You can tell that from all the way over there, eh? Anyway, what would it matter if I hadn't? (I have.) The pull quotes from the parent and the content of the gr

You can tell that from all the way over there, eh? Anyway, what would it matter if I hadn't? (I have.) The pull quotes from the parent and the content of the grandparent reflect the attitude I'm criticizing perfectly, even if one of them pulled quotes out of context to support it. The attitude is that polite discourse is so nebulous and loose weave that Stephen Fry has no right to categorically state that his detractors are infringing upon common decency. After all, who's to say that his offense is worth any more than theirs? Well, I will say that. His offense is worth more than theirs. It is possible to say objective things about the way that people are arguing. As an aside, I didn't suggest anybody go live on an island. That's a deliberately uncharitable reading on your part, I'd say. I'm using that phrase as a rhetorical device to express an idea. The idea is: I wish they could live in the world they're trying to create for a few days so they could live out, in real life, everything that is wrong with their picture of How Things Should Work. My point is that I don't think society could function very well if everybody was paralyzed by an infinite relativistic regress of social concern that "my polite" may not be "your polite". Nobody is literally being told to go live on an island to fuck off, as you seem to be suggesting.