>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>>There is more than enough information about The Sopranos in the air for
>>anyone to make general statements as John has. If someone wrote a
>>counterargument making a great deal of use of specifics from the series,
>>John would not be in a good position to respond to the whole argument,
>>but he still could (accepting the detailed description) argue with the
>>conclusions that defense drew from them.
>>
>>Your proposition here would simply make 90% of conversation and writing
>>impossible.
>>
>>I don't particularly agree with John, but it is really stupid to dismiss
>>off hand in this way his grounds for making the statement.
>
>You can be so preposterous. There's a lot of stuff in the air about
>Milton - should someone write an essay on Paradise Lost without
>having read it? I've heard some stuff about that guy Pound, too -
>fascist, anti-Semite, fan of Jefferson. I can see an essay brewing
>on that too. The poems themselves? Who needs 'em!?!?!?
>
>Did you teach this way? Or is a TV series not the same as canonical
>poetry? Do I detect a sneer at mass entertainment?
This does explain why you think it's unimportant to discover the opinions of Iraqis when discussing the future of Iraq though. You just know, don't you?
Doug