caroljane

This Sunday's Questions 5 & 6 should be instructive. Character and silliness will both be dealt with.Sterlingly and seriously I trust.

To Diana Hsieh, Don't you know that there's no such thing as bad publicity?

...but making fun of ME can never be moral! I am a superior competent productive non-silly Prominent Intellectual with very nice teeth!

MULTICULTURE NEWS After decades of strenuous grim effort, the Scottish-Canadian community has finally received its rightful recognition, with the adoption of the Maple Leaf Tartan as an official symbol of Canada. This tartan,designed in 1964, now joins the beaver and the loon as a hallmark of our culture. Heritage Minister James Candour said today that the addition of the tartan is a tribute to the Scottish community which "for four hundred years has made great contributions to our national progress and culture." It's about bluidy time they said thank you! So take a bow, MacDonald, McWilliam, McKeever, McShcerk--or if ye're wearin' yer kilts, take a curtsey. And keep on making those contributions-- I need your tax money to pay my exorbitant wages. Jacobita

Lose tonight, Boston. Lose, Carolina. LOOOOOOOOOOOOSE.

[XRay] Something just crossed my mind ... Hmmm ... OMG, could it be that ... - Carol (nudge, nudge (whispering) psst: Could it be that we were on the false track all along, and that the trail does not lead to Duckburg and Scrooge McDuck, but right to this luxurious hotel, with its silver service, best china, and the dark horse billionaire WN sitting right in front of us? And I bragged about my sleuthing abilities while seing nothing - shame on me! [***disclaimer** pure banter of course, but one can never know whether some people who are not into bantering might take it at face value] OMGOMGOMG! Could it be? More than we ever hoped for - not just money, but OLD money - cash, class, culture - let's not get too excited - we've been burned before....

One of the things I love about Objectivists is your dogged, unquenchable optimism. As a Synaeshtho-Fatalist I find it a very attractive quality.

Where did you see this? What kind of 'dole'? I would like to know more about this story. Mother Earth made reference to the Harvard Professor Uh, Adam, it looks like a fine example of free-market value trading between the Monitor Group and Mo here. Hope Cheney enjoyed sunny Tripoli. You really can't blame Obama for this one. (smiley face)

The father of one of my son's friends is so permanently infuriated at the Leafs that he goes down to the ACC some game nights, just to greet the ingoing crowd with his harangue on how much and in what ways they suck. This man runs a successful business but I better not say where.His son is embarrassed enough.

As the slow torture continues, let us hark back to the golden days that we did not know were golden, when hockey only happened once a week within the six teams, and the voice of Foster Hewitt followed the puck from player to player... and mangled their names, all of them, even the English ones, even the one-syllable ones...that was torture too...there's no escape, even in nostalgia... Thank Gord the Royal Wedding is coming up.

Carol, Do you accept this kind of instruction without compunction? I didn't think you were that easy. Michael I accept instructions only from my Control at the Sacred Igloo, who conveys messages in secret ways through many unwitting messengers. Hmmm-- let me read your and Adam's posts again ...mwahahaha....

William, I think you're - you're - well, you're not quite respectable. There. I said it! And I'm not sorry!

The term "public figure" is in common usage to mean a person known to the general public, those outside their own profession. It may indeed be defined in legal terms for purposes of determining how defamation would damage reputation and reduce income; that hardly makes it a "notion" which has nothing to do with civility. The level of privacy and civility which celebrities can and should expect is regularly debated whenever an actor slugs a paparrazzo. You can define "public figure" however you like. Why I don't understand is why you and Phil seem to think that insulting a "public figure" somehow differs from insulting a public poster on an internet forum. I am attempting to get a reasonably clear picture -- mainly from Phil but also from you -- of what "civility" is and why incivility (in the form of insults or whatever) is supposedly a bad thing. Ghs OK, I think incivility is a bad thing for an individual to practise regularly, in discussion/debate or in daily life. In debate, it's ad hominem. In life, it's bad hombre-ism. Over to you, Phil.

