How many Jews ...
 

Very good. I think everyone here saw that in 9th grade. So spectacularly stunning and original.

An "original" image that memorializes the reality depicted in the first post.

Writer Tim Dorsey brings an interesting perspective to this memorial in this photo
from his travels and brings us closer to the subject than is comfortable for some.

http://www.timdorsey.com/Holocaust-Memorial.jpg

And finally, something we <b>haven't</b> seen. So how about deleting this waste of a thread and making something worthwhile with that latter picture?

One of the things I made a point to do while I was in Germmany was to see Buchenwald. I went with a German friend of mine that lived in the area, and she had a hard time being there, and understanding that her own countrymen were capable of such a tragedy. The entire place is quite eerie, as they still have the original gas chamber still in place, but the bunkers have all been knocked down. Many memorials are in various spots around the landscape, remebering comrades and soldiers.
Just because I have a soft spot in my heart for these people doesn't mean I hate them. I also have a soft spot in my heart for skinny white Texans. I still like to laugh, too.

Some countries play baseball, some murder Jews in mass quantities.

Just let us have our fun, will you!?

Racist Idiot
 

Every community has a token idiot.

Paul Lastname is the tokenidiot in the Cellar.

I’m sure Paul Lastname doesn’t think he’s a racist or bigot. He probably has Jewish friends who don’t know he’s a racist. He probably thinks he can talk like a racist and behave like a racist online and not be a racist in real life. He might have racist friends who will defend his behavior. I don’t know if his friends share his "interests" shown in his Cellar profile as “blaming the jews.” He probably has family that would be appalled at his racist behavior.I’m sure that the older generations of the Lastname family, who may have strong personal awareness of the Holocaust and the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Oma and Remco Lastname and their relatives around the world, would be embarrassed by Paul’s behavior, unless the whole family is racist. One can only wonder what kind of values Paul was raised with as a post WWII German. No matter how one looks at it, his behavior here brings shame on his family.

In another thread, Paul Lastname, a.k.a. tokenidiot, says he’s not an American. Living in the USA, he relies on a cultural and constitutional protection of freedom of speech to speak his mind. He hasn’t yet learned that there are limits to free speech, not the least of which is accountability, whether publicly or, perhaps, just in the online community that he infects with his racist posts.

Now, the Internet may seem like a safe place to behave like a racist, expressing one’s most socially unacceptable thoughts and offending community members and guests using a pseudonym, tokenidiot. Not if you’re mentally defective, as well as morally corrupt.

i think you missed the sarcasm. david probably didn't.
in the future, i'll try to address my posts directly.

dave: hi.

nicname: that was to david.

oh my god, shut the fuck up.

you're the idiot who evidently doesn't understand the context of the post. nor do you know much, if anything, about the person who typed that. why are you so quick to point fingers? jesus fucking christ.

i would think that would tip you off.

or...i really don't think many nazis thought killing people was "fun", so the use of that word should have told you something.

and honestly, after reading this http://www.cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2408 thread, i doubt that many (if any) of the people here will be offended by my post.

Good Lady!! :rolleyes:

Before the flamewar erupts fully here ... (although I recognize that it's probably too late.)

Mightn't this be a good time to retire to neutral corners for a moment.

This is obviously a topic which has a lot of negative emotional impact for nic ... and probably for a lot of people. Frankly, I don't give a good goddamn one way or the other. Some stuff that gets posted here I enjoy, some I dislike, some (okay, it takes a lot more than most people to get me to this point) disgusts me.

It's one thing to have the tasteless joke thread going (which, incidentally, I think is hilarious ... the blacker the humor, the better, IMHO) but this devolved pretty much immediately into personal attacks, which was something that USED to be rare around here.

Nope, nobody died and left me in charge.

I'm just doing what we do around here. Contributing my opinion.

Okay, guys. Touch gloves ... and let's see what happens in the next round.

