(Fwd) One for the books

Tim McDaniel tmcd at crl.com
Sun Aug 11 22:46:05 PDT 1996


On Sun, 11 Aug 1996, Larkin O'Kane <larkin at apache.webstar.net> wrote:
> Take a chill pill, Will and have a laugh at my expense.

I will probably cause greater offence by presuming, unasked, to
publicly instruct and critisize an adult on manners.

"Lighten up" has caused more flames than any phrase I can think of
that doesn't involve the word "Nazi".  It means
- "You are not due an apology for the offense you have taken."
- "Your sense of humor is broken."  (Call someone a bastard/bitch in
this group, and some will actually smile with pride.  Say they have no
sense of humor ... them's FIGHTIN' words, BOY!)

No wonder that the recipient justly gets so irate: as if the original
offense weren't bad enough, there's a "double whammy" added to it --
three offenses for the price of one!

As well, Larkin, it may not be at your expense only -- I now guess
(from the forwarding and some private e-mail) that someone else wrote
the piece originally.  If this is so, it was wrong to distribute it
without the author's name on it and without their permission, for
proper "wordfame" and for copyright reasons.  If not, please make your
authorship clear in the future.

In almost all cases, it doesn't matter whether the person taking
offense is objectively correct or not (as if offense can be judged
objectively at all!).  All that matters in this case is that they say
they are offended, and that I did it.

I have therefore wronged them publicly, and they are right to have
objected, and I am sorry to have been in the wrong, and I shall try to
do better in the future.  (It was indeed an attempt at a jest -- I
thought that no Board, Peer group, or Crown would do such a thing.
This is NOT any type of excuse for being wrong; it is merely an
*explanation* of how I came to do wrong.)

(BTW: I cannot agree, under these circumstances, that "in this
organization it is [instead] perfectly all right to suggest execution
and dismemberment", as a correspondent writes.)

-- 
Daniel de Lincoln
                             Tim McDaniel
                        Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com
                   Work account is mcdaniel at cpm.com
              Never use mcdaniel at mcdaniel.dallas.tx.us.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list