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Re: Rapprochment Need

When you find yourself in a corner, having crossed the line and offended
everyone in sight, a good strategy is to look to an answer that came
from someone who's committed the same gaffe in the past, and try to
project your flaws onto that scapegoat. I call this the Glen Strickland
maneuver.

Glen, go back and re-read my words, and this time Windex off your
reading glasses before doing so. Read closely: I didn't call you
political or stiff-necked. I called you complacent. Given that I was
responding to a note in which you insisted that the division between
CEDA and NDT was just plain dandy, especially for Emporia State, I think
my remarks fit perfectly under the truth defense.

Go ahead and try to characterize your previous note as nothing more than
a plea for discussion of the positive aspects of CEDA. Anyone with a
passing familiarity with standard written english will fail to fall for
that one. You called for a halt to discussion of non-CEDA topics with
the incredibly facile observation that "this is a CEDA list". What a
revelation.

Okay! That's the nasty part. I'm still young, and the nasty part comes
out first. Now for the more serious part. Suddenly, you have retreated
to an apologia for the Cross-Examination Debate Association, and your
latest note seems to imply that I was the only one making acerbic
remarks. Both are distortions of what happened. I agree entirely with
your assessment of CEDA as a response to needs left unaddressed by NDT,
or by Parliamentary, or presumably by NDA if I even knew what that was.
I furthermore agree down the line with your assessment of the problems
in debate, with the exception of your advocacy of random judge
placement. Some judges are just plain lazy, sloppy, etc. and while any
system of judge-screening provides opportunities for elitists, the
solution is not to repudiate any judge-selection system, but rather to
place the responsibility upon individual teams. The debaters work too
hard to be subjected to the few judges out there who don't flow, who
don't care, who openly declare that they regard judging as a joke, and
yet for some reason are still brought to tournaments to fulfill a
school's judging burden or hired by the tournament to fill out the pool.
We can't let them wander openly through the pairings, making a mockery
of the effort our students put into their efforts. Mutual preference
lets the elitists pick their preferred pool, and lets you pick the
lesser-known, undervalued judges to hear your teams.

I didn't edit out the initial, hostile comments because I honestly feel
that you've attacked me without reason. Your call for a repudiation of
NDT makes an open mockery of your accusations of anti-CEDA prejudice. I
freely admit that some anti-CEDA prejudice exists, but a larger current
of anti-NDT prejudice is even more evident, if nowhere else than in your
own mind. Intelligent people can and do disagree, and when that
disagreement arrives, you need to confront it with arguments, not run
for cover with baseless accusations of inappropriate conduct.

P.S.: Much like the "NDT is better" comments that I was citing earlier,
the judging pool comments and reliance upon evidence comments come from
YOUR OWN COHORTS, not from my NDT-conditioned prejudices. It's a
consistent theme on this list that NDT judging is overall better, that
NDT debaters rely more on evidence as opposed to CEDA debaters' reliance
upon theory arguments. NDT folks, most of them, make their choice
because they LIKE the very problems that are cited by CEDA folks. Just
because your teams cut cards does not mean that the attitudes don't
exist, and doesn't make me an anti-CEDA villain when I cite them to
prove a point.

Here's to further (and calmer) discussion.

Love Child
H: (706) 548-6041
W: (706) 542-3238
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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