Poem

[Dan Brickley]

* bitbitch at magnesium.net <bitbitch at magnesium.net> [2003-04-19 01:20-0400]
> *sigh* I'm going to kick myself for this someday.
> 
> 
> JB> Perhaps, John, FoRK doesn't want to be on the 'To' line for this 
> JB> sophomoric neo-con pablum.  Sell your crazy, chest-beating "Belligerent 
> JB> Imperial America' jingo somewhere else.  Of course, that's just my 
> JB> opinion.  But to the point:  we all *know* how you feel.  Do you think 
> JB> beating everybody on this over the head with this accomplishes 
> JB> anything?  Do you think you're *convincing* anybody of anything?
> 
> John has just as much a right to beat people over the head with his
> point of view as do you, or I, or anyone else on the list.  As the
> Supremes are fond of saying, you always have the right not to listen.
> Better that than silencing the speaker.
> 
> Sides JB, don't you have a killfile you can create for this very
> problem?

per http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fork-faq.html 
[
So FoRK's a mailing list. Remind me which phase we're in? 
THE NATURAL LIFE CYCLE OF MAILING LISTS 
]
...we seem to be well and truly into the 
'Discomfort with diversity ' phase :)


[
... people start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 
threatens to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's 
pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten 
up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than is 
used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed. 
]
 
> John, while wrong, does make me think -- if for no other reason than I
> try -really- hard to prove him wrong.  Occasionally it works.  I enjoy
> these small triumphs, and I'd hate to see him be driven off the list
> merely because his poetry sucks (heh heh heh) or his opinions are
> different than mine.   Even if they're insanely different than mine :)
> 
> John isn't (for the most part) attacking folks with useless flamage.

Um, you read the 'poem'? Or was that safely quoted (and ascribed to 'unknown')
so doesn't count as flamage, despite his obvious sympathy for the 
drool-stained, bloodthirsty tubthumpery that just hit all our mailboxes.

But yes, FoRK is interesting as a place to disagree and argue, but too much 
of this has been at the "Bin Laden in a blender" level of analysis. Maybe 
the poem would have been a bit more interesting given some context, eg. 
"this 'poem' has been according to <src> circulated more widely than any 
other chunk of net content since All Your Base", or discussed in context 
of what it's like to be French living in the US at the moment, or a UK/US
citizen in France. Or some attempt to look beyond the Beavis and Buttheadery of 
"heh-heh-heh stoopid traitorous cheese eatin' surrender monkeys" and 
see some possibilitiy of subtlety or principle behind the most-of-the-planet 
who didn't support this little adventure towards a new American century.

The net's full of hateful junk and we're all quite capable of finding 
it using Google without John's help. Having our own real live neocon to 
prod and probe isn't such a bad thing, the _debates_ can be interesting. But 
just forwarding uncommented, unattributed, hate-mongering sludge without 
adding some value is doing only harm to the list. The old FoRK FAQ has 
sensible things to say on this,

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fork-faq.htm "Ten Commandments of FoRKposting".

These include, 

- Thou shalt use a meaningful Subject line 
- Thou shalt forward only new bits
- Thou shalt reference where you found the bits

and in particular,

- Commandment 7: Thou shalt comment on any bits and/or clue you forward.
[[

Don't just send us raw bits, because we are all well read. Send a 
paragraph or two about the bits. 

To quote the brilliant Dan Connolly, 
	The paragraph or two of personal analysis is the essential part. 
	Without that, a "hey, read this!" message is nothing more than a 
	commercial. In this age of information overload, let's do each other 
	the favor of information _reduction_. 

So give us commentary, or stay quiet. 
]]

So, John, did you write the poem? Where did it come from, if not? Do you 
stand by it's message to the French? How would you feel if you were a 
French kid in an American school right now? More to the point, how would you
feel about your traitorous, cheese-eating, cowardly, surrender-monkey of a
Frenchie classmate if you were an American schoolkid right now? If the 
French spit on dead of Sept 11, would it be so wrong to teach them a lesson?

Dan

> He just doesn't agree with you and pulls some really (*cough*) unique
> sources at times to justify his position.  I say, cope.
> 
> =BB