The Grand "over-privilege" Inquisition

So after its ups and downs, one of the latest online discussions of an imminent kit started swirling down the bowl in a way that's just inevitable once the usual suspects get on the scene:

MCM: The Moebius Ford Pickups

I bring this up because there's a request made of me on the last page (34) that I'd very much like to accommodate:

'Danno' - "You're the one who used the word/phrase 'over-privilege,' which I didn't recognize.  And it doesn't exist in the dictionary.  So, I thought I could get a little education from you. 

Since you never make a mistake, it must be a real word with real meaning.  Enlighten us."

Now I don't like to harp on the exposure of my work a whole lot - NO, really, I don't.  But our dear pal 'Danno' here directed this at somebody who's very recently had a nationally published two-installment article titled "When A Good Build Goes Bad", notable in no small part as a chronicle of all the... 

WAIT FOR IT, now  - 

mistakes I made wrangling a plastic sedan body out of two Revell '50 Oldsmobile coupe shells! So not only do I make mistakes, I describe them, take pictures of them, and as luck would have it, submit them for scattering on the four winds to land at a hobby shop or better-stocked book store near you.

**BOOM**, that rake handle just pops up everywhere, huh?

Now in fairness, that doesn't appear to be the exact nature of what 'Danno' was talking about - then again, it should be just as apparent what I was getting at in the part he quoted.

But I did make a mistake in the thread, so let's come back to that.

Whether it's convenient to anybody or not, my use of "over-privilege" was a R E F E R E N C E.  To this quoted section (p 42):

'Petetrucker07': "...Its just funny how grown men are bickering like little old bitties, over, again, a 1/25 plastic model kit thats still in development. They should be lucky that we have this forum to discuss new kits, and feel overly privileged that the manufacturer is communicating and listening to the feedback..."

And to forge it into some sort of usage handy for a quick retort, I made a compound word of that construction: "So now it's an abuse of over-privilege to have a frank discussion about a kit in a forum ABOUT model kits, huh?"  

Somehow, I'm betting there's not a preponderance of hyphenated words in the latest Webster's - not least because compound words tend to drop their hyphens as they proliferate. The archaic "to-day" and "to-morrow" have long shed their dashes, for example.

Of course, my own eye wouldn't bat once at the use of, say, "work-around" in a modern sentence, but evidently, it's undergoing a transformation as we speak:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/workaround

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workaround

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/workaround

though not at Merriam-Webster, which will correct "under-privilege" for you, hyphenate "work-around", and refuse to acknowledge "over-privilege" entirely.

But check out a close cousin also not acknowledged by Webster, and oh, heeyy, LOOK WHAT HAPPENS:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/overprivileged

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overprivileged

http://www.yourdictionary.com/overprivileged

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/overprivileged

So as "privilege" relates to "privileged", and as any idiot can look at "overprivileged" and suppose it to be the opposite of "underprivileged", it's not such a leap to hope "overprivilege" might be interpreted on its own merits as an excessive privilege, and to make it more non-official, more apparently a word you improvised, by hyphenating it.

Except I DIDN'T USE the word on its own merits.  It was dependent entirely on the context of 'Petetrucker07'. Of course it's not intended as canon-according-to-Scrabble, nor did it need to be. And you aren't gonna make that fact magically dematerialize by trying to dictate your own rules of engagement.  Whether you like it or not, that wasn't the mistake.

Where I made my mistake was in assuming people might keep track of my antecedent.  Where I made my mistake was in forgetting for a minute who I was talking to, and, if not in failing to quote the source, then in not at least making it REMEDIALLY CLEAR that it was a reference by enclosing it in quotation marks: "So now it's an abuse of 'over-privelege' to have a frank discussion…"

But what really interests me is what drove 'Danno' to clamp down on that one particular thing. 'Cause how dense can anybody really be?  You don't see "height-challenged" in the dictionary either, but everybody knows what it means.  Naw, 'Danno' ain't that thick. Nobody is. And if it ain't cluelessness, what then?

