[quote]
Originally posted by Mike AI@Feb 20 2003, 06:54 AM
[quote]i am going to wear my "RawAlex molested my daughter for 10 years" shirt to express my opinion on proper grammar and sentence structure.
Quote:
JR this comment was a little bit much.... I have been knowing Alex for a long time, this incudes many in person meetings and such. He is a cool guy, I know you were making a point with sarcasim... but maybe you could have gone with another one liner rather then dealing with sexual abuse of a minor.... that is probably going over the line.
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this is precisely my point Mike.
there are boundaries as to what is acceptable and not acceptable. Alex is making the argument that the school was wrong... but not acknowledging where those boundaries may lie... much less the existence of such boundaries, be they Constitutional, moral, legal or not. There is Federal, State, local law as well as in this case, a school board policy and a school policy... and on top of that, it was a decision that was more or less made by the principal his/herself. There are many things that are considered when deciding what may be appropriate and innapropriate behavior in any given situation.
it would be VERY wrong of me to wear a shirt like that. i agree. that was the point of saying it. And i think that we both agree that to wear a shirt like that and for their to be controversy about it, would not have be indicative of some Government conspiracy to trample on the First Amendment. And i want to point out that its not just a "government conspiracy" Alex is afraid of.. .its a Republican government conspiracy.
By Alex's logic, my right to wear such a shirt is protected "freedom of speech" and for Alex to be consistent with his own logic and argument, he has to defend my right to wear such a shirt.
Alex may be a cool guy. i dont know him. a message board is just pixels.
Non-stop posts about "why America and Americans suck, by RawAlex" is fine with me. but it should not be expected that people dont fire back. being extremely provacative, offensive and insulting again and again does not give him the right to say "hey man, its just a political discussion"
I dont have any particular insecurities about my heritage, my ethnicity or origins or where i live. I dont fear my own government whether it is Republican or Democrat and i dont feel that each new day is worst that the last as some people seem to. I certainly dont feel a burning need to engulf myself in the internal affairs of Iceland, Lichtenstein or Guam or anywhere else because they exist only to make me feel worse about myself due to some sort of Freudian trainwreck of a personality that causes me to live in deep fear of an invisible boogeyman and the 250,000,000 million neighbors that are just too stupid to "get it".
if Alex wants to keep calling Americans stupid, which he calls "harmless political discussion" - then Alex should be right here taking the heat for it.
if anyone wants to know a T-shirt story - here is a good one.
when i was a punk ass teen, i had a T-Shirt that said "Adolf Hitlers World Tour 39-45" showing a map of Europe and the dates of their attacks on different cities. it was a mock shirt of typical bands to show their tour, where they played etc.
i was standing in line in a store in Anchorage Alaska and an old man walked up to me and said with a tear in his eye "i am happy that you did not lose your whole family in that war like i did. its why you can laugh about the worlds greatest tragedy"
i went home and threw the shirt away.
Why?
it was in poor taste. it was innapropriate. it was not "free speech" - it was just an 18 year old kid with his head up his ass trying to piss people off. the President did not make me do it. and i certainly did not wear it to school because the reaction would have been very predictable.
to this day, i am still ashamed at some of the things i did like that. ashamed of the hurt that it caused others and ashamed that i was so ignorant and full of myself that i did not mind hurting people in the deepest and most offensive way.
but i dont blame the President. I dont blame the School board. i dont blame the Constitution. I blame myself... and i am greatful that someone had the courage to walk up to me and say something about it.