Re: What Are the Race Deniers Denying?

Bob Whitaker (bwhit@conterra.com)
Sat, 14 Dec 1996 12:36:06 -0500

Gregory Taylor wrote:
>
> Bob Whitaker <bwhit@conterra.com> wrote:
> >Certainly I can understand taht, being a Poltiically Correct clone, you
> >assume that everybody lies in print. To you, it just a question of
> >lying for "a good cause".
>
> Actually, I make no such assumptions. My question derives from one of
> your own sentences, which seems rather simple to parse. Just in case
> you were hoping we'd all missed it, here it is again:
>
> >> >From bwhit@conterra.com Sat Jun 1 06:39:10 PDT 1996
> >> >Message-ID: <4oo50f$23b@molokini.conterra.com>
> >> ... I have also lied
> >> >about my position in poltical writing a number of times.
> >> >Others would call it stretching the truth, but I consider any
> >> >intentional misstatemetn of fact to be a lie.
>
> >You wouldn't understand this, of course, but there is a big difference
> >between an unintended mistake and a lie. This will seem a mere quibble
> >to you, but it's very important to me: I have made lots of mistakes in
> >ny writings, but I've never lied in anything I've published.
> >Can you see the diffference?
>
> The comment of yours I've posted above would seem to contradict what
> you've written previously. The guy who uses your name in the June 1
> posting tells us that he has lied about his position in political
> writing, and the guy posting yesterday from the same place with the
> same name tells us that he's never lied in anything he's published.
> Unless we do some fancy quibbling about the difference between
> "in political writing" and "publishing" (which is, I suspect, where
> this is going), one of the two of you *is* lying, rat cheer.

Nothing particularly fancy about what you call quibbling. Like most
profssional, the overwhelming majority of my poltical writing has been
for other people, eg, congressional speeches. I intentionally untruthed
one hell of a lot in those.
>
> I note, too, that you claim in the 1 June bit to appear quite scrupulous
> about honesty and authenticity - going so far as to collapse the
> distinction between "stretching the truth" and "lying". I find it
> curious that you'd go to so much trouble there and to be so ethically
> lapsed when it comes to "what you've published" and "what you've written."
> Seems to me as though you're abandoning the moral high ground pretty
> clearly.
>
> Considering that you seem so interested in appearances and actions,
> I'd think that you'd be pretty ashamed of needing to lean on some kind
> of difference between what you "write" and what you "publish." In doing
> so, you're explicitly telling us that there's reason to believe that
> you're duplicitous, aren't you? Haven't you rather clearly implied
> that it's possible that the "published" Bob Whitaker who plagues both
> our houses is perhaps lying (if we read your June I missal)? And
> aren't you creating some problems for your credibility if you claim
> a difference between what you "write" and what you "publish" in terms
> of truth content? You seem to be doing so here - I can't think of another
> way to reconcile the two Whitaker posts above.
>
> You seem rather confused. I can't say it surprises me.
> --
> When I pronounce the word Future,/the first syllable already belongs to the
> past./When I pronounce the word Silence,/I destroy it./When I pronounce the
> word Nothing,/I make something no nonbeing can hold./ (Wislawa Szymborska)
> Gregory Taylor WORT-FM URL:http://www.msn.fullfeed.com/~gtaylor/RTQE.html