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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:52 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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So first you said:
| flakfizer wrote: |
1987. Andres Serrano exhibits "Piss Christ," a photo of a crucifix submerged in his own urine.
Liberals: "Brialliant" "Illuminating" "A triumph of free expression."
"Stop whining, Christains."
1996. Chris Ofili exhibits "The Holy Virgin Mary," cleverly incorporating elephant dung into her Mary collage.
Liberals: "Brilliant." "Illuminating." "A triumph of free expression."
"Stop whining, Catholics." |
And when I asked you to quote your source, you reply:
| flakfizer wrote: |
| The quotes of liberals saying various things are obviously meant to summarize a feeling. Is it possible to use exact quotes on an entire group? Of course not. It was just a generalization. |
It's a generalization, all right. A generalization of your feelings. You can't provide any support that what you claim is how "liberals" actually responded.
Most people call that lying.
| flakfizer wrote: |
| As for those who point out that it was liberals who spoke out against the destruction of the statues...One, I'm sure they did and I seriously doubt they were alone in that. Two, so what? That wouldn't change the point of the post which is to show that some religions and their icons are considered worthy of respect by liberals, while one is not. |
Except that you haven't shown anything at all. As you've just admitted, you offer no support for your assertions and readily admit that what you say "liberals" said, is just something you dreamed up.
You're full of shit, but to your credit, at least you readily admit you're full of shit.  |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 6:09 am Post subject: |
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I was living in Japan at the time, and the monk interviewed was a guy from a Japanese temple there. It was the 10 o'clock news, so no link.
I assume the correct view from a Buddhist perspective would be: yes, it's a tragedy, no we don't support it. No, it has nothing to do with enlightenment, and no, we should not feel attached to it though it is possible to feel sorrow for its loss.
That's the difference between sorrow and attachment, which some people don't understand. It's also possible to be a buddhist monk attending an anti-Taliban demonstration while still not being attached to the whole thing. Perhaps going to the demonstration is the right thing to do, and it may help to spread awareness of the tragedy that happened, but in the end the loss of a statue will not change the reality of attachment / suffering / enlightenment one iota.
The best book I ever read on the subject was Awareness by Anthony DeMello. He shows how lack of attachment has nothing to do with lack of action, and actually gives the opposite effect. A person without attachment can not only act, but also act with clear-headedness and much more effectiveness than a person who responds to things around him mostly according to habits built up over time. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 9:39 pm Post subject: |
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| flakfizer wrote: |
| Deliberate distortion? Generalizing that liberals reacted differently to the aforementioned events is a distortion? |
If the generalization involves saying things that are not true, then yes, it is a distortion and probably a lie, not just a generalization ... unless you want to provide some evidence after being challenged on it.
| Quote: |
| It is not your job to tell me or anyone else what is or isn't acceptable on this forum. (which is good because you're obviously not very good at deciding that kind of stuff). |
These Forums are intended to be at least somewhat self-policing - that is, we curb ourseves from the most egregious behaviors and do what we can to criticize the behavior of our peers and encourage the use of this place as a stimulating source of frank - and honest - discussion.
From the Forum Guidelines page :
It should be noted that, like all things, these rules will continue to change and evolve with constructive feedback from users and from experience (...) Self-policing by the community at large is encouraged. Please take a moment and read over your comments before you post
One way to look at it is that we are, all of us, collaborating in small ways to determine and create modes of acceptable behavior here, though what I really think Ya-ta Boy was saying is that it is not acceptable as a true statement to present a generalization that is false as anything other than a lie.
And let's be honest. Your purpose in starting this thread was not to inform or persuade, or even to offer well-meant and constructive criticism, but rather it was just to offer snaide remarks on supposed hypocricy among liberals. |
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flakfizer
Joined: 12 Nov 2004
Location: scaling the Cliffs of Insanity with a frayed rope.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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What is it exactly that I am supposed to document? That liberals used the exact words I did or that they reacted differently to different incidences of religious icon desecration? I did document what I assumed everyone clearly remembered. It would have been like documenting that Letterman and Leno made a bunch of O.J. Simpson jokes. I remember the ACLU, Susan Sarandon and her ilk fighting Giuliani and the Catholic League about that Ofili work. Don't remember? Type in "Ofili" "sarandon" "Brooklyn Museum" and you'll get a bunch of stuff. Now, when the ACLU and Suzie's Hollywood squad vociferously defend the desecration of the Koran, then I will no longer say that liberals react differently to the desecration of different religious icons. As for the differences in reactions around the world to desecrations...
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/op_columnists/article/0,2565,ALBQ_19865_3805062,00.html
Oh, and Bobster. Keep up the good "self-policing" work. I remember how well it worked with The Urban Myth. |
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endofthewor1d
Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: the end of the wor1d.
