I'm a former IC ZZL/P Mod = AMA

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sunnyheel said:
This will be my last entry on the subject.

Deeming kapo a racist slur takes a degree of mental contortionism that is unmerited given that there is literally no Jew complaining about its use anymore. It’s an artifact of WWII reflecting a real and horrible reality that has unfortunate parallels to the present. Why is it okay to talk about Nazis and brownshirts today in comparison to their modern equivalents and not kapos? Surely there is truth to the proposition that even some Nazi apparatchiks were coerced into compliance and victims of Stockholm syndrome too.

If the argument is that Jews were special victims of Nazism (undeniably so) and the word should therefore be cast down the rabbit hole, what is the message? Does the lesson of history get lost too?

Moreover, even if the hypersensitivity to Jewish victimhood is merited, how can applying the term to a gentile carry the racist baggage that would merit a ban? Its use does not necessarily imply an insensitivity to the complexity of the phenomenon.

This gripe has been overstated and amplified far beyond its importance merely as my personal experience with the capriciousness of board moderation which I believe was the ultimate cause of its demise.

Finally I hope the crux of my comments about moderation are not interpreted as an assault on Snoop’s integrity. I thought I was clear in my admiration of his dutiful and conscientious efforts in a losing game. He was a cog in a wheel doomed by its quavering nature to fail.
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1. By your logic, calling a white man a Negro isn't offensive because "how can applying that term to a white man carry the racist baggage"? This is a misunderstanding of what that racist baggage is all about. The only reason why someone would call a white man a Negro would be to use Negro in a derogatory sense. Even if it was in some way factual -- i.e. a white man with kinky dark hair, like my son -- it's still insulting. More to black people than the white man so targeted.

2. Whether or not your language deserved a ban is a different question. I'm simply addressing the issue of whether kapo is an acceptable term in that context and it's not. Maybe you didn't mean it to be bad.

3. I'm really not interested in your take on whether "no Jew is complaining about its use." When was the last time you cared what Jewish people think in this regard. We had a very long discussion (including Dan) about Labour in the UK under Corbyn. You were adamant that there was no anti-Semitism there, and that it was a word being used to discredit anti-Zionists. This went on for pages and pages. I posted at least a half-dozen articles about Labour Party Jews complaining about the anti-Semitism they experienced. They weren't all Zionists. There were discussions about Corbyn's various forms of expression over the years, and you were similarly apologetic even though there was really no interpretation of his words that was acceptable. For pages and pages, you were given testimonials from Jewish people in the UK, and for pages and pages you dismissed what they were expressing.

So for you now to invoke "literally no Jew takes offense" (which is assuredly false) as the standard is risible.

4. If this gripe is "overstated and amplified," why not just admit you were wrong? Oh, because like ZenMode, it's just not what you do.

5. It beggars belief that the difference between brownshirts, Nazis and kapos needs to be explained to you, but here we are. "Brownshirt" is rarely, if ever, used in the singular or attached to a person. I have never once heard someone accused of being a "brownshirt." Rather, that phrase is conceptual. When we say Trump wants an army of brownshirts to carry out his bidding, we are criticizing Trump, not the brownshirts. Your use of kapo, by contrast, was direct and personal -- unsurprising, since there is no real historical legacy of "kapo-ism."

Nazi, of course, is an ideological term. If someone says, "I'm a Nazi," they are not necessarily saying, "I'm a sadistic person who enjoys causing other people to suffer in pursuit of my own grandiosity." They are saying, basically, that they like strongmen and don't care for Jews. And when someone refers to Trump as America's Hitler, they are not necessarily saying that Trump is a man who would attempt to conquer all of Europe.
 
sunnyheel said:
This will be my last entry on the subject.

Deeming kapo a racist slur takes a degree of mental contortionism that is unmerited given that there is literally no Jew complaining about its use anymore. It’s an artifact of WWII reflecting a real and horrible reality that has unfortunate parallels to the present. Why is it okay to talk about Nazis and brownshirts today in comparison to their modern equivalents and not kapos? Surely there is truth to the proposition that even some Nazi apparatchiks were coerced into compliance and victims of Stockholm syndrome too.

If the argument is that Jews were special victims of Nazism (undeniably so) and the word should therefore be cast down the rabbit hole, what is the message? Does the lesson of history get lost too?

Moreover, even if the hypersensitivity to Jewish victimhood is merited, how can applying the term to a gentile carry the racist baggage that would merit a ban? Its use does not necessarily imply an insensitivity to the complexity of the phenomenon.

This gripe has been overstated and amplified far beyond its importance merely as my personal experience with the capriciousness of board moderation which I believe was the ultimate cause of its demise.

