Xref: utzoo soc.culture.jewish:8464 news.misc:2186 news.sysadmin:1746
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!galen!paw3c
From: paw3c@galen.acc.virginia.edu (Pat Wilson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,news.misc,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Anti-Semitism (Jew-hatred) on the network. What should be done?
Message-ID: <279@galen.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 88 15:51:44 GMT
References: <1748YZKCU@CUNYVM> <3616@phri.UUCP> <1752YZKCU@CUNYVM>
Organization: AT&T System Admin, Uva. Med Center
Lines: 37

In article <1752YZKCU@CUNYVM>, YZKCU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Yaakov Kayman) writes:
> 
> I normally try very hard to avoid profanity, sometimes with more success
> than at other times, but "F___ OFF YOU JEWISH B____" is anything but a
> joke, and deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms by responsible
> adults, who have a moral obligation to discourage deliberately offensive
> behavior.
> 
> Humor that is deliberately offensive tends to bring out the worst in
> people.
> 
> Do we not now see that?

Sigh.  You must be new to the net, or have never posted anything
controversial.  I'm sorry for Nancy that she got some nasty
e-mail, but it's no worse than anything else I've seen.  The fact
that the adjective "jewish" is in there is really not a big deal.

Usenet, as has been pointed out again and again, is a public
forum.  Our particular way of communicating has a lot of
drawbacks, not the least of which is that typing at your keyboard
is _very_ distancing - people often find themselves "saying"
things in anger that they wouldn't in a face-to-face (or even
voice-to-voice) conversation.  There's also the problem that
it's incredibly easy to send mail to a poster, and mail (unlike
news) can't be recalled.

If you're concerned about harrassing e-mail, or harrassing
postings, the first thing to do is to contact the poster.  The
second place to go is the poster's system administrator.  Spaf
and Erik probably can't do anything about it anyway.


-- 

Pat Wilson
paw3c@acc.virginia.edu || uunet!virginia!paw3c || paw3c@virginia.BITNET