Well, they say it’s not the size, but what you do with it that counts.
I have question: is this now officially considered a trainwreck? Mod?
One can almost hear his eyelashes being furiously batted here, as he gazes with doe-like eyes and a bewildered expression.
“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. Raahlly I didn’t. I just brought up “John Fucking Kerry” because he is entirely and completely the first person that any reasonable person would think of regarding a serious protocol blunder among world leaders.”
No. This is friendly. We do this until somebody new shows up and asks a question and then we gang up and kill them.
…No. Don’t back up. Come a little closer.
Oh, ok. So you pasted the quote as you found it, from a…trusted source. You did not, yourself, alter the quote. Apparently, then, the quote had already been altered by your…trusted source.
But, as you say, you supplied the context that more or less evened things out. All well and good, fair and balanced. Assuming we accept that “context” is equal to plain fact.
Which means you knew that a more inclusive quote existed, no? You would have had to have known that in order to supply the context. If you didn’t know what was left out, you couldn’t know whether “context” was supposed to be ice cream or kangaroos.
So having the full quote in one hand and a truncated, somewhat misleading quote in the other. You chose to include the lesser quote, but to compensate by supplying context, and thereby, accuracy. Substantial acuracy.
Is that about it?
You know, I wish Bush had flipflopped on Iraq a little.
It’s well into the top 100 most viewed Pit threads of all time. That’s a pretty reliable indicator of trainwreckdom.
No. The place I got it from supplied the full quote as shown in the factcheck.org cite Shayna provided. I got it from here:
http://kerrysenate.com/iraqcontradictions.htm
Yes. About right. I think I did a good job providing the context. Please take a moment and go back and reread the whole paragraph I wrote and see if you disagree. I thought it important to give fair context and to go over in my own words what I understood Kerry’s stance to be so that I could highlight the part that was contradictory, which was that we could not have both disarmend Iraq and yet still be doing inspections. Do you think I did a good job providing the context, or do you think I left out some key element?
Yes. I new the full inclusive quote existed. I trimmed it down, but I don’t beleive I altered its meaning. I had acknowledged and explicitly stated the part I left out, and I beleive I even stated it before in my previous post to Shayna. Since that part of Kerry’s stance was not in dispute, nor did I see any contradiction in it, and since I already acknowledged that part two seperate times I saw no reason to include it.
No. I had the full original quote. I abbreviated it myself.
I may quote, and I may abbreviate quotes. This is fair use as long as by abbreviating the quote I don’t change the meaning. I don’t beleive I’ve done so here as 1. I’ve provided the context and therefore didn’t need to duplicate it and 2. Am not taking issue with the ommitted part.
The Bush ad made the same abbreviation I did, but they altered the meaning in doing so because they did not add in the context and they took issue and showed a contradiction with the part that was ommitted. Had they not ommitted it there would not be a contradiction.
In my case the contradiction exists whether or not you add back in the ommitted part, and since I’ve provided the context seperately I have not altered the meaning.
Is this satisfactory to you?
While doing my very best Peter Falk (requires scruffiness, always a stretch for me…)
Well, that certainly clears up everything, Mr. Scylla, sir, ties up the whole package. Just one more small question, and then I’ll stop bothering you, you’re a busy man, got things to do…
You see, the problem is, that’s impossible. You either did, or did not, alter the quote. You take out words, you alter, all the experts agree on that one.
::pulls out gun:::
Very Clever, Elucidator. I have to hand it to you. You’ve found me out. You’re much cleverer than you look. You forgot one thing, though. How are you going to get off this deserted beach alive? Nobody will know if I just shoot you now, will they?
As the astute reader will note, you are incorrect. A “quote” is an excerpt from a larger statement. One may excerpt portions of a statement for quotation purposes and this is not considered “altering” in the sense that I am changing the mean. It is only “altering” in the pure semantic ubelievably pedantic and pointless technical sense. Since I was speaking of “altering” in the terms of quoting I was using the common, former stance and not your contrived latter sense.
You clearly acknowledge this and understand it and explicitly accept this former sense in your previous post in which you state:
I would also like to note that when you quote me in the post to which I am replying to now you provide a highly abbreviated version of my larger statements and have engaged in substantial “altering” in the latter sense yourself.
You quote:
and
In each case, I note that you have added periods which I did not write! You also have not provided the preceding and following sentences. You left them out. To what nefarious purpose, we can only guess.
Furthermore, you make no distinction between “altering” and “abbreviation.” We also note that you provided no context. Had you provided the actual context the distinction would have been apparent and there would have been no contradiction.
According to the latter, semantic sense, you have “altered” quotes twice! And, you have ommitted context! So, if I am to be punished for my crimes it is only fair that you sentence your self to at least thrice the punishment.
While I provided context and fairness, you have taken my quotes out of context to alter their meaning in exactly the same fashion that the Bush ad does.
Apprarently, this specific technique is particularly egregious. Shayna call it:
“The most egregious example. . . of using edited quotes in a way that changes their meaning and misleads voters.”
