I mean, Tracer is the one reporting here that prosecutors and judges have been idiotic / opportunistic enough to game the law to get bigger sentences out of ordinary assaults and such.
― nabisco, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:35 (seventeen years ago) link
Yeah, some people here seem to be confusing the American justice system with, like, things they saw in comic books.
― Eppy, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:36 (seventeen years ago) link
nabisco beyond whether you agree or not with the concept of making "hateful" (yet not specifically threatening or harassing) speech illegal (i don't) i think it's worthwhile to consider what effects the extra sentencing due to hate speech has had so far in the US, and in one way of looking at it, the upshot of these laws are that more minorities are behind bars for longer than before they were introduced. you can say this is because of "prosecutorial misuse" and that such misuse may be intellectually separable from the law itself but that's what some people say about the death penalty too. "just because some public defenders do a bad job doesn't mean the principle of the death penalty is invalid!"
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link
minorities behind bars .... servin' drinks!
― remy bean, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link
How is any of this really about hate speech? The irony is that this is really about the hotel's right to police it's ambiance and its guests' behavior - someting more akin to a libertarian attitude than some do-gooder policing of people's morals. A hotel probably cares about minority x's money and patronage more than the politics of the thing and if it feels that expelling people who are hating on minority x is a good way to insure that it continues to enjoy the patronage of said minority, it'll probably do it, unless it's a boutique hotel for bigots or racists or crackpots or something. Frankly, I would have kicked the lady out regardless of what she said; her behavior prior to the homophobia was disrespectful, dyspeptic and disturbing enough and Hoos merely made use of her egregious speech to help make an obviously soddenly drunk woman understand that her behavior was unacceptable.
― Michael White, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link
accentmonkey: I have no idea. The whole argument seemed to be based on a whole load of skewed history and fantasy, any or all of it could be total bollox.
Ah right. I thought it might be some amazing post-war legislation loophole or something. But of course it is probably makey-up.
― accentmonkey, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link
xpost But the death penalty is invalid because it's the death penalty.
― Eppy, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link
(I would also like to see yr article(s), Tracer, as it's something I've been curious about ever since the hate crimes laws were introduced.)
― Eppy, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:57 (seventeen years ago) link
accentmonkey: Who knows? I believe that they believed it, for what it's worth!
― Mark G, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99sep/images/9909lincoln.jpg "Fuck manalishi"
― deej, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:00 (seventeen years ago) link
captain save a hoos >>> captain save a manalishi
― deej, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:01 (seventeen years ago) link
I just wanted to point out that Jeb can go fuck himself.
― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link
I have to admit that my version of Hoos' speech might've ended "Please leave, cunt."
― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:05 (seventeen years ago) link
if i were the minority behind the bar, i would've pretended to sneeze in her face.
― remy bean, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:07 (seventeen years ago) link
how charming. ;-)
― Jeb, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:10 (seventeen years ago) link
no far more charming was your assumption without reading any of the relevant threads that somehow I am part of this delicate hivemind that can't handle 60 posts a day of nothing more than bigoted flamebait, as if that's something we should all aspire to.
― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:11 (seventeen years ago) link
mine would've gone something like, "do you have a male traveling companion? so I can punch him in the throat before kicking you both out?"
I worked in an upscale hotel for a while. It was most definitely not a good idea for me job-wise.
― will, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:12 (seventeen years ago) link
xxxpost
― will, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:13 (seventeen years ago) link
my impression was that most of his posts were more substantial than that, but point taken.
― Jeb, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago) link
So ridiculous that this thread turned into such a shitstorm. If you work in an establishment that serves booze, it's your goddamned job to remove ANY patrons that are disturbing others.
