--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > Well Judge Judy has convicted me for being a cop and handing > out tickets, though I am not sure what the ticket I seem to > have issued was for. > > What is my sentence Judge?
Just for the fun of it, Xeno, and because you haven't been around for the Judge Judy act as long as some of us have, here's a Golden Oldie from alt.m.t. from 2002. Note that her role(s) have not changed in all this time, and that the question I posed at the end has never really been answered: From: Uncle Tantra (tantric...@aol.com) Subject: Judge Judy and her Many Hats View: Complete Thread (8 articles) Original Format Newsgroups: alt.meditation.transcendental Date: 2002-11-07 12:04:39 PST Not rushing off to an appointment now, with a little more time to deal with: Judge Judy: > > > What could the difference be? Could it be that you don't get > > > "bored" because you don't have any trouble demolishing Petrus's > > > arguments and consequently get to be right yourself a whole lot? Unc: > > It could be that Petrus, despite his faults, has never shown > > a tendency to harbor a grudge, seemingly forever, and be > > unable to get past it. Judge Judy: > No, I don't think that could be it. I think that's another one > of your cobbled-together excuses. I think you'd be very hard-put > to come up with a plausible reason why I might "harbor a grudge" > against you, first of all. Perhaps what you meant to say was that > Petrus doesn't remind you of your past failures as I do; but > that's quite different from "harboring a grudge." Judge Judy has spoken, declaring "past failures." More on this later. :-) > And, of course, he doesn't *know* about your past failures > because he wasn't here then. With someone he's been arguing > with for a while, he's only too ready to repeat past accusations. > Plus which, if you wanted to go back and check, you'd see that I > tend to start fresh in any discussion that begins with apparent > good intentions, regardless of past conflicts. It's only when > your old bad behavior resurfaces that I've reminded you of it. Judge Judy accuses the plaintiff of "bad behavior," as usual without defining it. Look, Jude, here's the thing. I hadn't really thought about it in these terms before, but now that I have, you're just gonna have to sit there and endure MY point of view on all this. :-) You like to run this newsgroup. To do so, you wear many HATS. There is the hat that says, JUDY THE PARTICIPANT. Then there is the hat that says, JUDY THE WHINY, ABUSED PARTICIPANT. And, of course, there is the hat that says JUDY THE REFEREE, and the ultimate hat, JUDGE JUDY. How *I* see what you do here is that you start your various arguments fairly sanely, and all goes well as long as the other party plays by your rules. Then the following schizo- phrenic dialog takes place. JUDY THE PARTICIPANT: Logic dictates A, B and C. VICTIM: I don't have to agree with that. Logic is a made-up convention, restricts me to a limited number of choices like A, B and C, and what I really believe is X, Y and Z. JUDY THE WHINY, ABUSED PARTICIPANT: You can't do that. It's illogical. It's cheating. VICTIM: Why can't I? JUDY THE REFEREE: Because it's against the rules. VICTIM: Who made up the rules. JUDGE JUDY: I did. VICTIM: Oh. Well, what happens if I don't agree with the "rules" and agree to play by them. JUDGE JUDY: You lose. You are a cheater. See, the first problem is that you actually believe that conversations in cyberspace are a game that you can WIN. That's your first mistake. The second problem is that you actually believe that you can declare what the RULES are of the game you feel compelled to win. The third problem is that you reserve the right to act as JUDY THE REFEREE whenever one of your opponents violates the rules that you made up and attempted to impose on an entire newsgroup. Some see this as slipping on the JUDY THE WHINY, ABUSED PARTICIPANT hat and screaming "No fair." Even if it were a contest, no participant in any contest anywhere in the world has the right to "call foul." That just marks them as a whiner. But oh, I forgot, YOU can do it, by simply slipping on the JUDY THE REFEREE hat. :-) Finally, when the poor victim gives up on trying to debate with all these multiple personalities, JUDGE JUDY steps in and declares JUDY THE PARTICIPANT the winner. It's a really silly game, and I am amazed that no one here calls you on it. YOU get to define the rules, YOU get to call foul when someone violates the rules YOU made up, and YOU get to declare yourself the winner when the poor victim gives up on having a rational discussion with a schizophrenic. :-) I am hoping that, now that I have provided a set of nomen- clature for busting this behavior, that others will use it, too. In the future, every time you're in a discussion with Judy and she puts on a hat other than 'PARTICIPANT,' CALL HER ON IT. This place is NOT a place for formal debate. It's a place to swap opinions, in whatever format any of the participants feel like swapping them. Judy does NOT run things, however much she pushes out that she does. It is my honest opinion that this newsgroup is the cesspool it is BECAUSE of Judy, because she has set things up here to run the way she likes them, and the vast majority of other participants have never had the balls to do things another way. There are many other ways. I know of a lot of spiritual discussion forums where it is NOT considered de rigeur to win arguments by character assassination, or by appeal to rules that were written up by one person and imposed on the rest of the people. You could have such a forum here, if every so often you would just point out that Judy has put on one of her other "hats," and is attempting to run things again. But will anyone have the balls to do so? That remains to be seen... Unc, wearing his TROUBLEMAKER hat :-)
