Hm. And here I thought I was on to something original. Well, hers is better worded, and more to the point.
As opposed to all those lefties who are calling for the elimination of the military and our immediate surrender to al Qaeda. :rolleyes:
I guess there’s a perception problem here, in that the ultra-right-wing tend to be the ones who use hate-filled language against racial minorities, national origin, gender-orientation, etc. If we cut off the extremes of the spectrum, I’d say that both conservatives and liberals find hate-filled language opprobrious. Thus, finding most people objecting to such language does not mean the board membership is left-of-center, it means that there aren’t a lot of the extreme right here.
The question of when langauge is hate-filled, of course, is a different question altogether.
I wish I bought stock in Home Depot and 84 Lumber what with this huge run on conservative cross-making. There probably hasn’t been a run on lumber like this since the last hurricane threat…
I don’t really know how other members came to register at the SDMB - for that matter, I can’t really remember how even I came to register! - but if I had to make a wild guess, I would say that many are Cecil’s fans, and follow his column, perhaps online, and wandered over to the message board from there. Cecil’s column began in a then very left-wing paper, the Chicago Reader (which is/was kind of like the Village Voice), and so the membership here has probably always had a left-wing slant. Other times I think there are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands - students; unemployed techies; writers; freelancers; etc., i.e., people who likely stand to gain a lot more from liberal policies than conservative ones. Many of them are also young and angry.
Since I haven’t been around that long here, I can’t say whether any changes have happened lately which have skewed the Boards one way or the other, since I really don’t know how the Boards USED to be.
I do think this Board is WAY left-wing, not that that fact bothers me at all. I enjoy the outrageousness.
Some people are an embarassment to what “conservative” really should mean, IMO. A big embarassment. Others are a big embarassment to what “liberal” really should mean, IMO. Sadly, people see only two camps, and try to force their square peg into either the circle or the triangle, whichever is closer to them that day.
Democrats aren’t 100% liberals, nor are Republicans 100% conservatives. In fact in several areas I really am at a loss to see why one side holds the viewpoint they do. Such as Democrats and gun control and States rights, and Republicans and abortion and gay/lesbian/TS rights and status. For some reason this has always seemed wrong to me, and reading 20,000 threads in GD has not changed my mind on this.
I’m not going to debate these in any level of detail, and I’m not challenging anyone or their viewpoint. It’s entirely IMO as befits most things outside of GQ and GD.
Is this true? I thought the Chicago Reader was just a benign entertainment weekly.
The READER was (and remains) an “alternative” newspaper. As such, it tended to more avant-garde tastes. I don’t know that avant-garde necessarily means “left-wing”, although there can be some correlation, I suppose.
I believe there are several factors at work here.
First, as C K Dexter Haven points out, the READER is a magazine that probably has more readers on the ‘left’ than the right’. That adds one bias to the pool of potential users of the SDMB.
Another factor in Great Debates anyway, is that there is a core of very vocal lefty assholes who are abusive to people on the right, and pat fellow lefties on the back. So when people drop in here at random, the righties are probably more likely to say, “Screw this” and go elsewhere, and the lefties are more likely to say, “cool place” and stick around. There was a new user called “The Republican” that showed up here a week or so ago. He was mercilessly attacked for relatively trivial offenses. He was “pitted in advance” of him saying anything pittable. In short, he was treated shamefully. And I notice he hasn’t come back in a while. Mission accomplished.
For a long time, Great Debates was absolutely out of control due to one Collounsbury. If someone came along and posted a pro-war message, he would immediately get treated to a, “you-are-a-fucking-idiot-who-should-shut-his-fucking-mouth-until-he-gets-a-fucking-clue” profanity-laden rant, complete with pile-ons by the lesser lights of the anti-war crowd. This probably caused a lot of pro-war people to either go away, or just stop debating. It had a chilling effect.
Another factor: Great Debates, at least, is relatively well balanced ideologically on economic issues and social issues. But it is heavily anti-war. So to the extent that the war gets so much attention, the board is going to look more ideologically skewed than it really is. Plus, the other non-war threads are much more civil, which no doubt causes more conservative types to come out of hiding.
Finally, there’s just inertia to these things. If a board, for whatever reason, develops a slight leftward or rightward tilt, it naturally becomes more appealing to people of the same political persuation that stop by. So I would expect this place to get even more liberal over time.
