http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17857781&postcount=7
Where’s the line on that rule? Can we talk crap about Putin? Kim Jong-un? The president of Uzbekistan? Or does it only apply to Israel?
The line is, don’t take political jabs in General Questions. It’s not a particularly difficult one to understand. Context, as always, is significant. Israel is clearly important in US politics, and calling Netanyahu “chickenshit” is obviously a political jab. Comments on other leaders may or not be political depending on context. For example, commenting on Putin’s policy in the Ukraine would be (when it’s not relevant to the thread), while mentioning his propensity to go shirtless would not.
While I understand the comment was based on a controversy due to the alleged use of the word by a US official to describe Netanyahu, that itself was a political jab. Simply repeating someone else’s political jab doesn’t make it less of a political jab.
Obviously?
What about Canadian leaders? Is Rob Ford off limits?
Saudi Arabia is pretty important too, does that mean no jokes about the Sauds?
Do you have a link to examples?
As I said, context is important. There’s no point in discussing hypotheticals. Whether it’s a political jab will depend on the comment and the subject of the thread.
We have the example of someone calling Netanyahu a chickenshit. Let’s just take that in isolation, outside of the context of the Atlantic story. What makes it a political jab? Why would commenting on Putin going shirtless be a political jab? I don’t see how politics enter into it. Even if insults of Putin were partisan in nature, say based on anti-communist beliefs, so what?
I disagree. In this context, repeating the political jab was not a jab itself, but an allusion to what was going on. With a tiny bit more context, it would have been a constructive post (I didn’t know about the controversy prior to this thread); with only the context given, it was just a joke based off of the controversy, the kind of joke that could be made also by Netanyahu supporters who think a lot of Israelis have a wry sense of humor.
Edit: I also understand if that’s too fine a hair to split, and it’s easier just to avoid this kind of joke, even if not intended as a jab.
It’s an off topic insult about a politician in General Questions. (As it turns out it wasn’t completely off topic, but we’ll ignore that for now) It would inappropriate in GQ regardless of who was the subject of the insult, but political insults are the most common.
As I’ve repeatedly said, context is important. You can’t take the remark in isolation.
Please re-read what I actually said. I said that was an example of a remark that might not be a political jab.
It doesn’t really matter if it was intended as a wry joke. The fact that on the face of it it was a political jab made it deserving of a mod note.
Exactly. The point of the rule is to prevent threads from being derailed by people objecting to or retaliating against the comment. So regardless of the poster’s intention, a reminder of the rule is in order.
What I mean is, say someone simply expressed their opinion that Netanyahu is a chickenshit. Why is that an impermissible political jab?
If that’s not obvious to you, I don’t think explaining it to you would do any good.
I also have a hard time imaging how such a remark would come up casually in conversation in a GQ thread.
?מה זאת המילה ציקנשיט
The poster should have identified the story behind the question in the OP instead of just posting the name of the politician, and noting else. I knew about the story, and saw immediately why he posted the name, but he shouldn’t have assumed everyone knew. It was a very recent news story. Without knowledge of the story and without reference to the story, that post could be read different ways.
GQ has had a zero-tolerance rule for political jabs of any sort since about 2002. Manny mass banned about 5 posters (later reinstated) for ignoring the rule early on to show how serious it was.
This rule has prevented GQ from gaining the obnoxious political jabs that all the other forums always get around this type of year.
It’s a great rule, it’s 100% clear, and this ruling is almost* 100% consistent with all previous history.
*Frankly, it should have been a warning.
First of all, I can’t imagine when calling ANYONE a chickenshit in GQ would be OK, be they a politician or a baseball player. How could that be anything but an opinion that would be inviting a hijack at best, or trolling at worst.
Secondly, it’ pretty obvious this is still a grey area with some individuals (can we make fun of Kim Jung Il?), but when it’s a politician who’s at least a nominal US ally, I think common sense says keep your opinions out of GQ.
Yes, that’s true, but to be fair it was only on Thursdays and he let the dog out first.
Leo. No warning, not even a moderator Note. Just a request that you and others post in English.
It’s only because you could have been posting something like “Fuck all the mods on this board” in Hebrew.
Honestly, I don’t know why that thread is in GQ. It feels like the whole point is to comment on the Netanyahu affair. But, it was posted in GQ, it needs to be a GQ thread. That means explaining the background for why the question arises would be acceptable, but dropping the one word response in quotes like that is a joke in the form of a political jab. Ergo, it doesn’t belong in a GQ thread.
Better than in ATMB.
samclem, thank you for your forbearance. Since you and aldiboronti, in his response, are aware of my meaning and others still may not, I ran it through Google translate to check, assuming others would choose that route. FTR, the result was “Mover crafts fluff feels.” Close enough.
Addendum to above: someone with fluent Hebrew (unlike me), surely Alessan, could validate my judgement-- and of course find interesting – this cross-check of the Google translation of this entire thread into Hebrew.