Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
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Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!rrizzo
From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Form and Substance
Message-ID: <1005@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 11-Oct-84 18:51:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.1005
Posted: Thu Oct 11 18:51:33 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Oct-84 06:13:04 EDT
References: <947@phs.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 46

Come off it!! Are you serious??  That the complaint(s) is Arndt is
"unsupportive", "unintelligible", "rude"?  Do you actually read
either Arndt's or anyone else's postings in net.motss?  (I'm get-
ting tired of asking this rather rhetorical question, but the
myopia on this net is just unbelievable!)

SOME of the complaints against belligerent f*ckups like Arndt & Brunson 
are that they're bigoted, insulting, exhibitionistic in really loathsome
ways (like, for example, street psychotics), filled with hatred and
self-hatred, etc. etc.  And this adds up to merely "rude"?  Is it
merely "rude" to call a group of blacks "filthy niggers" who ought
to be "hung from the nearest available tree" AND then launch into,
say, "rational" discussion of race relations and the legislative
agenda before Congress?  And then swerve into a polemic denouncing
funding for sickle cell anemia ("Let 'em die!  We'll finally have
social peace!"), and discourse repetitively & at great length about
the genetic disposition of black men to commit rape (of white women,
that is)?
"Unsupportive", "unintelligible", & "rude".   Are we even speaking
the same language (English, that is)?  Sometimes I really wonder.

No one would make coherence or "supportiveness" (whatever that term
means) a criterion for posting messages on this net, considering the
character of much net mail.

A newsgroup moderator won't function to "translate" rant into
a kind of rational filtrate: the whole point about the Arndt
Phenomenon is that bigoted and deliberately offensive postings 
are totally unacceptable.  NO exchange will occur unless parti-
cipants observe MINIMUM standards of civility & respect for each
other.  And indulging, revelling in, something as vile as blatant
and uninhibited bigotry on the net simply won't be tolerated, at
least not in this newsgroup. 

Here's a suggestion for assigning "penances" to offenders who "repent"
(fat chance!):  ban them from publication or even summarizing in
mod.motss for as long a period as they've been "sinning", in the case
of Arndt, one whole year (so Ken can't expect to rejoin the fray until
November 1985).  Of course, for Arndts & Brunsons it would be entirely
just to ban them permanently, & I don't mean to argue against this
option at all.


  		    "Words, words, words: I know not what they mean."

		    Ron Rizzo