From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jun 01 2002 - 16:19:04 MDT
Oops - did it again. Darn! When I am in weekend
recovery mode, I tend to slip back into previous
lives, as in staying up all night writing
self-modifying assembly for my C64. Or, if I get
really, really tired, I'll start thinking in German,
from those stressful sleepless cram nights in the
'60's...
Anyway, Kimberly Dubbs (kimdu16@earthlink.net) wrote
on Fri May 31 2002 - 10:23:10 MDT, "... It seems that
what you faced was no more than a typical "bottom
feeder" attention grab..."
No - and thanks for your positive suggestions, BTW;
something to at least keep in mind; actually,
ToastMasters has an excellent program for developing
public speaking skills as well, and I believe that
their world headquarters is in OC. They provide a
very non-hostile environment for practicing speakers,
however, which doesn't really address this problem.
There are certainly plenty of people as you describe.
The local SF cons are not really plagued with this
problem, however. There are a small handful of people
who are known trouble-makers, including one very
hostile mentally ill man, for whom they frequently
have to call security on, but they can't get rid of
for fear of lawsuits over discrimination. You get
that everywhere, though.
As I described, however, this particular group acted
in unison and they already had a reputation for this
kind of behavior. The PC crowd is certainly not the
only group to pull this kind of disruption or
intimidation, however.
I should preface the following by saying that I have
considerable admiration for Sam Konkin and hold no
personal bitterness toward him. In fact, he pretty
much realized the mistakes he had been making by the
mid-'80's and publically acknowledged them, and has
not, to my knowledge, repeated them since. And he is
certainly one of the most intelligent, erudite and
consistent scholars and writers in the revisionist
history field, and a joy to talk to. I make this
disclaimer not for any fear of retribution for this or
prior comments I have made about his activity in the
past, but simply because I fear that I may have given
impressions here that were not reflective of his work
now. People do learn and change.
Anyway, that said, there was a period of several years
which I witnessed much of, during which Sam's "New
Libertarian" clique did a lot worse than the alleged
"MZB Mafia" did to me. They targetted both
libertarian venues and SF fandom. In both cases, they
would do things like shout down the speaker, refuse to
abide by any rules as to posing questions - jumping
right into the middle of a presentation, etc.,
whenever anyone implicitly or explicitly challenged
the New Libertarian agorist line.
What they accomplished - together with allies such as
George Smith and Wendy McElroy and their anti-thought
memes ("sniping from the gray areas" - see my previous
post) was the stifling of intellectual inquiry in the
local libertarian movement, and the destruction of a
lot of the credibility that libertarianism had in the
SF fan community. There were a host of top-ranked
authors - Heinlein, Anderson, Van Vogt, for example -
who were strongly libertarian in their fictional works
and had provided a very receptive ground to anyone who
wanted to proscelitize, so it was really distressing
to witness this.
I recall that the backlash to this behavior was so bad
that for several years mentioning that you were a
libertarian was likely to get you kicked out o the
late night parties, which are often the high point (in
more senses than one) of an SF con.
One does not have to stand-up, shout and physically
intimidate, however, in order to disrupt
communications. Men in particular have difficulty
trying to multitask, and someone who simply keeps
talking when you're trying to make a coherent
presentation may have a major impact.
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