"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract."
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841 - 1935)

"Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind."
- Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

from                aricam aricam@vodamail.co.za
to                     me
date                Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 12:25 PM
subject           your diss

Hey BE,
Found your interesting page on Motorcycho...pretty interesting indeed.
I agree with what you write about the Harley-Yups, with all their misled
ideals and ideas.
I personally view with distaste all of the modern-day values of "you must
have 'ABCD' to measure up" and
I clearly realise that predujice is often formed by opinoins of sometimes
dubious influential forces.
Such as Black men have larger penises than other men, Jewish folk are more
intelligent than others,
White men can't dance, Coloured men are cowards...you get the idea.
These are also part and parcel of the one-track mind-set prevailing these
days.
You obviously have targeted Harley-Davidson as your 'Big Hate' as is
displayed on your page...I just desire to
point out that in a similar vein I have similar emotions--for instance I
have massive distaste for BMW but
realise that it's not the product as much as the owners of these that get me
fired up.
Just because one bike is faster than another would not mean that it is a
'better' bike-just a faster bike.
'Better' means different things to different folk; Rolls-Royce is known as
the 'Best car in the world' not because of
it's top speed. It is because of reasons pertaining to build-quality,
historic achievments and so on.
Let's face it-where are the nylons from the '20's or '50's today? Yes, I'd
say that you don't care!
I have ridden daily since 1968 on Harley-Davidson, andadmit that for a
while chose to ride Nylon instead,
because of the yuppie wanna-be Harley-biker invasion...but that there's not
any way that one can hate, with practised reason, any
vehicle whether it be Nylon, German, American, South African or whatever
based on their owners.
Prejudice, is racism by any other measure is for those containing
small-minded tunnel-vision, something
every person suffers from at some time or another...but in their own
interest aught to be combatted. It's plain ugly.
It's a shame to sink to the depths of such unreasonable hate for any
inanimate object based upon your real hate-White folk.
Perhaps when or if you are able to confess this raw truth to your own
self-you'll be set free and get over yourself?
Sarcasm, insults, hate...weigh one down and are boringly unproductive.
Life is too short-rather enjoy it and mind one's own business.
Regards, Ari.

_______________

To which I replied

_______________

Ari de Beer, SASC, hails from Johannesburg, South Africa and is both a Director of Photography and a Steadicam Owner / Operator with an online resume (you can look it up ... it's not that hard to find).  The "SASC" is an acronym that stands for South African Society of Cinematographers (funny, I never really thought of South Africa as that much of a clearinghouse of cinematographers ... ).  Most of his email is just a long rambling mindless pish-posh of muddled thoughts until we get to this one rather large pot hole in his tiny intellectual cul-de-sac.  Yes, the one part of Mr. de Beer's email that really made me throw back my head and guffaw out loud was this tidbit:

Prejudice, is racism by any other measure is for those containing small-minded tunnel-vision, something every person suffers from at some time or another...but in their own interest aught to be combatted. It's plain ugly.  It's a shame to sink to the depths of such unreasonable hate for any  inanimate object based upon your real hate-White folk.  Perhaps when or if you are able to confess this raw truth to your own self-you'll be set free and get over yourself?

Yes, folks, Ari de Beer has discovered my real problem.  The core reason why I despise Harley Davidson is that I have a very real, very deep hatred of "White folk."  I guess that , according to Mr. de Beer, Harley Davidson represents, absolutely, the very definition of "White folk" everywhere (I hope not but that seems to be what he and a whole lot of others like him believe) and he postulates that my hatred of Harley Davidson is just a flimsy cover to hide the inexcusable nigh on intolerable racism that my site and my argument are obviously built layer upon layer on. 

It's okay, Mr. de Beer.  I understand that you may believe that Harley Davidson represents "White folk" because so many Harley owners believe (erroneously) that Harley Davidson represents a lot of things that Harley Davidson simply does not ... freedom, liberty, masculinity, sexuality, heterosexuality, patriotism, power, performance, endurance, truth, strength, quality, value, engineering, heritage, ...

 ... and now, Mr. de Beer informs me that Harley Davidson represents ... "White folk."

Bwahahahahahahaha!

If a day goes by and you don't learn something new, folks, then the day is wasted and today I just learned that Harley Davidson represents "White folk."  Yes, every now and then, I get an email that just makes me shake my head, close my eyes, say "Nonononononononononono ...." and mentally move the Harley owner intelligence bar a notch lower on the scale and this is one of those emails.  Oh, I've had to adjust the Harley owner average IQ scale many times over the years because every time that I thought that we had reached zero, every time that I thought that we had found the dumbest Harley owner in the entire world, someone even dumber would show up and lower the bar for everyone.  Ari de Beer is an example of just that.

