This isn't an inquisition, it's an accounting.

[rutgers!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (Mais, ou sont les neiges d'antan?)]

>IED, and all his entourage, are well aware of his
>"elitist" attitude, and in fact the topic has been discussed
>at length--and his position heartily defended--in Love-Hounds before. 

Oooh. I missed this part of the exchange, I guess. You and the twins
and little caligula actually stood up before the assembled masses and
defended your elitism heartily-elitism as in "the consciousness of
being or belonging to a socially superior group?" I gotta see this
stuff (anybody got any back postings to mail out? Bill? Doug? Rossi?),
since the only stuff I've got says "HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID" and
"it is obvious that...." and "you've shown that you know nothing at all
of...." I definitely wouldn't like to beat that dead horse.

>As for the ironic tone and
>occasionally patronizing remarks in some of his recent postings,
>to which you have so strenuously objected, IED is willing to
>admit that he may have been a little extreme; but indulgent
>readers will appreciate the pressures placed upon a Love-Hound
>who dares to undertake the role of devil's advoKate in this forum.

Wow. You're off the hook just like that. This is an even better
view of your own accountability than even the andrew/IED dodge
I alluded to in my last "nasty" posting. "Hey, shucks folks:
sure I was patronizing once in a while. Sure I skirted that old
ad hominem toilet. Sure I sounded sanctimonious once in a while.
Sure I called you all a bunch of idiots [IEDiots?]. But "my entourage"
and I were under pressure."

And by the way: if you're at all familiar at all with devil's
advocacy in either the sense of Catholic Theology or standard 
practice, you'll know that such a position involves the taking
of a sanctioned position whereby one defends a less accepted
or approved cause. In the case of Beatification or Canonization
of saints, it involves no risk whatsoever. In common usage, it
seems to be assumed by most lexicographers that the person assuming
the position does not agree with the position themself. Are you
being imperfectly clever in your use of the term, or did you curse
us all so coarsely without actually holding to the view you accused us
of misunderstanding?

I think that a bit of retraction and rewor[d,k]ing of your original
gauntlet *is* in order, and I look forward to seeing it again when
things resume their normal doldrums. I suspect that if you think about
it a little more, you'll find yourself either asking a more general
set of questions about the nature of language and art and the framing
of value judgements [which a number of us here have gleefully shredded
the daylights out of several times before and will gladly have at 
again] themselves, or you'll find that your newly-refined and objectified
question will ultimately parse down to something like "Why is there
nothing more like Kate Bush than Kate Bush?" I would hope that you
will be as inclined to use framing language like "I think" and "I
mean to say that" as you have so readily accused others of avoiding:
the combination of that with the cutesy third-person English (you are
aware of how utterly sanctimonious that sounds to anyone used to
the Monarchial term of self address, I am sure) will almost certainly
guarantee at least some mild abuse from somewhere, and make all your
many supporters perhaps less than ready to spring to your defense.

In short, you get the respect you extend to others. Honi soit....
And by the way, until such time as we do meet, you *are* what you
show up as on the net. That means you take responsibility for what
you say. Those words cannot be called back. I stand by everything I've
posted here-can you make the same claim without claiming stress of
blaming it on giro or caligula or whomever does the typing?

Back to our lives already in progress. The flames cut back from here
on unless I get called a dumbbell again. Got some old Harold Budd
recordings in the post today ('71, 72. electronic). Reports to follow.