I don't think it's fair that Sultan Kinkari was banned

The BBQ Pit
1

Yeah, he was being offensive, but this is the fucking Pit. It’s where people go to say the stuff they can’t say in real life, and though I don’t feel as strongly about the matter as Sultan I can kinda see where his feelings are coming from, having grown up atheist in an area where you are either Christian or capital-E-Evil.

But this doesn’t really have anything to do with that…what irks me is that this guy was called into the Pit and then banned for speaking his mind with no apparent official warning. Yes, a number of posters were telling him he was being offensive, but that happens every time somebody defends an unpopular view in the only forum where you are allowed to flame. I have a feeling that he was only banned because some people are oversensitive due to the 9/11 attacks, that any criticism of our new ‘heros’ is taboo. Yes, I understand that people in rough times often turn to weird things for comfort, but I don’t think it’s wrong to think that those who believe God placed a cross in the ruins are stupid, and though I think it would be wrong for him to tell them that to their face, I don’t think it’s wrong for him to speak up about it in a forum intended for venting, nor is it unusual for someone to get worked up when they are being attacked from all sides, when people are making sick jokes about the funeral of the guy’s GRANDMOTHER…sheesh. Anyway, banning seems totally uneccessary in this situation, and seems to set an unwelcome precedent. The guy would have probably stopped posting before long after making so many enemies, but maybe he would have changed his mind, or calmed down and better explained why he feels so angry about this. What DID happen was a guy got called into a supposedly flame-safe forum and then kicked from the board for doing something that we all do in here, and that’s just wrong.

2

Here’s a quick lesson: Pit != No rules. The “Don’t be a jerk” rule applies universally on the Boards. And he violated it, raped it, beat it to death with a giant rubber fish, and then raped it again.

3

Do we know why he was banned? Any specific reasons given by any Mods?

Sultan was a jerk. I don’t think I would have anticipated a banning coming from his assholish behavior, but I haven’t seen every post he’s written. As far as I know, no official “reason” for his banning has been given.

4

This is what Lynne said:

5

But that’s bullshit. Almost every poster who has posted to the Pit has been ‘a jerk’ at one time or another. Hell, I think manhattan was being a jerk when he joked that Sultan touched his dead grandmother’s pussy. Should he be banned for it? If he said it anywhere else on the boards, of course. Of course, he would never do that anywhere else, but it’s accepted that you CAN be a jerk in the Pit and that’s why he said it here.

6

I really don’t think his ATMB thread did his cause any good.

And since when are the admins required to give any “official” explanation for a banning?

Pehaps, just perhaps, his ATMB thread was something other than trollish - but it sure didn’t read that way when coupled with his posts in other threads.

7

personally I thought the dead grandmother joke was very very poor taste; sure, he mentioned his granny first, but the way the conversation went from there… well, I was shocked.

8

I know we can’t expect an official explanation for bannings, but the only times I can remember someone being banned without first being given a warning was when someone was running sock puppets, spamming, something of that nature. Why wasn’t Sultan given the same consideration other posters who go too far are given?

9

On one level, I want to agree with you. There might be cause for a legitimate slippery slope concern here. Yes, SD is strongly cliquish. Yes, SD cherry picks the ignorance it will fight. And yes, SD is sometimes as bigoted in its own way as the bigots it attacks.

BUT…

Sultan wasn’t just venting or ranting or even being a jerk. He was pulling chains. He was being deliberately offensive for the purpose of upsetting people. I think this portion from his “words of wisdom” tells the whole tale:

10

I agree, Lib. The chain-pulling was palpable.

11

That’s one part of his posts that I tend to agree with, weird. I don’t think it’s wrong for people to be upset about things that make them uncomfortable being done for the comfort of those with different beliefs. Should I just shut up and bear it if someone puts a dumpster in my front yard, since it makes things so much more comfortable and convenient for all my neighbors? Or on a more related note, should my loved ones (who are aware of my lack of religion) allow someone to erect a cross on my grave, because it makes the more religious visitors to the cemetary more comfortable?

Though I’m not as anti-religion as I used to be, I remember when I was. I was a strong atheist in my teenage years, and religious imagery would remind me of the murder of my sister, who was a devout Christian, and it was all tied together in one painful lump that I didn’t like to think about. Being in a situation where I had to hear a sermon would both infuriate me and bring me to tears. At that stage in my life, the cross of the WTC ruins would truly make me uncomfortable, and people justifying keeping it there despite common sense and the impropriety of basically putting a Christian grave marker on a mass grave containing hundreds of non-Christians WOULD make me about as angry as Sultan was. In public I would bite my lip about it, but if I was given an opportunity to let those feelings out I might have reacted to the situation like Sultan did. Yes, it would be brash and somewhat dumb, but understandable. I would find the people taking the other view as offensive as they would find me, and I would probably see being banned because of it as a form of discrimination.

The threads should have simply been closed, it WAS obviously getting out of hand, and people were getting too worked up. If Sultan had chosen to bring up the subject again after being warned and the threads being closed, then there would be grounds for banning that I could not take issue with.

12

Of all the shit he spouted off with in those two threads, this offended me the most:

13

Are you saying that people don’t do stuff like that just for attention? Not saying that the ‘cross’ was erected by a glory hound, but it could have been.

