I'm Sick of the Bigotry

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 May 02 - 02:10 PM

You too, eh, Spaw? And a noble quest it is! Saddle up, brother, and we'll meet at the windmills!

- LH

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: PeteBoom
Date: 01 May 02 - 02:22 PM

I said:

"Rather reminds me of a fellow who used to go to a "celtic" site and got angry when he did not get the answer he wanted to his question... "How do you become a celtic?" Come to think of it, he called that forum racist and bigoted too..."

Which generated the response:

"Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry From: GUEST Date: 01-May-02 - 11:44 AM

Nice bigoted trolling there Pete! Equating "Celticness" with bigotry. A shining example of what I've been talking about all along in this thread. "

Which begs the question, dear Guest that posted the above message, What did I say was bigoted? The forum was a general forum on Celtic society, etc. A person came in asking how to become a "celtic". We explained that it wasn't a matter of "becoming" one, but rather a matter of historical record of BEING one or being descended from one. He did not like that and called us racist. At no time did I in my post state, overtly or by implication, that "celticness" in and of itself, was equatable to bigotry. You did that all by your lonesome.

Now, answer the question I asked in my original post - What forums have removed Mudcat from their links because of the bigotry here? Or were YOU trolling? Hmmmmm?

I've had enough of this silliness.

Joe - I hope things improve for you, and for the rest.

Pete

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 May 02 - 04:00 PM

"I think you may have me confused with someone else"

Exactly. But it occurs to me that there just might conceivably be a connection between this kind of confusion and the practice of signing in as plain GUEST...I know it's a wild speculation on my part, but it could just be true.

Somehow it always seems simpler not confusing people with each other when they have names or faces. If someone with a name says something stupid, it's quite easy for others to let them know. As I know from personal experience.

I've got a program on my computer now called MailWasher. It means I can get rid of anything that looks like spam in my email without even opening it. That's one very handy facility to have.

The truth is, I'm prejudiced against spam.

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: DonD
Date: 02 May 02 - 12:31 AM

LH What have you got against the Lions Club? Sure, we have our share of 'ots', but a common goal of trying to help others "We Serve".

I'm off to the state convention tomorrow, and I' sure I'll feel smarter/holier/more sophisticated than all the rubes from the boonies, but I'll respect them for the one thing that will have brought us together.

Too many threads end up being completely crept -- and crapped -- by GUEST, who to me is indistinhuishable. Maybe a solution would be to have all of 'us' immediately respond to the first obviously negative GUEST post with -- not a meaningful comment, but a simple "Goodbye, GUEST".

A string of those might get the message across: if you don't like our party, -- leave!

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: GUEST,mr happy
Date: 02 May 02 - 07:03 AM

in the digitrad there are some songs which could be considered anti-religion or racist by some people

eg plastic jesus, ceramic moses,etc

i go along with povs expressed here that its ok to ridicule the commercial aspects of religions but not hurt people by attacking the philosophies themselves

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: GUEST,mr happy
Date: 02 May 02 - 07:13 AM

as a relative newcomer to the mudcat chat place, i've not been aware of hostility to guests. however my 'cookie' [bicky?] keeps going off so i have to either be mr happy or happiness which is my registered member name

anybody got similar probs? help please

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 02 - 07:39 AM

Mister H -- if your browser is set up to accept cookies it shouldn't have to be reset that often. You can reset it by going to 'Reset Cookie' under the Quiklinks, and logging in.

But once it has been set correctly, it should work each time.

Unless you have some kind of prejudice against cookies?

A

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: GUEST,WYDSIWYG
Date: 02 May 02 - 08:52 AM

Susan,

I think you might be failing to see how those Mudcatters demanding that anon guests put something in the From: line have a few control issues. And those Mudcatters who insist upon no BS/all BS have a few control issues. And those Mudcatters who insist that anon posting not be allowed have few control issues.

The forum is what it is. To spend the inordinate amount of time bitching about that so many Mudcatters do, is proof positive that they believe they should have control over the forum itself. Again--control issues.

I believe you are seeing the question a bit ass backwards.

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 May 02 - 09:03 AM

Happiness, you can check to see if your browser is set to eat or accept cookies. Under Netscape, its under 'edit', then 'preferences', then 'advanced'. Perhaps someone else could provide the route under Explorer.

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 May 02 - 09:22 AM

Well, WYD (and I think you might have meant WYDSIWYDG), I was not trying to assess what's wrong with Mudcat.... the first paragraph of my post addressed what I find troublesome about unidentified GUESTS. The second addressed my approach to living with others' "control issues" in the context of personal relationships:

The desire to control is rigid, and strategies in that regard are not intelligently accurate because it is a one-trick solution based on making the controller feel better for the moment. There are lots of ways to assist people who want to change, and most people do want to change despite the appearance they give. But hollering "STOP YOU BAD!" is seldom one of the effective ones. Real change happens in the crucible of closeness, and increased closeness is not facilitated by gagging someone as soon as you are close enough to do it!

(Of course ytou can't have a personal relationship with an anonynous GUEST.)

Another thing I find troublesome is that many of our GUEST posts show such a remarkable ability to take what one has said or not said, and to infer a whole BUNCH of stuff from that which bears no relation to what the person was actually thinking, feeling, or doing. (WYD's post is one of the more civil examples of this.) I don't know if this is because the posters actually think that they can read minds, and know everything there is to know... or because they just like to stir things up (for whatever reason) by miscasting reality on a regular basis. Fortunately the motive doesn't matter too much, because the remedy is the same in either case: it is reassuringly amazing how the truth about things can remain perfectly obvious even when this occurs.

