I, to be honest, couldn’t care less about your rules of engagement. I am glad to have the discourse, but frankly your the only person in said discourse that feels your time is any more important than mine(and yes, I am assuming you feel that way. I would if I were you).

1) Show me in my original post where I said that the content of your article led me to believe you were a Christian, and I will concede that I have made the logical error you identified. I have reread it and cannot find something making mention of the word Christian and drawing from any implication at all. Below is my ONLY Christian quote:

“So take your thinly veiled bigotry back to the church(I’m sure you’re a Christian) and ask for forgiveness…because its really immoral.”

Suggesting that the church should forgive you for being a bigot(I do apologize for calling you that..I too was angry) most certainly does not imply that the church would condone such behavior and consequently that Christians are bigots. I did say I am sure you are a Christian, but again…consider the forum. It was a reasonable assumption.

2) I did not say that I heard my superior make a racist joke.I said that I heard him use the words nigger and shine. I heard him say nigger in response to my explanation of a black mans attendance situation, and shine in response to a inquiry regarding a telephone conversation with another manager who happens to be black.

I can understand, based on my talk about the room full of white people and my lack of details, how you could come up with “Mr. Panetta is accusing someone who makes a joke of being a racist”. I am not, however, all that concerned with jokes…Chris Rock’s(which are hilarious) or otherwise. I AM horrified, however, at hate and spite. That’s what my supervisor had oozing from his voice. Even that doesn’t mean he is a racist, but I think that one could understand how I may glean that from two separate conversations both ending in hateful epithets concerning one’s membership to a race and consequent behavior.

Let’s be a little more clear about what horrifies me as well. I don’t really care if my supervisor hates black people. What really concerns me is that he is in a position of power and can use that hate to do something. There are probably black people in a similar position with similar ideals about whites, but I haven’t met those people. Every organization I have worked for has been managed almost exclusively by white people. For the record, I find both flavors of unjust control over another equally distasteful. The black American holds no special place in my heart.

3) I also never said that you needed the benefit of a balanced discourse on racism. I have no idea what you need or do not need intellectually. I did notice that you claimed I made a meaningful discussion of race and racism impossible. That’s why I said that you had a bunch of hand-shaking and compliance. That, to me, doesn’t constitute a well of discourse.

While I don’t really find your article about racism and its social productivity particularly useful,you are the only one it that supposed well of discourse that actually said anything.The rest just said nice job and patted you(and each other on the back). That’s some pretty one-sided discourse if you ask me(not that anyone did!).

If you want to criticize my approach as more inflammatory than productive, you are right. If you want to say that I treated unfairly as a person, you could be right(I don’t know you, maybe you just got back from a Klan meeting) and I’ll take the lump.

Unfortunately, that was not the bulk of your rebuttal. Rather, you continually make inferences from what I wrote. I did not say anything denotative or otherwise negative about Christians. You inferred it of your own accord(or in the parlance of Akron Ohio,you made it up buddy). I did not say that you personally needed to hear the other side, I called foul or you titling that accord a discourse. It wasn’t.

Still, if I WAS somehow unclear, maybe now I have made myself a lot more clear.

4) Your educational background and profession, while interesting at a personal level,are not particularly important here. Being a professor does not mean you are not of an insular academic world. One must not only be around opposing views, but also be willing to consider them seriously. I have only two choices,then. I can assume you are too set as the person you are to take that higher road and give due consideration, or I can assume you do openly contemplate alternative ideology. Neither particularly changes anything from my point of view, but I do like to think the best of people when I have the opportunity.

Anyways, its not your open mind that was challenged, or the minds on this site. Rather, it was the diversity of opinions presented as a consequence of your essay that I was speaking of. That, after all, is all I could really know about. Frankly,even after re-reading it I didn’t see anything to warrant a different view.

I have to strongly disagree on your assertion of the diversity of minds here though. I just haven’t seen that. Maybe I haven’t combed the forum as you have, but I thought I had read quite a bit of the last two months of it. Unless of course you feel a large number of tuna lovers arguing over the best way to prepare it is diversity of taste. For my part, onion and tomato or mayo and scallion, at the end of the day you are all eating tuna.

The right wing of politics in this country consistently does better at election time because there is more accord. At least,that is what I believe.

5) Happy Easter!!!! I off to see my parents.

You concede by failing to do anything except offer up a vapid opinion.

“Ample evidence.” The first laugh out loud I’ve had today.

An unwise assumption, plainly contradicted by ample evidence.

You make my point, Mountain. You seem to assume all sorts of things, without enough justification.

Oz

I’ll therefore assume you are conceding the point to me.

Mountain:
YOU asserted it did. YOU supplied no reference. I looked for it and did not find it. —

But I did. That anecdote comes from the book, The Myth of Political Correctness, that I clearly referenced. Re-read my post. I even obligingly acknowledged that it was unlikely to be an unbiased source, but since they were reporting a specific event rather than an opinion, I thought it was an acceptable illustration.

It is true that I inadvertently provided the wrong link to the book, sorry, although if you just take the trouble to google The Myth of Political Correctness, you’ll no doubt find it. But if you don’t find it on Google, Mountain Man, that does not mean it does not exist.

