Re: Lady and the Tramp

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Let me get this straight, when you wrote:
"For some of you, Pitino could spit on your head and tell you it's raining,
and you'd believe him," you didn't actually mean anyone specifically.
Rather we were supposed to read that "some of you" meant "an abstract
amalgam of some of your views, where I've stripped out the parts that
disagree with Pitino so that I can make the amalgam look like a ludicrous
Pitino-worshipper - and then I don't mean what I say literally, of course,
it's just an exaggerated insulting characterization"? As if an insult
has to be taken literally to be insulting; it's like calling someone a 
"motherf***er" and saying, "Hey, of course I don't mean it literally."

Alex

> At 12:04 3/3/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> >Why don't you name who you're actually talking about, because you seem
> >to be talking about list members? 
> 
> Sure:  Mark Berry, Bentz Kirby, Starke Farrell (who questioned the sanity
> of Pitino critics) and others whose names I don't remember now.  [However,
> read below]
> 
> > As far as I can tell, all the Pitino
> >supporters that actively post on this list don't view him as some sort
> >of god. I'd like to know who Pitino could supposedly spit on, or 
> >whether you're just referring to some mythical "Pitinoite" that you're
> >just making up to be generally insulting.
> 
> It's the averaged views of the people I named (and that generally belong to
> that group) - a prototype of sorts. In that abstracted prototype, whatever
> small qualms these individuals may have about Pitino dissipate, and what
> remains is staunch, unwavering support for Pitino that is not, as far as I
> can tell, affected by any counterfactual evidence - like Pitino's record
> with the Celtics. 
> Do I believe that these  individuals actually think of Pitino as a God-like
> entity? Did I literally mean that he could spit on them and tell them it's
> raining, and they'd believe it? Of course not.  These are averaged and
> figurative descriptions of the phenomenon based on the prototype Pitinoite.
> Let me repeat again at the risk of belaboring the point: it is neither the
> actual individuals, nor a "mythical Pitinoite that I'm just making up",
> that I'm referring to - it is the averaged, prototype views of actual
> Pitino supporters on this list ( If you've been exposed to neural network
> or categorization literature, you'd instantly know what I'm talking about).
>  If anyone else  took these comments literally, I'm sorry. But figuratively
> speaking, I still maintain that no matter to what depths Pitino takes this
> franchise, these people will probably always find a way to exonerate him
> and blame something or somebody else.