Standing up to bullies WAS: Re: Which Harry Potter character

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 186009


> jkoney:
> Zach's comments don't show any inside information that Ron actually performed poorly they are just cheap shots. 
> 
> 
> > 
> > Magpie:
> > But however McGonagall feels about what Zach said, whatever 
> > punishment she did or didn't give to Ginny (perhaps Ginny's claim it 
> > was an accident saved her), I simply don't think it's bullying. To 
> > me, bullying requires more than just insulting someone in any 
> > context. Draco's accused of buying his way onto the team by Hermione, 
> > but I don't think she's bullying him when she says it.
> 
> jkoney:
> If you don't think it is bullying than do you believe that verbal insults are a prelude to bullying behavior?
> 
> After all if you can get away with insulting someone the next step is verbal or physical intimidation.
> 
> If you are going to insult someone, you must expect them to stand up for themselves. Maybe Zach was only expecting words to be thrown back at him. That was his mistake. Zach started it, Ginny finished it. I don't have a problem with it.

Montavilla47:
I don't have a big problem with it, either.  But that doesn't mean I think Smith
was bullying anyone.  He was, as you said above, making cheap shots.  But
making cheap shots isn't necessarily bullying.  It's just making cheap shots.

Look, Jon Stewart (and every other comedian in the world) makes cheap shots
at just about every politician in the world.  Rush Limbaugh does the same thing,
with a huge "bully pulpit."   But neither of them is bullying anybody--not Clinton,
not Bush, not Obama, and not even Sarah Palin.  They're just taking shots--
most of them cheap.

Don Rickles made a living insulting everyone he met.  But he didn't bully
them.  Nor, to the best of my knowledge, did his insults ever grow into
physical intimidation.

Yes, insults *can* be intimidating, but they are not always intimidating.
Sometimes they are just hot air.  Which is what Smith's comments strike
me as.