Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Online Apology

I owe Rachel Strate an online apology. She feels that I accused her of being a conservative. She firmly states: "I would never describe myself as conservative."

The tag I put for her site said: "This is the blog for mild mannered analyst Rachel Strate who, on the weekends, becomes Wasatch Girl." When I first found the site it had posts on business and on climbing. I wanted to point out the interesting duality.

The climbing posts now are on a site called The CragBaby.

It was not my intention to accuse Ms. Strate of conservatism. I was trying to make an allusion to an obscur 1930s comic character named "Clark Kent." The character Mr. Kent came from a town called Smallville. He worked as a news reporter in a city called Metropolis. During his off hours, Mr. Kent doubled as an action hero called "Superman." The character has a similar duality to the business analyst/rock climber thing going on with Ms. Strate.

Some recent TV shows and movies build on this Clark Kent character.

The problem might be that I used the term "mild mannered."

I do not associate the words "mild mannered" with conservative. Accepted synonyms for conservative generally incorporate snarl words like "hard-headed," "close-minded," or "intransigent." "Mild-mannered" is a purr word. One uses purr words for progressives. You a sentence about a progressive might say: "Mild mannered Obama reasoned about climate change..." Articles about conservatives contain snarl words like: "closed-minded McCain hissed about climate change."

Perhaps the problem was the allusion to superman. Some contemporary thinkers have tried to tag the meme "America as Superman" to the view "George Bush is a Fascist."

However, it happened. I feel simply awful that Ms. Strate took the link to her blog to mean I thought she was a conservative. I really meant to say that I admire people who work hard at their jobs while pursuing the enjoyment of nature.

I apologize sincerely. I would never intentionally insult a person by calling them "conservative." Well, unless they were some sort of nut-job that actually courted the term.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh man, no worries. I read the description awhile back as my google alerts had picked it up. I couldn't quite remember what it said nor could I find the link again. I am not offended at all, if anything appreciate that you would give me a link back. When I first read the description I smiled as I assumed I had mis-branded myself. But I then realized the duality nature you were implying. If anything, thank you so much for the superhero analogy. I wish I could live up to the analogy. =)

y-intercept said...

The apology was a bit tongue in cheek. I think people get way too caught up in labels.

You couldn't find SLSites.com because no one links to it. Conservatives won't link to it because they see liberal links. Liberals (progressives) won't link to it because they see conservative links.

The idea behind the site was to link to everyone within a geographic area, so that we could learn the dynamics of a geographic area. Sad, but it is not working.

In this valley, at least, one's political and religious beliefs trump any connection to the community, which I find sad.