DonnieS wrote:Spazdad, skarp, great to know you guys are still around , still hang around on some boards with some of others of ill repute ( n/u, pale rider, etc.). This thread is the only one I have read, will probably do me for a few more years. The clown does sound similar to one of the wanna be trolls of many years past, cant remember who it reminds me of though. Hope yalls kids are doing well, mine are having little tiny future softball players, so I may be back in a few years. Give em hell.
Hey my friend...nice to hear from you. No tiny future softball players on this end (yet), but I still check in on this site from time to time, and offer up a post here and there. I guess I just have an affinity for the softball crowd...although I suppose you wouldn't know it from the results whenever I come around.
Dale Carnegie I certainly am not...
Yeah, there definitely was a strong essence of "cornfield" to some of these posts, but honestly, I don't think C77 was a lost cause. She's not a troll; she's just very passionate and combative (and inventive
). Which I can totally respect--but you've got to be willing to give at least a modicum of deference where it is due, and she didn't. I tend to use Sam as an example, because he and I have totally gone at it from time to time on this forum, but I never would have dreamed of proffering "you're stupid and repugnant" as an argument in my exchanges with him. Even though Sam is totally stupid and repugnant--JK!!
There's a truly odious authoritarianism pervading our societal discourse nowadays, and it manifests itself in these types of casual personal attacks--as if it's totally okay to call someone a racist, or a misogynist, or an idiot (or whatever) if they don't subscribe to all of your opinions on every issue. Those are straight-up fighting words, and they need to be squashed with extreme prejudice. But,
after, we've got to be willing to welcome the vanquished back into the fold.
I get the sense that C77 loves softball, and that she genuinely wants to contribute to the softball community. That makes her okay in my book. She just needs to understand the rules of engagement.