{"id":388,"date":"2009-01-12T16:12:51","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T15:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=388"},"modified":"2009-01-12T16:12:51","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T15:12:51","slug":"hating-and-haters-a-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/12\/hating-and-haters-a-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Hating and Haters: A Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the steward of this blog, I unilaterally decided to draw attention to an ongoing discussion about international enmity that’s occupied the comments for a few old posts. Most of the discussion occurs in response to two posts: Do You Hate the British Too?<\/a> and Now I do hate the British<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The word “hate” was excessive in both titles, but it did generate some worthwhile discussion (and a whole lot of traffic from the Google search engines). I ask that those who want to continue the discussion make comments on this post from now on. Feel free to link to old comments, or quote them, if you want to make specific references to the comments to date.<\/p>\n

I’ll contribute by writing the following in this post, rather than in a comment on an old post. If you’d like to contribute, please read the old comments first!<\/p>\n

M. Bucceri and M. Pickling:<\/p>\n

I’m glad for the chance to discuss this topic with you. But I’m not sure why my words from April — to Ryan Kennedy<\/a> — aren’t an adequate response:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think anyone intended to mean \u201ceveryone living in the UK or descended from such\u201d when they said \u201cthe British\u201d. On the contrary, most people in Ireland (and in the rest of the English-speaking world) respect and even emulate their favorite part of British society. You\u2019re right, it\u2019d be foolish to hate everyone in a nation!<\/p>\n

Now, what if \u201cthe British\u201d means the power structures (or willful individuals or cultural norms) that oppressed peoples in Ireland and elsewhere? Then, it might be appropriate to hate the British. It might even be a moral obligation.<\/p>\n

But even then, I don\u2019t hate the British. I have a great distaste for the arrogance of the British Empire in the 19th Century and a great sorrow for the lives and opportunities wasted at that time. But I don\u2019t feel hate for it in the way that I do for other things. Still, I can respect Irish people who do feel that intense emotion due to their particular connections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When taken in this spirit, the references to “the British” in this blog are not hateful, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

I, too, am opposed to Hate — blinkered and with a capital “H” — as M. Pickling uses the word. But I do not see where Anita or I expressed bigotry, anger, or intolerance. Instead, the two posts in question were intended to be self-deprecating and playful. At worst, smart-alecky.<\/p>\n

The best example of Hate that I can find on the bakkerbugle.com website is WAKE UP’s comment, which also links to an organ of the BNP. I will not dignify that nastiness with a link here. <\/p>\n

As far as asking M. Pickling to leave the party: well, I don’t think Anita did that. Her intent was merely to set some boundaries for the comments on this blog. If you’ve spent time reading comments on more popular blogs than this one, you know that there is a type of person who acts as a troll<\/a>, repeatedly posting inappropriate and hateful comments. Some of the people who commented before M. Pickling seem to be trolling: Alex, William and selia. (Feel free to redeem yourselves, drive-by commenters.)<\/p>\n

As Anita said, M. Pickling has been thoughtful, and hardly a troll. But comments like the following are a different matter:<\/p>\n

Maybe the fact that you call yourself a \u201chouse husband\u201d is an indication that you have too much time on you hands to conjure up these banalities in your odd mind.<\/p>\n

But the crux is: what if this article started with the statement \u201cnow I do hate the Irish\u201d, or \u201cnow I do hate the Americans\u201d?<\/p>\n

I only read this site because it\u2019s so banal and silly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is cause for offence, as is “why you don\u2019t stop your childish blablabla”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the crux: I can’t speak for Anita on this, but I have been tempted to write an article entitled “Now I hate the Irish too” and another one on “hating America.” I sometimes feel this urge after an unusually exasperating episode of a continual annoyance. In this context, the phrase, “I hate the Irish” would mean little more than, “As I write this, I loathe a way of acting that seems, to me, especially prevalent in Ireland.” In other words, I would be trying to express roughly what M. Pickling felt toward Parisian, Russian, and US border control staff.<\/p>\n

This is a blog, and blogs allow<\/a> for a casual, short-lived, and somewhat sensational way of writing. Some posts may cross into the grey territory of the banal; after all, I post too often for this stuff to represent my considered — and copy-edited — thoughts.<\/p>\n

I’m willing to clarify (when challenged) that I don’t hate Irish people, in the sense that M. Pickling talks about. So I don’t think that the word should be excised from my vocabulary for this blog. I believe that “hate” is a word that I can write with my tongue in my cheek. An example of tongue-in-cheek is the following comment I made in August:<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, it\u2019s okay to enjoy British things. After all, most of the Irish heroes, particularly writers, spent lots of time in England.<\/p>\n

One condition: you must temper your admiration as follows: \u201cI like the scones I had in Windsor, and I can\u2019t find an Irish producer. Feckin\u2019 bastards, those Englishmen.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the record, I do not believe that Englishmen are all sexually-active progeny of unwed parents. The comment was silly, and probably banal, but hopefully entertaining to a few people. If you don’t like my sense of humour, feel free to crack your own jokes. If you grant that those two posts were light-hearted, then calling me hateful is a red herring.<\/p>\n

I see that “hate” is a powerful word. Maybe I’m wrong about the word, and one should not use the word “hate” so casually. If that’s the crux of the issue, let’s talk about that. That topic sounds interesting to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the steward of this blog, I unilaterally decided to draw attention to an ongoing discussion about international enmity that’s occupied the comments for a few old posts. Most of the discussion occurs in response to two posts: Do You Hate the British Too? and Now I do hate the British. The word “hate” was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,11],"tags":[226,359,360,358,356,357,354,355,351,352,353,153,216,362,363,361],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}