― Tantrum The Cat, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:24 (seventeen years ago) link
i kindof love it when i get a fresh opportunity to tell some stupid person off. u just get to be all calm - oftentimes i find if you're calm enough, you can reflect their stupidity back to them and they end up digging their own grave
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:30 (seventeen years ago) link
OKAY, removing the initial post entirely from the context of what's happened since, my own personal reaction to it is that it errs a tiny bit towards the side of self-promotion, BUT that there's no real problem with this, because if as I believe it's a true story, then he has every right to post about his life experiences on here. HOWEVER, I believe that given the nature of this board, he might have thought twice before posting it, and then refrained, because it isn't a particularly rich tale, more an open-and-shut case, and so the devotion of an entire thread to it comes across as a little more self-aggrandising than it actually is. The potential for flaming so far outweighed the potential for decent discussion that I believe Hoosteen was rash in starting this thread. I myself have been guilty of this countless times in the past, so I reckon I have a fair stance from which to make such a judgement.
― Just got offed, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:34 (seventeen years ago) link
1) nobody is clowning hoos for kicking some drunk bitch out the hotel, its for manufacturing a heroic captain planet slamdunk about it - id do the same if any other smug goober had posted this thread
2) the thread is about hate speech laws now because ppl kept using the term 'hate speech' as some kinda valid description & i said its something i associate with ppl who are interested in restricting speech - homophobic bigotry has a name already and theres no need to get on some orwellian newspeak 'hate speech' shit about it unless youre defining it legally
― and what, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link
i would do the same if somebody started a thread complaining about 'homicide bombers' or 'the democrat party', and i would not actually be defending any of those things either
― and what, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link
Leaving it up to judge and jury opens up why we have degrees of murder and such.
Darraghmac has just fallen into the great lie/fear that's at the center of people fearing this stuff -- this bizarre leap to assume that things are being dealt with based on the identity of the victim, as if someone's being offered "special protection," or it's suddenly "more of a crime" to harm a minority than it is to harm a white person. And this very, very obviously isn't the logic: it's that some crimes carry an element of terrorism and threat.
Way late, but this seems off from the typical justification of hate-crime laws afaik, which actually says that 'yes, special protection and yes, they need it.' Maybe that is a harder sell though.
― bnw, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link
here's the article i was thinking of, by debbie nathan. and - my bad - it just talks about new york, not all of the US. it's long but it is really really good.
http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3069
"After 9/11, many New Yorkers feared hate crimes were a new epidemic. But what's happening on the streets may be more familiar stories: fights over girlfriends, mugging easy marks and rumbles between revved-up teenagers."
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:44 (seventeen years ago) link
um yeah but it's pretty ridiculous to have to stop and wonder what you all are gonna think of a story. if posters did that all the time, no one would ever say anything.
and again, i don't think HOOS was "manufacturing a heroic captain planet slamdunk." he was telling a story, something that affected him. that we have to berate him for his maybe intentions instead of thinking about the story seems so silly to me. picking apart other people should not be a hobby, and it also just seems like a blatant missing of the point.
if you don't have any reaction to the story of interest, why even post at all?
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:56 (seventeen years ago) link
because on ILX you are JUDGED by what you say :-D
― Just got offed, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 16:58 (seventeen years ago) link
honestly when did being so cunty become a way of life?
"hi guys, i just had a weird run-in with a drunk homophobe and i told her off"
"you fucking idiot!"
it's like, what?
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:00 (seventeen years ago) link
You're OTM, but I think you're arguing a lost cause on this board.
― Rock Hardy, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:01 (seventeen years ago) link
rock otm via surmounter
― g-kit, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:03 (seventeen years ago) link
'bitch' is as bad if not worse than 'faggot', when you get down to it, except that it's effect has been dulled by over-use. it's almost saved by directing it at men and women in equal measure just as readily but ah, not really. [/pc plod]
― blueski, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link
That quote is very romantic (!), Tracer.
― bnw, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link
In a way I actually really like the fact that ILX is so quick to pounce on the merest perceived error; it means that any bullshit statement (of which I have written more than a few) is generally corrected/ripped to shreds within a very short space of time, and one's argumentative technique is honed. You've gotta be on your toes here, which is something I appreciate. I'm not saying that Hoosteen is a bullshitter, far from it, and some of the treatment he's gotten here is harsh, but this harsh treatment is a pretty inevitable by-product of the sharply intellectual, skeptical culture that prevails (and long may it prevail) here.
