Josh Hill goes:
>On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:57:56 +0200, Alan Hope
><usenet.identity@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>Josh Hill goes:
>>>Ray's braggadocio seems mild at worst, but even if he out-Falstaffed
>>>Falstaff, his offense wouldn't hold a candle to the intentional
>>>smearing of someone who served honorably in the military by someone
>>>who most assuredly did not.
>>>There's something good-natured if dumb in Sylvia's smears, and I'm
>>>more likely to feel sorry for than angry at her, but on several
>>>occasions she's gone too far. Following a poster to another newsgroup
>>>is one such occasion. Telling defamatory lies about others in a
>>>situation in which they might be taken seriously is another. But the
>>>worst I think is attacking the valor of those who, unlike her, have
>>>actually had cause to demonstrate it.
>>Who, please?
>Whether you wish to describe Ray's activities as valorous is of course
>up to you, but unless you're going to deny his military service
>there's no question that he put himself in harm's way.
Yes, well I don't consider that valorous per se.
>>>Monday morning quarterbacking is one thing, but Monday morning
>>>soldiering? She can stuff it up her cloaca as far as I'm concerned.
>>
>>>>Unaccountable, that is, unless someone is offended enough to
>>>>seek out and present verbatim the instances of Ray's lying.
>>>>I won't quarrel with those who think Sylvia does rather more
>>>>than that, that she allows her personal distaste and dislike to
>>>>colour the opinions she expresses. Perhaps she should simply
>>>>upload his own words periodically. That will be enough.
>>
>>>It seems to me unlikely that the patently dishonest Sylvia would get
>>>upset about Ray's putative lies. She's just a bored old woman looking
>>>for something to do, to which end attacking someone over something at
>>>which she is not herself a habitual offender might be a good start, as
>>>would concision, sanity, honesty, substance, and the acquisition of a
>>>life.
>>
>>She is not. She's a babe. I suspect that's what gets up the cracks of
>>****s like you and the increasingly hysterical Fundoc. I notice you've
>>joined him in attacking her womanhood, faute de mieux evidently.
>I beg to disagree. Fundoc seems to have entered a period of
>introspection and calm. Like he's run out of crack or something. And
>his posts have been all the more devastating for the absence of the
>Joycean rush that produces such a marvelous Shock and Awe effect in
>the initial salvo, but merely tries the patience by the second or
>third.
So you're happy with the diseased vagina trope? Of course you are. It
fits perfectly with your own "bored old woman" lame.
>>"Putative lies" just about sums up your position, doesn't it? You know
>>Ray's a liar, but you're too far in to back out now. That's what we
>>call "damning with faint praise".
>To which I'd reply that Shakespeare applied retroactively for a coat
>of arms in his Father's name, that Mozart is said to have destroyed
>his sketches to maintain the legend that he did all of his composition
>in his head, that Bach styled himself a kapellmeister when he was no
>longer such except in theory and was criticized by contem****aries for
>calling himself the Royal Saxon Court Composer and having himself
>painted in velvet, and that Beethoven pretended to be of noble birth
>until forced to recant in court, whereupon he placed his hand upon his
>heart and said "My only nobility lies here."
Nonsense. Utter arrant nonsense. What it has to do with the point is
anyone's guess, but Beethoven is being traduced by someone who thinks
his name is Von Beethoven, and thus in Germany slightly indicative of
minor nobility. When in fact it is and always has been Van Beethoven,
a Flemish name from his Flemish family. His grandfather had a bakery
near Mechelen, halfway between here and Antwerp.
>Which is to say that Ray's mild autoboosterism seems to me a common
>enough component of the human condition.
You may think it's mild to lie about the dead, but I don't.
>At least, I've never made it
>a practice to believe every candidate's claim that he's a Wa****ngton
>outsider, or every bar stool Lothario's account of his seductions.
Hardly comparable to boasting about "crispy" brothers-in-arms, surely?
>And
>even those of us who don't feel the need to bathe ourselves in greater
>glory than our magnificent deeds deserve tend to omit those very
>un-Senatorial games of footsie from our accounts, do we not?
How is this relevant? Did your mother never teach you that two wrongs
don't make a right?
>On the other hand, we have Churchill's characterization of Clement
>Attlee: "A modest man, but then he has so much to be modest about."
You're a whiz with the Bartlett's.
>I won't comment on certain persons who bluster about 'umility while
>suffixing "the Man" to their names with each and every post.
Spare me your fishwifery. I take it you don't know what the suffix
means, or meant at one point in recent history.
>A bit
>Mother Theresaish, yes, in an angling for sainthood sort of way,
Not in the least.
>but
>also very human, and forgivable in someone who, like Atlee, has so
>much to be modest about.
You're so cocksure it's a delight to prick your bubble. The Man is a
countercultural term for a policeman. No more and no less.
>So no, the Ray thing is basically about some lonely nutter burning off
>whatever gu****ng neurotransmitter fires her mania by tearing down a
>guy who had the bad to taste to show her up by serving his country,
>and in the process telling many more lies than Ray ostensibly did.
She's reprinting Ray's own lies. Have you not been paying attention?
>And
>a few bored posters joining in s****adically, on the principle that any
>activity, however dismal, is more interesting than discussing
>economics with Kurt.
>Subject anyone to that level of attack, and they'll look bad as well.
I challenge you to try it.
>By way of contrast, one needn't ignore or deny Ray's actual flaws to
>forgive them, at least if one knows him well enough IRL to know that
>he has counterbalancing merits: a failure to exaggerate is more than
>sufficient.
You've changed your tune. Since you don't read Sylvia's posts
(evidently) you won't know: you were once one of his sternest critics,
on the subject of lying in particular. Now you won't know what to be
more embarrassed about, that or your ridiculous misunderstanding of
Stan's moniker.
I'll let you stew in both, shall I?
--
AH
http://grapes2dot0.blogspot.com
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