Finally I hope the crux of my comments about moderation are not interpreted as an assault on Snoop’s integrity. I thought I was clear in my admiration of his dutiful and conscientious efforts in a losing game. He was a cog in a wheel doomed by its quavering nature to fail.
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I'm pretty sure this justification could be fairly easily modified by those who support the continued use and veneration of Confederate imagery (flags, statues, etc).
 
ZenMode said:
Again... I have absolutely no issue with homosexuals. As I said previously, I was for gay marriage before Obama was.

The fundamental meaning of abnormal applies to homosexuality...feelings or not. If a poll were posted, I doubt that any honest person, if given the option to describe homosexuality as normal or abnormal, would pick normal.

deviating from what is normal or usual

homosexuality is a deviation from what is normal or usual.
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So then you'd be comfortable labeling homosexual behavior as deviant?
 
sunnyheel said:
sunnyheel = concentration camp survivor
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It's more like sunnyheel = "someone trapped in a bus station for an hour and compares his plight to Auschwtiz."

Or maybe sunnyheel = "someone who plays basketball at UNC, wins a national championship, gets drafted in the NBA lottery and still refers to his time in Chapel Hill as prison."
 
superrific said:
It's unreal how people are taking shots at SnoopRob without even bothering to consider the issue from his perspective. Or even having any perspective.

Try an experiment. Listen to Nirvana's Nevermind album, and then listen to their debut album Bleach. Notice something? Nevermind has much better sound quality. That's probably related to another fact, which is that Bleach cost like $3000 to make and Nevermind well over 100K. But I like Bleach and I listen to it. Part of that experience is accepting that the sound quality isn't going to be great. The sound quality, after all, is connected to one of the great things about that album: it was pure Nirvana, with no corporate oversight or mainstream producers trying to make Nirvana sound kind of like a heavier R.E.M.

So too with the ZZL. It was a free message board, and the moderators were unpaid. You're not going to get Nevermind quality moderation. That's not because the moderators suck or couldn't do better if they were professionals; it's because they were volunteers and doing the best they could within the commitment that could be reasonably expected of them (not to mention cross-currents from above). They were giving Bleach-quality moderation.

And, like the Bleach album, the low cost was an integral part of the ZZL's appeal -- namely, that it was free and anyone could post. I would not have posted on the ZZL if it cost money, and I'm guessing that's true of many other posters. So if you ever liked discussing issues with me, or learning from me, or teaching me -- well, that benefit came with the cost of volunteer moderation. I think it was a good trade or I wouldn't have posted. Sunnyheel sure seemed to enjoy boxing with me (either that or he was a masochist), so for him to complain about the imperfections in moderation is basically ridiculous. It's like going to your local Mexican cantina and complaining about the lack of a tasting menu.
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As I try to catch up in this thread, I'd like to thank super for the sidetrack of going and checking out Nirvana's Bleach album. Soooo takes me back to what every college band was trying to do back in my undergrad days of the early to mid 90s...
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
As I try to catch up in this thread, I'd like to thank super for the sidetrack of going and checking out Nirvana's Bleach album. Soooo takes me back to what every college band was trying to do back in my undergrad days of the early to mid 90s...
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Negative Creep remains my favorite Nirvana song.

FWIW, the rumors going around indie rock world back then (even before Nevermind) is that the record was supposed to be called "Blecch", but Sub Pop nixed it, and thus "blecch" was the proper pronunciation of the album's title. This was told to me in person by Maynard from Tool, who I interviewed for my college radio station. I don't take his word as gospel, both because he could have been just repeating rumors or just fucking with me, but there it is.

Incidentally, as that interview was concluding, the band's H showed up and Maynard offered me a turn on the needle. It remains the only time in my life I have ever seen it up close and personal. What I wanted to say was, "I don't do H, and even if I did, I wouldn't share a needle with your dirty ass, no offense," but what I actually said was "no thanks." Sigh. I'm pretty sure Maynard would have appreciated my comment and thought it funny, but I was too scared. It's a regret of mine. Not among the top 100 or top 1000, but I do wish I had said something different. It was my only chance to diss a big rock star to his face and laugh about it, and I blew it.
 
Ddseddse said:
Is anyone at all surprised by the fact that folks who have been banned in the past nearly universally disagree they should have been banned in the first place?

Do we think another potential universe might exist where they're all sitting around going "Whelp, yup, I totally deserved that!"?
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I had two aliases banned for calling out TarheelPatriot on his fuckery and asshattery. It was worth both aliases.
 
superrific said:
Incidentally, as that interview was concluding, the band's H showed up and Maynard offered me a turn on the needle.
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I wonder if he would've let you have a bump if you'd asked for that instead...
 
hedge said:
I wonder if he would've let you have a bump if you'd asked for that instead...
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Well, I would never have done it. I vowed to myself as a teenager to stay away from all opiates forever unless absolutely necessary, and I've lived up to it. When I shattered my kneecap last year, I declined the painkiller in the ambulance because it was opiate. It fucking hurt like hell every time we went over a bump, but such is life.
 
