<html><div style='background-color:'><DIV> <DIV>Carrol said:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>>Granted, Lou may have built too strong a rhetoric on too weak a<BR>>foundation, but his forcefulness does have a foundation in one<BR>>implication of the whole of Rob's posts on this topic. Rob lays claim to<BR>>"understanding." That kind of claim, in a number of areas, can<BR>>legitimately trigger fireworks. I imagine, for example, that Marta would<BR>>quite reasonably throw a very large fit if I told her, on the basis of<BR>>my broken hip of 1990 and my broken wrist of 2001, that I "understood<BR>>what it felt like to be disabled."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you're referring to the "I-wouldn't-mind-if-someone-stared-at-my-tits-were-I-a-woman" bit, then, yep, I winced at that one.  It can trigger fireworks, with I think good cause (I'm speaking logically, not empirically here; nothing of the sort has happened to me), but I think people who get on their high moral horse and charge the evil offender down for insulting them are going a tad far.  Patience, albeit leavened with some heat, and giving the ignoramus a chance to explain him/herself, could work wonders, I expect.</DIV> <DIV><BR>>At meetings of the local Depressive and Manic Depressive Support Group,<BR>>when new persons show up, we will spend some time discussing what the<BR>>group "does for" members. A core point we will make is the usefulness of<BR>>spending two or three hours a month in a context where no one will say<BR>>stupid things to you. And one of our prime examples of intolerably<BR>>stupid things is any version of the statement, "I understand how you<BR>>feel."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Hah!  Do you also line up to target shoot at Stuart Smalley ( of SNL fame, "I'm OK; you're OK") posters?  Man, sign me up!</DIV> <DIV><BR>><BR>>I rather suspect that had Rob not allowed this implicatiion of "I<BR>>understand how you feel" to show through his posts, his clumsinesses<BR>>might have been handled more leniently by all concerned.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><Gallic shrug></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Todd<BR></DIV></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at <a href='http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></html>