David Limbaugh
- Thread starter Regnad Kcin
- Start date
SezMe
post-pre-born
Personally speaking, I've seen this transition and would commend Whiplash for it.
Maybe that is simply due to the fact that there are more people on the left here. I wonder what the result would be if you tried to ascertain "venom per capita" for lefties and righties?
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
You don't actually have to listen to all the different conservative and wingnut radio shows since most of them get their talking points from think tanks and blogs. One or two will suffice.
Earlier tonight, on two different shows, they discussed Ms. California appearing in a spot for Friends of Marriage or some such group and ran their commercial in toto, gratis.
Earlier tonight, on two different shows, they discussed Ms. California appearing in a spot for Friends of Marriage or some such group and ran their commercial in toto, gratis.
20-30 years ago here or off in Sharia land any time, such notions would have been acceptable generally. Time has eroded that here. Most laws that get public push are to validate some belief or another - whether valid or not.
Regardless, the time that most people here would stop and consider what he said are over - and hopefully will never return. That's why the reaction is as it is.
mortimer
NWO Janitor
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Messages
- 3,517
Just to be clear, if a poster wishes to discuss topic A, they should be expected to discuss topic B as well? Do you have a list of topic A - topic B pairs for us to refer to?
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Not sure what you're talking about. Whiplash bemoans and decries uncivil debate. I was just noting his inconsistency in applying that principle. It is almost as if it isn't civil debate that he is interested in defending.
Whiplash, if you are making an effort to correct this, good for you. I have not seen it.
YUP, until evidence to the contrary, this pretty much sums up American Conservatism in the most succinct way I've read in years.
And babbling on about how we're not this, massogenistic, anti science, anti tolerant, jeebus freak bitter middle ages white man party doesn't make it so.
davefoc
Philosopher
The comment was divisive and it pandered to anti-homosexual bigots. Sadly, gay bashing is some form or another is a routine part of the shtick of various well known "conservative" pundits.
But there was some truth in the comment also.
1. Hate crime legislation is designed to pander to various groups by making them feel good without actually doing much for them.
2. Gays are one of the groups that are pandered to in this way and perhaps one of the reasons that some of them feel good about this kind of legislation is that society is explicitly recognizing them as a group worthy of special protection.
The silliness of the hate crime laws debate might have reached its zenith when the children of James Bird (man who was dragged to death) were featured in anti-Bush advertisements because Bush didn't support hate crime legislation. All Bush wanted to do was try the perpetrators and kill them, but somehow Bird's children thought Bush's opposition to hate crime legislation proved he was a bad guy and some Democratic spinmeisters thought that could be exploited by using it in an anti-Bush commericial.
But there was some truth in the comment also.
1. Hate crime legislation is designed to pander to various groups by making them feel good without actually doing much for them.
2. Gays are one of the groups that are pandered to in this way and perhaps one of the reasons that some of them feel good about this kind of legislation is that society is explicitly recognizing them as a group worthy of special protection.
The silliness of the hate crime laws debate might have reached its zenith when the children of James Bird (man who was dragged to death) were featured in anti-Bush advertisements because Bush didn't support hate crime legislation. All Bush wanted to do was try the perpetrators and kill them, but somehow Bird's children thought Bush's opposition to hate crime legislation proved he was a bad guy and some Democratic spinmeisters thought that could be exploited by using it in an anti-Bush commericial.
Last edited:
Morrigan
Crone of War
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2006
- Messages
- 8,262
Whiplash is just playing at being outraged again. I think it's all he can do. I mean come on, look at this blatant silliness:
Also I can't help but wonder why one who calls himself a skeptic would be so outraged at so-called "vulgarity", but pays little to no mind to intellectual dishonesty, cherry-picking of data, evasions and lies. BAC's portrayal of people who are against torture as "people willing to sacrifice millions of innocent lives", for instance, is far more outrageous than someone who uses a word like "tea-bagger".
