What do you mean? Jethro Tull DID win a Grammy for Hard Rock/Heavy Metal.
I believe my original point is that a free speech zone would have been an improvement.
Democratic organizers in Pennsylvania often use union thugs as muscle. If you like, I’ll put the blame on them.
Atarian pecked:
I’m reminded of a scene from Funny Farm.
Andy Farmer has written the first few chapters of possibly history’s worst novel, The Great Heist. He gave his wife, Elizabeth, those chapters as an anniversary present. He asked her to read them. Right then and there as they sat in their motel room.
She started reading. He went to get champagne.
When he returned, he queried her excitedly. “What did you think?” he asked, oblivious to her expression of dread. “Wait!” he exclaimed, and poured some champagne, finally settling down. “Well?”
Elizabeth fought back tears. Andy seemed puzzled, “What, you didn’t like it?” He proceeded to point out passages that he was sure were remarkably brilliant.
She began to cry. “But in the first few pages alone,” she mourned, “you have three flashbacks, two flash forwards, and I think a flash sideways. It’s horrible!”
“But,” stammered Andy, “what about the story?”
Her frustration welled fully ebullient. She creased her eyebrows and formed her face into an expression of desperate pleading. Her lip quivered as she stared at him incredulously. She blurted out through her copious tears in a trembling and squeaky voice.
“The story?”
So, to answer your question, I would reply “Your points?”
Lib, you might be being a tad pedantic on this point. Surely you recognize Max meant an “incident that is alleged to have occured at some point in the past” when he requested a cite.
You’re usually above petty semantic nitpicking. Why stoop to that level now?
Let no one be confused here: Libertarian isn’t protesting the notion that the right to speak is tied to ownership of real property. He’s for that.
He’s only against the existence of public property that allows for the possibility of free speech for the rest of us. And for some reason, he sees it as an essential flaw in our system that free speech rights on public property are less than perfectly maintained.
When the hell did Libertarian and The Ryan switch brains? And is anyone ever going to take Lib seriously now that he admits to not only watching Chevy Chase films, but to being able to quote them at length?
Homebrew wrote:
Unfortunately, I had to in order to communicate with the gentleman. His outrageous demand for a cite (in the Pit, no less) for a person’s (now several persons’) memory deserved the scorn it received.
RT brayed:
Not necessarily real property. This site, for example, is owned by the Chicago Reader, to whom all rights with respect to it accrue. It is merely a fact. Note, for example, how recent attempts at mutiny failed.
The rest of you? Are you homeless? Did you sign a lease with one of your hypothetical madmen? Is it okay by you if one of the White Supremecists from Stormfront comes into your home to spout racial epithets? Why not? Why should you have the right to determine what’s said in your home?
Is my fucking wallet yours? What the hell makes you think you’re entitled to the fruit of my labor? Kiss my red ass. If anything is offensive around here, it is that lascivious propensity toward socialism and arbitrary entitlement by champions of oppression.
That is not the flaw. That is merely one manifestation of the flaw. The flaw is tyranny.
Miller wrote:
Just wait 'till I start quoting Dude Where’s My Car?. Shibby.
Jesus, not this again. For the umpty-umpteenth time, posting in the Pit is not a blank check to spout unsubstantiated accusations. If you make a claim about a public or political figure or organization, expect people to ask you to back it up. Asking for a cite of a person’s memory is not outrageous. For example, if I said, “Hey, Lib, I remember one time you posted a thread about how much you hated Jews and black people,” I would fully expect someone to ask me for a cite to prove that you said those things. The fact that I have (or claim to have) a memory that they happened is not enough. You’ve been here longer than me, Lib, you ought to know that by now.
Mutiny? Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n Bligh, but what mutiny would that be? Got a cite?
I only quoted this to point out the irony in telling somebody to kiss your “red” ass for being a socialist.
Lib, please keep in mind that my OP deals with simple, old-fashioned 1st Amendment type protesting, in public space. (Public space includes sidewalks in front of private businesses; basically anwhere that it’s normally legal to walk without having to get permission.) You may be unhappy with the concept of public property maintained with the money the evil government sucks out of your wallet, but it is in fact a fairly well-established legal reality. Private property rights have no bearing on the activities described in the column to which I linked.
Nobody wants you to have to submit to having Bad People come in your house and say Bad Things. I think we’re all agreed on that.
Well actually Miller, the Pit IS the place to “spout unsubstantiated accusations”.
Whether anyone believes or gives a flying fuck about them is a different story. Cites are not required, but uncited bullshit is of course subject to ridicule and derision, as the case may be.
Wow, isn’t that the whole fucking point of the Pit? <smack> Duh!
Miller said:
December never made such a claim.
His claim was about a “practice” that was a news event many years ago. The only possible cite would be a news clipping from before the time when most news agencies had WWW sites. The best you could hope for is a link to a site where someone else remembered it. Therefore, the demand for a cite was outrageous.
