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I have to agree with Wade, Kevin, John, and Bill. And while I do not
want to debate the appropriateness of "ango-saxonisms," it nevertheless
seems to me that too many of us spend too much time being offended by
things that really don't offend us but which we think other people may
find offensive. Call it "co-dependent umbrage."
The joke contained vulgarity of the same kind used in middle schools,
high schools, and universities around the country and probably around
the globe. The type of vulgarity used in the joke is also the linguistic
hallmark of newly-weds who are concluding the honeymoon period of their
marriage. In the context in which it was presented, the vulgarity wasn't
lewd, bigoted, inflammatory, or even, in my opinion, offensive. In fact,
I would argue that the vulgarity added to the realism and, therefore,
humor. And I think Vonnegut, Miller, Lawrence, Shakespeare, and <insert
the name of your favorite author here> would agree. Finally, I can
easily see how the joke could have segued into a discussion about the
problems that plague tech docs written by multiple authors.
If anything is offensive in this thread it is that some people have
presumed to take the high moral ground and take Bobby to task
publicly--instead of merely posting Bobby in private or even posting to
the list stating that they were _personally_ offended. In other words,
it wasn't just, "I was offended by this" (which is perfectly
respectable); it was, "you did a bad thing."
Leonard
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
om] On Behalf Of Wade Courtney
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2010 6:59 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Creative Writing Assignment - humor
As a life long sailor, I was not offended at all by the post. We are all
adults here. It wasn't a personal attack to anyone on the list. If you
can't
please everyone, and you can't, the please the ones that matter the most
to
you. Everyone else can suck it.
On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:41 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> Dossy Shiobara poked delightfully:
>
> > On 6/17/10 8:58 AM, Peter Hirons wrote:
> > > The important thing to remember is that this is a multinational,
> > > multi-ethnic, multi-gender, multi-sexual-orientation, etc,
> > etc, audience.
> > > Any joke you make must not offend any of them.
> >
> > ... or, all of them equally. :-)
>
> It's like modern kindergarten... oops, I mean pre-school...
> where everybody gets a prize for showing up, so everyone,
> equally, gets to feel 'speshul'.
>
> To John, which is worse: to have the chip on your
> shoulder, perched and ready for any opportunity to
> take offense.... or to be on the lookout for any
> chance to be offended on behalf of somebody else?
>
> As for the content of the original post, any of
> us who are ... um... of a certain age, has seen
> a variant of that joke several times over the years.
>
> I might be in the minority here, but I have no
> problem with people posting humo[u]r to this list.
> But I think the line-in-the-sand should be:
>
> a) if saw it and you think it's funny, post a link
>
> b) if you want to post it directly... author it.
>
> - Kevin
>
> (... who's occasionally funny-haha, and occasionally funny-wierd)
>
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