[WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!
Sheldon Rampton
sheldon.rampton at verizon.net
Thu Jun 3 15:52:00 UTC 2004
Stan Shebs wrote:
>Because there's no possible excuse for personal attacks. It doesn't
>matter how strongly you feel about the issue, your personal history,
>nothing.
The people who think that Abe *initiated* personal attacks should
take another look at the title of this thread. This entire discussion
is taking place in the context of an attack on Abe in which a
proposal is on the table to ban him. Moreover, the discussion here
has been mean-spirited and unfair. Abe posted the text of an article
he wrote about the failings of the Soviet economy. I read the
article, and I could see that it contained several clear, strong
criticisms of Stalinist policies that hurt the economy. Nevertheless,
Fred and others responded to the article by waxing nasty and
sarcastic. They cherry-picked phrases out of the article that made it
sound like Abe was blaming workers for poor productivity, and then
threw in gratuitous accusations of being an apologist for dictators
because in their opinion Fred's article didn't say enough about the
Soviet gulags. As far as I can see, Fred is the one who initiated
this attack, and he did it dishonestly. He has a different POV than
Abe, and he's trying to resolve it by having him banned and by
warring about the content of his article on this listserv.
Sure, Abe shouldn't have called Fred "senile," but in the overall
context of nasty discourse that has characterized this thread, I
don't think Abe's comment stands out as being more egregious than the
insults that have been thrown his way.
--Sheldon Rampton
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