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Message

Subject: Re: ATTN JMS: B5 Backbiting from actors wins no fans here
Date: 06 Dec 2002 03:41:43 GMT
From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

>When she went to JMS to ask for, although an unreasonable
>(though not grossly so) request, an understandable and fair request,
>she got a (nasally voiced) "NO!" from JMS. 

And who, exactly, are you to determine, years after the fact, what was an
"unreasonable" or resaonable request?  Or whether it was grossly unreasonable? 
Again, were you in the room?  Yes or no, were you in the room?  Then how do you
know what was asked?

And how do you know a "NO!" was said by me, "nasally voiced?"  

You are utterly ignorant of the situation and the conversations.  You weren't
there.  And you choose to characterize my actions with your own voice and
prejudices (see above) in order to make it sound snotty.  

As for example:

>Considering how caustic
>JMS's words on this matter were (i.e.Whenever she was on, she expected
>it to be the Andrea Thompson Show,"(1) ), I'm inclined to take
>Andrea's side on this matter.

You then link to the actual quote, which you deliberately paraphrase to make
something else.  Since you had the quote in hand, you could easily have just
cut-and-pasted it rather than rewriting it to fit your thesis.  What I said --
from the article you cite -- was:

"Finally, it was never Warner Bros. who hired her or pushed her
on me. WB didn't care one way or another. I was the one who hired her,
with Doug Netter. If I hadn't felt she was right for the role, I
wouldn't have hired her. But I was also under no constraint to make
the show into the Andrea Thompson Show. Andreas and Peter have often appeared
as many times in a season as Andrea, and didn't even *have* a guarantee for the
first two seasons. (Now they do.)
We did what we could to accommodate her without destroying the
story arc. I regret that she has taken out her frustrations in this
way. Either one is a team player, part of an ensemble, or one is not. 
We are very proud of the fact that the cast members as they stand now are all
ensemble, team players."

Where, please, is the "caustic" in this?  Where is me saying "Whenever she was
on, she expected it to be the Andrea Thompson show?"  Nowhere.  

It's the oldest trick in the book, and the lowest, also the meanest, to take
someone's words and paraphrase them to your own benefit, and characterize them
with loaded terms to make the other person look bad.

Frankly, this kind of tactic is beneath contempt.

Grow up.

 jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine 
and don't send me story ideas)