Juniper Valley Park. Home to a lovely neighborhood of solid citizens, many of whom are dog owners and who for years have enjoyed off-leash recreation in the park.
As astute observers of recent off-leash history are aware, it was in this neighborhood that the seeds for codification of Off-leash Hours Policy were (inadvertently) planted by a small local civic group who rejected an enclosed dog park in Juniper Valley Park, and rejected the designated Off-leash Hours area of Juniper Valley Park that residents had used before 9am for six years. Instead, this civic chose to instigate a costly and failed lawsuit against the City. More information can be found here.
Dear Orrin has chosen videos from Juniper Valley Park Off-leash Hours for his delusion du jour.
And, as usual, our hero's irrational worldview takes hold to interpret such lovely videos of citizens enjoying off-leash recreation legally, respectfully, and properly in the park as something sinister and improper.
Let's analyse today's delusion one by one:
Orrin Says: The vigorous exercise in which most of the dogs are engaged (not).
Gee Orrin, maybe in your world, dogs running and playing with each other is not exercise or socialization. However, must rational people would say otherwise.
Orrin Says: Dog owners standing around chatting and drinking coffee. All fine and dandy, but why do they deserve their own area, paid for by the taxpayers?
What would you have dog owners do, Orrin, jumping jacks or playing soccer (or perhaps bird watching) when they are responsibly watching their charges and socializing with their neighbors (heaven forbid). You don't like to socialize with your neighbors much, but not everyone needs to be a curmudgeon.
And perhaps all of those people in the videos are tax cheats, but probably not. Therefore, they are all taxpayers. In the park 7/365 enjoying a designated area that other times of the day is multi-use.
Perhaps Orrin might ask why certain people in Juniper Valley Park have locked ballfields that are single use areas all the time, or why there's a dedicated bocce court, basketball courts, and ice skating rinks. Perhaps only the ice skaters pay all their taxes.
Orrin Says: The large dogs in the background of one of the videos running around under no discernible control of their owners (not that the small dogs seem to be under the owners’ control).
How do you define discernible control, Dear Orrin? The dogs are running in the designated area, and are under the watchful eye of their owner. Your irrational attempts at throwing mud on the wall just further discredit you.
Orrin Says: Every person in these videos is white.
Speaking of discrediting yourself on a daily basis. Here we go again with Orrin's racial theories (which most non-racists would consider racism).
Since Orrin's so interested in racial statistics, perhaps this map of New York City would be instructive to him: http://histmaps.research.cuny.edu/pub/maps/map3.aspx?g=1&animation=true
According to this map, published by CUNY, the racial composition of Middle Village and Juniper Valley Park is from 1-10% "Black". The neighboring nabes are also the same racial composition. But in Orrin's racial worldview he expects to find a cornucopia of African Americans in Juniper Valley Park? It's clearly to "support" his whackadoodle racial theories and Bogus Cynical Racial Ploy that he's building in his desperate attempt to attack the codified Off-leash Hours Health Department and Parks Department regulations. Nice try Orrin baby!
Perhaps Orrin should ask his friends in Middle Village why there are so few African American residents in the immediate and surrounding areas? That would be an interesting conversation.
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7 comments:
Hey Fan Club!!!
Wow. Well, this is quite a feat. Coming over from the feisty little http://kensingtonbrooklyn.blogspot.com/
crew, this is refreshing. Though I tend to think those few contrarians are gadflys and rhetorical gamesmen. However, our sad little Orrin is, sadly, all business. I don't think he gets out much. Certainly not out to actual Off Leash hours.
Anyway, lately I find myself checking in on his Martian dispatches. And, yeah, like you, and I assume some others, I find him clearly strange and quite strained. He recently even chose to print excerpts from one of my comments! I'll give him credit for having the balls, after I wrote three or four times clearly insulting and taunting him. So, yeah, he took out the insults and actually attempted to argue against my points. I've taken 3 minutes and thought of responding, but then I realized: this guy is spending hours supposedly observing behavior he detests then going home and composing blog posts to virtually no one. Have you seen his tally? The guy's not near 3k since Feb. My wife's blog gets about 1000 a week.
So, you know what? The guy's powerless and pathetic.
I'm going to continue being a responsible dog owner - keep them on four foot leads well healed, pick up the shit, give wide berth to pedestrians and bikes - and enjoy our legal and lawful Off Leash time in the park, only where and when designated.
I owe you a debt of gratitude. I thank you for watching the skies and not giving this jerk an inch. But for now, I'm gonna forget about all this crap and blogs and get back to watching the ass kicking ZZ Top gig on VH1 Classics. At some point, you gotta live.
PS - should our little buddy comment herein I'd hope you'd allow his remarks to shine un-moderated.
Thanks!
