Posted by caraher on December 5, 2008, at 15:55:48
I'm puzzled by the 2-week block for rayww's post concerning the suspension of Parliament in Canada. As I read the post announcing the block (http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20081115/msgs/866822.html) it sounds like the offense was for failing to explicitly label her views as opinions. So if instead of writing
"It is the three party leaders mainly who are causing the fuss, neither of whom are capable of leading the country as individuals"
she had written
"It is the three party leaders mainly who are causing the fuss, neither of whom are capable, in my opinion, of leading the country as individuals"
that part would have been rendered officially "sensitive" and "civil?"
And similarly, if she had started
"Division's purpose is to divide focus, and destroy the government."
with the words "In my opinion,..." that would have been OK?
In my opinion, these changes do not materially affect either sentence, neither of which I found remotely uncivil or insensitive (and I say this as one who routinely finds himself holding views diametrically opposed to hers). If the rule is that, in order to be "sensitive" and "civil," every statement that is not a statement of fact must be accompanied by a disclaimer that it is not a fact but an opinion, very few posts (IMO) anywhere on Babble could be considered both "civil" and "sensitive." It seems to me that every Babble post is presumably the opinion of its author, and therefore adding explicit verbiage to that effect is at best redundant.
I strongly disagree with her opinion on the issue, but found no cause to take offense at the way she expressed it. Outside of Babble, part of the practice of civility is not taking offense when none is offered. (Indeed, that's the source of much of the outlandish humor of Sasha Baron Cohen's rude character "Borat;" Borat spews patently offensive statements and many of his victims bend over backwards to accommodate him, behaving as civilly as possible in circumstances that could easily lead to fisticuffs. His victims are civil to a fault!) It seems to me that the enforcement mechanism for the rules of Babble can itself appear uncivil and even insensitive, under the ordinary meanings of those words.
At the same time, it's also clear that adding the words "in my opinion" is not sufficient to render intrinsically insensitive/uncivil content sensitive and civil. (Jon Stewart does jokes about the guy who says, "No offense, but..." and goes on to say something to which one cannot help but take offense, a perfect example of this.) I think rayww has been trying to avoid such posts since her block (which came in discussing some highly charged issues), so I'm disappointed that she's been slapped with a 2-week block for a slip that I find undetectable.
poster:caraher
thread:866882
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20081003/msgs/866882.html