Avant-garde has a French etymology and you question if it corrolates to “left-wing”? Hmmm… I’ll have to meditate on the idea while I eat my Freedom fries.
Left Wingers just have more free time between their protests and peacenik singalongs to post on the board. Right Wingers typically have jam-packed schedules, what with their wine-tastings, board meetings, box socials, and just plain sitting around their opulent mansion enjoying their luxury. Of COURSE there’s gonna be a smaller right-wing presence here!
Not to mention all that time it takes to hunt down the orphans, puppies, and kittens they grind up to lubricate their bomb factories and oil refineries.
Ack! Re-reading my OP, perhaps I should explain that everything from where it says I believe and onward was just used as an illustration of what I personally believe in. I never meant anyone to think that I was either left OR right wing!
I still think that the (so called) PC Police here are growing in number. I should NOT have used the term Left Wingers though…I should have, maybem said the happy, touchy-feely, it-isn’t-their-fault-that-they-did-it-so-why-punish-them-so-hottibly crowd.
Then again…maybe not.
Hottiby?
Forget it, he’s rolling.
Hey, Sam, you got a typo there. Lemme help you fix it up:
“For a long time, Great Debates was absolutely out of control due to one december. He wasted valuable resources by posting right-wing screeds thinly disguised as subjects for “debate,” only to scurry away like a frightened rat when his distortions and slant was called on. Unfortunately, the folks who were fighting his ignorance were often subjected to pile-ons by the lesser lights of the conservative wing, who found any disagreement with their view as ‘evidence’ of the board’s ‘liberal slant’.”
Much better, don’cha think? 
Nah, I figure they’d just have their servants do it.
Still singing “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me” there, Sammy? Even after having the Spokesadministrator call you a “fucking paranoid loony”?
Here’s the scoop: For december, not only his banning but the derision he constantly received were due not to his views but to his behavior. The derision you constantly receive is due not to your views but to your behavior.
Say hello to Barabbas up there, willya?
Cite?
I seem to recall the admin saying that the paranoid loonies were those who thought the mods were a bunch of Stalinist lefties who axed december because of his politics. That’s NOT my opinion.
But I never could count on you to accurately represent my opinion, so why start now?
And I don’t recall mentioning december in this thread. Could you help me out there? I mentioned one “The Republican”, who was hounded mercilessly right from the get-go, including a lovely pitting-without-reason, on the assumption that he would need to be pitted soon anyway, so why not get a head start? The fact is, you and a handful of others are a bunch of nasty, intolerant bastards. It has nothing to do with your political point of view. I’m sure if you were a right-handed Rosicrucian, you’d be a nasty right-handed Rosocrucian bastard. It’s just in your nature.
Without questioning the veracity of the claim made, I think this actually disproves any sort of liberal tilt in this board. Why? Simple. The war issue is likely the one to draw the largest number of international posters, which, added to an even split between Conservative/Liberal posters on the other issues you mention, would explain that particular tilt. Beyond that, you have the fact that America is the most conservative of the developed nations in the world, thus rendering the lib/conservative terms almost meaningless elsewhere, one need not be particularly “lefty” or “righty” to oppose the Iraq invasion outside the US.
So, on the particular issue what you have is the 50% of American liberals on board, joined, by what can be considered almost by definition, non-partisan foreigners, in condemning the Neo Conservatives naked power play. Opposition that ran at a 70-80% clip or better in most of the rest of the world.
Of course, what infuriates people like Sam, is that he apparently thinks opposing this particular strain of Foreign Policy by Thundering Troglodytes, is akin to promoting Peace and Love, Kumbaya-singing, Hippy Communist Communes. Odd that, being that the majority of his own countrymates didn’t exactly lockstep into place.
Perhaps if he fired a doobie from the community stash and played some Allman Brothers tunes he’d find new meaning in his constant navel-gazing 
Those were the good old days!
No, the problem with you is that you think people supporting the war are ‘thundering troglodytes’.
And the majority of my province-mates DID support the war. 69% of them, in fact. Of course, I live in Alberta, a veritable sea of thundering troglodytes.
As for the Allman Brothers, I love Live at the Fillmore East, although their best studio album is probably Idlewild South. You just can’t beat a good rendition of “Hoochie Coochie Man”.
Perhaps you should also lay off the stereotypes.