Well, I haven’t read every one of his OPs so I don’t know, but as far as I could tell his waffling was far overshadowed by his “lalalalala I’m not listening to you, lalallalalaa” pig-headedness.
Ever notice how few folks on this board accuse the moderators of having a conservative bias?
I don’t see any numbers there; your argument doesn’t hold weight.
Try to take things a little more literally, you’ll get much more joy from life.
Jodi, it may well be that I’m remembering defenses of december that said, “You’re just attacking him because he’s conservative!” as defenses of his dishonesty, as Mtgman suggests.
My connection at home is slower than dirt, and burundi is impatiently waiting for me to get offline so she can go buy me ice cream, so I can’t look up specific examples tonight. I’ll try to find examples tomorrow. I’m not accusing Izzy et al of defending december’s dishonesty; rather, I’m accusing them of defending december DESPITE his dishonesty, which I find rather curious. As Redfury points out, it was a lefty poster who exposed Chumpsky’s dishonesty, and I don’t think that dishonest leftist posters get defended by other lefties around here.
But since I can’t provide you with cites tonight, consider my assertions temporarily retracted; tomorrow, I’ll either provide you with links to the specific examples I’m thinking of, or I’ll retract them point entirely and apologize.
Daniel
That, too.
mtgman:
Why do you feel it’s necessary to start fucking with me?
First off, get your terminology straight. You may disagree with the concept that December caught more shit because he espoused conservative views. You may even be right.
Either way, if it’s wrong it’s just wrong. It’s not a strawman. A strawman is a specific type of logical fallacy.
Saying December got hit harder than he would have if he were a liberal is not an argument that can be dismissed as a strawman, though you are free to disagree with my observation.
That being said, I don’t think December was treated unfairly, and I have to admit that I’m somewhat releived that the prime conservative flake will no longer be making the rest of us look bad.
<< But I think that someone with very stong views gets noticed more, and those in the minority get noticed more in a bad way.>>
Well, there’s undoubtedly some truth to that. A poster who never says much isn’t going to be noticed. A person who takes an extreme position gets noticed.
In this case, december had such a long history of misquoting, distorting, etc. that if he posted “Good morning!” I suspect people would have jumped down his throat. One of the truths of this Message Board is that there is past and there is history and there are consequences. (One of the reasons that we don’t allow socks: socks are a way of avoiding history and consequences.)
We do not ban someone for holding an unpopular opinion. We do not ban someone just because many other members don’t like them. We ban people for violation of the rules. Yes, some of the cases are grey and fuzzy: we don’t have the time or the inclination to write a law code. The moderators and the READER want three things: (a) a large membership, that (b) has interesting discussions, and © enjoy posting and reading posts.
OK, now: this discussion has gone on long enough, I think. It’s ranged VERY far afield. If you want to comment about december and the banning, go ahead, I’m not closing this yet (it’s only been one day, for cryinoutloud). But if you want to rant about how the majority of the membership is liberal-pinko-knee-jerks or how the majority of the membership is right-wing-red-neck fascists, start another thread, OK?
Mtgman:
Oh, I forgot my retraction.
I believe that I was wrong in that thread to ascribe December’s getting beaten as to being generally due to the fact that he took conservative stances.
Well said, Dex.
You can never silence the voice of…
Yeah, ok, I guess you’re right.
BTW: I noticed Orson Scott Card thinks highly of you.
December always seemed to me like the type of person who talks AT you instead of WITH you.
A-Fuckin’-men! Strike “conservative” in the last line for “moderate” and I could have made this post.
This is a sad day for reasoned discourse. Sure, december was often full of shit. Sadly, most of the looney left here rarely bothered to debate and disprove his blog posts, which was fairly easy to do. No, they found each and every december thread an excuse for them to come in and vent their spleens to the exclusion of all reason and facts. December had a point in the Bali thread, one which I defended over there. Nobody even adressed it until it was picked up by other posters, instead it was all “december this” and “december that”, people falling all over themselves to post the vilest vitorol or the most biting insult, each competeing to prove how clever they are. I remember one thread where it took me repeated posts demanding that december’s points be addressed. It took until page 6 before someone did so. Once the issue and not the poster was the subject, december was shown to be wrong fairly quickly. I am sure december made life tougher for the mods, but I am also willing to bet that it was because of the way that others overreacted to him and not due to his posts themselves. Claiming that his Bali thread was a huge, deliberate lie posted solely to provoke people is ludicrous when as far as I can see, all he did was get a timeline wrong over events months in the past. His core assertation over there was spot on. I say this with absolute confidence: Nobody except december would have been banned for starting that thread.
