ignoring my posts about the PCUSA, corrective rape, the economic meltdown of Detroit, a couple NASA posts, etc.) Again, I don't really care about what you think of my blog. By my admittedly hasty estimate, I think somewhere very close to 100% of the population of Earth does not read my blog, and that's just fine with me. A few do, and I read their blogs, and that's what it's all about. I'm simply pointing out that what you claim, and what you actually do are two different things.
"And now you jump in with the histrionics because GKS and I were talking... t r i v i a l l y... about you."
What? Are you saying that it is unreasonable for me to get bent out of shape about something you wrote when you're not actually talking about me? LOL. Yes, that's actually been my point all along here, since you got all bent out of shape when I wasn't actually talking about YOU. Have you learned this little object lesson yet, kiddo? Have I proven my point yet? Or are you still too obtuse to get it?
"The Queen is in overdrive this Friday and getting remedial, pedantic responses. Well, if the slingback fits."
Thanks for verifying something I'd been supposing about you for a while.
I thought "supposing" was not supposed to be what I should do.
What, pray tell, are you bent out of shape about? That you are the Big Head when it comes to advanced chemistry?
(Sorry, all I can think of when you go galactic is Mork... for some reason.)
Again, if you can't take what you give, get out of the hallway you've put us in.
"What, pray tell, are you bent out of shape about?"
Nothing. Nothing at all, actually. How can you not know that? LOL I was simply illustrating how you reacted to my comment above which had nothing to do with you.
But now that the shoe is on the other foot, you surely do get surly don't you? As someone once said, if you can't take what you give, get out of the hallway you've put us in. ;)
(Are you actually trying the "some of my best friends are teh gay" angle? LOL Excellent. That's so quaint. But that wasn't what I meant anyway.)
I find it really interesting that you seem to think that it is so easy to get me "bent out of shape". In fact, it would be a rare thing indeed for me to even get the teeny-tiniest bit irked at something some random anonymous stranger wrote on the internet. But you do seem to enjoy thinking that you get me "bent out of shape." Interesting.
GKS, I confess to being superior to the welder, chemist, and accountant in wielding theological, philosophical, and psychological sources and in the practice of their discourse.
I confess to be inferior to the welder, chemist, and accountant in wielding the welding torch, the beaker, and Excel.
Does this bring judgment on me for knowing the law? Are those who do not know the law better off? By no means. The law was intended for instruction, to raise up knowledge of those things pertaining to the law. But the law is not enough.
Are you saying that I think I am superior in morality or clarity?
How could I? The true theologian, philosopher, psychologist would not be here, writing.
And so neither are you, and we are rather like equals. Who argue from experience and learning. You think I am overthinking. I think you are undercooked. You think I am haughty and treat others as if simple. I think you take the pietistic low road that is paved with dismissals of complexity. You are a sceptical British empiricist, I am a stoical German idealist.
We use different strands of the post-modernisms.
But in the end, we both have to rephrase and say, "I can only fiddle. Others make a great state from a little city."
This would be for Alan, who does so love to quote from movies.
"Which you have chosen now not to respect."
Since you didn't ask, and it was posted while I was writing, I hardly think you can blame me. (Oh, but I know you will! LOL) I don't actually have the ability to read minds to know that you were thinking "Oh, wait, maybe I should delete that" while I wrote my post.
Clearly you have such an ability, but you'll have to forgive us mere mortals who do not.
Yet you decide that it isn't because I have neither the power of ESP or time travel, but because I don't respect you. Well, you're right, I don't. But I'll still delete my comment above, because now I know why you modified yours, which I could not have known when I posted my comment.
Ass.
"you've now lost the shape of your points and the reason you got into all this morning in the first place."
Nope, I know exactly why I wrote what I wrote this morning. I did it to demonstrate to you how you act. So, I did exactly what you did. I took something you wrote, that wasn't actually about me, and I pretended to take offense, and make a big deal out of something that, in reality, had nothing at all to do with me.
Just like you did yesterday.
It's all really quite obvious.
What isn't obvious is why someone as brilliant as you can't see that this has been an extended exercise in demonstrating your hypocrisy and trying to teach you a little lesson that, in fact, not everything is about you.
BTW, dumbass, my comment "Thanks for verifying something I'd been supposing about you for a while."
was a joke about your fashion sense. Slingbacks? Before 5PM? Good lord. At least tell me they're not white.
I was not offended by a form of dialogue I use with my friends at least as often as anyone. Though I do find it amusing when straight guys attempt to talk "gay". It's sort of like watching Vanilla Ice try to rap.
And it's a strange thing for someone who clearly doesn't like me very much to try to use such dialogue in an obviously less than chummy way. So, such a context could call into question exactly what Geoffrey mentions regarding limousine liberals. However, that wasn't how I took it. I took it as someone trying to be "hip". Badly. Though perhaps I'm giving the benefit of the doubt where I shouldn't bother.