The truth is that Harley Davidson only represents one thing, Mr. de Beer ... failure and it represents repeat failure at that.  You can study their company history if you want but I doubt that you will discover that any of their many and frequent failures were the result of hostile action by militant black people.  No, all of their failures were due to ignorance, short-sightedness, stupidity and laziness and I'm pretty sure that for most of the history of Harley Davidson that "White folk" have been at the helm of that particular ship of fools. 

Mr. de Beer ... I'll let you in on a little secret ... okay, it's not such a little secret and okay, it's really no secret at all: I'm white and that makes me a genuine original member of "White folk."

SURPRISE !

There are several pictures of me posted throughout my website and I assure you that I am 100% genuine college educated "White folk" so by that admission, I really can't hate "White folk," at least not in good conscious or proper form because, you see ... I am white folk.  If I hate any kind of people who are white then it is the uneducated, white trash folk who make up such a large percentage of the Harley customer base.  If I truly hate anything, then I hate stupidity ... and ignorance which is a close second ... and liberals but then I honestly believe that you have to be both stupid and ignorant in order to ever be a liberal but I digress.  Now, there are two types of stupidity and ignorance ... unwilling and willing.  You really can't make fun of people who are unwillingly stupid or ignorant ... that just comes naturally ... but those who are willingly stupid and willingly ignorant, then there is no excuse for that and Harley Davidson is willingly stupid and willingly ignorant and, by default, so are its many followers who are drawn to that kind of mindset because they have discovered a place where they can be willingly stupid and willingly ignorant and they aren't ridiculed for being so ... in fact, they're embraced and adored.  It seems that the more willingly stupid and willingly ignorant a Harley owner is, the more they are respected among the Harley owning community.  Harley Davidson is like a wildlife refuge only for stupid people, it's where stupid and ignorant people are protected by a corporation that depends on them in order to survive from year to year. 

I will assume that you are older than I am but you apparently don't have as much knowledge or as big of a grasp on life as I do and I'm only 40 years old.  In my four short decades, I've found that stupidity and ignorance are equal opportunity afflictions in that they affect people of all ages, both sexes, all skin colors and all nations, creeds, religions or what have you that you might use to categorize someone.  My website stands for many things but one of the core principles is that it stands against ignorance and stupidity ... especially willing ignorance and stupidity; two things that Harley owners seem to nourish and cultivate in great amounts. 

Your email is an example of this.

So you believe that my real problem is that I hate "White folk."  I can promise you, on the graves of my many, many Confederate (CSA) ancestors that I do not and in no form whatsoever hate "White folk."  In fact, my personal email signature reads "I'm not black like Barry White.  I'm white like Frank Black."   It's a lyric from the pop group "The Bloodhound Gang" and it's an intellectual stab at people like you who tend to talk first and think later (because you've been rewarded for this kind of behavior and not punished accordingly).  Perhaps, being from South Africa and having that whole history of Apartheid in your relatively recent rear view mirror it's easy to look at my online name of "Black Echo" and erroneously assume that I am of African / Negro or African-American origin but I assure you that I am not.  What is laughable is that you would propose such without doing the slightest bit of research on your part before sending your email to me ... an email that itself strongly chides racism while being openly racist in nature.  Irony and hypocrisy ... they are two of the most important aspects of owning a Harley Davidson.  At your age (and I've seen a picture of you, Mr. de Beer, from your online resume which you have posted on the Internet), I would have thought that you would have had the good sense not  to assume that someone who was known online as "Black Echo" must automatically have a skin color to match their online name.  Your inexcusable behavior indicates an incredibly naive and very shallow amount of thinking on your part, if it actually does represent any thinking at all but then you did admit that you ride a Harley Davidson and in doing so, you also admit that the kind of company that you support as well as the company that you keep isn't exactly composed of a bunch of rocket scientists or learned scholars.  You are only as smart as what you surround yourself with, Mr. de Beer and I'm way too smart to ever own something as dumb as a Harley (or want to associate with people who desire to own that sort of ridiculous junk).

When I say that Harley owners are simpletons, I mean it.

Life is too short-rather enjoy it and mind one's own business.

Perhaps it is you, Ari de Beer, who should take your own advice and stay out of arguments that not only don't concern you, but arguments which you dive headfirst into without the benefit of having the first fact on your side. 

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