From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Mon 30 Jun 1997 - 18:14:32 EEST
Steve Martin says to Peter Metcalfe's fairly innocuous comment on
Greg's Great Wastebasket:
> Um, did you miss something?
Sentences like _this_, it seems to me, are quite comfortably more
> Contrary to what Alex
provocative than any of these alleged profanities against the sacred
texts, and the sainted recipients thereof. Even if Mr. Martin imagines
that Mr. Metcalfe _may_ have missed some subtle point to which he was
alluding (for which the evidence appears weak), responding in this
fashion functions principally as flame-fodder.
> Ferguson said, most of the references have seemed to me to be derogatory,
> not in the spirit of fun. And not all of them were aimed at me, either.
I had a quick grep through my current Digest mailbox, which contains
most of Volume 4 (big file!); I found:
o No uses of the phrase "Greg's Trashcan", until Steve
asked us to stop using it, thereby originating same
almost out of whole cloth. A minor point, but I think
that "trashcan" has different connotations, if we're going
to indulge in this sort of abstruse textual analysis.
o Several mentions of "wastebaskets", which one would
have to read a lot "into" to imagine that either
Greg, or the scrap-recipient was being derogated thereby.
(I'm not quite clear which Steve's (main) complaint is.)
Obviously hoping for a "spirit of fun" might be being
over-optimistic in some cases.
o None 'aimed at' Steve at all. (The original incident
must have been somewhat earlier).
As polls are flavour of the month, is there anyone (else) out there,
particularly those "victimised" by imputations such as that that they're
members of Greg's Wastepaper Bin Ring, or whatever, who feels offended
thereby?
Belated declaration of interest: I've been a somewhat indirect
recipient of some of Greg's Scraps myself. Jolly good they were too!
> But again, I think many people on the Digest are too offensive, and many
> of them on purpose.
I wouldn't disgree with you there. If people spoke to each other
in the average pub the way is sometimes quite casually done here,
fists, if not actual patrons, would be flying in short order.
I suggest a six-month moratorium on straw men, "umm"s, "err"s,
statements that people weren't paying attention, are too dense to
comprehend what they're being told, were posting "opinion not
information", and things of that sort, for starters, then. Concrete
examples of comments whose only conceivable effect is to inflame aren't
hard to find, without looking hard for more questionable others.
Way off topic, (for which apologies, all)
Alex.
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