That’s nonsense. Again, I’m happy to back up any claim I’ve actually made - as opposed to claims I have NOT made. I note that folks STILL refuse to actually specify which claims I’ve made that they want me to back up.
Now, if you think that the claims I made don’t actually show anything, then there’s no need to challenge me to back them up. Just argue that they are irrelevant.
In any event, the claim I actually made – that collounsbury was sometimes wrong – is relevant here. Folks have been suggesting that collounsbury attacked people because they were wrong; because they are fools; etc. The reality is that he attacked people because they dared challenge his Incredible Knowledge.
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Wait a second - a moment ago you seemed to be saying that my claims were obviously true but irrelevant. Now you are saying that they are unsupported?!? Make up your mind, ok?
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Those responses seemed to suggest that the folks collounsbury attacked were in the wrong; were fools; etc. Again, the reality is that collounsbury was no deity. A lot of the time, collounbury may very well have been attacking ignorant fools. But not all the time.
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Let me ask you something.
In general terms, my position is that collounsbury was sometimes wrong and that he sometimes was rude to folks who were right or, at a minimum, simply offering a reasonable opinion that happened to be different from his. Not always, but sometimes. In short, he was no deity.
Do you disagree with this or not? If you disagree, I’ll try to come up with some examples. If you don’t disagree, then there’s no need to argue.
This is becoming quite tedious. Since you persist, let’s have a quick and dirty review of your assertions here. I apologize to everyone else reading this.
The first part, with the added emphasis, is relevant, because you accuse Collounsbury of certain behaviour you have utterly failed to support – please support your statement. The second part of the quote is of no use, since no one is infallible and no one has claimed that Collounsbury even approached such a state. Let me repeat that again: Collounsbury not infallible! Collounsbury occasionally wrong! Collounsbury exhibiting inappropriate behaviour at least often enough to get him banned! None of this is new material.
Nope. I am not aware of a single person on these boards who has not disagreed with Collounsbury at some point, myself included on a number of issues. So, please support your assertion. He was definitely on the mark the large majority of cases, in spite of people attempting all sorts of techniques (many of them even more questionable than the ones you employ here) to try to stump him.
They most certainly were, as a rule (of course, there are exceptions to every rule and we have established that coll is not infallible). He may have been off his mark at times and a other times he may have lost his cool for insufficient cause, but when he resorted to his trademark roasting it was generally because he was addressing ignorant (and most often mailicious) claims made by some biased person who had little more than his opinion and bigotry to support a position.
Wrong sometimes: yes. Ignorant fool sometimes: not that I am aware of, perhaps you’d like to support your claim. Pretending to be superior: hardly, it seems to me that even when asserting a degree of superiority, he had his arguments, sources, referemces etc., to draw on, things his opponents were frequently without. Had he lacked such strong support in terms of arguments and references, I agree that his behaviour would have been an empty pretension at superiority. It wasn’t
Note also Coll variously outlined his limitations, for example when it came to strictly military issues, over which he admitted he was not qualified to talk in any authoritative manner.
I won’t bother with the “just as human as everyone else” comment since I can imagine no application for it beyond low-level rhetoric.
Let’s look at the so-called “worship” that you criticized without any basis:
My added emphasis to assist in your comprehension. I think you need to learn the difference between a well-reasoned point, such as made above by Shelbo, and equivocal gainsaying, such as that provided by you throughout this thread. Onwards:
I include the above only to highlight your apparent bias.
Would you very much mind supporting your claims already (note there are at least two claims in the quote above) since I suspect that the incidents to which you refer could turn out to be rather different from your characterization?
Nothing else relevant. Now let’s go over your latest post:
Hasn’t it been pointed out enough times, or are you just buying time? It seems to me folks might get sick of repeating themselves, especially if you happen to be operating under the impression that you have made a valid argument. You’ve been invited to support your wild assertions a number of times, but you have vconsistently refused to do so, choosing instead to deride posters who (shock of shocks!) disagree with your (unsupported) claims.
My word, you are a stubborn one. To use a phrase Coll is quite fond of, I invite you to read this thread for comprehension. Anyway, once again I ask you to support your claim since it is in distnct opposition to the available material we have. Especially in those many, many occasions where Collounsbury joined a discussion and put on the spot people who hadn’t yet had the chance to “challenge his incredible knowledge”, and people who never did (note that challenge to Collounsbury’s knowledge often come after he has proved his point, when bruised egos demand retribution).
Besides, think for a moment: Collounsbury is not the ultimate authority on ALL things MENA or race-bio. He’s good, yes, and he has an impressive range of knowledge in these fields, but other posters here have more specialized knowledge in some fields (for example, Tamerlane’s knowledge of the history of the Islamic world would seem [to me] unmatched around here). Why wouldn’t Collounsbury respond to these posters the same way he responded to the many others who, according to you, “challenged his knowledge”? Could it be that the highly informed posters simply aren’t idiots and, furthermore, that they know well how to argue and present a point?
I sincerely hope you wrote the above in jest. The self-evident statement that I said was obviously true but irrelevant is the “Collounsbury is not infallible/right all the time” line of nonsense. Everything else you have claimed here has not only been wholly unsupported, but also mostly false.
Since no one here suggests that C was right all the time, and since I already raised this issue days ago, I have no idea why you are repeating the above.
Since it’s extremely difficult to quantify “sometimes” when referring vaguely (with much gesticulation) to a poster with thousands of posts, I can only go back to my earlier statement, that no one is infallible, etc., and ask you to provide some kind of argument to support your claims.
Sam, I referred you to Col’s exposure of your habit of making shit up because he’s done a lot more of it than I have - a sign of his great patience with you, and a desire to fight the ignorance of readers who might otherwise think you have a grasp of and interest in facts… If you, or anyone else reading this, likes, just search the word “khayali”. I initially declined to spend time looking up cites that you’ll simply dismiss, with your Reality Shield permanently installed.
But, if you want examples of my calling you out in that regard, here’s a few off the top of my head:
How long is the runway on Grenada? When did Reagan the war started there? How long has John Ashcroft been a lawyer? What did Bill Clinton do about Al Qaeda? Cites will be met with countercites.
Nice spluttering about my calling you out on comparing WMD’s to Afghanistan - but that shows only your difficulty in distinguishing statements of opinion from statements of fact.
**december[b/] gets roundly excoriated for his comical loyalty to his party line, as he should, but he simply filters the facts he chooses to use. You’re less comical, but have even less integrity. You’d do well to consider, just for once, the possibility that you may not have the facts, and may not be seeing them from all sides. As it is, you both are unable to learn and grow because you are unwilling to do so.
And then there’s lucwarm - you asked what claim to cite, apparently unable to understand that it’s your claim that Col was normally wrong about his facts. Replying that he was often damn rude is not only not responsive but is not in dispute here. Your turn - cite?
Abe: no posting by proxy. I’m sure Collounsbury didn’t ask you to post that, but he’s banned for a reason. So don’t copy stuff off LiveJournal (or similar websites, lest someone loopholes another link in there) when the person writing the quote is a banned poster at the SDMB.
Collounsbury can’t defend himself here anymore, and since it’s becoming more of the same, I feel it’s time to let this matter rest. I’m sad to see Col go, personally, but there’s no way around it that he just couldn’t or wouldn’t follow our fairly simple rules. It’s a shame, but there you go. We can’t go about ignoring one poster’s vices whilst chastising others for exactly the same.