Oz

Of course not, Mountain. I could not access that website from where I was today. Firewall stuff.

I’ve looked at it now, and I see that Professor Kerri Dunn appears to be a kooky lady that pretended to be a victim of a racial hate crime or something like that. So? How does that cast any doubt on my assertion that Righties have a history of using simplistic and counterproductive epithets to describe Lefties, just as the reverse is true?

Thanks for the newsflash, Mountain, but I’m pretty well aware that there are psychotic, illogical, and troubled people in the world. I would be happy to give you a corresponding list of websites that portray extremists and mentally ill people who subscribe to right-wing or libertarian ideologies.

Here’s a couple you can start with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_duke
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/19096134/detail.html

———–f you want to refute Coulter, or Goldberg, or Ingraham, or Limbaugh, or anyone, cite the quote in context, provide your analysis of why it is gratuitous, and I will respond. ———————-

Riiiight, that’s a great idea, Mountain. I’m tempted to plead a health exemption from the assignments you are trying to give me, because my head would probably explode if I had to wade through that stuff.

But on second thought, why evade a good challenge? Okay, I’ll do it.

Let’s meet back in a month, and I’ll give you my critiques. In the meantime, I would merely ask that you agree to read the following books, so that we can have an informed exchange of views:

Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (by Al Franken)
The Lies of George Bush
The Nature of Prejudice (by Gordon Allport)
Lies, and the Lying Liars That Tell Them (by Al Franken)
Make Me Wanna Holler (by Nathan McCall)
All the President’s Men (by Bob Woodward)

Please also take some time to watch the following shows and movies:

The Color Purple
In the Heat of the Night
Sanford and Son (seasons 1-3)
Chico and the Man (seasons 3-5)

And, importantly, please give a listen to the collected works of the following modern rap artists

“Snoop Dogg”
“P Diddy”
“Eminem”.

Agreed? I’ll even let you submit your findings first.

Oz

I would think that if gratuitous name-calling is so prevalent on the Right, that it is on par with the sewage spouted by the Left, that their would be numerous contemporary examples for you to document.

However, usage of terms like politically correct, liberal fascist, godless, etc., do not constitute evidence that your thesis is correct. The usage has to be gratuitous. Correct, accurate usage of these terms is perfectly acceptable.

If you want to refute Coulter, or Goldberg, or Ingraham, or Limbaugh, or anyone, cite the quote in context, provide your analysis of why it is gratuitous, and I will respond. The author, Mr. Kerwick, did this very thing.

I note that you did not address Professor Kerri Dunn. I’m sure that you did not overlook this point as you have been accused, right?

I’ll throw ONE out: ‘POLITICALLY CORRECT’.

(CAPS added for emphasis)
—————————————————————-

I’m sorry you didn’t find my evidence convincing, when I cited college professors, a couple of specific anecdotes, a book, and personal experience to support my assertion that “Politically correct!” is used by conservatives to silence debate on meaningful topics. I’m a little surprised that you think that because you can’t find something on Google, it must not have happened. You should probably get out more.

But I think you are simply doing what you accuse me of doing (without evidence, of course): ignoring the substance of posts. I said the ‘politically-correct’ name-calling was ONE example of my larger point. I also mentioned ‘Fascist’ in my original post. In my follow-up, I mentioned ‘Godless’ and ‘Treason(ous)”. I could give more examples, easily. For example, Dr. Jackson is feverishly enamored of using ‘stupid’ and ‘idiot’ to refer to anyone with whom he disagrees—I don’t recall you ever objecting.

I wonder why you didn’t ask for proof on those. I suppose it could be that, as you say, since I didn’t adequately document ‘politically correct’ as partisan name-calling, you concluded that all of my other points must be erroneous as well.

Gosh, Mountain Man, that analytical strategy sounds kind of hasty and impulsive. Seems unreliable.

But I think the real reason is that you recognize that the ‘substance’ of my post is entirely valid and well-documented. Conservatives commonly use harsh epithets, analogous to ‘racist’ on the Left—-to attack and close off meaningful debate. Both sides are guilty.

By the way, didn’t Liddy Dole trot out ‘Godless’ in just this last election? And Goldberg apparently called Liberals ‘Fascists’ 163,310 times, and Coulter called them Godless and Treason(ous) over 500,000 times, according to sales figures.

And that’s just on the COVER of their books.

But I know it takes a lot to convince you, MM. If you’d like, I can direct you to a nearby Barnes and Noble, where you can investigate the matter on your own, without any liberal jibber-jabber interrupting your counting.

Oz

I therefore conclude, in the absence of corroborating evidence, that this event never happened.

Regarding Howard, I said “Gratuitous.” I think he was absolutely correct in his assessment. Besides, do you really have to go all the way over to Austrailia to find an example?

“I see no reason to dismiss their ‘testimony’ out of hand.” I do, however, given recent history like Professor Kerri Dunn’s fake hate crime charge: http://www.natfront.com/shieldedreporting.htm. By the way, I did not reject them “out of hand,” I rejected them because they were not what I asked for.

“Why didn’t you question those and demand I provide evidence? Probably because there’s really no question about it.” I picked one charge because I only have so much time to waste on your ignorance. If one instance proves to be a fiction you invented, which is the case, then the others most likely are as well.