Re: Everyone, please read: Will & Scottie especially!

Since I've recently returned from a 5 day trip and am wading through the
remnants of 262 e-mails, I haven't read all replies to Scottie's incendiary
remarks.

Every reply I have read so far, though, seems to miss an important fact --
Scottie was including himself in the group he was telling to "fuck off" --
"hand-wringing atheists." In the past I've known him to take a somewhat low
view of religious faith in general and to have declared Freud to be his very own
Moses, and when I read this part of his post I understood him to be setting all
that aside to enjoy the spirit of the season -- and perhaps to make a positive
nod toward some of the better fruits of religion, particularly Christianity,
which tend to come out around this time of year.

But Stephen's reaction is a pretty good indication of how words by themselves
cannot necessarily be understood "as the author intended them" without some
knowledge external to the author's text.

I could be completely mistaken about Scottie's intent, of course, but then that
would also support my point.

Jim

Stephen wrote:

> > (Yes, CHRISTMAS dammit - & all you yids,
> > wogs, chinks & hand-wringing atheists can fuck off.)
> snip...
> >
> > Please weigh in with your reactions.
>
> My reaction? I find the above comments to be very offensive. I don't want to
> trade parallel 'insults', that is not a sign of affection to me, rough or
> otherwise. What amazes me is that after someone found these "tokens of rough
> affection" to be offensive there was a defense of them. I believe an apology
> is in order.
>
> Stephen
>
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Received on Thu Dec 26 22:37:43 2002