From: Jasper
Date: 1/19/01
Time: 9:24:46 AM
Charlotte,
I know that you didn't have a problem with the original post. Depending on the circumstance under which we are writing or proofing our work, all of us occasionally make mistakes ilike the ones I made. It's the nature of the beast. I don't mind the errors is other people's posts because, as I have said before, they force you to slow down and really think about what the other person is trying to say. There are almost always enough context clues to tell you what the intended message is, and you can tell a lot about the writer's true state of mind that you can't tell when he has time to reflect on what he wants to say and edit how he says it.
All of that said, I admit that I deserved that little spanking you gave me. I also appreciate it. I do try awfully hard to be fair. That should be enough. Where I go wrong is when I try so hard to convince everyone else that I'm trying to be fair. That's not cool. It's a character flaw. I'm aware of it and I'm working on it.
This is not a apology for the substance of the message. I wanted to get it right and make it readable because I think it's important to examine the power of institutional corruption -- of how any system with rewards and punishments can lead ambitious people to deceive themselves about what they're doing and why... or why not.
The interview went very well (about one in four does). I was focused and ready so my end of it was better than usual. I could tell that the host didn't expect much at first but, like most of these shows, we ended up going into overtime and the host said that he wanted me to return. He started of certain that the evidence against O.J. was conclusive. However, he asked intelligent questions and listened to the answers. By the time we finished he had a whole new take on a lot of things (common sense kicked in). The phones weren't working so he had to relay a couple of the caller's messages to me -- the usual stuff: "If O.J. was innocent, why did he run?" "If Fuhrman was really a racist who was trying to fool 'that jury' into thinking he wasn't, why would he lie about using the n-word, knowing that the tapes proved he had used it?" How do you think I answered? How do you think I should have answered? --Jasper