quote:Quick, call the waaaambulance for all the whineos !
This is a statement of considerable irony given you, well, many would call it proceed to make a post in which you whine angrily about funding extra-curricular activities for children.
quote: I really don’t give a rat’s adrenal gland why this school district banned all clubs from using school facilities, I’m just glad they did. Nor do I give a weasel’s spleen what that club’s agenda is, they and most other clubs have no business using school facilities.
They absolutely do have business using school facilities. School activities, such as extra-curricular activities, are what school facilities are for. Not just the RRRs.
quote:(I'm not even convinced public schools should have huge sports programs.)
quote:(I'm not even convinced public schools should have huge sports programs.)
I'm not either, but instead of an angry (whining) rant, you could examine the question of what happens after such programs are eliminated. You know, what enters the vacuum.
quote: I just wish more school districts would do this - especially the one I’m paying property and other taxes to support. For as long as I can remember my family and I have been subsidizing other people’s causes, hobbies, and activities. AND I’M SICK AND TIRED OF IT. I’ve never asked other people to subsidize my hobbies, and I shouldn’t have to subsidize theirs.
First of all, yes you have. Not directly, but yes you have. You're a member of society, you get more than you give unless you're some sort of saint, so yes, you do. That's the virtue of civilization. Shared labor yields greater benefits for everyone. Second, those property taxes you're we'll just say complaining about, it is indeed dreadful that they go towards improving the lives and education of children.
One might wonder aloud what might happen to your neighborhood, your property values, if suddenly there were no extracurricular activities in your neighborhood. I can guess what someone of your rant-y flavor will say - they should be funded, just not by me - but that's not the question at hand.
quote: So, any people who want their own club should just stop whining about it and form their own club on their own property with their own money on their own time and leave the rest of the people in their communities the hell alone.
Or people who attend a public school and whose parents also pay taxes and have a right to public education and facilities, etc., want to use the facilities they have supported.
(If this response sounds exasperated and sarcastic, it's because your post was pretty childish and obnoxious.)
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Rakeesh- my initial response was just a string of name calling and expletives and I figured that was against TOS so I didn't post it. So, I am pretty impressed you managed to give the response you did cause your level of exasprated and sarcatic is pretty low.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: See, to me the gay uncle was mentioned in his post as to why he tries to be more tolerant. That's completely different than claiming that he can't be homophobic because of it, IMO.
Just because I actually DO have a lot of black friends doesn't mean I AM bigoted. In fact, a large part of WHY I am not bigoted is BECAUSE of my black friends. I can't believe stereotypes that run so completely counter to my actual experiences with people of different races, the cognitive dissonance is too great.
I believe that it is far harder to judge people based on race, religion, and sexual preference when you don't know anyone who fits into whatever group you are bigoted against. I don't have a poor view of other people based on race because of how I was raised, but also because I have had friends from all over the world all of my life, so when I DID experience bigotry it just didn't fit my world view, even as a kid.
I don't think that Alpha's original post was bigoted, and his clarification was clear as day to me.
YMMV.
Yes, exactly. That's what I was shooting for. Thank you.
I agree with much of what you're saying, though I think you're misinterpreting some of it.
I don't think having exactly one minority friend or relative is some sort of magical guarantor of prejudice. That'd be pretty silly. I was talking about, with AlphaEnder, what sounded anti-homosexual and explaining why. In this case it was citing one's gay uncle as credibility in a conversation that had, to me, a few other remarks that were pretty uncertain on an anti-/friendly- scale (examples being 'whatever anything like that is called', don't ever hit on me (or my family). Those remarks have since been gone into greater detail.
Or as Foust said, 'tone-deaf'. Personally I hadn't made up my mind, when I made my initial post, whether AlphaEnder was anti-homosexual in his politics or whether his remarks were simply tone deaf. I was only ever posting, as I said, about how they sounded.
For example, the citation of the gay uncle. It's just the sort of factoid that, brought up in the way it was - and in this case, it was specifically used to point out, "I didn't intend to sound like that." - having the gay uncle isn't what sounds anti-homosexual, obviously. Referencing the gay uncle as a source of credibility is what sounds, not bad exactly but...sketchy. Because it comes in a context of a host of other remarks that also sound sketchy.
You see the distinction? I'm specifically not cross-examining AlphaEnder, btw. That's not my job, I'm not entitled to do so, I'm taking a much narrower and for me right now more interesting approach: discussing how things sound. "I didn't mean to sound anti-homosexual. If I did sound that way, it was unintentional, because I'm not anti-homosexual. I've got a gay uncle!" The proper (to me) way not to sound anti-something is to simply not speak in ways that are likely to be taken that way, rather than having a genealogical boilerplate.
More relevant to that discussion of how things sound would be talking about, for example, how much interest is expressed in the uncle's personal life and the ways homosexuality impacts it compared to other relatives-ideally other uncles of similar closeness, for comparison's sake. Would the gay uncle, if invited over for dinner, be frowned upon actively or subtly for bringing a partner (of whatever duration) with him? How would any physical affection between the two be tolerated-in front of or not in front of any children? Open discussion of the two of them as a couple? Etc. etc. These are the kinds of things that serve the purpose AlphaEnder intended by mentioning a gay uncle, the answers to these and similar questions. (I'm not asking them, btw.) Not just having the uncle in the first place.
Much like the classic 'some of my best friends are black' line. The natural follow-up to that is, "When was the last time you had a black man over to your house for dinner, or for any occasion at all."
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Why clubs and after school activities are worth your tax dollars?
Do you know when the most dangerous time to be out on the street is?
Its not after midnight.
Its not at dark.
Its between 3-5pm. FBI Statistics show this.
Do you know why? Its because those same kids who could be making kites or acting or throwing the football around, are to often totally unsupervised between the end of school and the time parents get home from work.
posted
The conservative response to this being (I've heard it many times), "Fine, so we need good after school activities. Let private money pay for it!"
Except that, well, that's a great big leap of faith, ain't it? Not that the private money is there, but that it would be given in sufficient amounts to fill in the gaps.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Some of my best friends are jamaican neighbors
quote:Much like the classic 'some of my best friends are black' line. The natural follow-up to that is, "When was the last time you had a black man over to your house for dinner, or for any occasion at all."
does a black woman count? That cuts me down from two months to three days.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
That's pretty harsh, Samprimary. I don't know if AlphaEnder knows who you're referring to, but I don't think the conversation has risen (well, sunk really) to even that neighborhood yet. Really does just seem like, as Foust said, tone-deaf to me.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ... The proper (to me) way not to sound anti-something is to simply not speak in ways that are likely to be taken that way, rather than having a genealogical boilerplate. ... Would the gay uncle, if invited over for dinner, be frowned upon actively or subtly for bringing a partner (of whatever duration) with him? How would any physical affection between the two be tolerated-in front of or not in front of any children? Open discussion of the two of them as a couple? Etc. etc. These are the kinds of things that serve the purpose AlphaEnder intended by mentioning a gay uncle, the answers to these and similar questions. (I'm not asking them, btw.) Not just having the uncle in the first place. ...
Rakeesh, I think you are doing a phenomenal job of explicating an important concept that is often difficult to catch. Stellar!
Posts: 831 | Registered: Jul 2005
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So, I am pretty impressed you managed to give the response you did cause your level of exasprated and sarcatic is pretty low.
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