Nobody.
And that’s why this makes a complete mockery of the claim that these boards nurture debate and “fight ignorance”.
December was banned because a cabal of vocal idiots who can’t stand the fact the their cherished sacred cows aren’t revered by everyone pushed, agitated, yelled, screamed and threw the online equivelent of a temper tantrum over and over and over and over again until december finally got caught in the fallout, and now they can smugly sit back and boast to each other how well they are “fighting ignorance”, when all they are really doing is shouting louder than the next guy. I am deeply saddened that the administration of these boards lost their ability to objectively look at a situation and fix the blame where it belongs, rather than simply striking out at the sacrifical goat that everyone is screaming at.
While I’m certainly NOT comparing december to Jesus, I would note that Jesus was crucified not because of how he acted or what he did but because of how people reacted to him. Looks like mankind hasn’t changed much in 2000 years.
I think december’s bigger than The Beatles. Oh, and Weirddave chose his name well.
Weirddave I am assuming you missed this post on the last page. As a courtesy I am moved it here for you. You may want to review it.
Have a pleasant and fun filled weekend.
Jack Batty, if your friend won’t register, I might be able to supply a substitute in the form of my boyfriend. He thinks Ann Coulter is the voice of truth, wishes to vote Ashcroft the honorary title of pater patriae for saving his country from destruction, is already eager to vote Jeb for pres in 2008, etc.
(Looney left! That’s cute because they both start with L. NICE.)
Er, um, anyways – care to offer us up an example? I’m sure a lot of people frothed at the mouth, because people don’t like being called (however politely) “terrorists,” but I’d like to see you come up with a thread where not a single person addressed the factual content of his posts. Level-headed posters like wring, tomndebb, and hordes of others usually do a good job at being calm and RIGHT (correct, not conservative 
).
**
Stated like a fact. I call bullshit. Others called bullshit as well (see Jodi’s work in the thread, and she’s a conservative!), and still others picked up your gauntlet (see IzzyR’s contribution, who is also a conservative).
**
Linkety-linky? I’d also suggest that you peruse at least the first page of the thread, because I can pretty much guarantee that at least ONE person addressed the issue and not the poster. Unless this was a fairly active thread, in which case the factual post might have been bumped to Page 2. Either way, I suspect that you’re wrong, and will savor the flavor of your retraction <grin>.
**
On this we’re in total agreement. Given that – of what use was he to a board dedicated to Fighting Ignorace? Even if he did have a point once in a blue moon (something I’ll need cites if I’m going to concede), I’m most likely to tally that under the “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” category. At the end of the day, his steamy disinformation trumps his few nuggets of okayness.
**
You might want to re-read the thread. Essentially, december notes that a terrorist said protestors over the war in Iraq gave him heart. Which is okay… except there WEREN’T any protestors over Iraq. Barring time machines, his OP is the finest vintage of heapin’ bullshit, Texas stlye even. If someone (Brutus) wanted to save his bacon by mentioning the Law of Unintended Consequences in a more general sense, that in no way renders his OP logical, worthwhile, or even physically POSSIBLE.
**
Yeah, you’re probably right, but for the wrong reason. He was banned because he was warned in the past. Umm… you DID read what CKDH had to say in this thread, yes?
**
Woe is december! It’s truly tragic that he was FORCED to start inflammatory thread after inflammatory thread! Truly, he is a victim of Anne Frank-ish proportions.
Fuck that noise, chief. If december couldn’t handle the heat (notice who the OP was in the Bali thread), he sure had an odd way of showing it. In fact, if one were cynically inclined, one might suspect that he… enjoyed reaping the whirlwind of his nonsense partisan chicanery.
…
Naaaaaah. Then he would be a troll, and certainly someone in the know would have stepped in and said “He was banned for being a troll.” Right?