I was beginning to have faith in Nic Name. I was beginning to think that he had the best intentions, even if he went about them in a way which I found irritating. I was calming toward him, and I was even <b>civil</b> when I pointed out a mistake he had made (something that I normally would have accompanied with words like "retard" and "illiterate"). But I was wrong.

Where to start?

For one thing, I can tell you that my experience with Germans (eh, Europeans, for that matter) is that they're <b>much</b> different from Americans and Canadians. The Atlantic Ocean isn't the only thing that separates us, nor is the language. Society is very different in Germany, and it became even more apparent to me when I spent close to two weeks with a German family.

You don't know Paul or Remco or Sibille. You've never been to their house, sat with them at dinner, stayed up until 7AM Pacific watching soccer with them. You don't know them at all, yet you act like you do.

Paul's words are hardly racist; they're not even making fun of Jews. I think anyone attempting to get the actual meaning out of his dark humor will realize that he's poking fun at Germans and Germany. Perhaps if you read over it more carefully you'll see that. That's certainly what I come away with, and I'm certain that's how he intended it.

As for whether or not Paul's family would be ashamed of him... I doubt they would be. Because thankfully, they are not like you. They understand that he is joking, and they're not so stuck on this that they would be so easily offended. You obviously have a very deep personal connection to the Holocaust. Whether it's because you're Jewish, or your parents are Holocaust survivors or what, I don't know. But you are apparently unable to look at the situation without emotion. It's obvious that this is <b>personal</b> to you. Maybe that's why you need to discontinue discussing it with us.

Honestly, I think Paul started making jokes like that after Jen or I put the idea in his head. One of us, upon learning that he was German, probably said something like "Oh, so you hate Jews, huh?" - jokingly, of course. And he <b>understood</b> that it was a joke, and that's why you see here what you do. It's all in good fun, even if you can't understand that.

I have a Jewish friend named Avi. Avi is short for Avraham, and his last name is Schwab. Avraham Schwab. One day, I said to him "So you're Jewish, huh?" He replied "Yep." And I said "I hate Jews." His response was "Me too!"

Now, I'd suppose you'd go on to say that he's racist as well for even joking around with me like that (and, of course, I'm racist, and blah blah blah). But I disagree. I think the generation gap is too big, Nic. I don't think you understand the way things work with younger people today. You grew up in your environment (where apparently dark humor was illegal) and we grew up in ours. You're much older (when's your birth year - '50? '51? I'm too lazy to find the post where you alluded to it). My dad was born in '49. He wouldn't find those jokes funny either. There is a difference in the society in which we were raised. You grew up in the 50's and 60's; we grew up in the 80's and 90's. There may only be a difference of 30 years, but those eras are worlds apart.

So really, I'm forced to draw this conclusion: You're either ignorant of the environment in which many youth today grew up or you're trolling. Neither of those is very much appreciated in an online community. I enjoy your regular posts, but perhaps you should take ones like this elsewhere.

I'm joining wolf on this. I've only been here for about 2 months, but when I started people generally didn't go out of there way to personally antagonize others. That has changed in the last 2 or 3 weeks. It seems that in the ellar lines have been drawn, and alliances have formed to the point where if someone not on your "side" says something a opposite of your opinion, 4 people start ripping on him/her. Where is the education discussion, flame wars are fun once in a while, but this is getting ridiculous.

It seems that, like your father, I raised children in the same generation as you and Paul, so I am very close to people your age. You're not a good example of your generation.

I do sense that Paul was raised properly but is under a bad influence by you. It would be great if you could be a positive role model.

Paul will recall, and you may too, that his intuitive response to my criticism above was to post, "I apologize. really" That was based on his values that he got from his parents.

I think that you encouraged him to retract that apology and attempt to justify his remarks, since his replacement post spoke directly to you.

Paul then indicated that he didn't think that anyone here would be offended by his remarks above and offered up a link to your Tasteless Jokes thread as some example of what's acceptable around here. I can see where he might get the impression that he had support for his offensive post from listening to you and reading those racist jokes.

