Sun, 9 Oct 1994 10:44:45 -0700 for <SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU>
Date:         Sun, 09 Oct 94 13:19:50 EDT
From: Steve Harvey <HARVEY@UConnVM.UConn.Edu>
Subject:      response to albers
To: SOCGRAD@UCSD.EDU
I'm not "so riled up." There was a discussion, initiated by others, over the
appropriateness of using socgrad as a format for delivering non-interactive
lectures. My initial response was that I believed TR Young had a right to
say what he wants, anyway he wants, but that I found (what appeared at the time
to be) the rhetorical ploy of couching posts as unauthored decrees of Truth
to be counterproductive. After receiving further information, I admitted that
some of those original assumptions may have been misunderstandings on my
part, but that I still wanted to know why he/she refered to him/herself in the
third person. These, to me, are legitimate questions for a given discourse,
because I consider it productive to reduce "smokescreens" surrounding ideas to
a minimum, in order to best compare and assess whatever ideas are on the table.
I may, as Albers says, "protest too much," though, as far as I can tell, all
I've done is present a perspective and ask relevant questions, some of which
have been answered (and, miraculously, TR Young switched to the first person).
So, Dale, "why don't you just sit back and enjoy" my contribution, as you
suggest is the appropriate reaction to posts, or, as I suggest (and have done),
perceive, consider, and engage? There is no reason for anyone on this list, no
matter how couched, to try to silence any voice. If there's something I said
which you find logically or empirically flawed, or some manner of saying it
that you find either disengenuous or inflammatory, then by all means, say so.
But, the fact that I say what I have to say, in and of itself, is not open to
criticism. (Nor have I ever objected to Young saying what he has to say).

Steve Harvey