~Susan

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 May 02 - 12:02 PM

And those Mudcatters who insist that anon posting not be allowed have few control issues.

Now the curious thing is that, if had read And those Mudcatters who insist that anon posting not be allowed have a few control issues , it would have implied almost precisely the opposite. The English language is really strange sometimes.

And that's not in any way mocking WYD; typos creep into all our posts from time to time, and mine more than most, and that was the sort that no spellchecker could ever pick up.

However, it does strike me that some posts by generic GUEST do seem to have more than a hint of "control issues".

I found out the other day that, when you click on the GUEST at the head of a post, it treats it like any other name, and sooner or later up pops a screen full of posts from the generic and presumably multi-person GUEST (or from the particular GUEST, if it's a GUEST with a label, such as WYD). I rather feel that a trawl through those - which I haven't carried out - would throw up a lot of examples of control freakery.)

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: GUEST,An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 02 May 02 - 12:05 PM

Could I copy in here a message, which I posted in the Drumcree megathread to explain it to a "bewildered" fellow-guest, and which is relevant here?

That thread, which seemed as if it could turn nasty, instead turned into a riot of creativity and wit, and I would recommend it as essential Mudcat reading. What saved it was the fact that one or two people were big enough to apologise when they realised they had gone too far in either giving or taking offence - that and the Irish ability to turn just about anything into a joke.

The fact that an uneasy peace has broken out in Northern Ireland makes room for that sense of humour, and the Middle East is unfortunately some way away from being joked about (except by very sick people). The poisonous people who use that situation as a pretext for their anti-Jewish or anti-Arab variants of antisemitism are best ignored.

And could I also renew a suggestion which I made somewhere else that, if it's technically possible, a separate area in the forum should be established for BS postings? That would reduce the risk of the music getting buried, without ruling out non-musical discussions among Catters and their guest friends?

******

"Poor bewildered, my heart goes out to you.

It's a Northern Ireland running joke which has taken on a life of its own. In fact it could arguably stake a claim to becoming a permathread, because it started off way off topic with someone who needed to get a load off his chest about current political issues by sharing it with fellow-mudcatters, but then mysteriously drifted bang onto topic by giving rise to a good dozen parodies, many of which are in the pure folk tradition of updating old songs to new circumstances.

It's drifted back off for a while, but even when OT it contains numerous musicians' in jokes, many of which would be accessible to folkies who are not Irish - e.g. the obsession with the Corrs which permeates the Chiff & Fipple forums, or the inevitable bodhran abuse theme.

I'm a newbie myself and still learning netiquette, so I'm still signing on as a guest, but Mudcat has been a revelation. At an early stage, when I was still aglow with gratitude for all the help which I'd got from Catters in finding words to a song, I posted a critical comment about someone lowering the tone of the site with some rather sharp political comments. But of course, I was the one who was wrong, because folk song (not least of the US variety) would be a mere shadow of itself if you took out the political content and commentary on current affairs.

On a quiet day at work I went right back to the start of the Drumcree threads and read on from there, which is the only way to make sense of this magnificently surreal phenomenon. The original posting takes ages to download, and someone kindly put it up on a website at

http://members.atozasia.com/munster/Drumcree1.htm

(sorry about the unblue unclickiness) where it's much easier to print and read, if you're interested in Drumcree itself. If you want to know more about the Northern Ireland situation as a whole, another contributor to the thread posted the URL of a trustworthy online archive run by a university at

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/cainbgn/index.html

- otherwise just skim through Brendy's magnum opus at the Drumcree site to get a flavour of the background then move on to where the fun begins at

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=43154

Beware, especially if you suffer from the German/American disease (spot the troll ;-) of literal-mindedness: not everything on this thread is to be taken at face value, and most if not all of the abuse is firmly tongue in cheek. Also, you will probably realise after a while that not all the postings in the name of famous musicians have necessarily been put up by the musicians in question. Likewise, Sean Pol O'Tuathail is Pope John Paul II, and he probably didn't really write the last posting.

But if you can spare the time, it will expand your consciousness in ways you could never have imagined."

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 May 02 - 12:47 PM

DonD - Well, I threw the Lion's Club in for humorous effect... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: I'm Sick of the Bigotry
From: wysiwyg
Date: 02 May 02 - 12:59 PM

I call that control-thing the Shoulddadons-- nasty and not very smart dinosaurs left over from a time when the people who were bigger and stronger, who were supposed to take care of us, didn't, and played the blame-shame game instead. When you grow up like that, everything can look a lot like people saying back and forth all the time, "What you SHOULDDA done was...." and then what follows is the "why" of being so awful to someone-- I get to be awful to YOU because YOU should have known better, should have thought first, ought to realize how I'm feeling, etc. Magical thinking.... it says, "You should have been thinking what I thought you should be thinking about, and if I have to TELL you that, that's the problem!" It is a lefotver in present time, of a time when the person so affected could not really do much for him/herself, and really depended on the supposed adults.... because the reality is, in present time, we don't really have to get someone else to do what we want, in order to do what we choose to do. We can choose from among a huge array of options, whatever the circumstance, and yet we so often feel, and act like, someone is standing on our oxygen hose ON PURPOSE and it will be FATAL so GET OFF! GET OFF!!!! DO something! *G* In AA it's called "stinkin' thinkin'".

Life is actually so much nicer than that!

~Susan