Re: string-length example

While I am not a devotee of political correctness, I strive to not 
gratuitously offend others.  But saying that a famous, widely-known 
quotation from arguably the most important writer in English literature, is 
so offensive that we have to avoid it is astonishing.  (Note how I am 
sincerely trying to avoid perjorative terms or attitudes!)

I will also say that I personally know a couple of dozen lawyers, including 
members of my family.  All of them know the quotation, none of them are 
offended by it, all of them use it in their own conversations and jokes 
with other lawyers and with clients, and none of them have expressed the 
slightest discomfort with it.  So I find myself wondering why we are 
debating whether to include a quotation that *might* be offensive to some 
uneducated lawyer, even though significant personal experience demonstrates 
that many --- probably most, perhaps nearly all --- lawyers are not at all 
offended by it.

I don't think that anybody who has studied English literature even in small 
amounts believes that Shakespeare was actually proposing killing anybody, 
much less wholesale slaughter of an entire class of people.  The reason I 
would not be inclined to quote David Duke or Adolf Hitler is because their 
statements are intended to hurt people directly and to foment the physical 
destruction of classes of people.  That is, in my view of the world, a very 
different thing.

Sigh...
    Jim



At 06:55 PM 9/9/2003 +0200 Tuesday, Tobias Reif wrote:

>scott_boag@us.ibm.com wrote:
> >(I assume you would not quote David Duke or Hitler...
>
>Exactly.
>A sentence does not get any better just because it has been written by a 
>famous person.
>
>I still think that adding the source of the quote would improve the 
>situation, but only slightly.
>
>Tobi
>
>--
>http://www.pinkjuice.com/

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Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL)     Phone: +1.801.942.0144
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Received on Wednesday, 10 September 2003 15:21:55 UTC