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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (47869)	5/17/2002 2:03:37 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

You seem to have many qualifications on your definition of what you will admit to be blackmail (even adding that it must succeed or be carried through? Is that what "one would have to either get what one wanted, or carry through the threat" means?) (Okay, attempted blackmail, let's make it, sheesh). In a sense, though, it did succeed; Poet decided to allow her private business to be aired by CH, as that course, in the end, was less upsetting in contemplation than what he was continuing to insinuate: that she had done something, something that he could prove if only she weren't constraining him, that justified his harassment of and insinuations about her. If the information would have a marked impact on the persons reputation, That's interesting. So if an individual has personal reasons for not wanting something revealed, and revelation is threatened unless the individual complies, the discussion must be not about what the threat means to the individual threatened, but how the person's "reputation" in the minds of some hypothesized others would be affected? Some examples: How about if I had AIDS from, say, a blood transfusion (so as not to cloud the issue, given that there are JCD's about), and didn't want it known, for my own reasons? How about if I had had a difficult (and personal) family situation involving my my brother (I don't have one), an inheritance, scandal, that I told only my friends about, but I myself was unbesmirched, so my reputation couldn't be compromised. How about if I were a recovered alcoholic who didn't want that known by other than friends? (I'm not; I haven't had more than six alcoholic drinks in my life). What if I had told CH that my husband was an alcoholic, or my mother, or my brother? What if I hadn't talked openly about my mentally retarded daughter here (I didn't for some time; it isn't easy for me to talk about it; I begin to cry, still, when I talk or write about it) but had confided the detail to CH, and he.... What if I were an adopted child and didn't want that known for some personal reason? Or if my children were adopted? What if I were dying, and didn't want it known? What if I had told CH any number of private but not reputation-destroying things? You believe he could use the threat of exposing them publicly without it being called blackmail? I made all of the above up, as examples. None are true of Poet or of me. Your definition of "blackmail" is startlingly restrictive, and, it seems to me, designedly so. I just figured blackmail was a threat to expose something publicly that someone didn't want publicly known. I think that's the more usual understanding of the word.