>[I thought what Thomas said was kinda dumb but it's fascinating to
>watch the perimeters of acceptable opinion being policed.]
Compare the dumping Thomas is taking with the encomium reserved for John Wooden. Papers across the land are filled with stuff like this since he died Saturday:
[...]
He walked in as if it were a General Motors keynote speech, then spent the next hour talking about how important teachers are. Basketball was little discussed. The trip home took almost two hours in traffic. He had a cold and said he felt bad that it had kept him from speaking longer. He apologized for nodding off in the car. His speaking fee had been chocolate chip cookies, and a few days later he called to make sure the word was passed to the baker that they had been the best he ever had.
When you visited, for as long as he was able, he would walk you to your car, or at least to the condominium elevator. Your comfort level was his primary concern.
Until recent years, when the phone rang in his apartment, he would let the answering machine take it and then, invariably, feel guilty about doing such a selfish thing as screening calls. It didn't matter who it was, even after the caller indentified himself. One day, he took a call from an aluminum siding salesman and spent five minutes explaining that he lived in a condo and didn't make building decisions, but that he appreciated how hard the man worked at his job and wished him well.
[...]