[Mears]

“We haven’t walked in his shoes, and we weren’t there to see what took place.”

—

We haven’t walked in ANYONE”s shoes,but that still does not excuse rudeness.

Aldrin was not dragged kicking and screaming to MIT,he chose to go. He could have stayed home.

.

[rlmorel]

Right. It doesn’t excuse it, but it can engender forbearance in specific situations.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with exercising that forbearance in those situations.

You apparently feel differently.

By the way, were you at MIT when he was there?

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

That's the thing with Chuck Yeager, too. Whenever somebody talks about meeting him and finding him to be a rude jerk, people always have to pipe up and go on about what an American hero he is and all that. I'll give him all kinds of props for literally putting his life on the line to advance aerospace (with at least a couple of accidents that probably should've killed him), but that doesn't excuse being rude to people and talking to them like they're peons that barely rate shining his shoes.

With Buzz, I'll give him all kinds of credit for putting his life on the line, literally, by being an astronaut. Buzz was 3rd in his class at Westpoint. He was a combat pilot, then he went and got a Ph.D. from MIT. I'll give Buzz all kinds of Kudos for that, he was definitely one of the sharper knives in the drawer everywhere he went. But none of that excuses bad behavior and acting like you're better than everybody. Far from it.