Letter to the Editor

boing
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I, on the other hand, believe my countrymen are astonishingly fair-minded when facts are put before them. If it’s excessive use of force, after a cycle or two of a lack of prosecutions, political pressure will build. But one things for damned sure, without video evidence nothing will ever change.

You can speculate that prosecutors won’t do it even with video evidence, but it’s damned sure they won’t do it without it.

And, as I’ve previously noted, the presence of cameras changes behavior, all to the good.

88% drop in public complaints, 60% drop in use of force.

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124

Honestly, it’s rare that a complaint letter hits each classic complaint so squarely. It just nails the rhetorical form of “complaint about a ban”. I feel obliged by posterity to provide it to future complainants as an exemplar of the genre.

• Original comment was clearly banworthy per the rules
• Commenter insists it was just for disagreeing with the editors
• Commenter is “disappointed”, in a sighing, somewhat pious way.
• Commenter has read Boing Boing forever.
• Commenter is horrified by Boing Boing’s “turn” toward politics, drugs, radicalism, etc.
• Commenter is canceling his subscription

PLUS a soupçon of weirdness or surreality, in this case…

• Commenter attaches a picture of Jackhammer Jill that embodies everything he’s complaining about, in the apparent belief that we might not know what he’s complaining about and need to be shown it.

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I appreciate that you took a few moments to respond to my comment(s), and not simply attack me personally. I happen to disagree, because I think being reminded of the thought process of those one does not agree with, on a regular basis, is important, as is formulating counter-arguments against those wrong-headed ideas – and not just arguments for the sake of argument, but yet, arguments that may possibly teach something to the wrong-headed thinker, or at least someone who is a third party to the whole exchange.

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127

Quoth The Banhammer: I’d hit that…

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128

Closest I could manage on my phone while sitting at the counter at the diner waiting for my to-go order. And you’re right, that totally skewers my point.

You have still not actually addressed the criticisms. For instance, as has been mentioned by another, it’s completely disingenuous to post an article like this without also including at least links to the original comments this stemmed from, and really the entire surrounding context discussion as well.

Yes of course, in your playground, you CAN do whatever you like. What you can’t do is claim any moral superiority when you do not actually have it.

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Well, they’ve been deleted, haven’t they. So the comment was posted above. It’s vile. Seriously, your argument is pretty stupid.

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“I don’t think shooting someone who is obviously physically superior to you,” In no way was MB physically superior to DW. MB was a severely overweight 18 year child having a tantrum. He gained 30 pounds from his last weight in a few months prior to his death compared to his weight at death of 290lbs. 6’4" 18 year olds do not get to 290 lbs from lifting weights, they get there by not doing physical activity, poor diet, they get there with fat. DW was 6’4" 220lbs 28 year old trained by the police to physically manhandle people. If DW wanted to he would have destroyed the fat kid having a tantrum.

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Any dissatisfied subscriber may, at any time, present me with the receipt they received when paying in advance, for a full refund.

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I’d like to state, for the record, that as I am still here, I did not write that letter.

I would like that tee shirt though.

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I do see a single sentence excerpted, with no real proof that it is faithful. But even assuming it is, it’s not particularly damning to me, for the same reason’s others have pointed out. It’s easily within the scope of legitimate opinions. He didn’t for example, say anything like black people deserve it.

Now remember, I happen not to agree with that position. I think, of the many contradictory things fed to us by the media so far, more of them point to the cop being a coward and a liar and basically a murderer.

It’s just that I also know I’m only going on what has been fed to me. None of us actually knows squat. I allow other people, who only know the same nothing that any of us who weren’t there knows, to have their own conclusions based on their own reasoning. That is what civilized people do.

The harder they defend squelching that guy, for that comment, the more they prove to me, a neutral bystander (I’m not him or her, nor do I know them, in fact I was if anything, biased in favor of BB because I have always liked the articles and have purchased Cory’s books etc even though I could have them for free etc.), the more they prove him or her right.

It’s like how people talk about political correctness. Someone says “that term offends me, and here’s why exactly…” and the offender says “I don’t care I’ll still say it, if it bugs you that’s your problem not mine.”. I bet, I just bet, that the author of this article usually responds to those sorts of disputes with something along the lines of “You don’t get to tell other people whether or not they feel hurt. If they say wearing fake costume American Indian feather head dress without being an actual chief of a tribe who has actually earned that right is offensive and hurtful to them, then that’s it. It just is.”