Yeesh. I did it again. I went back to Orrin's website and discovered the nuttiest post yet: He contends that a mugging of a teen near the dog beach before 9pm is proof that the teen had a dog off leash before legal hours. I mean, just... I'm speechless. Well, not entirely - here's the comment I wrote that I don't expect he'll allow:
"Uh...wow? I do appreciate you having some sense of fairness and recently printing some of my comments, albeit edited. For a moment, I thought I might continue to converse with you, lay aside the jokes and teasing, and engage in an annual discussion. However, this post, to me more than any other of yours up to now, reveals your outlook and prejudices. You took a tiny police blotter report of an unfortunate event, a mugging of a 14yr old that occurred near Prospect's dog beach (perhaps a result of a dogged Google search for certain Off Leash related terms) that clearly has no indication of any canines being present whether on or off leash. Your evidence is only via a tortured interpretation of the Queens Ledger's writer's statement that the teen was "trying to enjoy herself at the Doggie Beach..." The NY Post entry states she was "near" the beach. Are you seriously trying to exploit this event that is unrelated in any way to your cause?"
Thanks again for the venue!
Noisejoke:
Yes, sadly this type of willful misrepresentation (often called lying) is Standard Operating Procedure for Orrin.
Orrin's M.O. is to throw as much made up or distorted items on the wall in the hope that he can create some sort of illusion that Off-leash Hours patrons are irresponsible.
He'll fail at this just as he's failed at trying to kill the policy. Ironically, he and his micro-ilk such as the so-called Prospect Park "Advocate" and the yahoo's in Queens that started the ball rolling toward codification had their own cannon explode in their face. The law of unintended consequences. Orrin's still hopping mad over that one (he recently called it his Nakba.)
Orrin is a off-leash rejectionist jihadist, and I suppose will always be. It gives meaning to his life. Perhaps one day he'll see the light and realize that the policy is overwhelmingly positive for all New Yorkers. Are there a handful of rulebreakers? Just like with any other human activity. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as Orrin and his micro-ilk tried unsuccessful, and which Orrin so irrationally keeps trying, would be like eliminating highways because a handful of people speed.
Strict enforcement of the rules is the answer. The policy has proven to work in the 88 parks where it now exists on a daily basis. Including our beloved Prospect.
Thanks for participating!
Noisejoke:
See our July 7th post, which deals with the subject of the 14-year old girl being mugged in Prospect, and Dear Orrin lying to say that she had an off-leash dog with her.
I tried to post comments to "CREDO" but his creed is to deny opposing views and to censor opposing opinions unless they can twist them to his advantage. So I figured I would post here what I tried to post there so rational people can decide on their own:
"You say you accept comments but you do not post mine so you are clearly afraid.
The Juniper Park videos show people with their dogs off leash in the designated area of Juniper Park- which has sidewalks running through it. Obviously those are not your videos and you have not visited Juniper Park.
My cousin lives in Middle Village on the south side of the park. When I visited, we visited this area last year and this spring so I know where it is within the park. That’s how I learned and became interested in this whole off leash fight (not that it is a fight anymore as it is now legal).
It is not the perimeter as you say. Dogs do not play off leash on the perimeter sidewalks. Not only not allowed but dangerous given the busy roads on all sides.
Private club? Excuse me but when is a gathering of citizens a private club?
A private club is more like the local baseball league in the park with locked ball fields (10-20x larger than the off leash area) where they charge kids hundreds of dollars to play and include kids from Long Island whose parents do not pay NYC taxes.
These dog owners are using a DESIGNATED AREA, during LIMITED TIMES. This is a small area of the park.
You write that you do not object to fenced dog parks but when my cousin signed a petition to have a dog park carved out of an unused area of Juniper Park, he told me that the local civic association opposed it; the same association that unsuccessfully fought off leash in the whole city.
So what is it that you want? The dog owners asked for an enclosed dog park and the local nut jobs said "no."
So now off-leash is legal and your own videos (not that they are YOUR videos) show people following the law and you object.
You claim they are outside the area but I was there and you clearly were not. There are no signs outlining a designated area for off leash so your claims about violations are unfounded.
Furthermore, you attack the dog owners who are civil, abiding by the rules, and having a wonderful time with their children and dogs.
So you hate children, hate dogs, hate law abiding people, and just hate everyone.
You will not post this so I will also post it on the other site.
And about your just posted comment about black and white- Middle Village is almost all white so whom do you expect to use a LOCAL park?"
A racist is one who judges everything through the eyes of race, so this makes Orrin a racist.
I have tried twice to post a comment on the Credo/Orrin blog; both times they have never gone up.
I guess it is because I am from Juniper Park and extremely aware of how erroneous his comments were with regards to the location of the pathways & benches they are attached to the UNOFFICIAL Off-leash area. Dogs may be off-leash anywhere in Juniper Park before 9AM with the exception of official Ball Fields or Children’s play areas. We try to keep them contained to one area. We would love a fenced in area but for the time being are happy to have the privilege of the off-leash hours.
The comment that we are a private club is beyond ridiculous anyone who wishes to join us is more than welcomed. Unlike the ball fields, tennis courts & children’s play areas where I am not permitted.
