I know that I am in the political minority here on LBO-Talk, in a tendency with Nathan and a very few others that engages much more with the 'mass' US left than the 'ideological' US left; it is probably not coincidental that both Nathan and I have an orientation toward work within the labor movement, as opposed to academic and/or intellectual milieux. It doesn't particularly bother me that I am in a minority here, because with my politics in the USA, I am have had a lifetime of being a dissenting minority. I continue to be involved in LBO-Talk because I believe that I learn something from most of the exchanges, which are generally of a high intellectual quality, and because I believe that I contribute something of value to the mix which would not otherwise be here.
But I have to admit that there are times when I find myself really irritated, just wanting to send a 72 font "fuck you too" reply. Take all of this nonsense about 'plain text' posting. I have spent a lot of time, hours and hours, trying to find a way to post 'plain text' out of AOL 6.0, I have done all kinds of research on the net, I have sought advice from anyone who would provide it, and the bottom line is that I have found no way to post pure 'plain text' out of AOL 6.0. In earlier versions of AOL it happened automatically, but in the latest version, since they introduced the capacity to do HTML posting, there seems no way to send a post which, at a minimum, does not appear in two forms, one plain text, followed by one in HTML, with all of the codes.
Nothing burns my ass more at this particular moment than to read another posting from another smug and _willfully ignorant_ individual about how easy it is to post plain text from AOL, especially since not one of these folks has ever made even the most elementary effort to help me discover if there is indeed a way to do that. The only assistance I have ever received is from folks who don't use this problem as a way to make obnoxious personal insults in my direction, and for all of their help, which I do appreciate, I have never found a way to do it.
In my experience, different listservs use different software; on some, such as LBO, I have this interface problem; on others, I do not. I am on about 10 different Yahoo based listservs, for example, and I have not a problem on one. On other listservs, I find posters whose texts appear with all of the codes. Now, I have this novel idea that we come to a community we try to create together, such a listserv, we start from the premise that we are different, and we try to find ways to accommodate those differences. Part of those differences are political, part are questions of personal style, and part are different points of access to the Internet. Not all of us are sitting in a university with free access. This accommodation of difference requires mutual efforts; I accept it as my responsibility to try to make my posts appear in the best format for others, but the responsibility is not that of one person alone. It is fascinating to me how some folks who proclaim so loudly the right to difference in the abstract have so little tolerance for it in the concrete, whether it be in software interface or in politics.
So, no, I am not going to unsub, and as much as I am tempted, I will not send them back a message suggesting that those who make these friendly suggestions do so themselves. I'm here, I'm queer; get used to it.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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