From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Aug 08 2001 - 21:57:05 MDT
Lorree Thomas writes
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
>> Loree Thomas wrote:
>
>>> Jerry Mitchell wrote
>>>> neat trick for a black cop to be racist [towards] blacks
>>> Not such a trick at all. Happens constantly.
>> Yeah, anyone who doesn't support rent-a-riot
>> politics must be racists, and if they are black,
>> they are Uncle Toms....
>
> I suppose this makes some kind of sense to someone,
> but not to me.
The sarcasm did make sense to me, Loree. But this is
very typical of the way that when executed without
any backup redundantcy, confusion results. In other
words, they were no longer talking to you, but only
congratulating each other.
> It seems not only nonsensical (what the heck is a
> rent-a-riot?) but non sequitur and vicious well past
> the point of any possible provocation as well.
>
> The "Uncle Tom" thing is "sequitur", but vicious, mean
> and indicative of poor debating skills.
It was *not* vicious! They were saying that it is a
shame that black people are called "Uncle Toms" whenever
they fail to support liberal politics (which may or may
not be true, but is besides the point of your question).
> I could also construe this to mean that you just
> claimed I AM a supporter of rent-a-riot politics...
You had in effect said, "black cops can be racist towards
black people", and then Mike Lorrey sarcastically said
>> Yeah, anyone who doesn't support rent-a-riot
>> politics must be racists, and if they are black,
>> they are Uncle Toms....
meaning that cops (who don't support rent-a-riot politics)
are merely a subset of all the people who don't support
rent-a-riot politics, and that these people are shamelessly
labelled "racist". This didn't *have to* logically include
you, but the confusion here follows exactly from his heavy
use of sarcasm.
> which you make clear is a bad thing and thus meant to
> be a personal insult. Add to that the defamation
> inherent by your implication that I would call any
> person an "Uncle Tom".
No, as I said, it turns out that he absolutely never meant
to say or imply that.
> We were doing so good before this Mike. Why did you
> have to bring it down to this level?
Impatience, I think.
> That effectively ends the discussion, at least from my
> side. Feel free to carry on by yourself.
I hope that you resume. You were very much helping by
disagreeing with Jerry and Mike. But when you wrote
the one-line
>>> Not such a trick at all. Happens constantly.
you were setting up a scenario of some quick rather
thoughtless exchanges. If you had fleshed this out
with even *two* complete sentences, very possibly
the misunderstanding would not have materialized.
> So Lee? You've been championing reasoned discourse
> lately. How do you feel about this post of Mike's?
I've just said. I hope that I was able to throw some
light on the exchange.
Lee
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