Comment by arp242
10 months ago
I don't really follow what's objectionable about Ted's email, or why it's being singled out. It matches my experience as an open source maintainer pretty accurately. It's also pretty constructive (it goes on to lay out a plan on how to constructively proceed and make everyone happy).
What's objectionable is primarily the phrase "thin blue line" - it's highly politically charged language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line
One would hope it was just a particularly bad gaffe, but it could also be an insight into how he actually views himself as a maintainer which is not great.
It is most certainly not politically charged language. It's an anodyne statement referring to being a small force keeping bad things from happening. That's all.
The "blue" is specifically about police, so it is not as generic as you make it out to be.
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While words change and it rapidly escalated over the last 10 years, it's been about police brutality/misconduct for at least 50 years now.
Using phrases whose meaning you're unaware of is generally risky behavior. Trying to claim it meant something other than what the common lexicon says it means is just asinine.
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Eh, right. The "far right" seem to appropriate every other thing these days. I can't keep up.
In the context of a long-term good faith maintainer in what is clearly a constructive good faith email, assigning bad faith meaning to a simple phrase is in itself a bad faith action IMHO.
> Eh, right. The "far right" seem to appropriate every other thing these days. I can't keep up.
Is it really appropriating anything, though, in this case? Seems this is more people ascribing the expression to a particular political camp in order to taint T'so by association with said camp.
(Sorry, if you were being ironic or sarcastic in your wording, I failed to pick it up.)
The gaffe is on the part of those who read far too much into the expression.
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> widely understood to mean "and this is why police should be allowed to shoot black people without being questioned about it".
Or maybe it's not as "widely understood" to mean that?