So here is me telling that author, and anyone else to whom it may apply, treating a discussion participant this way is offensive, and it informs me as a fellow potential discussion participant that this is apparently no fit place to expect to conduct meaningful discussion. (hence my edited screen shot)

The button on the site says “DISCUSS” it does not say “AGREE”. That implies conduct other than I’ve seen here.

You can’t tell me I’m wrong and that I don’t see capriciousness and lack of integrity here any more than I can’t tell some woman that they do not feel objectified when I stare at them.

You (BB, not you the commenter I’m replying to right now) can only ask yourself (as have others already in this thread) what exactly was your purpose in having a comment section at all, and labeling it “discuss”?

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“Well, they’ve been deleted, haven’t they.”

That is precisely why a person with integrity would simply not have posted this article at all. It’s self-evident and self-damning. All the necessary info for that judgement is included right in the article itself. No one should have had to even point it out.

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It certainly seems self-evident to you. I’ve already offered my response to anyone who wants to defend the comment in question further up the thread. Be quick though, its the sort of comment that will probably get deleted.

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Also, let’s examine another charge levied by the author of the article on the author of the letter:

They included a copy of the image they referred to in the letter.

That is entirely sound protocol. Attempting to paint that as somehow funny actually just exposes your own lack of intellectual rigor.

They, unlike, you, recognize that if they are going to refer to a thing, especially if it is to criticize that thing, it’s most proper/honest/forthright to provide some reference to that thing for examination by all concerned. For example, the thing itself, a photograph of it, a pointer where to find it, etc. I’m talking about anything here, not merely things on the web. It’s a basic concept that applies in any context.

Further, in this particular case, they are referring to an image on a web site, and they had specific things to say about specific details of that image. A preserved static copy of the image is exactly the proper thing to include with those comments, not merely a link to them. Perhaps you weren’t aware, but things on web pages are not static and trustworthy from one minute to the next. That image could change, or disappear, at any time. And so it is not fit as a reference.

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Dude, it’s funny. It’s Jackhammer Jill, it’s the most singular image related to BB, “have you seen it” directed at BB staff is a (inadvertantly) funny way to end a letter that just as Beesshizca (page up for correct spellin? Nevah!) said contained the hit parade of what would normally be one-hit wonders of silly things commentators say.

Now who is being silly!? It’s You! This post is about the Letter to the Editor. In fact, indisputable fact, that is what it is and what it is about. After stripping the name/etc there is not one thing wrong with publishing it. You don’t even need to strip identifiers, that’s just being polite.

Lemme ask, where would you look to find another example of a Letter to the Editor?

Did you answer “Why, a publication, of course.”

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138

Whatever you do, don’t call a sock puppet who was subsequently banned a “shit-for-brains”…

That’ll get you 10 days of productivity.

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139

Many people, myself included, don’t see Michael Brown as a “victim”. The grand jury certainly decided that he’s not a victim of a crime, and that the “blame” for his death lies with his actions, and not the police officer’s response.

If those who voted in the majority of the grand jury wanted to post their viewpoint here, would they be banned too?

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I have been the victim of banning here and I totally blame myself . . . uh-oh.

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If the punishment in Bob’s World for shoplifting (that the store didn’t even deem unusual enough to call-in) is death then I don’t want you in charge of deciding who is “mostly in the right” thanks.

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When a newspaper or magazine publishes a letter to the editor, a thousand or a million copies of the things to which the letter refers have already been irrevocably and indelibly printed, and widely distributed. They are out there for anyone to reference. The publisher can not modify or remove them after the fact.

Also, I don’t recall ever seeing a letter to the editor published in this disgraceful manner. Often publications have published damning letters, and often those letters have been of low argumentive quality and the point of publishing it was likely to expose exactly that, as this person seems to have believed they were doing.

But even in those cases, they didn’t write a finger pointing, derogatory, childish, and even logically bankrupt article about the letter. They responded to the letter. If the letter is ignorant or has other problems, and they want to skewer the writer, the do so honestly, by simply answering the letter.

This thing here? This is just unworthy and indefensible garbage.

The failure to apologize for it through out all these comments pointing this out just cements that charge beyond all dispute.

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I purposefully and unapologetically troll ignorant racists off Twitter using threats of d0xing (sometimes delivered) because some opinions are not worth discussing. Discussion didn’t hurt anyone, but normalisation of such discussion does. Fuck those people. They’re not welcome on my internet.

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