StrangePackage said:
So then you'd be comfortable labeling homosexual behavior as deviant?
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Sexual deviance is much more subjective. There's nothing homosexuals do, sexually, that heterosexuals don't do.

Some people might call specific sexual acts, none of which are unique to homosexuals, deviant.
 
I didn't turn down the painkillers when I had all my teeth pulled, including the surgery to remove the broken roots (legacy of too much fun with amphetamines in my youth) but didn't have anything but Tylenol after I had the trach. Not an aversion, just a preference. I wanted to get out of the hospital, I wasn't leaving until I had a bowel movement and opiates lock me down.

Found that out early. There was a lot of opium and/or opiated hash coming back from Vietnam and I managed to run into my fair share. It was a really pleasant buzz but it was the wrong direction for me . I also didn't care for the constipation.
 
superrific said:
Well, I would never have done it.
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I was more wondering if he would've refused a request for a bump b/c he thought that would be wasting it but I guess there's no way to answer that at this point...
 
ZenMode said:
"Typically" isn't "always" and adding an emotional factor does negate the core meaning.
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nonsense.

arguing that Oxford and Merriam Webster are wrong and you're actually right about what words mean is definitely a winning argument.

just a stunning lack of self awareness.
 
hedge said:
I was more wondering if he would've refused a request for a bump b/c he thought that would be wasting it but I guess there's no way to answer that at this point...
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Oh. Nah. There would be no reason for him to diss someone from a college radio station (which is where most of the grunge bands got their first airplay). It's not that I had a lot of pull anywhere, but it couldn't possibly be worth it for him to even run the risk that I'd be offended, and then I'd get on the air and say, "I interviewed Tool, but they were assholes to me, completely dicks, and I'm not going to bother with the shitty interview." Surely a band with videos on MTV wouldn't sweat a bit of H.
 
superrific said:
Again, the word you are looking for is atypical, not abnormal -- that is, if you're trying to talk about facts.

Atypical is a factual description. It means, "not typical." A quality in a population shared by 10% of the members is unarguably atypical. Left-handedness? Atypical. Homosexuality? Atypical. IQs higher than 120 or lower than 80? Atypical. Being 7' tall? Atypical.

Normality is a judgment about the way things should be. It is not a factual concept. Indeed, the origin of the word "normal" is the same as "normative." which is expressly a concept about value judgments. And perhaps you've heard of social norms, which are informal rules that people are expected to follow because they are supposedly virtuous. All of this amounts to the same thing.

This is not controversial. This is my last post on the subject because, as I anticipated, you're unwilling to admit that you used the wrong word. Should it be considered a personal failing that you confused "atypical" with "abnormal"? It should not. I worked for a well-regarded appeals court judge who confused "effect" and "affect." It meant he made a mistake, not that he was an idiot. Alas. Neurologists talk of a testosterone response to being wrong. Some men in particular experience a drop in T after losing an argument, which is a fancy way of saying that you're thinking with your testes.

Finally, other posters have given you examples of situations involving atypicality that are never described as abnormal. I'll do one better. Lebron James and Michael Jordan are among the most atypical people on the planet. To be blessed with the size, athleticism, drive, skills, coordination, intelligence that they have is indeed extraordinary. It's not simply that they are the two best players in NBA history; they are pretty far above #3. I've never once heard them described as "abnormal." Have you? And to extend the point, NBA players themselves are highly atypical people. The vast majority of them are exceptionally tall compared to the average person, and they have other distinguishing factors. Have you ever heard them referred to as abnormal?
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"This is my last post on the subject because, as I anticipated, you're unwilling to admit that you used the wrong word."

The fact that several people, I suspect all of similar political views, don't like the word abnormal being used, doesn't mean it's "wrong". It may not be nice and the aforementioned people may be concerned about the feelings of those being described as abnormal, but there is no doubt, in nature, there are norms when it comes to gender, attraction and procreation and homosexuals fall outside of those norms.
 
4thgenheel said:
nonsense.

arguing that Oxford and Merriam Webster are wrong and you're actually right about what words mean is definitely a winning argument.

just a stunning lack of self awareness.
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I never said the dictionary definitions were wrong. Typical isn't always. Abnormal can be used in a positive way. A basketball player can be abnormally tall. A gifted student can be abnormally intelligent, etc.
 
ZenMode said:
I never said the dictionary definitions were wrong. Typical isn't always. Abnormal can be used in a positive way. A basketball player can be abnormally tall. A gifted student can be abnormally intelligent, etc.
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How often would it be expressed like that outside of ,possibly, a clinical sense? Would you use that in conversation with someone else? Would you directly ,especially to the basketball player?
 
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