Geez, for all the lip service he pays to respecting the expectation of accuracy in a kit, it couldn't possibly be the same sort of thing prompting another participant's flailing, wildly conjectural, half-ass Matlock maneuver on Bob Turner - since deleted - could it?  'Cause it's not as if it would have had any impact on the points he was making if Turner called himself Captain Kangaroo. His logic is unassailable, so hey, let's be true to form, let's try character assassination!

Are you all soooo bereft now, so impoverished for any other angle of attack, that these are the depths to which you'll resort? Is this what you've been reduced to? Taking any peripheral, nonsensical potshot you can, 'cause ya just don't have anything to counter the real issue - which is that hell yeah, there's an "us" and a "them" even in car modeling, and that this schism WASN'T the idea of anybody who nit-picked a plastic model!

Oh, and one other thing - if  you're to have any hope selling me as self-appointed, it should probably be for reasons a bit more compelling than simply because you said so. 

Sure, there's nothing to stop you coming up with whatever willy-nilly little definition of "self-appointed" you like. But if you want it to have any punch, you're best advised to trap me with my definition of self-appointed, not whatever you've manufactured for your own convenience.

It's like plinking down arcade ducks, calling out the complaining about complaining, the moaning about the moaning, the twisted panties over twisted panties.  But I've set up a slightly trickier task for anyone who thinks I'm so susceptible.

My definition of "self-appointed" -  as in Self-Appointed Defender of kit manufacturers, say - involves somebody trying to impose a totally arbitrary standard: our SAD takes it upon himself to be offended by criticism of a model, so he introduces personal attacks into a discussion that hasn't been very personal up to that point, all in his misguided attempt to defend the manufacturer.

My angle is that this is a presumptuous and morally compromised approach to take, an angle based on a standard a lot more objective than it is arbitrary.   Critics don't start out attacking anybody; they're criticizing objects, usually with facts and visual comparisons to back their observations up. The personal offense a SAD takes is far less solidly justified, and the personal attacks he responds with, indefensible.  

Those of us on this side of the argument act the way we do because there's no good reason to tolerate such an oppressive and abusive approach. You'll be very hard-pressed to find me getting obnoxious without a clear reference to somebody else who got obnoxious first.  And if, stacked up against people who stare down their noses at kit critics and so loftily berate them, you somehow contrive me as the poster of supercilious content, then I've got no interest in your skewed bullscat definition of humility.

And objectors have… what, exactly?  Anything I haven't made a laughingstock in that first blog?  They have their own standards of what they deem to be acceptable in kit criticism, and they appoint themselves as enforcers of those standards in the ugliest and most puerile  ways, openly dictating how grateful we should all be, chastising our building skills if we don't swill the kool-aid.  Yeah, just try turning that around on me.

Some critics may go overboard, but we all know that's not necessary for the word-barf about substandard modeling, and "gluer-not-builder", and "just-what-have-YOU-built" to ensue in force.

And another key difference is that I don't try to dictate what you should say, I just point out what's all shagged-up about your content after you spew it out there.  To the contrary, I WANT you all to keep that scat up, to keep digging yourselves in those holes.  OTHER people watching will understand, even if y'all refuse to.

Seriously, 'Danno', God love you. Please,  KEEP IT COMING.  Don't feel you need to keep to that skipping "supercilious bloviating"  record, either.  And if you wanna persist in some "no-YOU-are!" game, with the whole "self-appointed" thing, that's peachy.  Just don't pretend you've caught me in any kind of intellectual inconsistency doing so.

I'm not making any claims to be above it all, and I'm not subtle in my quid-pro-quo.  
Never claimed not to make mistakes.  Now, to give my arguments a wee more objective, factual, and less arbitrary basis? Mm, well, MAYBE.  

And don' worry 'bouddit, there's plenty more "enlightenment" where that came from - 

all any o' y'all can eat, in fact.

Doubt me?  The comments section awaits below...