Asymmetrical Information

Yeah, yeah, real courage. The secretary for the NAACP, who was coached by liberal employers to create a test case 50 years ago. Big deal. Like in the movie Barbershop, real heroes would go to jail for those acts. Rosa became a celeb. What suffering she must have endured. All those TV cameras.

We writes:

>>>"Yeah, yeah, real courage. The secretary for the NAACP, who was coached by liberal employers to create a test case 50 years ago. Big deal. Like in the movie Barbershop, real heroes would go to jail for those acts. Rosa became a celeb. What suffering she must have endured. All those TV cameras."

I'll just chalk this one up as another reason why African Americans like myself have to be ever vigilant about civil rights in this country, even in 2005.

--Cobra

Unbelievable...... Can you honestly discount the courage it must have taken that woman to defiantly refuse to give up her seat on that bus, effectively saying to an entire social strata, an entire misinformed culture, that "I am not less than you, and I'll not accept this indignity any more". Rosa Parks was a better, stronger person than "we" or I could ever hope to be. You may not choose to believe it, but you ought recognize that she was a huge part of the Civil Rights movement, and helped change this country for the better. And guess what, it takes a television camera or two along the way to make that happen. Do you think the fire hoses in Birmingham, or the "I Have a Dream" speech, would have had the same effect had it not been on national television?

It's true that Rosa Parks was deliberately selected for an NAACP test case. But so what? Being a hand-picked test case made it more of a brave choice for her. Yes, she got more accolades than other people who had done the same thing, but she also took on more dangers; by volunteering to be the symbol of this volatile issue, she made herself the most visible target for racists. As it turned out, she lived a long life and ended up beloved by almost the entire country, but she couldn't have known that back then.

One could argue something similar about Martin Luther King: he wasn't the only civil rights leader, there were many other people instrumental in the struggle, and that King got a disproportionate share of the glory. Perhaps that's true, but it's unarguable that he got a disproportionate share of the violence. When a racist looked for a civil rights leader to kill, King was the obvious choice.

We wrote:
Yeah, yeah, real courage. The secretary for the NAACP, who was coached by liberal employers to create a test case 50 years ago. Big deal.

Oh, dear, another mid-school student has dropped by. Please ask some responsible adult to explain why it is childish and despicable to write such a stupid thing in general, and in particular shortly after the death of the individual in person. Then try to learn something about Jim Crow. Then go post somewhere else, anywhere else, until 5 years after completing puberty.

Thanks, in advance.

ellipsis:

Nicely executed ad hominem attack. You managed to work in six or so insults in only four sentences, including something concerning the writer's sexual maturity or lack thereof. Always a winning debating technique!

MarkJ wrote:

ellipsis:

Nicely executed ad hominem attack. You managed to work in six or so insults in only four sentences, including something concerning the writer's sexual maturity or lack thereof. Always a winning debating technique!

Many writings are worthy of debate, and to deploy a fallacy is in error. I try to avoid that error.

But some writings are worthy only of contempt, and I heap scorn upon them. There was no substance, no real argument in the first posting, merely childish posturing and arguably ignorance; such twaddle doesn't deserve serious attention any more than a 12-year-old mouthing off on a street corner deserves serious attention.

Hmm. I don't know - the argument was that the Parks incident on the bus was staged, and not a spontaneous act of courage as I understand it to have been portrayed at the time. This may not (and does not, in my opinion) mean it didn't take courage, but I don't see that the first poster's point was "childish posturing" and "twaddle".

What I think it was, was an argument against a multicultural idol of yours, and it made you angry so you wrote a scathing ad hominem attack - complete with a sexual maturity slur - to try to ridicule him.

Which is itself childish. So please get off your high horse and stop acting like you were performing some noble deed that needed doing.

MarkJ wrote:

Hmm. I don't know - the argument was that the Parks incident on the bus was staged, and not a spontaneous act of courage as I understand it to have been portrayed at the time.

Sorry, I do not see such an argument in the first posting. What I see is merely adolescent posing and extreme rudeness in the form of bashing someone who just died.
Do I have to explain basic human decency towards people that just died, here? It wasn't all that long ago that pretty much every adult had the common sense to at least keep their opinion to themselves in such a situation...

This may not (and does not, in my opinion) mean it didn't take courage, but I don't see that the first poster's point was "childish posturing" and "twaddle".

I see, so implying that Parks took her stand because she was told to do so, or to get herself on TV, at a time when crossing color lines could earn real physical harm...that's not childish? Standing up in this forum to denegrate someone that just died, this is mature? Please, do defend the posting in detail...

What I think it was, was an argument against a multicultural idol of yours, and it made you angry so you wrote a scathing ad hominem attack - complete with a sexual maturity slur - to try to ridicule him.

Then I suggest that MarkJ should think harder. I chose to ridicule a posting that I found repugnant and beneath contempt, for reasons having to do with basic human decency. I still find it to be so, and find this attempt at a defense of it to be rather ugly.

Which is itself childish. So please get off your high horse and stop acting like you were performing some noble deed that needed doing.

Telling a fool that he's been foolish isn't childish, it is in fact quite the opposite. I'll take MarkJ's suggestion on what to think and say under advisement and get back on that Real Soon Now.

But tell us all, what is it about Parks that seems to bother MarkJ? Was it that she was uppity? That she was part of an organization known to be full of "outside agitators"? That she didn't know "her place"?

Do tell us all about it, please....

I find myself CHEERING for Ellipsis right now. I wouldn't have thought that possible after recent threads.

On this one, I salute you.

--Cobra

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