I’m glad many Dopers see Michael Moore for the liar he is. Ebert & Roeper gave Michael Wilson’s film “Michael Moore Hates America” two thumbs up, and will expose a great deal of Moore’s bullshit. Wilson confronts him on one occasion, where Moore shouts him down in front of his cronies, but not before Wilson got a chance to cover a few of his lies. Wilson also gives others in Moore’s film a chance to finally say how they were treated by Moore and the methods he used.
I had respect for the late William F. Buckley jr on his “War on Drugs” stance, and was willing to call it as the failure it was, also willing to tell us just how much it was really costing us, and also showing just how much harm and unfair the drug laws really were. Some 20 years ago, he wrote a column that said on the federal, state and local level we were spending over 100 billion annually to fight this “War on Drugs”.
Imagine allowing for inflation, and with all of the new prisons, and it seems like every two bit small town having their own swat teams these days, how much it is costing us today. There are other conservatives that share the same view as Buckley on this.
I actually like any fiscally conservative, but just don’t think Republicans are such, just because they claim to be so, especially when they want a military as big as ours that outspends the other top 15 countries combined, and 12 of those 15 are our allies.
Compared to Sean Hannity, Mike Moore is a shining paragon of virtue. And I haven’t given a shit what Rogers and Ebert think about anything in a very, very long time.
Michael Moore and Der Tris.
Michael Moore because even though I might agree with his point the way he goes about making it is repulsive.
Der Tris because (and dude I agree with you 99.9% of the time) of the way he interacts with a thread is like using bomb to kill a fly. I guess in both cases I generally agree with the point but cringe at how its made.
On the conservative side.
Bill O’Rielly – but only sometimes. He’s even, on occasion (rare I admit) told the extreme right to shut up.
Finally Bricker. No conservative makes me rethink my position of issues like more than Bricker does. When he makes a point I generally enjoy reading it, I generally learn something even if I’m not convinced my political opinion is wrong.
Der Tris would you be willing to answer the OP’s question? Seriously I’d honestly love to hear your thoughts.
Well, the liberals I most strongly disagree with I can’t recall by name. They are people like “that feminist I read back in the 80s who claimed that curing the sick is immoral because science is masculine and Mother Nature is feminine”.
I can’t think of any conservatives I admire or respect. Conservatism is a collection of qualities that I neither admire nor respect.
They are both despicable and have no regards for truth.
There is no and. Roger Ebert is one person, and hasn’t done his show since having throat cancer in a very long time, and his former partner Siskel is dead. I did mention Ebert and Roeper. And actually don’t pay much attention to movie reviews either, but occasionally it might get me to watch something I may not have watched otherwise.
I’m not a fan of admiring people because of an “aspect” of their personality, because then you end up with nonsense like having to say you “admire” Hitler because he was a good public speaker. Admiration is about the whole of a person.
This is a perfect example of why i love reading your posts but cringe none the less. I don’t mean that to sound funny, mean or snarky. I mean it sincerely …
Anyway I love reading your posts here man, I sometimes wish I could be so absolute in my opinions
So what? At least I am willing to give the man credit for doing something that I gave Bush credit for doing! Rush and Hannity (and others, they’re just the most visible) would have NONE OF THAT, thus exposing THEIR BLATANT HYPOCRISY! However (you saw this coming), when the New York Times Editorial writers (and others, but again they are the most visible) had NOTHING but criticism and bile for Bush’s tactics in fighting the war regularly while Bush was prosecuting it, their man that they lauded ends up doing much of the same things and all of a sudden now that THEIR MAN is using the same tactics they just don’t seem to object quite as much as they did when Bush did it which thus exposes the Left’s BLATANT HYPOCRISY! My admiration for President Obama’s doing that is no different from the left wing admiring John McCain for doing “liberal” things and being that maverick that so often irritated the Republican party when McCain blatantly went against the party line (drilling for oil in the pristine areas of Alaska, for example).
I think the entire premise of this thread is somewhat flawed. I never claimed to be 100% absolutely perfectly Fair and Balanced in all ways at all times no matter what. Who would make such a claim?
I feel like the entire thread just buys into the “oh, we all know that the Dope is full of rabid partisans” meme, which, while obviously having some truth to it, is something that it’s easy to just accept as Gospel Truth, and then people start framing all of their interactions with Dopers through that lens.
So, I refuse to play along. I assert, without any evidence at all, that I put a lot of effort into being intellectually even handed, but I’m sure I fail sometimes. If anyone thinks that I’m actually a rabid partisan, I put the burden of proof on him or her to so demonstrate.