Nancy Pelosi and most other politicians are not "famous outside their own spheres." They are not famous for anything other than being politicians, but they are regarded as "public figures" nonetheless. Indeed, most local politicians are not famous at all, but they are still regarded as public figures. I have published three books on atheism. Does this make me a public figure? If so, how does publishing a book differ in principle from publishing thousands of posts on the Internet? Ghs Of course Nancy Pelosi is famous outside her own sphere, which is other politicans.I'm not a politician or even an American, and I've heard of her. The source of her fame (being a politician) is beside the point. Elected and want-to-be elected politicians are, or certainly should be, known to the general public outside their own party. If they are elected they are representing and being paid by the public, they certainly become public figures in both senses. In the arts, success requires the practitioner to court publicity, which as we know can result in monetary success even when the practitioner has no talent in his particular art. Bad writers can become famous, for example. Publishing books does not make anyone a public figure; it is the degree to which the writer becomes a "household name" outside the sphere of other writers, and enthusiasts of the writer's subject matter, which determines how public a figure he is. But you know all this already. So do we all.

The term "public figure" is in common usage to mean a person known to the general public, those outside their own profession. It may indeed be defined in legal terms for purposes of determining how defamation would damage reputation and reduce income; that hardly makes it a "notion" which has nothing to do with civility. The level of privacy and civility which celebrities can and should expect is regularly debated whenever an actor slugs a paparrazzo.

Poor Uncle Max! He was no oil painting that's for sure, but he left a lot of them to us, even though his decadent descendants are trying to steal them. Carol proud New Brunswicker

It could plausibly be argued that anyone who posts frequently on internet forums accessible to the general public thereby makes himself or herself a "public figure." Ghs No. Frequent posters want to share their correspondence with as wide an audience as possible. Public figures are famous outside their own spheres, or forums. They are "celebrities".

I am curious whether Orwell's remarks, especially about Lord Beaverbrook looking like "a monkey on a stick," would pass Phil's civility test. Would he have told Orwell that there is no good reason to insult a person on the basis of his appearance? Would Phil have held up his own supposedly polite style as a model that Orwell should have followed? Ghs Beaverbrook did look like a monkey, and he knew it. I wonder if this was published in one of his newspapers. Surely you realize that civility towards the powerful, practiced by journalists, becomes servility via deference in very short order. Orwell certainly did. It has nothing to do with debate between frenemies in internet correspondence. I said nothing about "internet correspondence." I merely asked if Orwell's remark was civil. Do you regard it as civil to describe someone as "a monkey on a stick"? You say that Beaverbrook knew that he looked like a monkey. Okay, suppose someone knows he is a fat slob. Is it then not an insult to call him a fat slob? Suppose Phil knows that most of his posts are bland and pedantic. Would it then be civil for me to call them bland and pedantic? If you have standards of civility in matters of writing, then state what they are. Your ad hoc musings will get us nowhere. Ghs Beaverbrook was a public figure, a proprietor of tabloids who refined the art of mudslinging, and he had the hide of a rhino against whatever was slung at him. Of course, his personal sensitivity or insensitivity are not to the point. I repeat, he was a public figure, and then as now was required to bear public incivilities, if not outright defamations. It came, and comes, with the territory.To answer your question, Orwell's simile is not especially civil, though it's one of the more civil things Lord Copper has been called. "Matters of writing" is too vague, but I will answer to what I think is your intent. An internet forum is an interesting extension of the tradition of private correspondence among literary and intellectual figures, who shared and commented on these missives. With computers we can just do it faster. The standards of civility were those of the times and of the individual writers, as they are now. We write each according to our own standards, and we may try to persuade others to adopt our standards, but we can't impose them. So I have my standards, you have yours, Phil has his and so on. Bottom line, Michael has his standards and it's his call. There has seldom been any civility whatsoever in literary criticism, so if you are trying to introduce some, more power to you.