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| Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
And let's be honest. Your purpose in starting this thread was not to inform or persuade, or even to offer well-meant and constructive criticism, but rather it was just to offer snaide remarks on supposed hypocricy among liberals. |
come now, bobster. have you never posted something solely for the purpose of offering snide remarks about the other side? |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:54 am Post subject: |
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| flakfizer wrote: |
| Now, when the ACLU and Suzie's Hollywood squad vociferously defend the desecration of the Koran, then I will no longer say that liberals react differently to the desecration of different religious icons. |
There is a very large distinction that you fail to make between so-called "desecrations" that are actually works of art that no one forces anyone to look at in a free society where is largely seen as part and parcel of public debate - and the trashing of a holy book as part of either punishment or interrogation by a nation that claims to support religious tolerance and respect for other faiths.
Do you need that distinction spelled out more precisely than this?
From the article above liniked :
| Quote: |
Jassem al-Kharafi, the parliament speaker in Kuwait, called for a White House investigation into the allegation - which Newsweek says was wrong in the first place - because, he said, desecrating the Quran is "a major crime against more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world."
If desecrating the Quran is a "major crime," where do assassination, beheading and other such butchery rate? |
Wow, flakfizer has an opinion, and in order to support it he brings us another guy with an opinion ... who also displays an equal degree of being completely off-base.
The assassinations and beheadings are not being carried out by 1.2 billion muslims in the world, flak. But when the Koran is urinated upon, this is in fact being done to 1.2 billion muslims.
| Quote: |
| Oh, and Bobster. Keep up the good "self-policing" work. I remember how well it worked with The Urban Myth. |
Largely nonsequiteur, but certainly in the spirit of this thread's intent as described earlier ... snide remarks, and little more.
As for TUM, I haven't read all of his posts lately, but the possibility exists that he has toned down his tendency for racist remarks, especially since the incident a few weeks ago where he made an ambiguoius reference to a Korean friend of mine and used the word "slant" - I never had a problem with him or others voicing such things here, but hate speech is against the TOS, and it puts Mr Sperling at risk of lawsuits, lawsuits that could kill the entire site.
I've also noticed that since I got a little too busy to take as much interest in these forujms lately, one or two others have decided to call racist remarks and bigoted statements what they are. "Self-policing" is the term used in the Forum Guidelines, which I quoted and linked to. It's not just me.
Accept my invitation to disparage people of other religions, nationalities and races all you like, but it's illogical to wish to be able to do so and also wish that others not call it what it is.
endofthewor1d
| Quote: |
| come now, bobster. have you never posted something solely for the purpose of offering snide remarks about the other side? |
I might be guilty, though we may disagree on specific instances - why not provide one? Next time I do it, feel free to call my snide remarks what they are. |
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endofthewor1d
Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: the end of the wor1d.
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
endofthewor1d
| Quote: |
| come now, bobster. have you never posted something solely for the purpose of offering snide remarks about the other side? |
I might be guilty, though we may disagree on specific instances - why not provide one? Next time I do it, feel free to call my snide remarks what they are. |
i don't care enough about this to go hunting around for your posts. mostly because i'm far more guilty than either of you of this offense. the large majority of the times i post on the current events forum is to offer remarks which are utterly worthless outside of the value of their snideness.
however, i don't believe that was the sole intention of the original poster of this thread. and i do see an element of truth to the gist of it. the simple fact is that there are a lot of basic inanimate objects which people with one delusion hold sacred and people with different delusions do not. how many american flags are being burnt as i type this message? anything about it on cnn? i'm sure somewhere in the world right now someone is having a dump in a bible in front of a christian prisoner. if the media got wind of it (there's a potential pun in there somewhere) do you think they would even bother covering it? i don't. right now the u.s. and christianity are on top of the world. others can desecrate symbols of these things, and it makes about as much difference as a guy flipping the finger at a charging rhinocerous.
but to pee on a koran.... that's kicking a man when he's down.
is either one right? of course not. is either one so terribly ghastly? of course not.
i, for one, don't necessarily see it as hypocracy, but more like a knee-jerk politically correct instinct. but whatever it is, i can't be bothered to go hunting around for links to prove that a lot of people (call them 'liberals' if you like) do have this attitude. i had to endure so much of it in my university days.
at the end of the day, people's thoughts and attitudes can't be proven. but surely they can be recognised. this forum is not a courtroom. there are no prizes for winners nor penalties for losers. there is no burden of proof for things that cannot possibly be proven. so i can't see why it's wrong for flakfizer to make a comment on an attitude that he finds disturbing about a large portion of society. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| flakfizer wrote: |
| What is it exactly that I am supposed to document? That liberals used the exact words I did or that they reacted differently to different incidences of religious icon desecration? I did document what I assumed everyone clearly remembered. |
The only thing you've "documented" is your own assumptions about how 'liberals' react to incidences of religious image desecration. And you haven't demonstrated that anything you said happened, really happened. I remember mainline Christian churches -- liberal and conservative -- criticizing Piss Christ, and I remember congressional officials -- liberal and conservative -- wondering if this was a good use of NEA money. |
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