BVC-CHAT Say it ain't so, Lance!

[Matthew K. Irwin]

Chris,

I wonder why an instance of you condemning America's urban areas as nightmarish seems allowable on this listserv, but an occasion of me criticizing the French is not? I suspect if we showed my post to Lance, he would agree with me, at least in sentiment if not in word choice. 

I share Lance's fury with the French and their repeated attempts to malign his integrity, performance, legacy, and name. And as I understand things, he has uttered in public and in private some off-colored sentiments about the French far worse and far more protracted than those in my short blast this evening. What, I wonder, would you have said to the seven-time Tour champ had he written my post?

Mr. Irwin,

Evolutionary biology, mythologies of intelligent design, D.N.A. structural makeup commonalities, or any other beginning-of-life paradigm to which you subscribe--all suggest that, in fact, we are related.

Lisa,

I humbly stand corrected. That should have read, " . . . piss off a few million Frogs." Your keen eye always curtails my literary arrogance . . . well, almost always. Here goes: 

Mr. Hattaway,

I noticed that you wrote to me about my "use of vulgarity" (in the midst of a comma splice [that's a grammatical error not unlike the ones with which your posts chronically reek]). Your post arrived in my Inbox sixteen minutes after Mr. Menzel's, which, if I recall correctly, contained the vulgarities "bullshit" and "damn." How is it that his vulgarities escape your condemnation but mine incur the fullness of your pseudo-sanctimonious (and hypocritical) wrath? I suspect it's because your criticism carries as much cowardly selectivity as your writing contains errors. Would you like to see vulgarity? You can. Just examine every email you've ever posted in here--especially your correspondence during the Terry Childers era. Your writing constitutes in its own right a basest vulgarity every bit as displeasing to me as my written "piss" is to you. 

You call my behavior bigoted, yet you selectively impart your prejudice toward me while simultaneously acquitting Mr. Menzel without any similar scrutiny. Choosing who you will like, applaud, echo, and mimic (Mr. Menzel, your fellow cycling club member) based upon his or her similarities with you, and who you will scorn based upon his or her differences from you (myself--differences from you which I bear proudly) constitutes bigotry on your part--the very bigotry you so self-righteously decried. 

Now. As far as my post seeming hateful? I fully intended it to resound with hatred for the malicious, poor-loser, witch-hunting that many French are perpetrating against Lance Armstrong every day. I fail to see, though, how me voicing anti-French diatribes differs philosophically from any of the language I see employed regularly on this listserv. BVC-Chatters regularly revel in directing their ire at, say, idiotic, troglodytic rednecks in 4X4s who swerve at cyclists or who, solely for amusement, soak cyclists with Copenhagen-spit-filled drinking cups. When such utterances against such behavior and its perpetrators occurs in here, I don't recall any hypersensitive, politically-correct defense of inattentive motorists or 4X4-driving rural folks occurring. Hm. I wonder why that is? I suspect it's because BVC-Chatters know (now, at least) that they do the very same thing I did tonight. They just do it at the expense of a social group over whom little love is lost among cyclists. But there's more to my anti-French post than just hatred. 

I also, in the spirit of supporting Lance and opposing Lance's French detractors, fully intended my post to come across as hyperbolic, and I deliberately engaged in stereotyping and hasty generalization fallacies. Had you scored better in at least one of your K-12 compulsory writing classes than your spelling, grammar, mechanics, and syntax seem regularly to indicate, perhaps you would have dimly sensed what I fully intended to be scathing, biting, and incriminatory humor--much like how this sentence slams your writing skills. Oh, and "french" is always capitalized; you need to employ a comma after "fine" and before "but"; and "soap box" in this context needs to be one word [soapbox], not two. So you can come down off your high-horse or your soapbox whenever you're ready. 

To any other unwilling recipients of my poorly-timed, poorly-toned posts, I apologize. Most of you prove continually to be warm, welcoming, and forgiving members of the BVC, and I'm sorry if I offended you. I do not apologize for my disdain for those French who continue to witch-hunt Lance, but I genuinely regret the fallout my rather abrasive posts seem so easily to generate on this listserv. Henceforth, if I can say nothing nice then I will say nothing--unless provoked to meanness--in which case, I'll be wildly enthusiastic about exchanging contact information with any BVC-Chatter so we can meet face to face and settle our differences as adults without hiding behind the security, distance, and relative anonymity of cyberspace. 

MKI
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