{"id":23651,"date":"2016-10-01T09:09:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T13:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=23651"},"modified":"2019-08-15T12:11:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T16:11:58","slug":"honestly-does-the-evidence-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=23651","title":{"rendered":"Honestly: Does the Evidence Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Martha<\/a>
Martha E. Conway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Human Condition<\/h2>\n

By Martha E. Conway<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Reposted from March 2011) Every time someone asks, \u201cDid you see [Fill-in-the-Blank Topic Posted on The Forum That Shall Not Be Named]?\u201d I want to puke coat hangers. No, I haven\u2019t been on there, on ANY of them, and neither should you have been.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really care who \u2018you\u2019 is.<\/p>\n

Usually it\u2019s electeds, but recently it was a John Q. Public. He wants to go educate the misinformed. I told him it\u2019s a waste of time. Even if he can figure out who they are, grabs the group and tries to address their misinformation, concerns or complaints, I guarantee it won\u2019t make a bit of difference.<\/p>\n

If someone is predisposed to discompose, discredit, disrespect, disbelieve, disarrange, discard, discriminate (against), disembowel, disgrace, dislike, dismiss, dispirit, disprove, disqualify, disregard, distort (facts or information), distrust, disparage, disagree (with), disapprove (of), discharge, discomfit, (be) discourteous (to), disdain, disfavor, (be) disgusted (with), dishonor, dismember, disparage, dispossess, dispute, disquiet, disrepute, distress, disturb or otherwise diss* you, you are wasting your breath.<\/p>\n

They know what they know, they use so-called \u201cnews sources\u201d that mirror their concrete mindset and, in the case of TFTSNBN, they hide behind their Cloaks of Invisibility to do all that dissing I just referred to above \u2013 and probably even more I didn\u2019t think of.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m cranky because everything we do in this line of work has our names and faces attached; both should be on this piece somewhere, for instance.<\/p>\n

I had an elected kind of yell at me \u2013 to me? \u2013 last month that I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to be personally attacked by members of the public. After I nearly died laughing, I told him to wake up \u2013 that we\u2019re in the same game, just on opposite sides of the playing field.<\/p>\n

Reporting is the first position I have ever held where people so freely express how much better you should \u2013 and they could \u2013 do your job.<\/p>\n

But he is not alone. A bunch of public figures \u2013 not necessarily elected folks \u2013 have told me they want to: Fight back! Speak out! Defend themselves!<\/p>\n

Against what? The Invisible Man? (Please forgive the pronoun.) Seriously? And what is The Invisible Man hiding from? Who are they afraid of? I sure as hell don\u2019t get it, but I will share a strange example.<\/p>\n

I was in the Post Office last week. A couple of guys were talking about the Madison County Sheriff\u2019s Office chaplain.<\/p>\n

Only they couldn\u2019t remember his name. It was driving one of them crazy. They were driving me crazy because I couldn\u2019t concentrate on my Post Office Calculus and ZIP code sorting. So I opened my cell phone, dialed a number, introduced myself and asked who the chaplain was. These guys stared in fascination.<\/p>\n

I hung up and gave them the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho did you call?\u201d one of them asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sheriff\u2019s Office,\u201d I said. \u201cWhy? Who would you call?\u201d<\/p>\n

I desperately wanted to add \u2018Ghostbusters?\u2019 to the end of that question, but I really, really wanted to know. They were incredulous, but now I was fascinated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, whom WOULD you have called?\u201d I pressed.<\/p>\n

No answer, but clearly not the source, it would appear.<\/p>\n

Maybe The Invisible Man is embarrassed to look like he doesn\u2019t know everything? If you want embarrassment, some years ago a colleague and I were having lunch and discussing all the methamphetamine arrests in our blotters that week.<\/p>\n

It occurred to us we didn\u2019t know how the drug is abused \u2026 so I called Canastota Police Chief Jim Zophy.<\/p>\n

I started out by saying, \u201cI\u2019m really embarrassed to admit this, but\u2026\u201d and he responded we shouldn\u2019t be embarrassed and wouldn\u2019t have any reason to know and explained everything about the drug.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how you learn. And Chief? Thanks for not laughing at us (to our faces, anyway).<\/p>\n

I guess in that TFTSNBN situation, you\u2019re damned if you do, damned if you don\u2019t. If you respond, you\u2019re being defensive. If you don\u2019t, you\u2019re being elusive. The former has never been successful; the latter doesn\u2019t dignify the idiocy with a response.<\/p>\n

If someone approaches you in person, it\u2019s a little different. At least they\u2019re not operating under the cover of night.<\/p>\n

But evaluate how that talk is going while you\u2019re in it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old saying that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Well, the same thing applies here. If you find the initially innocent-sounding question is really an accusation and your detractor increasingly appears to reject anything you say or do, you are wasting your time trying to win them over.<\/p>\n

Ask them two questions: \u201cDoes the evidence exist (to prove your side of the issue)?\u201d Then, \u201cWhat evidence would it take?\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lucky, they will say they don\u2019t know, and talking about it may be productive. If they get angry and turn and walk away, no evidence will ever be enough, and you\u2019ve saved your precious energy.<\/p>\n

And stay the hell off the forums; you\u2019re only upsetting yourself over the stupidity of an ignorant, vocal minority who hate themselves, and there\u2019s absolutely nothing you can do to change that.<\/p>\n

Martha Conway is the publisher of MadisonCountyCourier.com.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

*diss: \/dis\/ v.tr. sl.<\/em> put (a person) down verbally; bad-mouth (The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, Second Edition, c. July 2001)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Human Condition By Martha E. Conway (Reposted from March 2011) Every time someone asks, \u201cDid you see [Fill-in-the-Blank Topic Posted on The Forum That Shall Not Be Named]?\u201d I want to puke coat hangers. No, I haven\u2019t been on there, on ANY of them, and neither should you have been. I don\u2019t really care who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-69t","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Conway-Martha-092812.jpg?fit=226%2C290&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}