As a public service before I go way for the weekend let me start this Pit Thread for our own dear december who has reached new levels of inanity in his ceaseless yet empty headed partisan yammering.
I believe the generalizations he cites to speak for themselves as being stupid – and rather unflattering to both sides – although certainly our dear friend December has managed to derive a not terribly original line of attack (which we have seen before, conservatives are thinking perhaps calculating, liberals are feeling).
However, the underlying articles—blogger tripe really—are themselves inane over-generalizations. Really inane and utterly unsupported over-generalizations not even worthy to have wasted the electrons it took for me to read them. Sort of Sunday afternoon bar talk. Inane and stupid, on the level of Men / Mars, Women / Venus level of idiot-boy ‘just-so-stories to make me feel better about my preconceived ideas’.
What makes it worse is December has come along to sally forth to make his usual pitiable attempts at an argument while scurrying away from the inane OP – which he at least had the sense not to fully support.
For pity sake, please spare us this bloody dog and pony show, Mr. Gardener said it quite well:
Now then, this is, IMO the only place one can fully discuss our latest travesty.
I suggest that our dear amigo learn about that forum called IMHO in which inane non-debates may be freely bandied about with nary the need for logic nor citation.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if December got a hobby other than seeing how close he can come to trolling in GD. But I’ve long since began to ignore the vast majority of his knee-jerk partisan threads.
My membership of this Message Board is stil very young and tender, but this is already the 2nd thread I see about december in the Pit.
I usually read his post, and they nearly always make me snort with amused contempt. I’m staying civilized, though, as I figure that riling people is what he’s after, and I’m just not giving him that satisfaction.
Literally a waste of energy, to get mad at anything he says. I’d counter his arguments once, and then he usually goes off into an insignificant detail, or he’s trying to put words into your mouth…those posts speak for themselves. They don’t need another counter argument.
So, just leave him be and ignore him. The fact that he’s got so many people angry, probably gives him a bit of a thrill.
The poor sucker.
You’d really nearly give him 10 cents for his efforts.
Yep, you’re definitely a newbie, elfje. A quick thread title search of the Pit reveals 17 threads trashing december (plus one apology thread and one irrelevant mention of the month). That’s in addition to an indeterminate number of other Pit threads about december that don’t mention him by name in the title; Pit threads december has started that turned into Pittings of the man himself; and various other Pit threads that evolved into december Pittings.
It’s frankly no contest who our most Pitted member is. In fact, I suspect december has been Pitted more times than any of the mods, with the possible exception of manhattan.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen december answer any of the more pertinent, reasonable, or pointed objections to any of his OPs; he tends to pick the most ridiculous responses to take issue with. If I had to pick ten things I hate about december, it would probably be near the top of the list.
I haven’t read the thread in question and I don’t intend to, because I’m confident that it’s more of the same old shit.
A search of his postings over the past week reveals 70 posts. He posts a lot between 8 AM and noon and between 6 PM and midnight. He seems to take afternoons off (but there are exceptions) and he usually goes to bed by midnight, but occasionally he can’t sleep and he’ll stay up until 1 or 2. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this board is his primary occupation. If he works in an office, he spends a great deal of company time here, but in fairness he could be retired. If he works at home, my guess is that business is very slow. I’m pretty sure he once said that he’s married and has kids in college. I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t like to spend much time with them; maybe they’re liberals. His posting habits are the same on weekends as they are on weekdays. His lifetime average is just over 4 posts per day. I’m not that interested to go back beyond a week to see when he takes hiatuses. He’s the Sean Hannity of the SDMB and it’s obvious to me that that’s a full time job. He’s harmless and IRL probably a nice guy. He’s a gifted writer and could make a killing investing his time and energy working for the right wing press.
The United States is not going to be in the business of nation building.–GWB '00
Hmmm, december vs. Wildest Bill? That’s a tough one. Hope this doesn’t make the hamsters squeal too much . . .
(Holy crap, Bill O’Reilly has a lot of pit threads.)
And the winner is . . .
december!!!
(By a score of 17-10, discounting one thread invoking WB’s name for another purpose a year after he was banned and not searching on the obvious “WB” in threasd titles, since you can’t.)
Believe it or not, the conduct of the one juvenile, regardless of his actual age, isn’t what annoys me most. It’s the fact that the moderator community has, for reasons they collectively will not share, decided to allow this crap to continue. No doubt you have noticed other comments, and even made the observation yourself, that the standard of discourse in GD has more generally decayed recently. I attribute that, in part, to the frustration a number of thoughtful persons have with the constant diversions of effort into containing the latest idiocy themselves, and either withdrawing from or not entering the forum because of it.
He’s also not even the most dishonest regular poster in GD, for that matter. He only filters the “facts” he uses for his posts, but does not actually invent them (although the opinion sources he quotes may). There are certain other individuals, one especially prominent, who do not even maintain that scruple, leaving the rest of us to spend precious time pointing that out in the effort to contain the spread of ignorance.
So you have to blame the moderators (collectively) for not intentionally not enforcing adequate standards in the Fight Against Ignorance, not on a person or persons who can’t meet them anyway. We’re getting the quality of board here that they are willing to enforce, sadly. It’s like Gresham’s Law applied to discourse instead of currency.
I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again: why isn’t december banned for this behavior?
I mean, sure, if he wants to do is liberal-bashing schtick in IMHO or the Pit, no problemo – that’s what they’re for. But to toss them into Great Debates, under the false pretenses of trying to “debate” anything, seems like a violation of the forum’s purpose to me.
And since he knowingly and repeatedly does this … well, that’s pretty close to “trolling” in my book. Hell, we invaded Iraq on less.