Regarding the issue of Race, there is no issue, we welcome all regardless of their Race, sexual orientation, Nationality, sex, income bracket or political affiliation. The love we all have for our canine companions is in some cases the only bonds we have and yet it is enough to form lifelong friendships that break any socio economic barriers.
We are a group of law abiding/TAXPAYING NY citizens and should be accorded the same perks as any other citizen. We expect no more, nor should we expect any less.
This extremely interesting Op Ed appears in today's Washington Post. It is worth considering. Orrin is guilty of calumny:
Worse Than Mud
By Danielle Allen
Thursday, July 10, 2008; A15
Since time immemorial there has been political mud-slinging, including heaps during the period of the American founding, as Edward J. Larson noted on this page [" The Founding Mudslingers," op-ed, July 4]. But the eternal and universal nature of mud-slinging provides no basis for judging when the balance between it and forthright political discourse falls within a range healthy for democracy. As the Internet age matures, we should ask: Are we getting the balance right?
The philosopher Machiavelli, in a chapter of "Discourses on Livy" called "As much as accusations are useful to a Republic, so much so are calumnies pernicious," makes a useful distinction between accusation and calumny, or slander. Accusers present themselves and their evidence publicly so their accusations can be debated by the accused. That debate provides a reasonable basis for public deliberation. But calumny is anonymous, secret. Spread far and wide, it provides no real opportunity for debate or testing of evidence.
Moreover, accusations, even those caked in mud, can be true. Calumny is false by definition. The problem we face is not mudslinging but calumny, an antique word resurrected by the Internet era.
Machiavelli had seen clear examples of the problem. He wrote:
"Whoever reads the history of [Florence], will see how many calumnies have been perpetrated in every time against those citizens who occupied themselves in its important affairs. Of one, they said he had robbed money from the Community; of another, that he had not succeeded in an enterprise because of having been corrupted; and of yet another, because of his ambitions had caused such and such inconvenience. Of the things that resulted there sprung up hate on every side, whence it came to divisions, from divisions to Factions (Sects), (and) from Factions to ruin."
How important is calumny today? In 2000, calumny effectively led to John McCain's defeat in South Carolina. That smear campaign against him used robo-calls and fliers, and e-mail also played an important role, as the New York Times reported in February 2000. Arguably, calumny defeated John Kerry in 2004, and the infamous Swift boat television ads of that summer were, importantly, preceded by an aggressive Internet campaign begun that January that included perhaps the first viral campaign e-mail: a computer-generated image of Kerry and Jane Fonda beside each other on a podium at an antiwar rally. The image originally emerged at the Web site FreeRepublic.com, and Fonda had not in fact been at the event. But the damage was done. Today we are seeing viral anti-Obama e-mails, some of which I have traced to some of the same origin points for the 2000 and 2004 smear campaigns.
Since 2000, then, Internet- and e-mail-based slanders have had significant effects on national elections and have clearly shifted the balance between reasonable and calumnious discourse in a negative direction. In this regard, the Internet has given calumny a new level of consequence for our politics.
Machiavelli offered an account of calumny's threat to free republics: "Calumnies sting without disabling; and those who are stung being more moved by hatred of their detractors than by fear of the things they say against them, seek revenge." We can see these very sentiments in John McCain's response to the apparent involvement of a man named Ted Sampley, who operated a Web site devoted to attacking John Kerry in 2004. (Sampley's central Web site, U.S. Veteran Dispatch, appears to feed some of the e-mail against Obama, and he apparently also was involved in the South Carolina campaign against McCain in 2000, though he certainly has not been alone in these efforts.) As the New York Times reported in 2004, McCain described Sampley as "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter." Machiavelli argued that calumny breeds dangerous levels of factionalism specifically by motivating hatred.
But there is another issue at play here. McCain described Sampley as "an enemy of the truth." The problem with calumny is not merely that it motivates hatred or that it is simply dishonest. Even more significant, effective dishonesty -- calumny that succeeds in its goals -- undermines cultural commitments to truth by encouraging cynicism. When lies work, why not lie? Yet when a culture ceases to honor the truth, it loses its ability to preserve law, justice and fairness.
A right to free speech is no excuse for lying. While strongly protected rights of free speech are critical to a healthy democracy, rights bring responsibilities. Citizens should, as a standard practice, take responsibility for their views -- the matters of fact and principle that they wish to put before the public for consideration -- by appending their full, legal names to their expressions, even in blog posts. While there are times and places for anonymity, it should be the exception. Unfortunately, the Internet has brought us to a point where anonymity is the rule, not the exception. Rather than facilitating free speech, this is corrosive to democratic discourse. It's time to rebuild a responsible culture in which people speak in their full, legal names and honor the truth.
Mud we can laugh about. Calumny we can't.
Danielle Allen is a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study. Her latest book is "Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education." She has donated to Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
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