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Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 10:31:41 +0000
Subject: RE (2): Time Out article
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"Rob Mitchell"<admrwm@ccg.acu.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> Bob wrote:
>
> > I've come across this sort of negative inaccurate stereotyping with
> > other activities I've been involved in e.g. morris dancing
>
> and we can all take solace from the fact that there's always someone (much much
> much) lower than yourself in the food chain of cred.
>
> Unless you're Bob.
At the risk of proving that I'm either unbearably sad or have no
sense of humour or both I'm going to take this comment far more
seriously than I think Rob intended (you didn't mean it seriously did
you Rob :-) ).
I think this comment reinforces my previous point. Everyone wants
someone to laugh at and the things that get chosen are the minority
interests. Even people taking part in one minority interest want to
laugh at someone so the easiest thing to do is to pick on a different
minority interest.
Rob also wrote (in another email):
> the piece has been written, filed, printed and read by now and
> that's that. The only people who will have taken any notice of it
> are frisbee players and paphides' friends. Other readers will have
> thought, "that is/is not amusing" and moved on.
Just for a moment let us imagine that the piece was written about
morris dancing (and similar pieces have been). We would then fall
into the "other readers" category Ron mentions above. The following
week / month we might then have read a follow up article by the same
journalist about the letters and emails they recieved from scores of
outraged morris dancers correcting errors in the piece. (This has
also happened).
The letters might mention that morris dancing is an
aerobic activity, that many morris dancers are extremely fit (OK,
some are beer swilling lard asses but that just makes the comparison
with Ultimate even more accurate ), that it is part of a centuries
old tradition, that the Royal Ballet has a morris team, that many
morris musicians are extremely accomplished (and there is a whole
side issue of whether some one who plays an accordion can be
described as a musician) etc. etc. The journalist might (and, once
again, this has happened) hve closed the article with a note that
there is even a morris dance mailing list available on the internet.
How many people made it through that paragraph without falling
asleep? Basically, if you're not a morris dancer you don't care.
Anyway, I guess I'm tending towards the "let it drop" school of
thought, although I might be persuaded by the "one well written
letter from BFDF or BUF" school of thought as well.
This is also drifting off topic. I am continuing my downward spiral
into negative street cred and I should really do some work.
Apologies for taking up so much bandwidth.
Bob - Red II
----------------------------------------------------------
-- Bob Archer bob@hottub.demon.co.uk