Thursday, March 20, 2008
Glossary: Fair Game
In effect this is a systematised breach of Play the ball, not the man rule. It happens only sporadically on Slugger, but its intention is to uses the anonymity of the commenting zone to attempt to damage the reputation of some known public figure: politician; journalist; key witness; or even individual bloggers. The strategy was first outlined by L Ron Hubbard in 1965 as Fair Game Law. Hubbard’s target was ‘suppressive people’:
Suppressive Acts are clearly those covert or overt acts knowingly calculated to reduce or destroy the influence or activities of Scientology or prevent case gains or continued Scientology success and activity on the part of a Scientologist. As persons or groups that would do such a thing act out of self interest only to the detriment of all others, they cannot be granted the rights and beingness ordinarily accorded rational beings and so place themselves beyond any consideration for their feelings or well being.
Mick Fealty @ 10:38 AM
I fancy I am quite good at interpreting what others write but on this occasion I am beaten. I suggest that it points to an underlying culture here which I do not really want to penetrate.
But I still want to know what this blog is really “about”.Posted by on Mar 21, 2008 @ 04:52 PMGT,
You’ve probably hit on some inexactitude in the definition. Since it’s in the glossary section, I’ll work on it to try to make the definition more accessible.
In the meantime, here’s a previous post on Slugger which more explicitly demonstrates the connection with the playing the ball, not the man rule. About the same time Pete picked up this priceless clip from World in Action in the late sixties
Posted by on Mar 21, 2008 @ 08:13 PM