**
Er, um, <ahem>, what? Everyone BUT december should have been banned? There should have been an admonishment to be nice to december because he’s different, in that mittens-pinned-to-his-jacket sort of way?
I’ll make it easy for you Dave. If he’s been unfairly persecuted, don’t you find it odd that he was most often persecuted in threads that HE started? Strange coincidence, that…
I will miss december. He forced us to think and do research, though it was mostly because his statements were so patently and absurdly false that one didn’t wish to appear on his level by sputtering and gasping. I think the gut responses were the gist of many of the ones that Wierddave refers to when he speaks of entire threads devoted to attacking december rather than his statements. I mean, it was hard to treat him like an intelligent adult sometimes.
As for his supposed politeness, it was while making statements so vicious they would have gotten a less polite poster banned years ago. It shows that mom was right–you can get away with nearly anything if you are polite.
I’ve heard this phrase thrown around a couple of times, but I’ve never seen an example.
December exaggerated. December twisted statistics to fit his point of view. December linked to opinion pieces as fact. December did all sorts of things that are not reasonable debating tactics.
The thing is, so do many other people.
The difference is that December was attacked for it, repeatedly, and attacked for many things that didn’t warrant an attack.
There were countless times when I saw him post an article that was an almost word-for-word repeat of a very popular argument in the right-wing press- one debated and espoused by scholars, professors, and others. But when the idea was aired here, it would get smacked down without debate as mere trolling. As baiting. As disgusting and beneath consideration for debate.
If December ever offered an OP from a blog, it was immediately dismissed as being beneath consideration. Even if it was a blog from a professor of political science.
Every trick in the book has been used to discredit everything December had to say. December was essentially run out of town on a rail. It became clear to me a long time ago that nothing December could say on this board would be greeted with anything but derision and ad-hominem attacks.
This doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve criticism. The problem is that many, many times he didn’t deserve it and got nailed anyway. In the meantime, the pile-on parties and outright abusive behaviour towards him was left to run rampant by the mods.
So when December did something truly egregious, it was tainted by all the other times people created a fuss over him when it wasn’t warranted. That’s how bias works.
This whole episode is shameful. My opinion of this board has just gone way, way down. And Great Debates has just taken another step towards being another echo-chamber where people with ‘correct’ ideas agree with each other and pat each other on the back for being enlightened, while opposing viewpoints go unheard.
That’s not how you fight ignorance.
December, if you’re reading this, hasta la vista. You didn’t deserve 90% of the shit thrown at you on this board. Of the 10% you did deserve, here’s the lesson - when you take your ideas into hostile territory, it’s your responsibility to be above reproach. You have to be more accurate, more scrupulous with sources, and more honest than your opponents. Because they’ll get away with their bullshit, and you’ll get called on yours.
Huh, well, truly the poster everyone loved to hate, judging from the response here. He may have come off as thicker than two planks but lord, what a perverse genius when it came to getting people to waste endless amounts of time responding to his twaddle.
Not that anyones’s gonna wade through all the wailing and gnashing for and against dec’s self-immolation to listen to anything I might say, but hell, I’m here anyway, so:
-
Those who are claiming december was banned for being conservative, get real. The man misrepresented his supporting data, or simply made stuff up, in a large number of his GD threads. What possible benefit can be obtained from supporting a cause if the support is more often than not built on falsehoods? What possible use can such a person be on a board that supposedly has been established to fight ignorance? Ya wanna defend someone, try defending someone with a at least a trace of integrity
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Yup, lotta people just loved to pile onto the old boy. And why not? He’d never bark back, for one thing. But why such enthusiastic pile-ons? 'Cause even the thickest among us could usually see through his falshoods and lapses of logic, and it felt so good and so righteous to call him down for it. Of course, since even the thickest among us could see through his posts, it probably means that all the readers who never posted could as well, and thus it was probably unnecessary to pile on in the first place, but whatever.
Anyway, what Drama! What Pathos! What a strangely insular little world this board is. See, six pages on the banning in less than a day, when this thread’s subject was hardly worth six words. It’s a funny old world, alright.
Ahhh, fuck it, I’m just jealous of all the attention.