Aw, c’mon, where are you getting this tommyrot that this is a right wing movement?! I’ll have you know that Fox News, where the real news is, now labels the Westboro Baptist church as a Leftwing cult. Tis true!
I have to wonder what Bill O’Reilly and Bernard Goldberg think about that. Since my wife and I got rid of cable, I no longer watch FOX News, or TCM for that matter.
Well one poster is correct that Fox News makes that claim of being fair and balanced. While the particular catchphrase “Fair & Balanced” is not really used by the Left, they have their own ways of trying to come off that way. Many on the left tout diversity (although too often NOT diversity of thought and opinion). What is diversity but a variety of different things (people, socio-economics, religious beliefs, etc. but again NOT very often diversity of opinion). That being said, the purpose of this “exercise” so to speak may show the partisanship of many here on the board, but that was not my original intention. If you are interested, this thread actually is a variation on something my friends and I would do during the holidays. A bunch of us guys would be sitting around in a bar and we decided that we would toast and say something sincerely nice about somebody that we utterly despised, and NO it could not be a backhanded compliment like “she’s not as fat & disgusting as she used to be,” or “those new glasses he got make him actually APPEAR to be intelligent.” This exercise, if you want to call it that, forced us to actually try to find some good in somebody that we obviously didn’t think too highly of. The despised individual could be someone from public life (both George W. Bush AND Jimmy Carter came up) or somebody personal (one guy toasted his daughter’s loser of a “baby daddy” because the loser at least gave the man a grandchild that he loves very much). However I figured the closest that I could get to something like that here is the thread that I started.
All that being said, I think there are several responses here that are interesting to see. I also think it shows some possible common ground between the two sides. Furthermore, while the term “Fair & Balanced” can oftentimes be shown to be untrue at Fox News, the usually left wing agenda of “promoting diversity” is often shown to be untrue when diversity of thought is dismissed.
Two comments:
(1) I guess my problem with the premise of the thread as a whole kind of irks me because of where it puts the “burden of proof”. I assume that people I argue with on the dope are open minded and reasonable individuals who are capable of seeing good in the other side. There are a small number of individual posters who I have my doubts about, but as for the board population as a whole, I would no longer start a thread asking people to prove that they aren’t rabid partisans than I would start a thread asking people to prove that they aren’t child molestors. Which isn’t to say that nothing interesting might come of a thread like this, but it’s the way it was phrased, the “prove it”, that to me just buys into the assumption that the SDMB is nothing but partisan hacks until proven otherwise.
(2) Your proposed equivalence, with Fox-News-claiming-to-be-fair-and-balanced on one side and the-left-claiming-to-support-diversity-but-sometimes-being-intolerant on the other side, is just bizarre. I mean, even if I thought they were in any way equally “bad”, which I don’t, they’re just completely dissimilar. If you think they’re really meaningfully equivalent, then I think the burden is on you to support that claim.
What do you think of O’Reilly? When debating Bill Maher, Maher told O’Reilly that 60% of people believe the Noah’s ark story to be literally true. O’ Reilly says he knows of no one that believes that.
When Maher told him about a scripture in the bible where people that work the Sabbath should be put to death, O’Reilly kept asking him where would such a scripture be like that. He clearly wasn’t familiar with it. Maher pointed out Deuteronomy.
After O’Reilly ended the debate, he comes back to put his own spin on everything towards the end after Maher is gone. First he pretends to correct Maher by saying that scripture was actually found in Exodus, not Deuteronomy. But it’s aso listed in Deuteronomy, as well as Leviticus and Numbers too, but just didn’t want to give Maher credit. He then claims it wasn’t meant for neighbors to put them to death for working the Sabbath, and that it was meant for God to handle the situation.
But reading in various places it shows it will be the people carrying it out, with God’s blessings of course for breaking the Sabbath. The “congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” (Numbers 15:35 is one such place, there are others.)
Why do conservatives like O’Reilly? Is he funny to them? Think he has high integrity? Intelligent? What is it?
Like I said earlier, while I may not necessarily like the vitriol that Maher spews, I do admire and respect Maher for being consistent in his criticism. As for why conservatives like O’Reilly: Same reasons liberals like Michael Moore or Joy Behar.
They agree with them in principle, even though they may raise their eyebrows on every “fact” that they bring up. Here’s what I find funny. No one is always right and no one is always wrong. While Maher has put O’Reilly in his place on more than one occasion, Christopher Hitchens has put Maher and other members of the left in THEIR PLACE on more than one occasion. That doesn’t mean that people who agree with Maher on principle all of a sudden stopped agreeing with him. It just means that on such and such occasion Maher got put in his place by Hitchens, and on such and such occasion Maher put O’Reilly in HIS place.