December was attacked, in my opinion, for no reason other than that he was perceived as eminently attackable. An easy target. Someone who is unpopular among liberals for his political views. The object of several Pit threads.
He was judged solely by his “reputation”, to wit: “I mean, come on man, you know that you have a reputation as being anti-Clinton.” — MaxTheVool (10-18-2002 12:17 AM)
Therefore, the demand for a cite was snipish and cowardly.
And in fact, cites were offered in the form of personal memories from four people, including a testimony of personal experience, and a link that proved the existence of so-called “Free Speech Zones” during the Clinton administration.
Baldwin wrote:
Well, hasn’t fortune smiled on me! And fortunate, too, for our women that nobody wants gang rape, I reckon.
Wow, thanks.
In fact, he did. The OP complained about a sitting president using his Secret Service guys to restrict freedom of speech. This is, to a lot of people, a Very Bad Thing. december said Bill Clinton did exactly the same thing. I, for one, am not going to take the word of some random internet stranger on something like that. I’m certainly not going to take december’s word on it.
Assuming Max didn’t know of the event (a plausible assumption, else why ask for a cite?), how on God’s Green Earth was he supposed to know it happened eight years ago?
No, it wasn’t. And it still isn’t. Surprisingly, there’s a whole lot of information on the internet that is <gasp> more than eight years old! Look: The War of 1812! The sinking of the Titanic! Bill Clinton doing exactly what december said he did! Isn’t the internet just jim-dandy?
Okay, first, he wasn’t attacked. He was asked (fairly politely, all thing considered) if he would, for once in his career here at the SDMB, provide a reliable cite for the claims he makes. He was not called names, he was not shouted down, or ignored, he was asked for a cite for his claims. This is not an attack. Considering how relentlessly hostile you are around here, I’d expect you to know the difference.
Secondly, in case you haven’t been paying attention, december isn’t hugely popular with conservatives, either. Mostly for his habit of making unsupported (or unsupportable) claims, or by savagely distorting his sources to support his particular agenda. I don’t think it’s the least bit outrageous to not take what he says at face value. This has nothing to do with prejudicial politics, it has to do with december reaping what he has sowed.
Cites and testimony which were provided after you acted like an asshole to MaxtheVool. Couldn’t you have just siad, “No, december is right, I remember it too?” Maybe provided the link yourself? Naw, 'cause then you would have passed up the opportunity to call someone a fartwit. Who cares about fighting ignorance, when there are gratuitous insults to be made?
Incidentally, do you realize that you started your last post by saying Max was an asshole for asking for a cite no one could possibly give him, and ended it by saying he’s an asshole because somebody gave him the cite anyway? What was that you were saying earlier about “A and Not A”?
Still wonderin’ about that “mutiny”…
Klaatu: Okay, point taken. I suppose you’re not technically required to proved cites in Great Debates, either. Of course, no one is going to take you seriously without them, either here or in GD. At any rate, whining that “It’s the pit! I don’t haveta provide cites!” is pretty spineless.
Agreed Miller, and apologies for the somewhat derisive tone of that post I made.
Dear critics – I have no problem with your requesting a cite, although your requests might have been a tad more polite. My understanding of The Pit is that observations and memories without cites are not inappropriate. My point was clearly labeled*“IIRC”*. A cite would be nice, but it isn’t required in this forum. I apprecite all those who provided information tending to confirm what I remembered.
Some of you seem to have criticized my post without fully reading it. MaxTheVool implicitly complained that I was not “outraged at the invasion of liberty [by Bush],” even though my post had had already called that action "appalling." Miller misrepresented my post, changing “a similar practice” into “exactly the same thing.”
I really don’t see that you folks had cause for this degree of excitement and hostility.
Apparently, when december says that he has “no problem” with requests for a cite, he means that he still won’t provide one to back up his offhand assertions.
(a) Miller, thanks for getting my back in such a rational and articulate fashion
(b) just for the record, this link that Miller found does, in fact, describe almost exactly the same thing being done by the Clinton administration. Allow me to express my belated outrage. Grrrr! Damn those Clintonistas!!!
© as for the initial tone of my post, whether it was appropriate to ask for a cite, and whether I was attacking December simply because of his political views, well, it’s not quite that simple. Rightly or wrongly, December has a reputation on the SDMB as someone who holds conservative views, is incredibly vocal about them, and plays a tad fast and loose with the evidence to back them up. I’m not saying that there’s any justification for that reputation… suffice it to say that that reputation exists. (Anyone want me to provide a cite?)
Given that, if he authors a post like the one that started this tiff, even if (as in this case), he is 100% correct, there’s a good chance that people will ignore him or dismiss his post, simply due to his reputation. Which, at least in this case, would be a shame.