Dave, you aspire to be a leader but you don't have the qualities of a leader. You're young and, quite frankly, very immature for your age. Surely, you'll grow up. It remains to be seen what you'll grow up to be. What are your values and do you live by them?

Your Tastless Jokes thread sends a message to many people that the Cellar is not a worthwhile place for them: that it will be uncomfortable for them. I think it should be uncomfortable for racists and bigots and other bullies and I won't "shut the fuck up" while you and a few others attempt to make racists feel at home here.

In the Tasteless Joke thread, I tried to clue you in that your reputation is at stake. You just don't get it. Actually, I think Paul does get it, but he was clueless that his personal reputation is also at stake. He is lead astray by people like you who make him think your behavior is normal. Well, guys, it's not. That is exactly how people who aren't really racist get caught up in hate crimes, as the statistics show. Better Paul learn that here and now than learn the hard way on the streets on in the courts.

Your Tasteless Jokes thread created an environment in the Cellar that made it seem OK to Paul to make hurtful remarks wherever, even changing his profile to take an anti-Semitic view.

As others have said in your Idiots thread, maybe this gives us something to think about. We're all ready to say what the Israelis, or Iraqis or Palestinians should do. Maybe it's fair to talk about how we should behave.

This thread was created to send a message to Jews and other groups denigrated by you and your buddies, to whom "How many Jews..." is a joke about ashtrays. This thread was created to confirm that people in the Cellar are decent folks. People that have been raised with values and respect for others.

Paul's comments attempted to support your view that this thread should go away. His posts before and after my criticism are designed to make this thread as offensive to Jews as the Tasteless Jokes thread. He knows better, I'm sure. He might even regret it. He did apologize ... for a moment, anyway.

Maybe we have all learned something valuable in this discussion. Perhaps there is no longer a need for this thread or the Tasteless Jokes thread in the Cellar. I wonder what Paul thinks ... if he does think without asking you what to think.

Here's the problem with you, Nic. You are <b>so sure</b> that you are 100% right. And you're not, as I'm about to clearly demonstrate.

Without speaking for him, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you <b>again</b> missed the sarcasm.

And again, you are wrong. I didn't see his "apology", and I haven't spoken with him since Monday. I didn't encourage him to retract it because until you just posted it, I didn't know he'd written it. That having been said, I'm willing to bet that I picked up the meaning whereas you did not - mainly because I, unlike you, am not totally ignorant of what Paul means when he says something.

I can see how he'd get that idea; most people around here are not you. Most people find some tasteless jokes funny because most people have an appreciation for dark humor. They do not celebrate the travesties of the past; they simply realize that life isn't worth living if you're not having a good time.

He does have support for his post - because it's <b>funny</b>. There's nothing wrong with poking fun at one's history.

No. I don't aspire to be anything. I look to enjoy life and that's about it. I don't know where that will take me, but I'm comfortable knowing that I'll be smiling when I get there.

People choose to see that message. The message I'm sending is "it's okay to laugh; laughter helps ease the pain." Whether or not you choose to see that is your decision.

Regardless, I'm not at all attempting to make racists feel at home here. I despise racists more than you can imagine. I don't like people that hate. I have a half-Chinese friend, three black friends, a lesbian friend, a Jewish friend... and a few others. One of my African American friends, Mike, is coming over to my house this weekend to LAN - "If your woman doesn't mind having a negro in the house :)" (his words). Yes, I suppose he is also racist, by demonstrating that it is okay to refer to an African American as "negro"; to instill in my impressionable mind the idea that separation of races is normal and okay.

Now, I'm not telling you about Avi saying he hates Jews and Mike refering to himself as a "negro" and implying segregation because I want to justify my actions on the basis that I have minority friends and therefore it's okay. I'm telling you because it shows that even those who have the most justification for being insulted by such words <b>are not</b>. I don't know a young black man that hasn't joked about being a young black man.

