You apparently misunderstood me. My comments were directed towards S. Vertigo and his tongue-in-cheek statements such as "Bush is a true patriot and a national treasure" and his implication that people who support Bush are attempting to inject such POV statements into the Wikipedia. My comments were in no way directed towards you. -Slowking Man ----- Original Message ----- From: Geoff Burlingmailto:llywrch@agora.rdrop.com To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.orgmailto:wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 10:53 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Viajero/Zero and Lance6 - POV terms
*snip*
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Christopher Larberg wrote:
I'm not attempting to railroad this discussion off-track, but perhaps you could find better places to post your sarcastically anti-American vitriol.
This one caught me off-guard & took me some time to compose a response.
The point of my examples was to select some that were not as emotion-laden as the other ones we've discussed on this list: killings related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, White Supremacy, German-Polish relations. In trying to frame how to explain the facts & opinions, we too often get distracted by repeating the "facts". I had tried to pick some examples that would allow me to help everyone see where I was going, rather than become distracted with the ladder I was using to get us there. I obviously failed at this by my selection of controversial examples, & I'm sorry about that.
However, as a U.S. citizen, I was under the impression that I was free to criticize any public figure, as long as I did not indulge in slander or libel. None of the things I wrote were either, & I am deeply offended that by exercising my right to free speech I am seen as being unfaithful to my country. Especially as that email has been the only time I said anything on this email list that could be considered critical of my country. And for the record, away from Wikipedia I am far less kind & restrained about what I say about the goofballs who are unashamedly grinding my country into the mud.
Geoff