HATE MAIL!

October 23, 2008 in Humour | 2 comments

You know you’ve made an impact in the blogosphere when you get hate mail about something you’ve written. I am hereby deemed to have made an impact.

I’m afraid to say that William Hanson isn’t the most snobbish man in Britain, but you are. Your judgmental typecasting of this man clearly shows you to be the epitome of inverted snobbery and arrogance. Just because this young man has got off his backside and actually tried to do some good in this world, preaching the simple practise of being nice to one another doesn’t mean that you have to immediately judge him for being something that he is not! Have you ever met William Hanson? I think not, whereas I myself have and you will find that he is the most genuine, humble and well-meaning man around. Just because your ego is so offended by a teenager acting more maturely than you don’t get on his back. You should be ashamed of yourself. When people start criticising those people who want to change this world for the better, I despair.

Well, consider this to be my rebuttal.

  • The way he behaves in public, i.e. by lecturing people on ‘manners’ (in reality, anachronistic nonsense from Victorian days) seems to be treating those who don’t have the time to follow ancient table layout codes from the Renaissance (or who have simply acknowledged that we are in 2008, not 1898) as inferior. True, I don’t like bad grammar (if I see an apostrophe out of place my blood pressure increases twofold) but I try to nicely nudge people in the right direction.
  • Describing me as immature is a bit of a cheap shot – how else am I going to describe him? Am I to demand that he attends a formal debate on etiquette?
  • Being nice to one does not equal not putting the bread knife on the plate. Being nice to others involves… well… being kind to them.
  • Calling me the most snobbish man in Britain because of a simple blog post is very inaccurate: Brian Sewell would, of course, be next, after Hanson.

But wait! There’s more! The message came from one ‘James’ at hansoninc.co.uk – the Hanson family’s own web site. This demonstrates that

  • the commenter can hardly be trusted to give a balanced opinion of Mr. Hanson, being (presumably) related to him – I have no problem with giving him a chance to express his opinion, but he’s in no position to call me the most snobbish man in Britain
  • whoever built the web site can’t even spell the word gallery with the correct number of letter Ls. Now, doesn’t iWeb (yes, I recognise it as an iWeb template) automatically put the word ‘gallery’ in with the correct number of Ls? If not, that’s quite a major bug.

In the interests of free speech, ‘James’ hasn’t been sent to the killfile. Yet. If he continues prattling, he may well be. Whump. The idiot has now been sent to the killfile, for a long, long list of crimes.

edited at 2039GMT: this is turning into a very interesting saga. The guy’s now resorted to sending e-mail – I may publish the conversation as an example of how to win an argument.

edited at 2245GMT: War is over. James has now apologised: I may (if I’m feeling kind) remove him from the killfile tomorrow. If not, then would readers please still note that he has now apologised for his behaviour. I shall publish the conversation tomorrow as a post-mortem. Anyway, thank you to James, and, in the words of F. S. Catus, c. 8000 BCE-date: ‘I CAN HAZ SLEEP?’

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  1. James’s avatar

    James on October 23, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    Your nonsense about spelling the word gallery has nothing to do with the matter in hand, and the fact you feel the need to go off subject to attack him shows how limited your argument is. William is keen to promote MANNERS because he gets upset by the indifference and prejudice he sees in the world, from the likes of you and he wants people to just appreciate life in all its glory and not see it as a chance simply to make people feel out of place. He is a manners expert, but in order to add depth and expertise he has to research and be brushed up on all the technical sub-branches of manners, of which etiquette is one. He has always stated that manners is more important than etiquette and has professed that he would never feel offended by bad etiquette, but he would by bad manners. Yes, he has stated that correct ettiquette is advisable but if you can’t swallow the truth about Britain’s new found rudeness of which you are a prime example them your exactly the kind of guy who needs to listen to what he is saying.

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  2. Jonathan’s avatar

    Jonathan on October 23, 2008 at 7:46 pm

    For one last time:

    SMILING AT A PERSON IN THE STREET or HOLDING THE DOOR OPEN FOR THEM = politeness/good manners.
    PREACHING ABOUT HOW FAR, TO THE MILLIMETRE (sorry, SIXTEENTH OF AN INCH) AWAY FROM EACH SIDE OF THE PLATE THE KNIFE AND FORK SHOULD BE = pretentious idiocy.

    I don’t have a problem with Mr. Hanson’s education on ‘not talking with food in your mouth’ or ‘giving up your seat on the bus for, say, a pregnant lady’. However, it’s his attitude on TV and elsewhere, demanding absolute conformity with outdated social protocols that I can’t stand.

    With that, James, consider yourself consigned to the Crashed Pips killfile dungeon for the crimes of slagging, trolling, insipidity, cross-wanking, stupidity and snobbery. There’s also strong evidence to suggest you are a sockpuppet, so don’t push your luck. I may choose to report your domain to Akismet.

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