I get it - I simply don't care. I have no interest in knowing someone who can't laugh at the hard things. I don't like people who are <b>that</b> serious. I don't need to know people that have that much guilt. I didn't kill the Jews. I didn't round up the Japanese. I've never owned any slaves. I think all of those things are despicable (as I've stated here before), but <b>I am not guilty of them</b>, and I refuse to let you make me feel as if I am.

No. Racists and haters get caught up in hate crimes. Those that truly don't hate <b>don't</b> get caught up in them. It's pretty simple, and I'm not sure how you figure that a few tasteless jokes make me a cross-burning KKK member. Hey Rho, better look out! Nic says sycamore is a racist.

What you are teaching Paul is that older people are not worth listening to. People like warch and Tony and Griff post thoughtful messages that actually try to help. You come off as arrogant. You tell people how they are when they know differently. Paul isn't going to learn that joking about how Germans hate Jews is wrong from you, nor is he going to learn it from the courts and on the streets. It's not a problem for Paul. There's nothing wrong with joking around, and since he doesn't actually feel as though Germans should be "blaming the Jews", he's not going to learn that's wrong either. He already knows it's wrong. He jokes about it and that's it.

No it did not. My Tasteless Jokes thread created an area of the Cellar where people could enjoy dark humor. If someone isn't racist, a tasteless joke isn't going to make them so. I'm not changing any minds and I'm not espousing hatred. I'm laughing at the hard things.

If you had been paying attention, you'd know that Paul's profile had the "anti-Semitic" view ever since he signed up. He didn't change it because of my thread. It's a way of making fun of the Germans, not the Jews. It's not his fault that you don't get it.

This is perhaps the only part of your argument that I will mostly agree with, though I'd submit that you created it more as a potshot at those making the jokes.

People here at the Cellar <b>are</b> decent folks. Some of them just aren't as tight-assed as others.

No, I think Paul attempted to get a few people to chuckle.

I think that the original image in this thread is a waste, simply because everyone has seen it before. It's nothing special. The second one you posted was something special, and I recommended that another thread be started with it. You read too much into what I'm saying. I was simply doing what you've done many times before - suggest that a rather dull and tired image be deleted as "not worthy" of the title "Quality Images".

By "we all", I'm assuming you mean "everyone else". I've seen no indication whatsoever that you're actually willing to learn. You seem quite content to pretend you're omniscient. Well, you're not. There are things you don't know and things that you don't understand. So maybe, instead of dismissing my notions outright, you should sit back and consider them. Perhaps you should consider that I know David Ham and Paul Lastname better than you do.

Nic, you Just Don't Get It. And if you think raising kids means you know how they think and why they act the way they do, you are sorely misguided.

My parents couldn't begin to understand the issues that face our generation. And I think that's probably been true for much of human history.

I love my parents dearly, but I simply accept that their worldview is very different from my own. And so I act differently around them than I do around others, and I'm sure your kids do as well.

Don't try to pretend like you know what it's like to be a young person today. Dave is a rather good example of how most of the people I know in our generation think and act, at least when they're around their peers. And I'm sure I know a lot more of them than you do. Whether you agree with that behavior is another issue.

To us, making jokes about race, religion, sexual preference, or other formerly-taboo subjects is a way of saying "I recognize that these differences exist. I'm not going to pretend that all people are the same, because they're not." It's a way for us to cherish the diversity of the human race.

I'm sure that concept is about as foreign to you as just about anything you could think of. But that's the way our generation thinks, and you're not gonna change it by posting pictures of piles of dead, emaciated Jews.

That's it, that's exactly it. It's generational.

When Nic was born, he was born into an era that had just figured out that they had been massively wrong about race relations and racial/cultural differences, and it was critically important to society that they change attitudes in the space of a generation. (The generations previous to them had been busy saving the society in different directions.)

When Warch and I were born, we were on the cusp; they were still trying to figure out what went wrong with the first attempts to get everyone to change, and why it had led to race riots, suburban white flight, etc. We were schooled in thinking the right direction, but the people teaching us were still scarred by the recent past history. They were anxious, jumpy, uncertain.

