What exactly ~is~ a troll? Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: Bill Lear <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected] Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 19:05:03 To: David B. Shemano<[email protected]>; Progressive Economics<[email protected]> Reply-To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Golf
For what it is worth, I don't think Dave-o is a troll. Those who think he is are simply mistaken. On Friday, August 6, 2010 at 12:38:35 (-0700) David B. Shemano writes: >I just returned from a brief vacation in Carmel, CA, and discovered my email >clogged with dozens of email regarding the propriety of pro-Obama posts. >Fascinating reading. Thanks for 10 minutes of my life I will never get back >deleting the emails. > >Talking about Obama, he loves golf. Plays it as much as he can. While in >Carmel, I played a round at Pebble Beach, which is one of the ultimate life >events for a golfer. So I ask you PEN-L members: > >1. My sense is there an an anti-golf progressive sensibility. Why? First, you are a bastard --- everyone who has played Pebble while I have not deserves to rot in hell. I golf, with a 3.5 handicap (applause, bowing) and I love the game, for which I gave up soccer due to a knee injury. But so much of golf is behind private enclaves of wealth and privilege that it is nauseating. And don't even get me started on Tiger Woods --- what a dick, I'm glad he's 6 over par in the Bridgestone tournament (go Elin!). I gave up a private country club membership in part because I felt an outsider with the rich, reactionary right-wingers with whom I played. I do however, still enjoy golf on public courses, where I often play with right-wing reactionaries who are working class but with whom I identify so much more easily --- fuck Obama, nice putt. Next time you are in Austin, let me know, and we'll go hit the links. My treat. >2. From my persective, the Pebble Beach golf course is one of the most >serene, aesthetically pleasing, uses of a majestic coastline imaginable. I >truly believe that my life is better because the golf course exists (even if I >never played it), in the sense my life is better because Mozart wrote a >concerto, or the Eiffel Tower was built. It is difficult to imagine that it >could be built today for a variety of reasons, but, assuming a hypothetical >socialist California, could or should it be built? If you got rid of all of the rich brats around the course and made the area low-income housing with a beautiful golf course that subsidized the residents, I'd buy in with no questions. But this also begs the question: you are talking beauty here. Why would a golf course be more beautiful than the natural beauty that existed there before the bulldozers went to work? Would Yosemite be better if we put up 45 golf courses in its canyon? >3. The golf course offers and encourages the use of caddies. What is the >correct progressive response to the use of caddies? If use the caddie, I am >creating a master-servant anti-democratic relationship with another human >being, while if I don't use the caddie, I am depriving another human being of >limited means his daily income. What is the correct choice? Yup: better to be exploited by capitalists than not. I have never used a caddie, but when I do have master-servant relationships (those who trim my trees are Mexican nationals), I strive to make the best of it. They joke with me that when they arrive at restaurants to get valet parking, the valet refuses to park their car because they are wearing the uniforms that clearly identify them as "contractors" (in Spanish, they say to one another "They won't park the fucking Mexican's car"). I sympathize and tell them when I save enough money to open a restaurant they will have the head table reserved for them. When they say it will be $800 to trim my trees (one day's work), and they ask me if I think the price is fair, I don't argue and simply say "that's good --- I need them trimmed", and tell them how much I appreciate them working their asses off in the Texas August heat. I also tip hugely and invite them to drink lemonade that I make by hand, and if I were a real man I would learn Spanish on the way to and from work on my iPhone/Pod instead of listening to progressive podcasts such as Doug Henwood's --- for which I am grateful and for which we all should pay dearly (but, that would create a master-servant relationship, would it not?). Bill _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
