"Everything takes longer than it takes"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, James A. Landau wrote:

>     Would the list prefer that I insert a gratuitous
>     half-assed political statement here?

Seeing this comment reminded me that I had the honor of being the first
person on this list to be described as "half-assed" by Mr. Landau (is that
an example of "gross impoliteness"?).  My statement that prompted the
"half-assed" description was the following rather mild and
incontrovertible comment: "It will take years before all the
disinformation coming out of the Bush administration is sorted out by
historians."

Mr. Landau doesn't like gratuitous political statements on ADS-L.  But he
himself seems to unleash some of the most political statements ever posted
on this list, including his recent remarkable assertion that the elder
Bush is the only Bush who has ever been accused of going to war for
oil-related reasons.  He also seems to unleash some of the most extraneous
postings on the list, responding, for example, to my query about modern
proverbs with nine postings that said almost nothing about proverbs but
said a lot about the personality of Mr. Landau's former music teacher.
Some others on this list, such as Barry Popik, post a lot of OT material
but also provide considerable linguistic information of great value.

My point is that there seems to be a lot of pot-calling-the-kettle-black
going on here.  Of course, the main phenomenon driving this is that Mr.
Landau really doesn't like criticism of George W. Bush.  This is poignant
on a human level, since Mr. Bush is so manifestly unworthy of Mr. Landau's
passionate devotion, but I don't think it excuses all these off-topic and
overheated postings.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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