Tony, Objectivism is as Objectivists do. I wonder if part of your thoughts came after the recent exchange between Brant and Phil, about the everyday habit of joking and engaging with the random people we meet briefly in everyday situations. I do this too,and always have, just lifelong habit from nature and nurture. As I get older I realize more what an emotional lift there is from these brief connections - disproportionate to their briefness and inconsequentiality. It keeps the universe benevolent - or, as the scientists could likely prove, raises the natural, irrational level of optimism that got us up on our hind legs and out of Africa and onto the Internet. You are still in Africa but I think you know what I mean. Carol

I am curious whether Orwell's remarks, especially about Lord Beaverbrook looking like "a monkey on a stick," would pass Phil's civility test. Would he have told Orwell that there is no good reason to insult a person on the basis of his appearance? Would Phil have held up his own supposedly polite style as a model that Orwell should have followed? Ghs Beaverbrook did look like a monkey, and he knew it. I wonder if this was published in one of his newspapers. Surely you realize that civility towards the powerful, practiced by journalists, becomes servility via deference in very short order. Orwell certainly did. It has nothing to do with debate between frenemies in internet correspondence.

Rand: Adam and Tony. Two more first-handers who have somehow survived this existential swamp. More than I expected, really, but not enough to rebuild a moral world. Roark: Likely we'll find lots more in that Solo place. BLAM!!! Roark: Lookout for those floating abstractions, they can land on you anytime after one of these blasts. Sometimes they float for years.

Phil, I check them out too. I am wondering: What happened to Rosie the lawyer with the seatbelt? She seemed to be a fairly obsessive poster and then she just vanished. Is she posting somewhere else now? Also, do LP's "op-eds" ever get published anywhere except on his own site? Enquiring minds want to know.

There's truth in this quip. I think after a while we all read osmotically* - we absorb what most interests us, and along with the thoughts expressed in a particular post we take in our impression of the writer himself, and often think we know what they might or might not have written on a particular subject. Here for example, Phil had no particular reason to think me socialistic from whatever posts of mine he had read. I should clarify that I don't believe that any governmental system, including the one I favour, is automatically "best" for every situation, just as unions are not necessary or appropriate in every workplace. *Ba'al excepted

[quote name='pippi' timestamp='1299564751' post='12 What would Howard Roark or Rand even think if they happened to read this thread? pippi Roark: I want to blow up this place. Rand: You want to, but it is not your place to blow up, as you did not design, build or purchase it Roark: You're putting words in my mouth again. I wish you'd cut that ou... Rand: Exactly. It is I without whom this place would not exist, and where my ideas are used in ways I do not approve of, therefore it is my intellectual property . Mine! Roark: So do I get the dynamite? Rand: Yes. I will delegate Pippi to gather the few rational, productive men of the mind and explain their new freedom to them. Not the three-hour speech though, we are behind schedule. What is the next stop again? Roark: Someplace called Solo Passion. Rand: Sounds interesting....

George, I can relate to this. I've always had a problem with authority (especially the self-appointed kind, but the other kind, too). I've always been sassy to those in power I didn't respect, but I've always gravitated toward the power position. I haven't lived this over and over because I like power (I don't), but because--in the places I have been--the people in charge kept screwing things up and I wanted to see them done right. (For example, that's the main reason I became a conductor. Not because I loved conducting. But because I got tired of being the principal trombonist in an orchestra where a series of jerks waving a stick were butchering masterpieces and getting away with it.) Today, because of the way this Internet forum stuff developed, I'm an authority of sorts. And guess what? Now I have a problem with me! What the hell am I supposed to do here on OL? Put up with me? Dayaamm! (That's a quip, but there's too much truth behind it for comfort...) Michael Michael Stuart Kelly! You just do what your wife tells you and look sharp about it! You'll be fine.