Shodan, you’re emphasising the somewhat reasonable aspect of county’s last (?) post and ignoring the jerk bit.
You keep suggesting he said, “Well those black folks had it tough during the Civil Rights era too, you know”. He didn’t. He said “Yes, you’re discriminated against. So were blacks. That means you shouldn’t complain about it,” and in much more insulting terms than that.
He accepted that gays endure stuff they shouldn’t have to, and insinuated that it ought to be okay with them since black people had to. The suggestion itself is extremely disingenous, especially given the fact that county has made several racist comments himself*; a black person might be somewhat justified in making the same assertion, although he/she would be wrong.
Sorry, I agree with Revtim. This was not even in a gray area.
And Not Really All That Bright, I take your point, but again, this was not over the line. Saying “quit whining” is hate speech? Not even close.
Which is why this doesn’t work:
county wasn’t lynched; he was banned. IMO unjustly. (And there’s only one of me).
If nobody can complain about unfair treatment until they have been lynched, then nobody can complain about being told to “quit whining” if they haven’t been lynched.
What the hell - I have to present my membership card in the Oppressed Minorities Club before I can expect fair treatment?
Sheesh - gobear is the one who had the remark made to him, and he is the only one in this damn thread that isn’t complaining.
What the fuck? How can you possibly believe this is true? Do you think that “gray area” is some objective standard that scientists can study and quantify? Of course it isn’t: it’s a subjective standard entirely in the minds of the mods and administrators. If they say it’s in the gray area, it’s in the gray area: your opinion, your belief, has nothing to do with it.
For someone that complains in another thread about moving the goalposts, this is mighty ballsy of you. Who said anything about hate speech? Being a jerk != spouting hate speech.
As for its being over the line, again, we’re talking a subjective measure that exists entirely in the mods’ and admins’ minds, not some official demarcation.
As I said in an earlier post, County’s comment was stupid and asshattish, but not IMO, ban-worthy. Certainly the great and powerful Lynn is the final authority and far be it from me to gainsay her, but I’m disappointed that he got banned before I got the chance to (rhetorically) stomp him into the ground with me hobnailed boots until he was naught but a greasy patch on the asphalt. Banning him is not nearly as satisfying as seeing him wriggle in the crushing grip of reason.
I understand that County had a history of throwing turds into punchbowls and had racked up several warnings, so I can’t very well carp about his being banned given the context, but IMO his remark in itself was not deserving of the censure it received. Granted that he was a detestable little jerk and the board’s mean IQ rises several points merely from his absence, but we all make intemperate comments in the heat of argument, and it’s disquieting to note that the line between acceptable and unacceptable posts is so arbitrary.
Try “idiovitriol”. Or, for the partisan attack dogs, “ideovitriol”.
I’m on the side of “county worked hard at his jerkishness and finally earned enough points to be banned.” He occasionally had something reasonably useful to say, but most of his posts were a waste of hamster chow.
Originally Posted by calm kiwi
At least County admitted when he was wrong.
Sure he did. Yeah, right.[B/]
Hey I never said the bloke wasn’t a dick. Nor did I apologise for him. I just said my own personal favourite dickhead is just as unpleasant and is still here.
Hey if it wern’t for the dickheads we would all agree
In point of fact county was responding to you in kind where in a previous post in the thread, you called him a “dickhead” without any prior name calling on his part toward you. One needs to read the entire thread to get the flavor of the dialog, but it is clear you initiated the name calling. Lynn’s warning to county in that thread without giving an accompanying warning to you for essentially identical name calling behavior is indicative of the fact that she was irritated by him and was gunning for him.
After the fact “he was told thus and so” administrative puffery aside, it is obvious that when mods reach a specific level of indian burn irritation with certain posters almost any mis-step will get them axed. It’s not even handed if another poster is behaving the same way in the thread any only the targeted poster gets warned, but it is human nature.
I would feel deprived if mine wasn’t here too. I kinda like him in the way you like something that is bad for you…shhhhh don’t tell him. He does make me giggle.
Hmmm, since it was my thread, I think I did read the entire thing, thanks though. I tried to be reasonable with him AND explain my POV and rationale, but he insisted that I was being spiteful and trying to get an innocent dog killed, and no amount of evidence to the contrary could dissuade him because he did not want to be dissuaded: he WANTED to start a nasty argument, and his entry into the thread definitely degraded the already crappy quality of the discussion.
Many of the things he said were designed to be cruel and hurtful, and to be dismissive of the emotional pain I made no bones about feeling over the incident. Yes, I called him a dickhead, and since this is the Pit, mate, namecalling is not the problem. If you HAD read the thread closely, you’d notice that he started the namecalling by insulting CrazyCatLady (she did not initiate such behavior), calling her a hysterical moron and mocking her username. That is dickheaded behavior, and I was just calling a spade a spade. The turd-flinging had been well under way by that point. Just so we’re clear on this.
