[A-List] A comment - 1

[Michael Keaney]

My harshness and vulgarity perhaps detract  from and makes it impossible
to 
look at this history for what it is. If my  persona in the virtual world
needs 
adjustment  . . . fine.

*****

Melvin, as someone who is on record as appreciative of your past
contributions and who has learned much from them and about the tradition
they represent, your harshness and vulgarity, as you put it, are usually
a very small price to pay. We all have our flaws and beautifully
composed hypertext is no guarantee of correctness or insight, or, as Jim
often highlights, anything of actual use. The situation surrounding Don
Imus presently is a good opportunity for reflection on the uses of
language and its ability to reinforce stereotypes, to exclude, to
demean, to belittle, to act invidiously. There are words I could never
use that you can and do use, and this is fine because they possess a
different meaning as used by you. The very best I could achieve with
them would be to appear utterly pretentious.

Sabri has written often of the limitations of this medium and the
tendency for people to misunderstand or miscommunicate. Knowing that, I
spend much more time going over my writing in order to minimise the
potential for misunderstanding than before. This takes away a lot of
freshness and directness that animate many of your messages, for
example, but for me it's a worthwhile adjustment of my virtual persona
if it does not give others the opportunity to detect imaginary slights
or attacks. It is all too common on lists that there are individuals
whose main focus seems to be upon lying in wait for the next contrived
opportunity to attack or bait or feign offence. The A-list is freer than
most of this tendency, which is one reason I believe we have so many
refugees from other lists here. Thanks to you, Henry and Charles, for
example, I am much more alive to the latent chauvinism and outright
racism that seems to animate so much discussion and practice elsewhere.
Greater female participation would, I believe, help us as a community to
achieve the same level of awareness as regards sexism. And so on. We
make do with the resources we have, and on this list that is already
rather a lot, imho. Thanks to everyone for making it so.

Michael


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