People now in their 20s were born into a world where many of the really terrible problems hadn't existed for several decades, and even the upset of changing the culture was pretty much over. What was left, though, was the weird taboos and some of the weird anxiety.

Nic's anxiety literally is, if we keep this kind of thing up it will make us culturally liable to repeat the mistakes of the past. This thinking is bred into him as he is a product of the society he was raised in. If we don't solve our differences it may eventually cause our breakup as a culture.

Warch's anxiety is a result of being raised after Nic's generation: we are all one multi-culture and so the big mistake that we make is offending people in that culture. It isn't that we irreparably damage our culture; it's that we may damage people within that culture, which is insensitive, uncaring, and damages us in different ways.

The next generation sees the anxiety without the cause and wonders, what the hell! The racism that continues is not built into the culture any longer; all the racism they have seen has been rare, usually found after a long search and carefully rooted out. It's more likely to be individual cases of extended idiocy.

I think the real change has happened in the last 7-8 years. Consider the use and meaning of the word "nigger". In the 50s, it was a casual racial epithet. By the 70s it had become the "big" epithet, the single word that indicated bad intent. Through the 80s it became an incredible taboo, which increased its negative meaning. But by the early 90s it began to see regular use in hip-hop culture and actually achieved a positive meaning: it was more often used to indicate brotherhood and common experience than to put anyone down.

Making it a huge taboo was a mistake in the first place. It gave more power to the word than was ever intended. I think that, the younger you are, the more likely the silliness of the taboo is clear to you.

So I think that when younger folk make jokes today they are indicating a togetherness that comes from disrespecting the taboo, acknowledging both the silliness of it and, in a way, noticing that the taboo is no longer so important because many of the root causes are solved.

But I could be wrong.

i deleted the original reply because i thought that it might be somewhat ambiguous, and might lead you to think that i was actually apologizing.
while i'll apologize for not realizing your fragility when it comes to a topic, i won't apologize for the post. was it funny? not really. was it well thought out? not really. does it make me "mentally defective" and "morally corrupt"? no. if anyone here is defective, i dare say it's you.

UT nailed it. Are you folks are trying very hard not to understand each other? Lets not let this board disolve into an empty flamewar.

Once Upon A Time
 

back in the olden days of the dial-up BBS incarnation of the Cellar, Toad set up an Anonymous board. We used to post stuff on there that makes the stuff on the tasteless jokes thread that started this whole thing look tame and silly ... I don't think this interface allows for that option ... ah well.

I don't want to see the Cellar lose members over the kind of nonsense represented in this thread ... However, I also don't want a "let's just all get along" mentality to take hold ... because it IS our differences that make the cellar worth participating in.

I could be spending time on a number of similar boards, with much more homogenous audiences. But that ain't nowhere near as much fun.

'Nuff Said

This is cute...

Of course I'm a racist Dave! God, you're such a nigger! I keep Rho in the slave quarters out back, and also have a noose hanging over the entrance to our kitchen...it keeps her in her place.

(She nearly fell out laughing at this. For those not in the know, Rho--my fiance--is African-American.)

The shift against taboos seems to have started with the later end of my generation (mid to late 70s). The later generation (which would include Dave, jag, and my brother...1981 forward is what I've seen on the breakdown) has torn the wall down even more. From my own personal experience, when my friends and I would bullshit around as we did, some of our peers "got it," but many were mortified. Nowadays, it seems like many in that later generation "get it," while fewer are mortified.

UT, that was some sharp ass insight. I might have to give you a more expanded role in the Blastenbrei administration at City Hall.

Nic, I think I understand the point you are trying to make, but IMO, I think you are overreacting. It could very well be the generational gap, the difference between Canadian and American societies, I dunno...

I wouldn't say that Dave is immature for his age...he can be rough around the edges, but nothing that won't pass with time, IMO. In fact, he reminds me a lot of how I was at 21...the main difference is that my political thinking was more left--I was between what jag is now and what I am now. All in all though, I'd say he has his shit together pretty well.

One of the biggest problems with the Cellar is that you have a lot of smart people that gather here. And nobody likes to be wrong. Add those two together, throw in pinches of emotion and mean-spiritedness, finish off with dashes of generational and cultural differences, and it can get ugly.

I believe that we all can and should be able to get along, in spite of any differences we might have. It certainly can't be all roses and puppy kisses, but the general civility that exists here is what makes it stand out from the crowd. In the end, all we can do is continue to work towards better understanding each other.

Hahaha... if she ever mouths off or tries to get outta cleaning up the kitchen one night, you can just give it a lil' tap and say "sounds like <I>someone</I> wants to go for a swing!"

I just take it off the wall, hold it up in its hanging style, and chase her around the apartment, saying, "Don't you sass me nigger!"

This usually makes her cower in fear and say, "Oh no massa! I be a good nigga! Please don' be hangin' me wit dat rope!"

One year, I had an idea for Halloween. Rho would dress up in an Aunt Jemima-looking outfit, and I in a klan robe. I would have a noose around my neck, and Rho would be holding the rope. I don't think a lot of folks would appreciate the humor in that, though. :)

Kinda. I think so. I hope so.

I don't really get out much, but within the limited group of people that I know, that's the modus operandi of most of our humor; we rely on our established cluon-level to indicate to the people around us that our imitation of stupid things really is only for the sake of mockery.

I'm not so sure that this is really the case for all of 'my generation', though. Homophobia seems remarkably alive and well, considering how many people use 'gay', 'homo', and 'fag[got]' as synonyms for 'bad', 'moron', 'general_negativity', etc.

--Sk

Goddamn, you're an insightful mofo!

I'd give ya some candy!

You better put some blackface on her though, just to be sure the image is complete..

My whole problem with many issues is that people don't leave well enough alone. Yes, horrible tradigies occured in multiple wars. Yes, it would have been nice for them to never happen. No, I don't need to be reminded of them. But since it's been brought up...

When is a number big enough to care?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an estimated 103,000. Go America! We stopped a war. At what cost? 103K is peanuts right? I mean, it hardly approaches 550K...

East Timor, an estimated 200,000. Go America! All in the name of oil! So what, it's only 200K. It's not like it's 550K...

Does anyone badmouth America for either one? Does anyone brand the USA for their horrible acts? And if you think there "we" haven't committed any you're kidding yourself.

If that hasn't offended you, try this on for size: My other huge gripe is with racism because "we were slaves", or "you white folk drove us from our land". Yeah, and I should hate Romans because I'm a blue eyed boy and once upon a time Rome conquerored the entire known world and enslaved the populus... So my ancestors were enslaved! I should hate those damn Romans!

The fact is, people always conquer eachother. They kill eachother, sometimes in huge numbers. It sucks, but that's how people are. People enslave others. It still happens. It will happen for all of time.

But that's ok, because it's not 550K. Right? I mean, who cares if on the way home someone shoots through your window and kills your passenger. That's just one person. It's not like it's 550K, so who gives a fuck?

[edit]
Fixed links, because I was stupid and forgot to paste the URL in. D'oh!

To reply to below, and not take up another post, the point is, no one says anything when America does anything horrific, but we're constantly reminded about the "evils of others".

It's just hypocritical and assinine.
[/edit]

Quzah.

I couldn't get your links to work. Is the point of this post that you don't like America? I'm not real clear on the references you used, and you seem a bit angry.

I will say that in my world it is the job of the front seat passenger to keep me from getting shot and that is communicated before the car moves.

Slang: ok, I need you to fasten your seat belt and lay this across your lap (hands over Remington marine magnum), if you see anyone so much as point a finger at this car, blast em.

Passenger: Roger that.

So, if my passenger gets shot it's because he wasn't paying attention, but I do give a fuck.