One additional admittedly pointless point.

I said below that,

1) I am trying to avoid boredom here and

2) If I am being an ass, you should tell me so.

These two points can logically contradict each other. If you point it out every single time I make an ass of myself, our discussion could be hopelessly repetitive.

Joe, check your lexicon. We need some synonyms for “ass.”

mderpelding says:

Truly sophisticated people can kiss my you know what.
Truman never rejected his machine politician beginnings.
The “sainted JFK” actually was hit by a Japanese destroyer in a war zone for crying out loud.
After being kicked out of a cushy Naval intelligence posting.
His father was ambassador to the UK.
I happen to like Bach, and other polyphonic music.
But blacks and blonds disgust me.
JFK’s, FDR’s , HST’s , and all their fellow travellors no longer matter.
None of us can change yesterday.
Every decent man I know has regrets.
Because our gut speaks to us.
I need your help for tomorrow.

Comment by mderpelding — 7/17/2006 @ 9:46 pm | Edit This

Please don’t talk past me.
I will try to reciprocate.

Comment by mderpelding

MY REPLY:

Reading this blog the last thing you would dare accuse anybody of being is KIND. But mderpelding is being kind here. He made a quick list of a few things things he knows. Repeat, “a few.”

I keep repeating that I make the mistakes I condemn. Again and again and again I have made the exact miustake I accuse other ex-professors of making. I assumed that the people I am talking to are ignorant. People like mderpelding are just a little bit tired of people making that assumption, in the same sense that Simon LeGare’s slaves were a LITTLE tired of being whipped.

Point taken, mederpelding, with apologies. I will do my damnedest, which is pretty damned, not to talk past you.

But commenters are also touchy about this. A lifetime of dealing with giggling professors will do that to you. I just admitted that I am thin-skinned about the World War II Generation. How can I ask you not to take it personally when I go off on a tangent you made me think of? Do you REALLY want to read, “Now, Joe, I am saying you are making the neo mistake here, but I am not accusing you of being a neo.” Very soon you would be saying, “Dammit Bob, get to the friggin’ POINT!”

I want people to start with the basics. This does not mean they are implying that I don’t KNOW the basics. In his quick little list, mderpelding said “After being kicked out of a cushy Naval intelligence posting.” I am going to look that one up. I didn’t know about it.

This reminds me of an episode in the old camp TV program “Batman.” Batman was explaining some obscure facts about Tutankhamen and Robin said, “Gee, Batman, is there ANYTHING you don’t know?” In a spirit of humility Batman answered, “Yes, Robin, there are things I don’t know. SEVERAL things.”

“Several” means more than one but not many. This was perfect camp. Batman admitted that, in the entire universe, not only was there something he did not know, but ther was more than one thing he did not know.

But not many.

You hit on one of the several things that even semi-omniscient Bob doesn’t know!!!

The reason I am worth bearing with is that I know that my pretenses are a joke. I just need to be reminded of it a lot.

And try to remember that you, too, can misunderstand what I am doing. Do you REALLY want me to go through all the “mderspelding/Joe, Elizabeth/Shari, Dave knows this and I am not accusing you of ….”? Do you REALLY want to read all that crap?

I go to a lot of effort to insist that you separate yourself from all the spam. I keep repeating that I am not the Ultimate Authority, I am leading a seminar. If I talk past you, call me on it. This is not a lecture.
Let me do my thing and you do your thing.

I am very often an ass. Just say so.

Joe seems to be familiuar with alcohol and drug recovery, but I doubt he has ever been IN it.

But Joe is a wise old bastard, so he understands. He says:

“A sponsor’s first responsibility is to lead a pigeon through the 12 Steps. It is not the sponsor’s responsibility to prevent the pigeon from falling down. If they fall and you blame yourself you are not fit to be a sponsor. That, by the way, is not an unusual occurrence. There’s a lot of sponsors who don’t know what their job is and it shows. ”

I have never heard a sponsor refer to anybody in the program as “a pigeon.” You are a sponsor only if you live in the same glass house, so you don’t throw stones. But your point, because you understand things by now, is dead accurate.

Bob’s Blog is written from Bob’s point of view. So I knew a lot of people who had been brave in combat but who died because they could not handle drugs. So to me the kid fighting drugs is more impressive than the old fart bragging about how heroic he was in Nam or WWII. To keep anybody from getting all choked up abouthow I respect these young folks, please remember that I am expressing a deep personal loathing for grown men I have heard moaning about what heroes they were in The War. If the old guys sitting at the alcoholics club were the heroes they claim they were, iuf they couold handle everything by Personal Valor the way they say they can, they wouldn’t be in a recovery program.

