Re: Reaching Out

[James Smith <munnari!cc.nu.oz.au!CCJS@uunet.UU.NET>]

Path: cc!ccjs
From: CCJS@cc.nu.oz (James Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Subject: Re: Reaching Out
Date: 22 Nov 89 12:12:15 -1000
References: <8911190615.900@munnari.oz.au> <8911191449.AA02517@GAFFA.MIT.EDU>
Organization: University of Newcastle
Lines: 71

Jon Drukman writes (in reply to me):

>> are you really qualified to judge how good or bad any song is?

> Of course I am, you silly boy.  No matter how narrow your mind you are
> always entitled to your opinion.

But it is only opinion, not the truth.  You are certainly entitled to
give an opinion, but are you qualified to actually judge the song?  I am
saying that if you are narrow-minded, your evaluation of the song is
warped by your prejudices, and has little to do with the song's actual
worth.  Your view is very subjective, and becomes virtually worthless
to the reader, as he must know your predudices and eliminate them before
he can judge the song against his own.

Which leads to another point.  If your opinion is so biased, it becomes
important that you actually say "In my opinion", so that the reader will
not mistakenly accept it as truth.  Otherwise you are deliberately
misleading him.

> Of course, when people read *my* opinions they realize that they are reading
> the work of an exceptional being and that my opinions have ten times
> more weight than the average bimbo.

Again, this is opinion and has little to do with the facts of the matter.
It seems to me that when people read your opinions they start to realise
their true worth and so treat them as worthless.

> If you bothered to actualyl READ the lines you were REPLYING to in
> the original message, the sentence started with "to me personally..."
> or somethin.

You originally wrote:

> You betcha.  For my "walking around campus" cassette I programmed
> "Walk Straight Down The Middle" in place of "Reaching Out" and
> relegated Reaching Out to the very end of the tape.  Basically, I
> never listen to it, because I usually hit stop and rewind it after
> This Woman's Work.  IED can call me pathetic until he's blue in the
> face, but Reaching Out is a horrible song. 

You notice that it does not say "to me personally..." or something.
Who are you calling illiterate?

> In any case, THIS quote HERE ALSO starts with "My
> personal opinion is that..."  How could ANYONE mistake this for
> absolute word of god?  Other than the fact that what I say *IS* the
> word of god?

I was quoting the phrase "My personal opinion" in order to highlight
the fact that you did not use it in your original article.  Perhaps
I should have further edited the line...  In any case, I assumed that
any competant reader would realise what I was doing, as it would not
make sense to read it any other way.

> NEVER!  As long as there's life in my fingers, I will type whatever it
> pleases me to type and if you don't like it, then stick a line to
> obliterate my postings in your KILL file.  I happen to think that my
> highly offensive and overwritten postings bring a little life to an
> otherwise boringly factual net.  If you don't like 'em, then don't
> read 'em.

But how can I laugh at you if I don't read your postings? :-)

Jim

-- 
James Smith          | When a man fell into his anecdotage
Computing Centre     | it was a sign for him to retire from
Newcastle University | the world.
ccjs@cc.nu.oz.au     |                 -- Benjamin Disraeli