A few comments:
- I was rather amused that Martin Laurie and MOB, who between them have
provided us detailed accounts of necrophilia, coprophilia, murder, incest,
disembowlings and various kinds of human sacrifice, as well as mild flame wars
over both Onslaught and the Vadeli, can join hands in finding, respectively, the
nature of the posting and the type of the posting to be in "extemely poor
taste." Guess it proves Nat Hentoff's point that everyone favors some kind of
censorship.
- Generally, I don't think that people's personal business belongs on this
line, but news that has been disseminated to some 200 million people repeatedly
this week can hardly be considered "personal" any more.
- In fact, since I am remarkably uninterested in crimes of any sort, and never
read such stories, I had no idea that the fellow being accused was "our" Oliver,
and learned it only from the post. I do rather wonder why it was submitted
anonymously, which is generally a bad precedent.
- But surely the fact that this front-page story involves someone known to all
of us did deserve to be mentioned on this list.
- The only good news for RPG and Runequest players is that, had this case
occurred 15 years ago, the RPG angle would have been played up. Now, it is the
Internet that is the "sexy" part of the story.
- While I do not believe that it was inappropriate to put this news item on
the list, David Cheng is surely right that further discussion is inappropriate,
and that we should all remember the phrase "innocent until proven guilty."
Jim Chapin
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