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Blawg Innovator: Greenfield's Pre-emptive Comment Strike
Scott "Get Off My Lawn" Greenfield, who writes the tremendous Simple Justice blog, has added an innovative new wrinkle to the blawg world: the pre-emptive comment strike.
After thousands of posts on Simple Justice, and probably tens (or hundreds) of thousands of comments on his posts, Greenfield can sometimes see what is coming before he hits the publish button. And now he is striking back, in advance. In a Friday post from SJ following up on this LBW post on whether a retailer has the authority to stop a patron who has purchased
and paid for goods on the way out of the store and demand to see a receipt, Greenfield foresaw no less than three streams of misguided comments coming his way. And thus, in this "Caveat," the pre-emptive comment strike was born.
Caveat: Given the enormous difficulty some
readers/commenters have had lately in focusing on the point of the post,
I'm constrained to make a few things clear: First, clearly the most
expedient thing for the shopper to do was be compliant, do as he was
told and then walk away. That's neither in issue nor the point. The
question is whether the store has any right to make the demand, detain
the buyer and refuse to give him back his receipt and allow him to walk
away unmolested. Second, while the propriety of having a person not in
uniform make the demand is a real question, raising a number of issues,
the focus of the post is elsewhere. Let it go, no matter how critically
important you think it is. If you can't, start your own blog to
discuss it. Third, even though you might think the shopper behaved
poorly, that too isn't relevant. People are allowed to behave poorly
and are still entitled to rights, even if you don't think they should
be. Again, if you can't let that go, go elsewhere. Focus.
As the Guinness beer guys would surely say ..."Brilliant!!"
Since Friday I have been watching carefully to see whether Greenfield will be regularly serving up these pre-emptive comment strikes. I'd say the jury is still out, but he delivered one more today in a post in which he argued that "while anybody can fail the bar exam the first time, nobody but a blithering idiot* fails it twice." Recognizing the onslaught likely to follow, Greenfield added:
* If you are reading this post and failed the bar exam twice, do not
post a comment saying so or informing of great lawyers who failed the
bar exam twice. Just trust me on this. Don't do it.
Posted by Bruce Carton on July 26, 2010 at 12:26 PM | Permalink
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