--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > - In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > > > Notice that Curtis fails to acknowledge his error in > > > > eagerly adopting Barry's ass-backwards interpretation > > > > of my question to Curtis as to whether "The Simpsons" > > > > and "The Family Guy" were funny, or mean. > > > > > > Actually it was his analysis of your shifting of the > > > discussion from the topic to "Curtis is bad because..." > > > that interested me about Barry's post. > > > > I'll deal with this bit of nonsense and the rest of > > the post later. Here I want to address one point: > > > > > The fact that you failed to make it clear that you had > > > never seen the shows is irrelevant to me. > > > > > > > Nor does Curtis acknowledge what he knows to be the > > > > case (yes, Joe, "knows," because he's been the one > > > > directly involved in this discussion) that virtually > > > > everything *else* Barry said about that discussion > > > > was factually wrong. (Specific documentation on > > > > request.) > > > > > > You are not going to get away with this dodge Judy. Both > > > Barry and I didn't know you had never seen the Simpsons > > > and you let us know. Pin on a medal for being right about > > > something we couldn't have known from your writing and > > > move on, unless you are trying to sidestep the important > > > points. > > > > Too funny. You're in Barry's Master of Inadvertent > > Irony territory here, Curtis. > > > > That I hadn't seen the shows was the *least* of > > Barry's "mistakes" in that post and is indeed > > irrelevant to the actual issues I dealt with in my > > response. > > > > The biggie > > For you. > > was that he assumed I was suggesting the > > shows were "mean," when in fact I was suggesting > > they were *funny*. > > None of it mattered because we didn't know you hadn't > seen the shows.
And *I'm* the sophist in this discussion?? Wow. Curtis: "I'm just wondering if this disapproval of mocking religious claims extends to TV cartoon satires cuz that would pretty much knock out my favorite shows on Sunday night, the Simpsons and the Family Guy. "I have a feeling this is a Curtis-only policy." Me: "Are they really funny, or are they just mean?" Translation: If they're really funny, no, my disapproval wouldn't extend to those shows. What I disapprove of is *mean* mockery. If they're not really funny, if they're mean, then, yes, my disapproval would extend to them. Translation of translation: Whether I've seen them doesn't matter. I stated my criteria for disapproval, which is what you were asking about. > Once we knew that your point is moot. Who cares if you > think something is funny if you haven't seen it. I *assume* they're funny because they're so popular. That isn't an unreasonable assumption. But that wasn't the point anyway; you weren't asking me whether I thought the shows were funny. My "policy" would be the same whether they were funny or mean. > I didn't need to address it. You needed to acknowledge that it wasn't a "Curtis-only policy." It was a mean-only policy. You're hardly the only person who mocks religion in a mean way. You asked a question about my "policy." I answered it. Barry assumed I was implying the shows were mean and based his entire lengthy demonization rant on that mistaken assumption. You congratulated and thanked him for it when you *should* have guessed from my Carlin comment that I wasn't doing that at all. <snip> > Barry said a lot of things. I focused on the fact that > he hit my main beef with you in this exchange which was > to shift the conversation to me being mean. Nooooo, you didn't. You said: "Goddamn Barry! You just handed me at least an hour of my life back today responding to Judy. Thanks man. Now I can get back to this Blind Boy Fuller song I'm working one with nothing to add here." No "focusing on" anything there, sorry. Just a blanket seal of approval, nothing you needed to add. He'd said it all. And even so, Barry didn't say anything about my having "shifted the conversation" to you being mean. According to him, that's all I was *ever* talking about from the start. Which, as you know, was not the case. So that excuse goes into the crapper as well. <snip> > You did shift our discussion of challenging religious > claims into a discussion of "bad Curtis." I have come to > expect this from you and when it happens I usually state > my case and you have the last word which is fine with me. Let's have a look at this. You told Willytex that if he didn't believe and follow every word of every scripture, he had made the same choices you had. I commented that--"speaking for myself" was the phrase I used--I didn't believe *any* scripture, but that I chose not to insult and demean religious people. So our choices were different in that regard. *That* is where you took offense. That's where the discussion "shifted." But here's the fun part: I didn't shift it, *you* did. I had just made a side comment on your post to Willytex about *my* choices, but all of a sudden the discussion became about how I was portraying you as "Bad Curtis." You and Barry started batting around the term "mockery" as if that's what I had been focusing on. You claimed I was shielding religious people as if they were "delicate children whose feelings must not be hurt by someone challenging the idea as unsupported by reasonable evidence." Which was a crock, as I said. And when I objected to that crock, you pretended you had been referring to my criticizing you for indulging in mockery. That was also a crock. I had only mentioned mockery once at that point, to describe your use of the term "special," which sounded to me like the Church Lady (you subsequently denied that). Since *you* had shifted the discussion to mockery, I then explained why I thought mockery was less effective than addressing behavior and made the distinction between funny and mean, the latter being the least effective of all. And then the discussion became entirely about how I had said you were mean--after a good dozen posts from each of us in which that had never come up. Man, once you've decided to confuse an issue, you do a really fine job of it. It's virtually impossible to untangle so as to show what actually went on. And if I take a stab at it, as I've done above (and I've had to leave out a *lot* of your fancy two-stepping and misrepresentation), you conveniently bow out of the discussion with some dismissive remark, as you'll do this time as well. You can take your sophistry and shove it where the sun don't shine. Once again, *you* know I know what you've done and how you've done it. You just trust that nobody else will see through it. And you're probably right.
