ANST - "Flaming Idiot"

[gunnora at realtime.net]

I meant to post this earlier, but got swamped at work.

Yesterday I basically said that the husband who would turn around and tell his
wife of an insult that he had heard but that she had not was "a flaming idiot".
 Which just goes to show that there are many flaming idiots in the world, me
among them.

Truly, I intended no insult.  I was focused on the point I was making, and let
my rhetoric get away from me -- not excusing it, mind, just explaining it. 


I should have said something more along the lines of, "I don't think repeating
an insult this way is a good thing to do -- why hurt the other person's feelings
for nothing, especially if you're not going to try to resolve the situation
by one or both of the couple going to discuss the matter with the person who
made the insult."

My profound apologies for the unintended harshness of those words!

I will note, though, that this reinforces some of what I was saying -- you can
get someone saying something that is incredibly insulting or callous who had
no intent to hurt feelings, and they may not even realize that what they said
was ugly.  

In my case, I tend to write very much like I talk, but without tone of voice
and body language these things don't always come across as intended.  Had I
been speaking directly to a live listener and said that, the look on their face
would have told me I'd tromped on feelings, and then you can backtrack right
then and restate or apologize.

So once again, I'm sorry for the comment, I didn't mean it to be harsh or insuilting,
though clearly that's how it came out.

::GUNNORA::

Not "practically perfect in every way"!
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