Nevermind that he was shown, more than once, that many of those right-wing protesters used the term "tea-bagger" to describe themselves, and even grudgingly admitted that these people were "also wrong"... why would he bring that up again? Anyway, for "similar examples of such vulgarity", how about Cicero's constant "renaming" of left-wingers he doesn't like?
Also I can't help but wonder why one who calls himself a skeptic would be so outraged at so-called "vulgarity", but pays little to no mind to intellectual dishonesty, cherry-picking of data, evasions and lies. BAC's portrayal of people who are against torture as "people willing to sacrifice millions of innocent lives", for instance, is far more outrageous than someone who uses a word like "tea-bagger".
Praktik
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2007
- Messages
- 5,244
Im sure this has been caned around here more than once, especially since this is a skeptic's forum. I think its particularly apt in response to Whiplash's claim that he sees more of this behaviour from "the other side". Thing, is I see that too - seems to me the right is more vulgar. Whats the deal? Is there an equivalency between both sides? if we were truly objective, would we see more on one side than the other?
Whiplash answers: "Yes of course, the left would be responsible for more vulgarity", and I'd answer the opposite.
Courtesy of The Machinist blog @ Salon:
Whiplash answers: "Yes of course, the left would be responsible for more vulgarity", and I'd answer the opposite.
Courtesy of The Machinist blog @ Salon:
One cause of this is a phenomenon psychologists call "selective perception," which was described, most famously, in a study by social scientists Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril in the early 1950s. The pair set out to determine how an Ivy League football championship game -- in which Princeton trounced Dartmouth -- had been perceived so differently by fans of the opposing teams. Each campus was in an uproar over what each described as the other side's blatantly unsportsmanlike play.
Hastorf and Cantril showed a film clip of the game to groups at each school -- two fraternities at Dartmouth and two eating clubs at Princeton. They asked the students to act as unbiased referees, marking down all infractions they could spot. The results were remarkable: The Dartmouth fans mainly noticed Princeton's errors, while the Princeton fans concentrated on Dartmouth's.
The fans weren't deliberately overlooking things, Hastorf and Cantril stress. This was a matter of visual perception: Each side, that is, really did "see" a completely different game. When one Dartmouth alumnus was shown a film of the game, he decided it must have been badly edited. He'd heard that his side had played dirty, but where were those parts on the movie? He simply could not see them.
To understand how opposing fans saw the game so differently, consider what a football game really is: organized chaos. "There's an instant before it collapses into some generally agreed-upon fact when a football play, like a traffic accident, is all conjecture and fragments and partial views," Michael Lewis points out in "The Blind Side," his fantastic exploration of the modern game. But it's not just car accidents and football plays that are like this; nearly everything is.
Think about a schoolyard at recess, a baseball game, a political debate. Think about a confrontation at sea, a presidential assassination, a terrorist attack. Or just think about all that happened to you yesterday: Every "thing" that occurs is really a million smaller things involving a million people. But which of the million things, and which of the million people, do we notice? And which do we overlook?
Hastorf and Cantril showed a film clip of the game to groups at each school -- two fraternities at Dartmouth and two eating clubs at Princeton. They asked the students to act as unbiased referees, marking down all infractions they could spot. The results were remarkable: The Dartmouth fans mainly noticed Princeton's errors, while the Princeton fans concentrated on Dartmouth's.
The fans weren't deliberately overlooking things, Hastorf and Cantril stress. This was a matter of visual perception: Each side, that is, really did "see" a completely different game. When one Dartmouth alumnus was shown a film of the game, he decided it must have been badly edited. He'd heard that his side had played dirty, but where were those parts on the movie? He simply could not see them.
To understand how opposing fans saw the game so differently, consider what a football game really is: organized chaos. "There's an instant before it collapses into some generally agreed-upon fact when a football play, like a traffic accident, is all conjecture and fragments and partial views," Michael Lewis points out in "The Blind Side," his fantastic exploration of the modern game. But it's not just car accidents and football plays that are like this; nearly everything is.