Perhaps we should start referring to him as “the boy who cried Clinton”…
(d) one other thing… December, upon rereading my first post, I see that I did in fact imply that you weren’t outraged. That was poor wording on my part, for which I apologize. Please replace “be outraged” with “post something describing your outrage” in my original post…
Miller wrote:
Setting the record straight
Obviously. What you certainly are going to do, and have done, is take December’s word and modify it. Here is what december said:
“I find this appalling. IIRC a similar practice was followed by Clinton, but that doesn’t excuse Bush.” — Emphasis mine
Your fabrication is that December “said Bill Clinton did exactly the same thing.” — Emphasis mine
Before your knee slaps your forehead, I would ask you to consider that this is no semantic nitpick. He said “similar”; you said “exactly”.
Moreover, he prefaced his remark with IIRC, which is an acronym meaning “If I recall correctly”. He was offering his own recollection. Again, unless you make a complete mush of the language, his own recollection is not a claim of fact, but of memory.
So, the only thing we have so far is December saying that he believes he remembers a similar circumstance with Clinton. Note also that he went out of his way to condemn the circumstance involving Bush. He called it “appalling”, and said that any similarity to what he was recalling “doesn’t excuse Bush”.
How the gentleman could possibly have been more fair, polite, and reasonable can hardly be imagined.
The pile-on begins
But that was not suitable to you and your ilk. Just as you yourself have isolated, identified, and tagged December as someone whose word is worthless (see quote above), so did Early Out waste no time in eagerly beginning the assault on December. An assault, not on the theme of December’s post, but on its penumbra.
Early Out wrote:
“For the love of God, december, let it go!”
Let what go? His opinion that it was appalling? No. His opinion that Bush is not excused? No. Early Out appealed to God’s love as what ought to motivate December to let go his recollection of a similar circumstance with Bill Clinton.
That was salvo number one from the December Haters.
Salvo number two began with MaxTheVool. A man asking for a cite, even when he has ignored the claim of recollection, and presumes it as a statement of fact, might post only MaxTheVool’s first line, which was:
“Cite?”
But that’s not where MaxTheVool stopped. His next line was a shot aimed directly at the man behind the post, and his reputation. It was:
“I mean, come on man, you know that you have a reputation as being anti-Clinton.”
He then proceeded to list what would have been acceptable and unacceptable responses from December. Nevermind the fact that MaxTheVool lacks any authority whatsoever with regards to what is acceptable and what is not. Disregard that his judgment on that matter is worthless.
He proceeded to do what you have done and rephrase what December said to suit himself. He wrote:
“(4) randomly say “Clinton did it too” with absolutely no cite or evidence {bad bad BAD BAD DECEMBER}” — Original quotes left intact
Once again, what December actually said was that he seemed to recall a similar thing happening with Clinton.
It is clear to me that MaxTheVool smelled blood. He saw that Early Out had already begun the December pile-on, and he took this as his cue. He deliberately decided to kick the man who lay on the sidewalk, and he delighted in doing it. He took his time to compose a post complete with enumerated points, the whole of which was designed for the sole purpose of bashing December.
I sensed this pile-on beginning and decided to come to December’s aid. I offered that I recalled it as well. Subsequently, CJHoworth likewise recalled it. Mr. Moto testified that he had had an anti-Clinton sign torn from his hands. Larry Mudd offered a link to a story that at the very least ought to have clued you in that our recollections were possibly true.
And now the aftermath
Even Early Out himself now took pause, and expressed regret that Mr. Moto had been subjected to Clinton’s harassment.
But MaxTheVool pressed on. Realizing that the man he had kicked now has defenders, he began flailing about with irrelevant non sequiturs, straw men, and pleadings that he never claimed Clinton was perfect. He even dismissed Mr. Moto’s testimony as “only somewhat relevant”.
Only now has he admitted of “exactly the same thing being done by the Clinton administration”, and has fashioned one of those famous qualified apologies along the lines of I’m sorry IF I offended you. He is first grateful merely that you had his back.
Shame on you for revelling in the admiration of muggers whom you have defended and wooed with your dispassionate revisionism.
I disagree with December as much as anyone. But I do not automatically distrust his word any more than I do yours. And I certainly do not seek him out for no reason other than to jump his bones while others secure his arms.
The lot of you owe December an unqualified apology.
His obsession with Bill Clinton. The man’s been out of office for almost two years. What I was saying was, “Get on with your life, december.”
Besides that, the actions of this administration deserve to be judged on their own merit. The assertion that “Clinton did it, too,” doesn’t make these actions any more or less proper.
Wrong again. I expressed regret that Mr. Moto had been roughed up by some overenthusiastic supporters of Clinton. I categorically reject Mr. Moto’s suggestion that his mistreatment was caused by, or condoned by, Clinton. His suggestion that having union members beat up protesters is a standard Democratic tactic (“Democratic organizers in Pennsylvania often use union thugs as muscle.”) is offensive, and isn’t supported by any evidence that anyone has taken the time to cite.
Probably I should have started this thread in Great Debates instead of the Pit.