[Buddha-l] New web site peers into the past of buddha-l

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 11:12 -0500, curt wrote:

> Wasn't it Gore Vidal who said "never pass up an opportunity to be on 
> television, get laid, or be misquoted by Richard Hayes"?

I can't recall whether it was Gorvy Dahl who almost said something like
that, or Hunter S. Thompson. Maybe it was Chester A. Arthur.

Misquoting people is a subtle art I associate more with a guy named Dr
Curt Steinmetz than with anyone else now on buddha-l. I have no
pretensions of approaching his mastery of that practice.

For the record, what got me into hot waters before was not misquoting
people but quoting their words verbatim. One former subscriber to
buddha-l really did threaten to sue me for quoting him verbatim and
giving him full credit for what he had said. He said he would sue me for
everything I have. I was sorely tempted to let him do it, since that
would mean he would acquire my debt.

One when I was a brash undergraduate at Beloit College, a professor of
educational theory threatened to sue me for $250,000 for making fun of
him in one of my regular columns in the student newspaper. I told him I
had $37.43 in the bank, and would gladly split it with him. The irony of
that particular incident was that I had never even heard of him. The
column I wrote was making fun of a purely fictitious character, a
buffoon of my own fevered imagination. The next week I published an
apology, saying I regretted any unintended resemblance of real
professors to the fictional dunce featured in my satirical essay.

-- 
Richard