14

Ummm… I know people who would be uncomfortable around a cross, most especially my mother, who is a good person but is extremely anti-religion. She would find the cross offensive if she had to face it. Not everyone is Christian. Many of those who aren’t will tolerate Christians because, hey, everyone’s entitled to their beliefs, but some people will find Christian symbols being forced upon to be offensive. Sultan may have said a lot of jerkish things, but he’s within his rights to feel uncomfortable around crosses.

15

Sorry to hijack folks, but you just can’t let this lie, can you Lib?

16

I’ll tell you the same thing I told him:

17

I’m certainly not going to defend Manny’s “grandmother’s pussy” comments in the thread concerned, because I believe that any one of us would have received an official warning for such comments and deservedly so. The Pit isn’t, and never has been, a “flame-proof” zone.

Sultan pushed way beyond the point at which people had tried to explain to him reasonably civilly why his comments were inappropriate, and in more than one thread. While this MB has absolute rules, they are always interpreted within the context of current events - you might have noticed than another, very long time provocative poster is on the brink of a banning right now even though many of us don’t believe he’s deliberately trolling.

The admins have said many times before that the don’t generally assess people on individual posts or individual threads; they generally look at a poster’s whole history. Right now isn’t a great time to be a newbie making inflammatory posts.

I hope you read the OP criticising Sultan’s stance very carefully. Very many of us on this messageboard have no belief in the symbol of the cross. Most of us who don’t believe in the cross don’t believe in symbols of any kind - crosses, yellow ribbons, flags, candles, flowers. But you won’t find very many of us at all who would begrudge those rescue workers any and every damn symbol they need to make an utterly soul-destroying and thankless task a little more bearable.

The issue people took with Sultan was that he called those rescue workers “hypocritical”. I’d be willing to bet that quite a few of those workers are questioning their faith in God right now, but they are still in there doing an unbelievably gruesome task, not because they “have” to, or because “it’s their job”, but because they want to afford some kind of dignity to every single person who died on 11 Sept.

I personally don’t believe in either a God or the cross, but I’m damned if I’m going to begrudge those people who are still spending hour after hour, day after day, at the WTC site any damn thing they want/need to make their job a little easier.

Yes, I understand how the application of “the rules” might seem a little bit selective right now, but I’ve yet to see that “selective” application applied to regular posters debating very difficult issues. Many of us non-US citizens have made comments over the last few weeks which have been critical of US foreign policy; we’ve asked you to understand that the US viewpoint of the events of the last month isn’t the ONLY viewpoint. However unpopular our opinions might have been, and however heated the debates, I’ve yet to see anyone who is trying to have an authentic dialogue about any of the very many issues related to the current world crisis get banned just because their opinions are unpopular.

I’m sure, that as always, if Sultan’s errors were simply the result of naivete, and he makes a reasonable case to the admins for re-instatement, then that case will be considered. I also think that it is encumbent upon every one of us right now to remember that this is an extremely difficult time, that our opinions will quite possibly be polarised, and that now, more than ever, we need to treat each other with the same courtesy and respect we have always accorded, if not a little more.

Having said all the “reasonable” things I intended to say - I really don’t care very much if people newcomers who come in here jerking our chains get banned; I’m far too concerned about the here and now and the people I’ve known for a while (including those with whom I disagree with vigour) to give a damn about those who only seem to have registered in order to provoke controversy.

[sub]I don’t believe that I actually got through a whole Pit post without saying “fuck” - I’m slipping[/sub]

18

This is the SDMB at its lynch mob worst. Sultan expressed an unpopular view, and gets banned. Manhattan makes a mindnumbingly personal, hurtful, and deeply offensive joke about Sultan’s dead grandmother’s genitals, and gets fawned over by the usual mob of toadies.

And you people can still look yourselves in the eye and claim you’re fighting ignorance. I am sickened.

19

I think the problem isn’t that some people are “uncomfortable”. I think most of us know that not everyone is Christian, and that some people are not crazy about Christian symbols. To not want a Christian cross displayed on your turf (your front yard, your office space, etc.) is reasonable.

But to expect that no one else can have it either? To really expect that? That’s unreasonable. That’s what Sultan wanted. Even though he wasn’t working down at Ground Zero, even though it wasn’t in any way his turf, he still wanted it taken away, merely because the knowledge that it was there “bothered” him. Even though he didn’t even actually have to look at it, or anything. It wasn’t in his front yard. Even knowing that some other people wanted it, welcomed it, and were getting solace from it - didn’t matter. Sultan wanted it gone.

The world is full of people who will expose us to things that make us “uncomfortable”. The only way we can avoid all these things by never leaving our houses. That’s it. We don’t get to control whether the new church in town will display a big honking cross on the front of the building. We don’t get to dictate what every building in town will look like, or what each billboard in town will look like. All these things may have elements that may make us “uncomfortable”. While we are entitled to bitch about them, that’s all we can do. We can’t expect them to be removed, just because we don’t like them. Which is what Sultan wanted in this specific case. Which made him look like an asshole to many of us.

In a situation as unique as the WTC rubble, it really should be up to the people working there to decide what they want kept up, and what they want hauled away. I don’t know how the whole situation looks down there, but I am guessing that anyone who is “offended” by the cross isn’t assaulted with its visual presence every time they look up? Unless that is the case, I don’t see that it is “bothering” a huge hunk of people who were actually there.

20

The grandmother comment was over the line…one of the sickest comments I’ve ever read here…