Alterman: Left in Shambles

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Mon Nov 13 21:36:22 PST 2000


Art McGee, my friend, you give this Jan guy way too much credit. First as to to your idiot alert: Jan is no ordinary idiot. He is an insane idiot -- a sort of Marxist right winger who uses radical marxist rhetoric to justify exclusively right wing positions. I'm sure you have met the type before.

Similarly he is no ordinary "white radical" . This guy makes Todd G. seem progressive by comparison. In short, being basically a nice guy, you went way too easy on him. Believe me Jan is not worth arguing with -- unless you want to go to the trouble of totally humiliating him, flaming him until he is reduced to a small pile of dust, as a sort of volunteer pest control service. But you probably have better things to do with your time.

Of course some people on the list find him useful. Our humorists enjoy parodying his posts, or coming up with with witty replies to his stupider straight lines. Kelly says of him "Oh good, a new chew toy", although frankly I never thought slime was particularly useful for that purpose.

You know there are a few characters on this list who enjoy being nasty, but most of them have redeeming features. Some make intelligent points which we can learn from; some are good debaters, against whom we can polish our skills. Jan seems to combine a complete lack of rhetorical skill with a total lack of content.

The post you argued with, believe it or not, had the highest signal to noise ratio of anything he has said yet. Most Jan posts are pretty much pure name calling, empty of meaning. It is a shame he has chosen this list to hang around -- because as far as I can see he is a distraction without redeeming value.

As you can see, he has managed to mildly irritate me...



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