Re: Excuse Me, Your Double-Standard is Showing
Going to give this a try and see how it goes....
First off, thank you to Mathman and Nadya for their well-wishes for feeling better. While I still feel pretty terrible right now, it doesn't feel like someone crammed a couple of meat thermometers in my ears anymore. Guess that's what I get for moving back to a city with a 3600 pollen count (3627 today, expected to rise tomorrow).
Secondly: Joe, I have no problem with your post at all, though I disagree with your opinion that it is 'unnecesary' and that it is a 'bloodbath'. You have always remained true to your beliefs and feelings about this war, and though you and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum about the reasons behind it, the propriety of it, etc., etc. (no need to rehash all of that), you have never denied anyone their right to express their opinions about it. Which gives me a great segue into my next point.
<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>(W)e do need to distinguish between discussing the post and discussing the poster. It is easy to tell the difference. Read your post. If the subject of your sentence is "troops" or "war" or "Iraq" or "weapons of mass destruction" or "George Bush" or "Saddam Hussein," then you are discussing (or perhaps broadening) the topic.
But if the subject of your sentence is "Nadya" or "Joe" or "you" then you are discussing the poster, not the post.[/quote]
This is where it gets tricky. Trying to explain myself without referring to the subject matter now removed from this thread is not going to be easy, but I will do my best. It is one thing to post a differing opinion on a thread, be it skating related or not. It is an entirely different ballgame when a person denies someone a right to express their opinion and then turns around and superimposes their own opinion on that same topic thread. One could make the defense that since the denial of expression and eventual banning did not occur here at GS, it is irrelevant here. Had Nadya left this PARTICULAR thread at GS alone altogether, my perceived attack on her would never have even occurred.
That being said, Nadya did post on this thread, which IMO is an incredible insult to Mmandel, and as a result of posting here, she left the door open for criticism. I, like most people who belong to GS, go to many different skating forums, and when questionable actions and words by someone occur that contradict what is posted here, I guess I do have a problem with that, especially when the person in question is a moderator for another forum and in somewhat of a position of cyber-authority.
Nadya's actions elsewhere sent a message of "we don't care about political opinions, and we aren't going to allow you to express them, especially since we don't agree with them." When Mmandel questioned this decision, he was banned, and then she turned around and started posting on the very same thread, except the thread was here at GS. What I did was call her on that, and since I didn't sugar-coat my point and question to Nadya, it has now been perceived as an attack, where I view it as challenging her to stand up and defend her words and actions.
GS maintains a high degree of integrity in cyber-skateland, and its members are as a whole, informed, intelligent, insightful, humorous, and of course, a little crazy, especially in March
, and when situations like this come up, that high degree of integrity could potentially be compromised. I understand that since the source of this whole debacle did not occur here, some might feel that this topic has no business being discussed here in Off-Topic; however, I did not open up the can of worms, so to speak. The can was opened by Nadya's words and actions, and I merely turned on the light so everyone could see the can. If that is a sin, then I guess I am guilty.
GDR residents would refer to their elections as "lets go folding" :lol: 
and as many of you may have heard several of the POW families found out about their sons/daughters being POW's by seeing it on foreign news channels before they were contacted by the US military. One woman saw her son on the phillipine news for instance, another on a spanish language news.
