Charles Matthews wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote
Of course bad faith trolling is not to be condoned, but the same can't be said of good faith trolling when it succeeds in waking people up.
Ray, troll-folk are not slow to make this argument for themselves. I hardly think this list needs its complacency undermined, or whatever you think you're doing with this special pleading. It is wretched stuff.
I agree that fisherman are competent at baiting their hooks. I would never have taken the participants on this list to be complacent; if anything, they have a tendency for the other extreme. We're full of Humpty Dumptys whose words mean exactly what they choose them to mean - neither more nor less. I would not consider my consideration of a word to be so lofty as to require "special" pleading. If a pleading it be, I would think it more properly directed to the pleasures of language, and to an appreciation of the subtleties that light a contrary meaning in a sky of darkness. "Wretched," yes. It is important to be charitable towa\rd those wallowing hippo wretches on the litoral of the litteral sea. :-)
Ec