Think about a schoolyard at recess, a baseball game, a political debate. Think about a confrontation at sea, a presidential assassination, a terrorist attack. Or just think about all that happened to you yesterday: Every "thing" that occurs is really a million smaller things involving a million people. But which of the million things, and which of the million people, do we notice? And which do we overlook?
tomwaits
Master Poster
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2007
- Messages
- 2,288
I do think there is a lot of derision towards the right on this forum, but I think it's just because there are more people here that are on the left than on the right.
There's only a few posters I'd call "right-wing", and the smart ones (like Ziggurat) don't post here all that often. All we are left with is tons of BAC and Cicero posts, which everyone agrees are a little nutty.
There's only a few posters I'd call "right-wing", and the smart ones (like Ziggurat) don't post here all that often. All we are left with is tons of BAC and Cicero posts, which everyone agrees are a little nutty.
Roadtoad
Bufo Caminus Inedibilis
Well, maybe. I tend to lean towards the right, but that's when the Right makes sense. When it doesn't, I run like hell. (Sorry, but I've learned over the years it makes no sense to hang around when the crazies start running things.)
coalesce
Illuminator
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2003
- Messages
- 4,739
Did you ever read TokenConservative's posts when he was here a couple of years ago? I was convinced then, as I am now, that there was no way he believed what he was posting (e.g Walter Cronkite and CBS were controlled by Soviet communists and Joe McCarthy was an honorable man.) I will admit, though, he made an entertaining noise.
Praktik: loved that story. It calls to mind the current Obama budget. The amount of passion and outrage from the Republicans, especially Conservatives, over how much the government is spending and how much it's raising taxes on the top earners is amazing. Yet, where was all that passion and outrage from Republicans and Conservatives when the last administration ballooned the federal budget to enormous proportions or the first $700B stimulus package? Where were all those tea parties? Now I know that there were a number of Republicans and Conservatives who were really displeased with the federal budget deficits and the lack of oversight with the first stimulus package, but jeez, if you listen to certain sectors of the news, you'd think that outrage only started to happen on January 21st of this year and everything before that was just hunky-dory fine.
But then again, maybe that's just my bias...
Michael
And calling them those things doesn't make it true either. This has been my biggest beef about the left vs right thing for decades. Both sides define each other, and live in a world where their own definition of the other side is the only truth. I'm learning to see past those biases when viewing those on the left. I am gaining a great deal of respect for some on the left here. It's changing my viewpoint. Yet you seem to want to just write off all the right in such a manner and have no room for anything else. That's a pity.
I'm not any of those things. No one I know who is conservative is any of those things. I'm sorry if that shocks you, or you don't believe it.
Oh please. The fact that some of them used it to describe themselves does not excuse taking up that chant in a humiliating and insulting manner against all of them.
I point to LeftySarge as an example. He was blatantly trolling with it. Just like he does with Shrub and all his other little derrisve comments. How in the world does the fact that some idiots (and they were idiots) called themselves Teabaggers excuses turning around and then blasting all the tax protesters with the term? IT'S STILL WRONG DAMNIT. It's still very imature, confrontational, and does nothing to foward any debate. It's damned childish.
It was clearly meant as a highly insulting attack against those people.
The ones who used the label to fit themselves are also idiots. I didn't say so "grudgingly". They are imature fools. But I've seen the left throwing Teabagging around as a very strong and hateful personal insult towards them ever since then. That's not excusable, regardless of who started it.
Once again, it always comes down to a rationalziation for some of you that because someone else did it first, or did it worse, then it's all ok. Wrong is wrong, and you know it!
I have blasted Cicero for a comment he made about Ted Kennedy when he was in the news during his return to congress. I don't remember what it was, but it was way over the line.. and he's return comment was simply about how the Democrats did something about / regarding Caroline Kennedy. I gave up on him instantly at that point. I recognized he was the LeftySarge of my side. He didn't answer to my point, he just gave me the "Dems did it first" or "Dems did it too" response.
