From: James Wetterau (jwjr@ignition.name.net)
Date: Sun Sep 19 1999 - 15:07:53 MDT
"J. R. Molloy" says:
> From: James Wetterau <jwjr@ignition.name.net>
> >If this is extropic than I am a Hottentot.
>
> I know very little about Hottentots.
Me too.
> Were you a Hottentot at some earlier
> time in your life? Would you describe yourself as a reovering Hottentot?
> What do you find so attractive about Hottentots that you want to mention
> them?
No, no, and your premise is mistaken, but allow me to elaborate:
It occurred to me about three seconds after I sent the mail that my
concluding phrase choice was seriously unfortunate, especially in a
discussion touching on prejudice. My apologies for not having thought
that through more. It is an emphatic phrase attributed, I think, to
President Truman in response to something he thought obviously false,
and it has lurked in a corner of my mind ever since high school
American history class, waiting for a sufficiently obviously false
statement to burst forth.
Of course two unfortunate thing about my choice of phrase are that it
probably dates to an era of vicious prejudice in which Hottentots were
likely perceived as very alien or worse by most of the American
public, and that there is in fact no way that most readers might know
if I am or am not one, so the meaning gets lost. Let me try again,
with another phrase I learned from the memorable teacher (E. Ira
Marienhoff) of that American history class, years ago:
If that crap was extropic, my grandmother is a trolley.
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