And for every one bragging old bastard in the recovery club, there are ten who dies because they didn’t have the guts and the humility to get there. The old AA members are a pain in the keester. They kept bragging about how they were alcoholics but they were too good to touch drugs. I found the perfect reply:

“You know, you should thank us junkies. Who else on earth can an old drunk look DOWN on?”

I was in Narcotics Anonymous mostly. In that group, I was the second oldest person, and I have always been in politics, so I threw myself into helping out. Contrary to popular myth, people in politics are mostly people who want to help people out. As a result of this combination, I got asked to be sponsor by a LOT of people. Even my counsellors in recovery would ask me how the session went when I was new.

As a result, I got sponsees long before I was ready for them. No matter old and wise you are, you go through the same phases when you, personally, are a drunk and a junkey. No matter how old and wise you are, no matter how many episodes of combat you have been in, you are still deep in the same hole with everybody else. In fact, if you are older it just means you stay in the early phases LONGER. A kid who was clean and sober for a year after a decade overusing was in his next phase. I had been overusing for decades, and at the end of the first year I was still a complete wreck.

In other words, when I took sponsees I had the requisite year but I was still in the “pins and cushions” stage. I still did not have the perspective not to FEEL I had let someon down. I knew the program, but that doesn’t mean I understood the concept. But I didn’t let it make me a bad sponsor. It just hurt ME.

But I keep saying that the mistakes I condemn are the ones I have made myself. This is just anohter example of that. If I say you are acting like a neo, you may be sure I have acted like a neo many, many times before I caught myself. If you think I condemn YOU, you should remember what I said to myself. The last persojn we Aryans forgive is ourselves.

To repeat what one German wisely said, “If we said to others what we say to ourselves, we would be considered sadists.” Remember that is very true of ME. That is why you are willing to take from me a lot you wouldn’t stand for from someone else.

And that is why Ole Joe enjoys battling it out with me.

Joe said,

“Not Spam. **A sponsor’s first responsibility is to lead a pigeon through the 12 Steps. It is not the sponsor’s responsibility to prevent the pigeon from falling down. If they fall and you blame yourself you are not fit to be a sponsor. That, by the way, is not an unusual occurrence. There’s a lot of sponsors who don’t know what their job is and it shows.

Yes, you’re still going to use “silly” and “sophisticated” excessively because you are not one to accept correction.

That piece you just wrote, by the way, didn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. I mean the whole piece. I’m not talking about the stupid nonsense about me being a neoconservative. That’s taken as a joke. That’s all it could be. Mderpelding wasn’t giving you a compliment, Bob. He was slapping your face as I read it. When somebody says, “who made you God?” that’s not a compliment. That’s a challenge. No, don’t send me any money. The lesson is free.

Comment by joe rorke

** I damn near marked this as Spam, and NOT on purpose. See comment below, “Random Comments.”

MY REPLY:

I also said in recent piece that I was acting like a Jew. When I think you are acting like a neo or a Buckley I say so. I say so precisely because that is not how you want to act. If I thought you WERE a neo or a George Will this would not be corection, but a compliment. I do not see you taking it as a compliment.

The day I urge I urge you to take neos seriously is the day you can blow a gasket. Don’t hold your breath inthe meantime.

I read over your comments again and you want me to use better words. “Silly” is, as you say, girl’s word. It is the sort of word one would use to describe girlish behavior. Two commenters gave examples of social science teachers who had hysterics in their classrooms.

You are fully aware of the derivation of hte word “hysterical.” It is a feminine term, as in historectomy.”

I said that attitude is everything. What is the exact attitude that professors adopt against us? It is either hysterics or giggling. You have run into it plenty, and I defy you to say there is anything masculine about:

“But, dear boy, that is so GAUCHE! Isn’t, Chauncey, isn’t it Bertram?” Bertram and Chauncey join in the giggling. “My dear boy, no one wears that opinion any more! Don’t you read the Fashion Journals? They would laugh you to death at the Sorbonne!”

Joe, you said in your comments you had substitutes for my words, but you woldn’t tell me what they were. I have not played “I know but you don’t!” since about the third grad, and I am not about to start now. If you have suggestions, make them like an adult. I have accepted many, many corrections here and I have apologized here, but I will not respect grammar school games.

Until you have the basic respect to state an alternative, I will not use a masculine adjective to describe hysteria and fashionable giggling.