Seriously, all this bemoaning that fact that I haven't taken it to the right wingers here. Give me a break.. There are not that many, and the ones that are most outrageous are pretty much kooks that everyone ignores. I try to speak out about this sort of thing when I see it from people who seem otherwise intelligent and worthy of repsect.
Umm, what? Evidence please? I've complained about the intellectual dishonesty around here for months. I suppose you mean the intellectual dishonesty of those on the right? There is no intellectual dishonesty on the left? WTF are you talking about?
If I've supported things that were based on lies, or cherry picked words or data, I didn't mean to. I'm open to be educated here. Honestly I am.
I couldn't disagree more. He's wrong to make those statements, for sure. But comparing his hyperbole about terrorism with derrisevly insulting people about having someones nut suck dropped in their mouth isn't even on the same page, let alone the same chapter.
Your post just goes to show me that some of you are not going to be fair, ever. I have, as I said, bent over backwards here to be reasonable and polite. And yet some of you seriously dislike me. Even Upchruch still turns around and says he's not seen anything good from me.
You lot spend alot of time attacking me personally to discredit me. Why? What did I ever do to you? Is it simply because I'm conservative?
Last edited:
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
From another thread:
Name calling and insults. Whiplash, where you outraged at this uncivil debate?
SezMe
post-pre-born
I'll believe you but that makes your statement quite astonishing. Let's take just one characteristic: "anti-science" (or, more generally, anti-intellectual). The Bush Administration was widely seen as anti-science and there was objective evidence to support this view. Conservative punditry from top to bottom derided "east-coast elitism". The number of conservatives who deny evolution is enought to make your skin crawl.
And yet you know nobody who has any of these views. I'd conclude your circle of conservative friends is HIGHLY non-representative of the whole.
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
I'm a slight right of center moderate myself, but since my media environment is saturated with hard right conservatives and wingnuttery, and a number of my IRL friends and family are quite further right than I am, I find myself in the positio of playing contrairian to those/their views rather than embracing a more liberal weltanschauung.
In retrospect, you are correct! I was too hasty to endorse that comment. I want to point out, however, that I was most moved by what he said that I responded with in my quote. About Specter being a self serving politician. That is what I agreed with the most, and I rushed to respond without thinking about it enough.
The scumbag and slimeball comments were uncivil. I grant you that. It was going to far. Ok? I should have been more careful in endorsing that post.
But I would submit that scumbag and slimeball comments are nowhere near as reprehensible as the suggestion that someone must have been dropped on their heads as a child to endorse a certain view. Or even in the same arena as Teabagging. And none of those are claims I personally made, simply claims I either agreed with, or attacked. I'm not using one to justify the other, I'm saying that my mistake here was not fairly comparable in terms of offensiveness. After all, you are the one presenting it as a mark against me. I say it only as a means of defending myself. Not justification.
Surely there is a line somewhere. I'll admit that one crossed it, in my ideal dream world of civil debate. But I think that one is a rather tame comparison. Still, if it makes you feel victorious in your pursuit to discredit me, please enjoy it.
I'll grant that is very likely. In fairness, only about 5 people that I know are conservative. A few are religious, but not the type to want to force creationism into the schools, or religion onto anyone. They are good, honest, hard working family people, and that's it.
None of them are anti-science. In fact myself and at least one of them are very much into science and learning new things. He and I, together, broke from our religious upbringing as childrens/teens. And we've both moved more and more moderate over the years.
I agree there are people like that on the right. Maybe alot of them. But it's not all of them. Some of us are just people who think there should be more value on personal responsbility (but still with safey nets, and help for those who need it), smaller government (or more accurately, a government that is the right size compared to what we can afford.. less waste, less wasteful programs that don't do anything, etc), and that sort of thing.
I'm not religious or anti-science, and I want no part of those agendas. At all.
ETA: Oh, and I forgot, I should have thanked your for what you said about seeing that I had made efforts to be more polite or reasonable, etc. I appreciated that very much.
Last edited: