Dilip D’Souza has given me some advice. He says that making snide remarks leads to your own argument losing credibility, not the other person’s argument.
Well, I am glad to see that DDD has finally realised this. I suppose the realisation came to him after he was thulped all around for making snide comments and mocking Ravikiran’s post on incest. True, there were no comments about anatomy in specific, but trying to lampoon a post without even reading it or understanding the context it came from is pretty snide. DDD didn’t even notice the first paragraph in which Ravikiran mentioned he was responding to a question. He just had his bitchy little response up within twenty four hours. Yes, a clear case of responding to arguments rather than to people.
Oh, DDD defended himself. He said it was so pompous that it just cried out to be mocked. But this was the same man who a few months earlier had written that he would advise his friends to avoid mockery and insults if they ever came up with something like the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Our man evidently has different standards for his friends and for himself. Or different standards for prophets and bloggers. And if it’s printed in the Hindustan Times or Mid-Day, it’s always fair game for mockery.
You’d think that a fifty year old man would be mature enough to realise when he’s being inconsistent. To ‘learn from doubt’. But DDD is far too engrossed in persecution complexes and paranoia for that. Let’s not forget that this is a man who finds it bizarre when people ask him which magazines publish what he writes.
Dilip, before you start spewing homilies about learning from doubt, look in the mirror. Have you learnt anything from being unanimously criticised for calling a rant ‘fine journalism’? Have you learnt anything from being criticised all around for making emotional arguments that fly in the face of the facts? Have you learnt anything from all the commenters who complain that nine times out of ten you’ll answer questions with other questions or answers that bear no rellation? That’s not even learning from doubt, that’s learning from in-your-face feedback.
You’re a sad and pathetic man, Dilip. Don’t lecture me.