From: chaneysa@nextnet.csus.edu (Stephen A Chaney)
Subject: Re: Attention!
Organization: California State University Sacramento
Distribution: world 
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 23:32:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep9.002039.8859@midway.uchicago.edu> eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In response to Steve Chaney's length discussion of his flames:
>
>Suit yourself.  I'm feeling relatively anti-flames at the moment, but
>I have moods when I enjoy flaming and reading flames, and your tactics
>rather guarantee plenty of flamage.  I do think that your tactics do
>the pro-life side of the argument considerably more harm than good,
>but as I'm pro-choice this doesn't distress me.

As if the constant jabs by Kaufman, Humphrey, Garvin and Keegan don't
do enormous damage for the pro-aborts? 

You've got to look at the flip side - my flames come packaged with
clear and total exposure of all the mistakes your friends have made in
attacking me or other people. 

For instance, Susan Garvin's defense of her religious bigotry. 

>However, I do want to note that the tactic of fighting fire with fire
>wrt flames on talk.abortion has never worked in the past, and I do not
>expect it to work now.  What I've seen on talk.abortion since
>beginning to read it has been a viscious circle of flamage:
>pro-choicers flaming pro-lifers because of pro-lifers flaming
>pro-choicers because of pro-choicers flaming pro-lifers, all the
>flames slowly escalating all the while.

Well, it doesn't stop the flames, but when pro-lifers put the flame
pressure back on the pro-aborts, it prevents a lot of pro-lifers from
being "flamed-out." 

Pro-aborts can't go about their business of intimidating pro-lifers
off talk.abortion when they themselves have to spend time pulling up
their own pants and explaining away their own mistakes. If they don't,
they leave themselves open to getting Mark Kaufman'd... 

>Actually, a possible tactic for everyone trying to flame to counteract
>other's flames: put "this article is a flame" in your header as a
>keyword.  That way, anyone who wants to avoid the flames can simply
>put /this article is a flame/h:j in their KILLfile, and miss all of
>the flamage from those considerate enough to label their flames as
>such without missing any other articles except those mislabelled
>intentionally (since the string "this article is a flame" wouldn't
>occur accidentally in a subject line).

Well, seeing as that flames often come when people make mistakes,
it leaves folks open to not noticing when mistakes have been made or
their arguments produced an unexpected explosion in their own face. 

If they dump all files marked "flames" then how will they hardly
notice that mistake when pointed out? 

Of course you could suggest that the mistake not be pointed out amidst
flamage, but do you REALLY expect that to happen in application? 

=============================================================================
>##       "My logic is based on ... a religious perspective which says
>##  that personhood begins at birth (actually a month after birth if
>##  we want to be precise)..."
>##    -- Gloria Feldt,
>##       chief executive, Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona

>##   "I see nothing extreme or reprehensible about this statement."
>##     -- garvin+@cs.cmu.edu (Susan Garvin) <BtnDAw.Iwo.2@cs.cmu.edu>
=============================================================================
|Pro-Contraception   Pro-Freedom of Religion, Speech & Sexual Orientation   |
|Pro-Privacy    Pro-Humanism   Pro-Freedom of Choice 	Registered Democrat | 
|			Card-carrying member, NRLC                          |
|           Dedicated to achieving civil rights for the unborn              |
-----Steve Chaney: Founder, Borg Operating Space Systems, Revision 2.0-------
	       The B.O.S.S. does not speak for CSUS. 

Newsgroups: talk.abortion