You pounce on **THE WORD** as if it had power....YOU provoked Joe until he went beyond his usual comments, then go "AH-HA! See, he called me names!"

You would accept that the justification given for the Chief of the Mudcat Editing Team's role is to protect us from being called names?

And that the excuse of responding to any form of provocation may be an acceptable one if the example set by the Chief of the Mudcat Editing Team were given publicly only once and an apology given to the poster concerned and to our forum for this lapse?

And this excuse would not be an acceptable one for any subsequent examples?