Oh, this deliberate obtuseness is so tiresome. It wasn’t the namecalling that got him labeled a jerk, in and of itself. It was the deliberately hostile and cruel remarks he made, not only to me, without much provocation other than being disagreed with on a point about which he was incorrect. You will persist in seeing him as the victim, but he’s not. He’s the instigator.
Please. county had been warned on numerous occasions. He earned his banning. Get over it.
I think people need to read the thread for themselves. As to your assertion that you were being “reasonable”, this is somewhat debatable, as there was a marked uptick in your level of name calling and pissed off vitriol when it was became evident that several posters were not completely in tune with your characterization of events, and made some fairly logical points toward that end.
Oh, I never said I was reasonable throughout the thread. That certainly isn’t true. I lost my temper AND am generally highly emotionally wrought on that topic, and definitely slung some vitriol (it was mutual). In no way did I mean to characterize myself as entirely level-headed or calm in that thread.
No, if you read carefully, I said I tried to be reasonable with county and to try to explain to him that I didn’t want the dog euthanized. I really do not want that at all, and resent the implication that I do. If you will review the thread, you will see that no matter what I said, he continued to insist that I was being vindictive and trying to get the dog killed, which was just…not…so–and is not a real risk of happening, either, as he continuously asserted it was. He was also very mean and dismissive about my cat dying, and despite knowing how horrible I feel, he tried hard to be quite shitty about it.
Why? Why was he trying to paint me that way? Certainly not due to anything I said about my motivations. Just because he wanted to stir up shit? I really don’t see any other way to interpret it. That mean-spiritedness, and the fact that he STARTED the name calling at CrazyCatLady is what cumulated into a warning of jerkishness. To focus on the name-calling and ignore the rest of it is to be purposely disingenuous, as is much of this defense of county. Everyone who has spent time in the Pit has called names–not everyone is so frickin’ mean and nasty all the time, everywhere.
Let’s be clear on this issue. Despite your attempts to spin Lynn’s warning to him as some sort of a cumulative caution for the emotional distress he inflicted on you by being a nasty jerk and disagreeing with you in that thread, the warning he received had absolutely nothing to do with his back and forth in the Pit scrum that characterized that thread prior to the point of his calling you a “vicious bitch” as a retort to your calling him an “argumentative dickhead”.
It is glaringly, blindingly obvious that calling you a “bitch” was THE hot button for Lynn regardless of what you may have called him, and to that extent was tantamount to holding him to double standard in the back and forth volley of expletives you two were induging yourselves in.
Why are you twisting this whole thing around like this? I am not spinning the warning as having been all about me. I already pointed out several times that he started the name-calling at CrazyCatLady. Did you read that? How can you assert that the warning he received “had nothing to do with his back and forth” in that thread before he called me a bitch? How do you know that? All Lynn said was, “Stop being a jerk.” She gave no indication of what particular post prompted her warning, probably because it wasn’t one single post that caused it but his overall performance throughout the thread, which in turn was probably prompted by a pattern of behavior over a long period of time.
Also, he wasn’t really disagreeing with me. He was accusing me of something of which I was not guilty and ascribing motives to me I did not have in spite of many protestations to the contrary. It was just inexplicable hostility. I thought it was bizarre and most infuriating.
No, it is NOT “glaringly, blindingly obvious” what the cause of the warning was. You are totally making that up to support your specious point. **county ** was a jerk in several different ways that thread, not only to me, either. Yes, I think he was unnecessarily mean to me, but that alone wasn’t all that prompted it, nor was that one single post where he called me a bitch. Way to twist the situation to make him a victim (while trying to make me sound like I am martyring myself :rolleyes: ), when he most patently was not, while ignoring any facts that contradict your baseless point. You and he have that argument style in common.
Oh, come off it, astro. He was baiting Ruby with a bunch of totally inaccurate bullshit, and when I told him he was incorrect in his assumptions, he came after me. I’d said nothing untoward to him, just that he can’t make an assessment of whether or not the dog’s vicious without seeing it, that in many jurisdictions killing other pets is indeed grounds for a dangerous dog complaint, and that dangerous dogs are not automatically euthanized out of hand. (If the owner doesn’t keep them properly confined and they continue their dangerous behavior, yes, they’re euthanized, but most dogs and owners are given multiple chances.) He responded with the crap described above and continued to accuse Ruby of deliberately carrying out a cold-blooded vendetta against this poor, defenseless, harmless little puppy when the whole thing was all her fault anyway.
All I can think of it is that he was spoiling for a fight. When I didn’t oblige him (DNFTT), he upped the ante re: the alleged vendetta. His behavior throughout the entire thread was not just argumentative, obtuse, and generally shitty, which is all allowable in the Pit, but way over the line into undeservedly abusive. His remarks were way above and beyond what was called for in that thread, and he got a warning for the thread overall. Just like his banning, that warning just him piling concrete blocks onto the camel, then putting one teensy little straw on there for good measure.
Oddly enough, in viewing your exchanges with county I was struck by how similar your argument styles were, and how you sounded like an old married couple going at it. I was going to make mention of it in the previous post, but felt it would be impolite given how invested you were in despising him.