I would guess that it’s because if he were than the moderators would feel it necessary to apply the standard uniformly, and ban all the egregious bush/republican/conservative bashers.
I agree. I wish he wouldn’t do it. On the other side of the coin, the major thing that seperates December out is that he’s bashing liberals.
Because he trips in just under the wire-just avoiding the obvious, “Do Not Be a Jerk”.
Hell, we don’t know-maybe he IS close to banning. Who knows?
I have a feeling one of these days, he’ll cross the line and it’ll be over with. But until then, we can’t afford to just avoid his threads-as some will tell us.
To the contrary, Scylla (although that thought must certainly be comforting to you). If you’ll read the responses to the thread in question, just for example, you’ll find condemnation from the conservatives for it to be just as uniform as that from the persons you’d call “liberals”. What is being criticized is filtration and outright lack of fact, dishonest reasoning, and routine demonization instead of engagement of those who hold differing views. Those criticisms are not based on the underlying attitudes of the person expressing them - although, naturally, when you yourself do the same, you’re just as likely as he is to avoid considering the possibility that you might be wrong and that you should do a more responsible job in the future. Ignorance, and especially willful ignorance, is the enemy, not a particular ideology.
You do, however, raise an interesting thought - perhaps the votes on the divided Grand Council of the SDMB Moderators for the simple cleanup job that has been discussed are outnumbered by the votes of those whose own “debate” techniques are even less principled, making them admirers of the person in the OP title, and who may even think that anything that gets their demonized “opponents” angry must be good. manhattan, UncleBeer, 'zat you?
And, as I said, I think the primary thing that seperates December out is that he is bashing liberals. The fact that conservatives are willing to hold him to task for his failings is moot.
It seems to me that when Bush/Conservatives/Repbublicans are being bashed in similarly egregious fashion that there are few liberals willing to take issue with it.
oh absolutely. when liberals do shitty things, no liberal calls 'em on it. nope, no siree. we all just bask in the glow of anti conservativism.
There are conservative jerks here and liberal jerks here. When the conservative jerks post post inflamatory shit, there’s some calling to task from other conservatives, just as there is some calling to task from other liberals when liberal jerks post inflamatory shit.
and there’s vast numbers of other conservatives and liberals who don’t call any on their own side to task, but attempt to refocus the debates.
To attempt to prove your contention that liberals ‘don’t do it as often as conservatives’ would send the gerbils into overdrive, but I would rather point out to you that we’re more likely to notice shit when it’s our own wincing, that ‘calling to task’ is a subjective assesment (for example, when I post stuff about being in the ‘liberal but not a fucking lunatic’ section, I consider that ‘taking the liberal to task’, YMMV), that about as soon as you identify some one as a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, in quite a few cases you’ll get some level of disagreement about that as well.
Anyone else find it ironic that a formerly banned Doper is the one fulminating over december’s behavior?
Scylla is correct - the major problem most Pitters have with everyone’s favorite whipping boy is not that he resides under a bridge, but he is conservative. An almost unfailingly polite, occasionally witty, often Pitted conservative.
Plenty out there who are worse, but they are liberal and worse. Stuff they pull passes without comment. december does it, and we’re off to the Pit for the umpteenth time.
Can’t say I always agree with him, but I suspect some of the resentment comes from the fact that you can’t bait him into responding in kind, and getting banned.
And yet december is the one being Pitted. Odd, that.
No Scylla, you’re missing the point again. The primary thing that seperates december from the other mindless partisan bashers we’ve got here is his chronic use of straw men and bad faith debating. Case in point: I recently requested he prove his allegations that Yasser Arafat has embezzled aid monies from the UN/EU. He was unable to prove Arafat has diverted as much as a single cent into his own pockets. All he had was allegations from unnamed, mostly Israeli(clearly biased), sources and continued assertions that Arafat is a bad guy so he must be an embezzler as well. Essentially a genetic fallacy.
I called him on his ad hoc reasoning and weak evidence and guess what he responded with? An acknowledgement that his evidence was weak? A shrug and a “We’ll have to agree to disagree”? Nope. Lumps me in with the people described in this article A comparison to a group of people who have completely unreasonable standards of proof and draw absolutely irrational conclusions from the evidence(or lack thereof) that they do have.
No, the problem with december is that virtually every exchange goes like this.
december: some overbroad assertion with no, or anecdotal, evidence. Often simply the personal opinion of some random pundit who would never have gotten any airtime if it weren’t for the Internet. Most traditional media have a QA threshold. Somebody Else: Your assertion doesn’t apply to Group X, and I’m not sure it is an accurate representation of much of anything. Show some evidence that people actually believe this way please. december: Completely inaccurate representation of the other poster’s objection, morphed in such a way as to be completely repugnant. I guess this means you support raping puppies. By the way, SomeRandomPunditWhoDeservesToHaveHisInternetPrivelegesRevokedForWritingWithoutThinking agrees with me.
Damnit Scylla, you’ve been on the recieving end of his bad faith and distortions! Why in hell do you defend him? In that thread you called him a liar and told him it was low to sling accusations of racism without merit. Are you defending him because you’re willing to tolerate lies and baseless accusations of racism as long as they are lies/slanders about/of your ideological opponents? Good god man! I can’t imagine you believe it is better to have liars on your side than to honestly engage your opponents on the actual issues. Why in hell are you glossing over his bad faith?
Shodan, this goes for you too. Honestly, if you’re asking people to examine their feelings about december and see if their distaste for him is partly based upon being offended because they personally believe much of the ideology he so often criticises, then it seems only fair for others to request that you examine your motives when acting in his defense to see if you may be glossing over his dishonesty and bad faith out of a sense of solidarity with someone who shares many of your ideological views.