[Newspoetry] my two cents (depending on how you count it)

[Bill Wendling]

Hello all, again,

The flame war has gone on since noone has mentioned "Hitler" yet.
(Gordon's rule claims that all flame wars die once this is
mentioned...hence...*hope*).

I would like to mention that I did, in fact, read Rick's messages and
thought I answered what he had to say in them. Besides the personal barbs
towards Joe and Sam, I was able to boil down (in my own mind) these
points from Rick's message: (a) Rick heavily campaigned for Nader,
perhaps more than anyone else I know of, (b) Rick is dissatisfied with
the result of the "election", not because he thinks Gore is better than
Nader, but because of the horrendous way the "election" was decided and
the disenfranchisment of a large majority of (primarily minority) voters,
and (c) Rick thought the poem implied that anyone who voted for Nader and
now wants a recount is a Gore supporter.

In my last message, you'll realize that part (c) isn't the case. In
particular, I'm one of those people who think the "election" was a fraud
and that Gore won. But I still despise Gore and like Nader. Was there
confusion on this? I'm not the cleverist bard on the planet, but do tend
to write coherent sentences from time to time.

This will be my final word on this subject. I have (and I think we all
have) beaten this dead horse long enough.

As a personal aside, comments on the quality of Newspoems is counter
productive, in my opinion. If someone posts that some poems are good
while others are more suited to Onion articles, this may cause people to
stop posting their work entirely. William can correct me if I'm wrong,
but I thought that Newspoetry was to write poems about the news in order
to become more skilled as a writer and to read the newspapers.

-- 
|| Bill Wendling			wendling at ganymede.isdn.uiuc.edu