Anyway, my comment, which you took to be a slam on your gay-street-cred, elicited an even more amusing comment which appeared to be a "some of my best friends" rebuttal. Which, as I said, I thought was funny, since you didn't get the joke anyway.
Now that's all cleared up, can I go back to laughing at Feodor's inability to see the irony of this morning's conversation, while he gets pissy about me not being able to read his enormous mind?
I retract the whole "limousine liberal" thing, if for no other reason than Alan's comment about establishing "street cred" is both more likely, and of a piece with the phenomenon known as LLism.
I do like the Vanilla Ice analogy. For younger people today, it might be Joaquin Phoenix.
I'll be honest enough to admit that, in the past, I did allow some things said about me to hurt my feelings. Over time, however, I have decided that it just isn't worth the emotional energy to get all verklempt over things anonymous folks say on the internet, for precisely the reasons Alan has discussed in the past, and I mentioned earlier. Which are also reasons why serious intellectual discussion, after a certain point, just isn't possible. The medium isn't constructed to handle it, that's all.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
No, Feodor, I am not a skeptical British empiricist. I am a very happily American neo-pragmatist in my philosophy, and an equally happy American liberal in my theology. The relationship between the two should be obvious.
A skeptical British empiricist would still consider the question, "Is being prior to knowledge?" an important question to consider. A pragmatist would not; indeed, a pragmatist would think such a question nonsensical.
While there are strands and threads of American liberal theology that have a robust metaphysics (Boston Personalism, Process Theologies), many do not (Henry Nelson Wieman is the best example). While I consider myself orthodox to the extent that I confess the Trinitarian existence of God, and the Divine incarnation in the human person Jesus of Nazareth as testified in the Scriptures, I waste little energy trying to get in to nitty gritty details about the how; for me, it is the "that" that is far more important, life changing, and necessary to grasp to move forward. Not that such speculative thoughts are necessarily meaningless or beside the point; for me, it is enough that God exists, that the God who created the Universe is a God of such overabounding Love that this God entered existence in the unique event and form of a man named Jesus of Nazareth, exemplifying in his life, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection by God just what Divine Love really is (and, not coincidentally, what Creation means as a doctrine; what salvation, atonement, justification, sanctification, grace, judgment, law, and freedom all mean). That these things are I believe, and they have changed not just my unimportant life, but the entire world and the course it is to run.
I refuse to get in to a discussion on the subject of perichoresis or homoousios or the two natures of Christ (the metaphysics of Sonship sounds so exciting, doesn't it?). I would much rather figure out how my little, pretty meaningless existence figures in to this Divine Plan, if at all. There are guides, and there are maps, but they don't really help anyone if I'm standing still. Since the end of the road, or at least my little sideroad, is still dark, I hold out my hand, and hope and believe that there is Another who is grasping it and will never let go.
Everything else is up for grabs, as far as I'm concerned.
Thank you, both, very much. Indeed.
____
Now, where were we?
GKS has been suggesting that a post on "redneck" does not immediately put us into the race discourse of our country.
Hard to fathom.
____
Alan, with comeback remarks like, "smell you, nancy drew," and "kitten has claws," dislikes it when I step into queer discourse after him.
Can't have it both ways.
And haven't we gotten beyond homo-hetero essentialism, Alan? Am I not, by some degree or remainder, queer? Just because your Mae West accent is better than mine...
And now Alan says that his whole morning's dialogue with me about me is to show it's not about me.
Okay, leaving queer behind and getting into Orwelliana.
____
BTW, "since you didn't ask, and it was posted while I was writing...'
You named it after you knew it was gone.
But your mistake was in following my greater one, to be sure.
_____
Again, thank you both.
And Alan, as I said a long time ago in different words, I'll sit and wait for the ice cream truck with you any day.
If I didn't have a base of trust and like for you, I wouldn't be here with during Lent.
____
Slow Friday over now. Gotta go.
"Alan, with comeback remarks like, "smell you, nancy drew," and "kitten has claws," dislikes it when I step into queer discourse after him."
To clarify, that isn't what I said. I said it was amusing. And I said it was like watching Vanilla Ice try to rap. I didn't say I "disliked" it. And I responded with a similarly bitchy retort. So no, I'm not trying to have it both ways. Anyway, the American Descent-esque "mamma's boy" comment was much closer to crossing the line we're dancing around. So, if I were going to get bent out of shape about something you wrote, it would more likely be that. But even then I indicated that I do not take offense to being called childish names by random anonymous strangers on the internet.
Anyway, hopefully I've made my point, that when I want to talk to you Feodor, I will do so. When I do not mention you, then my comments probably aren't about you. So save your knee-jerk snottiness for when I actually disagree with you.
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