― Just got offed, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link
no it's more like:
"so what you want a medal? quit showing off how righteous and valiant you are"
"uhh waaaht? *cries*"
― blueski, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:06 (seventeen years ago) link
but really only a couple of people did that anyway.
― blueski, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:08 (seventeen years ago) link
same difference.
newsflash: negativity is not a good thing.
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link
Non Aeon Flux discussion - prejudice charged taboo words within a society.
― Lingbert, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:14 (seventeen years ago) link
Just got offed: i see your point, but like everything, balance is key.
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:15 (seventeen years ago) link
i salute Surmounter for defending the humanitarian cause. however, i think we have to live with a few grizzle-pots soiling threads now and then as that's just the way impersonal internet communication works sometimes. which is not to say that such remarks shouldn't be reproofed.
― Jeb, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:17 (seventeen years ago) link
negativity is much, much funnier than self-righteousness
― ghost rider, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:17 (seventeen years ago) link
Haha, ILX sucks
― A B C, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link
also surmounter wasn't your first thread about how you don't tip bartenders or something? IS THAT ANY BETTER THAN CALLING THEM NAMES??
― ghost rider, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link
also, there's a way to challenge people without being obnoxious.
i love how that's just taken as a given: that impersonal internet communication is just nasty. why? it's just a reflection of the people behind the screens. are people with computers nasty?
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link
that was hilarious when you said that it sucks. ghost rider OTM. (xpx2)
― blueski, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:20 (seventeen years ago) link
my first thread was a long while before the tipping thread, i just don't usually post on ILE, i post on ILM a lot. i think i know why.
and no it wasn't about how i don't tip bartenders, it was about how i don't like tipping in general. i'm a pretty generous tipper as a rule.
and no, negativity isn't funny. sorry. that's a really sad thing to believe.
― Surmounter, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:21 (seventeen years ago) link
nabisco beyond whether you agree or not with the concept of making "hateful" (yet not specifically threatening or harassing) speech illegal (i don't)
Good f'ing lord, why do we keep circling back to this ridiculous idea that anyone anywhere in the US is talking about making speech illegal? Why are we even mentioning it? For the record, I am AGAINST painting a giant penis on the surface of the moon.
you can say this is because of "prosecutorial misuse" and that such misuse may be intellectually separable from the law itself but that's what some people say about the death penalty too. "just because some public defenders do a bad job doesn't mean the principle of the death penalty is invalid!"
I'd agree -- there's a difference between moral objections to the whole notion of capital punishment and objections to it's being poorly administered to the point of harm. (There's also nothing inconsistent or silly about the position you've made up there, assuming someone believed that the court system could be reformed to administer capital punishment properly!)
But I'm not here to argue whether the laws are well administered, or whether they can be made to be well administered; I've been arguing that they're philosophically sound, because whenever they get mentioned there's this sudden upswell of people on ILX saying "but they make SPEECH/THOUGHT ILLEGAL" and "BRAIN POLICE" and a bunch of ridiculous stuff that has zero to do with the laws' intents or how they function.
Way late, but this seems off from the typical justification of hate-crime laws afaik, which actually says that 'yes, special protection and yes, they need it.'
Whose justification do you mean? I'm talking largely about the legal rationale, which was why I quoted Rehnquist upthread: the idea is that crimes of racial intimidation -- especially when applied in areas like voting, school attendance, seeking employment, etc. -- have broader social harms than whatever the nugget of crime is (assault, arson, etc.), and that the state has a legitimate interest in countering that.
― nabisco, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:21 (seventeen years ago) link
maybe the save-a-hoos brigade doesnt know that most ppl clowning him here have also been clowning him in ilm rap threads for like 8 months now instead of just happening to read this thread & feeling the spontaneous urge to defend a homophobe
― and what, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link
surmounter pls send me jpg for addition to sassiest boy in america contest
― ghost rider, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:25 (seventeen years ago) link
Not the kind of predictable, formulaic negativity seen on ILX. It's about as funny as a bunch of white teenage boys giving some schmuck cigarette burns in the toilet.
― libcrypt, Tuesday, 29 May 2007 17:25 (seventeen years ago) link