Doubtless she will come and descend upon you like an avenging Fury for this sin of yours (or maybe it’s just conservatives she dislikes, or maybe just me.)
In seeking to trap me, you have trapped yourself and committed the very heinous sin which you were investigating.
You can probably get off though. Just claim that you learned it from the Bush ad and were corrupted.
Is this satisfactory?
Not quite. The quote is from the site cited, FactCheck.org, being their conclusion.
One can only hope…
Or, maybe not so much…
The natural consequence of persecuting the innocent and pure of heart.
Scylla, in the library, with the mustard gas.
Well, these guys keep converting a what had become a perfectly good hijack into the socio-linguistics aspects of changing slang and its societal and personal connotations back into a discussion that at least has a remote bearing (it saw it from across the street one day and waved eagerly) on the OP. Since both discussions have been rather interesting, and none of them has been insulting to the point of being devoid of content, I’d say that no, this isn’t a train-wreck.
Plus, it’s interesting. Here we have Shayna, mild-mannered [insert her profession here] for the [insert her company here] turning into The Fiery Avenger in the name of all that is Good and Holy, and Scylla, one of the funniest and most delightful men on the planet, again revealing in great detail what a total schmuck he is in the political area (oh, what hopes I’d had in his thread title about becoming Elephant-Proof!), and elucidator informing us that scruffy would be a stretch for him (as well as doing a pretty good Peter Falk imitation)! <btw, luci, now that I know you’re not scruffy *and * give great Columbo, how’re *you * doin’? 
>
So, no, I can’t say as I’d describe this as a trainwreck. But then, maybe I don’t understand the full connotations of the term.
Oh, Scylla, I didn’t want to leave you out - your imitation of the generic Columbo villain revealed was dead-on. Plus I’ve never forgotten that your full-blown war cry is indistinguishable from the sound a three-year-old girl makes when you drop a spider down her neck (not that you’d know what *that * sounded like!).
Dammit, why are some of the nicest and/or most interesting people you meet (in person or on a message board) hidden super-villains (i.e. hard-core conservative Republicans)?
It’s also fairly easy to spot why the thread has made such gyrations away from a clear demonstration that Bush is a nitwit and lunkhead of the highest order. Just spot who made the first charge that “cocksucker” is a term born of homophobia, and who first dragged “John Fucking Kerry” willy nilly into this thread. Clearly this one person has an aversion to the near unanimous opinion about the actual topic of the thread (and keep in mind that this same person has tried at least two different tacks on the actual topic - first that it was a master-stroke of the Big Swinging Dick school of diplomacy (and no, I don’t harbor a deep-seated hatred of master dick strokers) and then that it was a mere faux pas between close friends).
I’d say the thread has been a great success for that one person - he’s gotten all sorts of attention from all sorts of different people. In fact that one person is clocking it at the number 1 slot for posts in this thread - six more than the OP.
And that person is a sad strange little man, and he has my pity.
But that’s the weird thing. Scylla has never struck me as a sad or little man (a little strange maybe, like that’s unusual here - ask on this message board for someone who’s not strange and all you’re going to hear are the crickets chirping). He’s funny as hell, and generally is an enjoyable poster. Not at all the kind of person you’d expect to be saying “I’ve got mine; screw you!” (the underlying, but never-to-be-spoken-aloud motto of the Republican party). He doesn’t strike me as an attention whore any more than anyone else who gets a kick out of writing extremely funny stories for the entertainment of a message board - similar to the late, lamented Wang-Ka (whose politics were far more rational to my mind). I mean, I suppose people who write funny stories do it in part to enjoy the attention, but if so, they give great value in return.
People like him bewilder me no end. Some of the kindest and sweetest people I’ve ever known have been hard-core Republicans, ready to toe the party line no matter what, and it just puzzles the heck out of me. I’ll never understand it. But I really don’t consider Scylla a sad little man, worthy of pity. Possibly contempt, if he actually realizes that his politics of choice are all about maximizing wealth for them as already has, minimizing help to anyone who hasn’t, and minimizing or curtailing individual personal freedoms while allowing businesses to do anything they want to enlarge their profits. But pitiable? Not that I’ve seen.
The reason I asked is because I wanted to talk about my interpretation of the word “bootless”, ask someone to use it in a sentence, and call them a “fucktard” if the use it incorrectly.
That entreaty bids fair to prove bootless, sirrah.
Handsome, elegant, intelligent, sweet. I’m really Ideal.
I gave up the Republican thing a year and a half ago. I’m conservative by nature and now independant. But, that wasn’t the motto any more than “Check your brain at the door” is the motto of Democrats (though it might be a good one.)
The other possibility here is that you’ve taken this mischaracterization as an article of faith and don’t really understand your opposing party very well. People everywhere are prone to demonizing their opponents and mischaracterizing them (as you’ve done with Republicans.) It’s nothing new.
The thing that bewilders me about the left is that you guys actually seem to beleive your own press releases.
The actual simple fact of the matter is that both parties now completely suck.
And yet you always seem to find it within you to defend Bush and the Republicans. Why do you think that is?
Because they are being attacked, often falsely, often stupidly.