From: "Daniel J. Matyola": > Bruce is a troll, Lasse. You are right, Daniel. To what extent however, I only realised yesterday when he jumped at Roland and then started attacking the French. Earlier, when making fun of Norwegians/Scandinavians I though he mostly did it tongue in cheek. I didn't mind much when Bruce, and others, attacked Paal, because I knew, or thought, that he's the kind of person who really didn't care much about it. And, in Paal's own words, he can be an "a**hole" too. With Roland it's different. He was simply making a good natured OT Pentax remark about the Citroen that he drives, and got the most disgusting personal remarks from Bruce, followed by his rotten comments on the French.
>Responding only encourages him. When someone makes personal attack on another list member, the way Bruce did on Roland, I think it important that the list, irrelevant by whom, state that such behaviour is unacceptable.When it was such a low blow as Bruce's was, I don't think we should leave it to the one being attacked having to defend him/herself. That's why I objected to Bruce's attack on Roland. Then Bruce went on attacking the French. Evidently the only means we have to try to keep the list up to an acceptable standard is by verbally express objections. Whether it was a good idea, from the list point of view, to object to his posts or not, I don't know. >I thought you were better than that, but perhaps I was mistaken. > I am very interested in politics, foreign affairs, and the war, and I have > strong opinions on these subjects. I belong to lists devoted to these > topics, where we have lively and heated discussions. I just do not want > to discuss those topics here. I agree. That's why I made objections to Bruce's attack on the French in the first place. Maybe you did too, but I missed it. (However, I admit to the heresy of occasionally finding some OT flames amusing...) > Nor do I want to listen to MR's rude > remarks about the French I must have missed your objections to his remarks. >or your rude remarks about Americans. I am grateful that you at least adressed my comments on Bruce's post. This gives me another chance to set the record straight. In case you missed an earlier post of mine, my remarks were not (intended to be) about Americans, but on the moronism expressed by Bruce. (A moronism, which, as a type/specimen, I nevertheless did identify as an American one.) Nor were my remarks (intended to be) rude. I fell in a linguistic trap. I will try to explain why. The underlying Swedish phrase, which I (mistakenly) translated was "en typiskt amerikansk moronism". In English I wrote A "typical American moronism". The problem I did not foresee in this case, comes from the fact that in English the word "American" is being used both as a noun, meaning a person of American nationality, and as an adjective, like in "American music", or "American moronism". Swedish, being a language of germanic origin (like German, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) indicate adjectives by certain conjugations. An American [person] is in Swedish "en amerikan", but for an adjective you add (in this case) the suffixes "-sk" or "-skt" which means that the adjective "American" turns "amerikansk" (or "amerikanskt"). Furthermore the noun, meaning "an American", can not even be placed in the above position, where the English language allows it to be placed. Thus, in languages of Germanic origin, there won't even be a chance of misunderstanding, whether it is an adjective or a noun. (When I said "typical American moronism" I would think that most Scandinavians, and maybe the Germans too, (mis)understood my intention correctly - that I was addressing the moronism, and not the Americans. They would not have thought that I was referring to a "typical American".) Because of the above, it didn't even occur to me that my wordings could be interpreted as a comment about Americans. This was all my mistake. My bad. I already did, but I don't mind apologizing for it again. I do not think, nor did I mean to say, that the "typical American" is a moron. I am sorry that it came across as a rude remark about Americans. It was about the contents of Bruce's posts. >This list is for Pentax Photography. Exactly. That's why I objected Bruce's posts. Why didn't you? Thanks, Lasse (Another list member kindly suggested that saying "uniquely" instead of "typical" probably would have done the trick, and avoided the misunderstanding. Please rewind, insert "uniquely" where you find "typical". Thanks.)
