🚀 go-pugleaf

[snatched from local a group and crossposted to alt.angst, since this is
 the kind of stupidity I find incredibly depressing.]

tms@relay (Tom Swiss) writes:

>     Not welcome: bigots, religious evangelists, and general small
>mindedness. Please, no anal-retentive neat freaks _nor_ filthy dirty
>complete slobs, there _is_ a happy medium.

>     Welcome: artists, dancers, deadheads, drummers, engineers, hackers,
>long haired freaky people, musicians, neo-pagans, poets, philosophers,
>science-fiction fans, scientists, thinking people, and/or just generally
>groovy people.

This is incredible.  You rule out and simultaneously insult an entire
class of people ("religious evangelists") without any further
explanation, and in the same breath criticize "small mindedness."  You
then go on to welcome others based on a wide range of largely
superficial characteristics.

Your list of criteria, of course, collapses in internal inconsistency.
I'm sure it would be fairly easy to locate someone who played drums
and was at the same time, say, a neat freak.  Is such a person welcome
or not?  More amusingly, one could, with enough effort, probably track
down a neo-pagan who proselytizes (thereby violating the ban on
"religious evangelists").  Of course, any lapses in logic can be
excused for someone who has clearly accepted his entire belief system
in pre-packaged form, without the benefit of critical thinking.

I realize this is just a "housemates wanted" ad, but I've seen similar
attitudes expressed before, and I find them far more depressing than
the closed-mindedness one often sees in the right-wing.  I don't mind
ignorance and irrationality in the people I disagree with anyway.
What bothers me is people who shout the loudest about "tolerance" and
"diversity" when it is clear that in practice they are most interested
in surrounding themselves with like-minded members of a small clique.
-- 
Paul Callahan 
callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu