I have this cousin named Vinnie…sometimes we have to send him out on special missions, to reason with people.
Just as long as no “C” words are mentioned…
And I gotta pocket fulla Kryptonite nails!
Who said I was quitting? They’re gonna have to drag me outta here kickin’ and screamin’!
Firstly, let me slay the pundits: Diane, SilverFire and Guinastasia.
Rest assured that my capacious ego is fine, with or without your snivelling attempts at derogatory wit. I have no need to fear the slings and arrows of understandably unintelligible jackdaws such as yourselves, for I oppose them with a good scattergun and #4 Birdshot.
Nor do I fear the Crow Pie, for others of higher moral and intellectual standards than an obsolete myth, a cold, tarnished flame and a…a…whatever, who know of me and my past, will attest to my honor and integrity in admitting my err, when I have apprehended it, and making just amends to the plucked honor of my former oppugnant.
But I’m not apologising. Far from it. To quote a great actor portraying a good man: “I’m just gettin’ started!”
Although I think my “masterbating” comment was taken out of context; my tiff with Stoi was like, you know.
It was not directed at the TM at large.
Now down to business: :rolls up sleeves, lights cigar, pops a brewski, cracks knuckles:
For starters, I found the whole “I dislike/distrust Republicans because…” affair as tasteless as Krispy Original’s (in some incarnation or another) “I hate niggers” thread.
The sweeping statement form of insulting someone (and then recanting and saying "I wasn’t talking about you!) is utter horseshit.
It is a coward’s attack, and it was disguised as a debate and sanctioned by the moderators, even after I interjected my admittedly limited opinion early on in that debate that Stoidela’s post was nothing more than her opinion, and probably belonged in IMHO instead of Great Debates. I didn’t even comment on her opinion at the time, feeling no need to justify such asinine commentary with my response. Until later, that is…
Stoidela hasn’t made a single point/debate in Great Debates, just partisan mudslinging that has gone unchecked.
If I said “I distrust/dislike Jews because…”, what kind of shit storm could I expect? And rightly so!
“But wait,” some of you say, “Stoidela’s comments cut across race, color, religion, gender, etc.,. It’s too broad to take personal offense to.”
Well, the Jewish peoples cross a fairly hefty swath of colors, races and sex as well.
If naked racism is intolerable even in IMHO, then why is blatant personal attacks disguised as partisan commentary allowed to masquerade as a debate?
My personal attack on Stoidela may have been no more morally correct than hers was on me/Republicans.
But at least I was honest enough to say what I thought, out in the open for one and all (especially the recipient) to see, instead of playing the put-upon, misunderstood victim.
I know we tolerate partisan bullshit in our politicians and media, but I have come to expect a higher standard from the Straight Dope and our GD moderators.
And come on now; really. Calling someone (emphasis singular) a “frothing little goober” is hardly on par with impugning the honor, decency and charity of a great heaping chunk of the American population, which, I might add, includes just about every race, color, creed, sex and religion, all in the guise of a “debate”, by saying Republicans/conservatives are “untrustworthy, selfish me-monkeys”.
As her supporters (suprisingly enough, there are some) will quickly point out, she never called anyone an “untrustworthy, selfish me-monkey”, and they would be correct. She never, ever used those words, exactly.
I condensed from the following paragraph, for brevity.
From the thread Why I Don’t Trust Conservatives/Republicans
From the relevant bolded blocks, I (rightly so, IMO) drew the conclusion that Stoidela thinks that Republicans/conservatives are untrustworthy, selfish me-monkeys.
This is a debatable topic? Come on people, say it with me:
PUH-LLEEAASSE!!!
Which bring me to my final point:
Manhattan: your comment about reading the forum descriptions is the crux of the matter; if Stoidela would keep her biased opinions in IMHO, or the mods would move her biased opinions/general statements/insulting partisan commentary out of GD over to IMHO, then we wouldn’t be here.
And your take on my “stupid and over-the-top” comparison not only missed the boat, but you’re getting your ass reamed by the barnacles, pal.
In The BBQ Pit, ranting and raving is the norm. It’s taken w/a grain of salt, some condescending and placating platitudes are issued, and the disgruntled poster is patted on the head and sent on their merry way. I’d be just one more loony in the bin screaming for my medication.
By taking the argument to GD and forcing the issue on their doorstep, so to speak, I felt I had a better forum for adressing the issue at hand.
The analogy being (since you missed it the first time, I figure a detailed explanation is in order):
*If the people protesting Vietnam had just sat around at home bitching amongst themselves, nothing would’ve happened.
By taking their protests to the next higher level every time they were ignored/attacked, they gained more and more visibility until the situation was addressed.*
I am not advocating a massive grass-roots protests against all the mods. Hell, I even like you. Well, some of you. Oh allright, a few of you.
I am not even advocating a massive grass-roots protest against even the two I have a beef with.
I am advocating that whatever Moderator Supreme that is moderating the moderators needs to step in a put the lid on the partisan mudslinging in the Great Debates, an inject the two moderators moderating that forum with a couple of hundred cc’s of Impartiality.
If Stoidela wants to flame conservatives, Republicans, the rural part of our population, the military, soldiers, then Flame away.
In the BBQ Pit.
If she wants to sprout off why she thinks that Marxism will save the world from us evil conservative ditto-heads, then she may freely do so.
In IMHO.
If she wants to share her manifesto for ridding the world of the evils of conservativism through forced-labor camps and 40’x40’ blast furnaces, then bang on babe!
In MPSIMS.
But if partisan bashing is going to continue in the guise of debate, then this board has lost that something special that drew me here in the first place, and I’ll go hang with Dittoheads and dream up dirty nasty tricks to play on the Gorons come next election.
This is, of course, just my opinion.
But I don’t think that I’m wrong.
ExTank
"Mostly Harmless 
*alright; I don’t like none o’ yas. That explains why I’ve been here so long. :rolleyes:
:note to self: Get a life, you :wally*
I just want you to know ExTank, that at that point in your post I got up out of this chair, went and got a cigar and beer, and thouroghly enjoyed the rest of your post. I really mean that.
My boss (fiance) is gone for a day, and that just seemed to be the perfect idea.
It made the rest of your post soooooo much smoother. I for one am happy that they will have to drag you out of here screaming and kicking. (don’t hurt’em too much:))
I don’t recall her having anything bad to say about members of the military. Care to provide a link? 'Cause if I see that, I’d have a few choice words for her most likely.
ExTank said:
And, if you bothered to pay attention, you’d see that you get such a higher standard. The fact that we don’t agree with your every whim doesn’t make us partisan – it makes you wrong. Sorry. Deal with it. But you’d be wrong whether you were a raving liberal or a selfish conservative.
As was explained to you once (do I need to type more slowly?), IMHO is not the place for political discussions/debates/arguments. That is what Great Debates is for. You don’t like what she says? Then debate her. You think it’s too stupid for words? Then leave her to wallow by herself or flame her in the Pit. You don’t like the fact that it’s in Great Debates? Tough shit. It has nothing to do with it being a liberal or a conservative topic. It has to do with its topic. And that topic belongs in Great Debates. I’m sorry you don’t seem to understand this, but there is little more I can do about that.
Partisan mudslinging is Great Debates. Or have you not been paying attention to the news lately? Or are you just plain advocating censorship of views you don’t like?
We’re already full up with impartiality. We’ve also had it up to here with assholes who think that “impartiality” means we should do whatever they whine about.
Gosh, now I see it all. We’ve had it all wrong from the beginning. We should never have decided what goes where. We should have always left it up to ExTank to make all the decisions for the SDMB.
Man, somebody give me a pin so I can pop this bugger’s ego.
Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. Buh-bye.
But you are.
I think David B is just trying to pad his pit thread count.
Sssshhhhhhhh!
I love the fact that exTank is taking the model for his form of protest from the Viet Nam protesters. I think spitting on soldiers just returned from a battle zone is a wonderful analogy for attacking moderators of this forum because you dislike the modus operandi of one poster.
Make sense, not war.
Man.
Tank, I like you and I respect you, but your call for impartiality schtick, here, is simply lame. stoidela got under your skin with some wide and wild generalizations and you’re now claiming that you only wanted her stuff moved because it was not truly a “debate”? I’m sorry, but ever since we got close to the elections, the volume of people on all points of the political spectrum has gone way up in GD, while the level of logic, balance, and facts has dropped to the floor. Claiming that only stoidela has been waving around gross, unsupported generalizations in GD is simply wrong. Despite a few noble hold-outs, the overwhelming number of partisan posters for the last three weeks have been little more than shrill shills for “their side.”
To claim that stoidela needs to be especially taken to task or that “partial” moderators have been “protecting” her is ludicrous.
Nobody is banning you (unless you are intending to become truly obnoxious on this point). On the other hand, your overreaction to one poster, out of the dozens who have been cluttering up the GD Forum with sweeping generalizations instead of facts is bordering on the lugubrious.
You’ve had your rant. I’d suggest letting it go.
Have we learned NOTHING in the past week? Yes, yes, DavidB has more THREADS devoted to him, but who has more overall FLAMES? Because if Manny has more FLAMES, then I think DavidB ought to just come right out and concede that Manny has taken the lead.
Ha! A count of individual flames will put the lead even more firmly in my hands! And that doesn’t even include the absentee flames from foreign message boards, which will fall overwhelmingly on my side.
Plus, I think David leads in total invective directed towrds him. Two of Manny’s threads were from Madhatter, and there are no “Manhattan is a sanctimonious prick” threads. So that seems to indicate a total of only three posters attacking Manny, with David still at six.
Not so fast, Tonto. Are you counting the “DavidB is a total a**hole” thread? Because I think you’d have to throw out that entire thread for being too vague. How do you know with 100% CERTAINTY that the poster wasn’t calling DavidB a total “ARMhole”? You can’t, can you? And once we begin applying subjectivity to the count, we’ve corrupted the entire process.
And then we have the confused posters who flamed DavidB in threads CLEARLY devoted to another moderator – for instance in the “Lynn Bodoni is a biased wench of a moderator” thread. Should that flame be counted towards Lynn or DavidB’s? In the quest for fairness, double flames should also be tossed out.
I was just counting based on who’s name was in the subject (and a brief check to ensure they were posting something that could be considered a complaint, if the subject was unclear). I repeat, the count stands at David B - 6; Manhattan - 4. If you want a damn recount, the search button is pretty accesible. I may go and try to get a court order preventing you from conducting a recount, though.
Here are the links for everything I found. Draw your own conclusions.
David B:
[List=1]
[li]Regarding DavidB[/li][li]a threat from David B.??[/li][li]DavidB should resign or be replaced[/li][li]Classic DavidB vs Contestant #3 clash in GD[/li][li]DavidB is a sanctimonious, condescending, pompous ass.[/li][li]David B. Is A Patronizing Weasel[/li][/list=1]
Manhattan:
[list=1]
[li]manhattan closing GQ threads[/li][li]manhattan, wtf?[/li][li]Why did everyone RUSH to back up Manhattan?[/li][li]Bite me gently, Manhattan and Lissener![/li][/list=1]
I have a pregnant chad of a pit rant against David B. I’ve been deliberating starting a new thread, but will probably save it against Manny the Mover taking the lead.
It’s a 3 part platform:
-
At some point DavidB became David B, didn’t he?
-
David B, perhaps sensing he is on shaky ground has not returned to substantiate his early allegations in the Conservative thread, thus depriving me of the technical victory even though I seem to enjoy the popular consensus.
-
David B does not propose his share of half-baked ideas. We’re supposed to be fighting ignorance, and in order to do so that means we need ignorance. David B is not contributing to the renewal of this valuable resource by providing others with fodder to exercise their logical skills.
I’m not sure this counts a s a pit thread though. Perhaps a committee can determine my intent.
In answer to no. 1, I don’t think so. Search turns up no DavidB, and before the conversion to vBulletin, one could not change the name that appeared on old posts. To the best of my recollection, he was David B before the switch, thus any other names he might have had would still be in the database.
Now if somebody wants that to count as a pit thread, they’ll have to copy and paste it into its own thread.
Hey goddamnit! Search for pit threads with me (beer) in the title. I found eight. Sorry, David, but you lose.