Good Lord, I hope selling diapers is a non-trivial reason or that the people who made that commercial I saw last night were patient enough to wait until the baby started crying. But then those monsters just left him lying there bawling while they filmed his discomfort!
[republican moment] Oh, wait–that was for a business purpose and we all know that there is NOTHING untrivial about business! [/republican moment]
Random, Bricker, John Mace, and Shodan, if I had EVER heard you four being nearly so concerned about the TEN MILLION children who die each year of preventable causes I would have more respect for you and sympathy for your position.
[republican moment] No–wait–that’s UNICEF’s number and we all know how evil the UN is! [/republican moment]
As it stands, I have lost all respect I’ve ever had for you guys. With Bricker and, especially, Shodan I never had much, but to see Randon shilling for them is particularly disgusting. By lying about your own concern for the welfare of children–and to be up in arms about this photographer’s methods while not screaming louder in defense of those ten million proves your insincerity and, dare I say, the completely political basis for your outrage–proves how sickeningly political you are. You couldn’t care less about the kids in those photos. You just want to score political points in some imaginary game.
I am ashamed to belong to the same species as you.
Oh, and to those who point out that my [republican moments] qualify as “scoring political points in some imaginary game,” I would like to remind you that I’ve never been consistent.
I do, too, but often fail. I use the excuse that, as a Gemini, I was born to be flaky, pretending to believe in astrology. The astrologers nod sagely and the skeptics roll their eyes, resolving to put me on their ignore lists.
They fumed, gnashed teeth, fulminated, gesticulated, flecked spittle and sold books to one another.
Then they looked around at one another, stared at their shoes, muttered occasionally, and started looking at their watches. Some began wondering if it was possible to recover a metaphorical plowshare from a metaphorical sword.
Someone in the back of the crowd yelled out “Remember Ward Churchill!” and a wave of mild interest and a nostalgic semblance of pseudo-outrage swept through the crowd, but only briefly.
Someone else on the periphery of the crowd shouted “The War in Ir…” but before he could get the words out he was beaten senseless by a barrage of old deferment papers and new keyboards, lest any thought occur to the crowd.
Then, apparently, someone said that a liberal somewhere was making babies cry in order to bash Bush. A wave of fury re-invigorated the now-dwindling mob, and they marched off again, some with laptops furiously buzzing about the liberal War on Children, which they saw would dovetail nicely with the established fact that Democrats were the Party of Death.
Nor did I, but I changed my mind upon him listing pretty much everyone who disagreed with him as evidence that he was right as to the “giving of a pass” and the implied motive for said giving. See Post 91
I consider this point a False Dilemma. In this mistake I think you are entangled unfairly because there was no way to re-state Bricker’s position without using the False Dilemma because it was the core of the entire line of arguement. Either denounce the actions of the photographer, or admit overwhelming bias against the target of her statement.
Let’s presume a hypothetical person real quick. This person believes the best judge and advocate for the health, safety, and happiness of a baby is the child’s parents. Upon reading the article in the OP, this person says “their parents were involved, informed, and consented. That’s good enough for me.” Would said person be a sociopath? A rabid Bush-basher? Something else?
As noted by Gorsnak, the word “torment” has a very strong connotation and while the literal meaning encompasses the actions, it may be bad usage here. If we get into reasons for PBM, aside from the one so nicely gift-wrapped in the thread title, then we’re at another False Dilemma. Let’s take another hypothetical person. This person believes in the freedom of artists to explore their creativity is very important. They aren’t willing to use qualifiers like “meaningful” or “artistic” because all art is subjective and what looks like trite crap to one person(canned fecal matter anyone?) is high art to others. So they are unwilling to judge the photographer because of this deeply held belief in artistic freedom. Are they a sociopath? Bush-basher?
Well, unless you fall into one of the two classes of hypothetical people I enumerated above, or any of tens of thousands of other unenumerated, yet not sociopathic, positions which would make the artist’s procedure unobjectionable.
Meh. “trite, lame and stupid” are in the eye of the beholder. I would personally agree with the assessment, but it isn’t for me to say my artistic views are solid enough to be a “true” premise in a chain of logical reasoning.
Lots of art makes anti-Bush points. Listened to any Green Day, or Dixie Chicks recently? Art as a political statement has a history dating back hundreds of years. Political cartoons can be found in pretty much every newspaper on the planet. Many of them are making anti-Politician-du-jour statements, often stupid, lame, and trite(in someone’s opinion at least).
Who are these “True Believers”? All the people who had posted any non-negative reactions to the photo spread? All the people Bricker quoted statements from when pressed to reveal who he thought was blinded by partisanship? I’d hazard a guess that a fair number of them were confused by a poorly constructed OP(see Jackmannii’s excellent analysis in Post 372 of this thread). Some of the others probably fell into one or more of the categories of respondents I identified earlier, or some other non-sociopath, non-rabid-anti-Bush, category.
Again, meh. Personal judgement on an aesthetic topic is not a sound premise for a chain of logic.
I think you’re conflating a few different reactions here. Supporting the freedom for artists to follow their muse, even to places which make us uncomfortable, is one. Deference to first-hand parental judgement, another. No one has thus far said “I’m going to send her a big fat check!” or “I want to be her assistant so I can be part of such noble work!” or anything of the sort. Supporting freedom is not the same as supporting every individual act made possible by that freedom. If it were then everyone who believes the second amendment creates an indivdiual right to bear arms should be prosecuted as accessories to murder.
I think most of the outrage was due to the implicit accusation in the OP, and more explicit accusations later on, of being partisan shills or dominated by such base motives as antipathy to Bush. Another sizeable chunk was confused about exactly what the OP meant and, because it is a hot-button topic(anything involving mistreatment of children always is) were firing off posts trying to get clarification. Others, like SkipMagic, or tomndebb were doing their own thing, joking and factoiding as they felt appropriate.
Whoa there! Hang on a second. What evidence do you have that people who said they were ok with what the PBM in question for non-partisan reasons actually had other, irrational, reasons they didn’t want to state? This statement is nothing less than an accusation of lying and it should be substantiated or withdrawn if your goal is honest debate. I would agree with the statement on general principles, but without evidence that it happened here, in this thread, with these participants, then it is a Irrelevant Conclusion.
Crap, we’re getting deep into mind-reading now. Now we are distinguishing between what a person “believes” is motivating them and what is truly motivating them? I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with this conclusion. I have pointed out many issues I have with the premises it is based on, and taking it to the level of determining the “real” motives of a person posting on a message board is highly dubious.
In short, I remain unconvinced that Bricker A) has a valid view of how a moral and reasonable person “should” react to this artist’s actions B) correctly identified and comprehended the actual reactions of his fellow SDMB posters C) was interested in an honest discussion to begin with.
Thank you for the discussion though. It has been refreshing.
Funny you should mention that, as I was going to reply to crowmanyclouds with a link to that thread and this follow-up one, to let him know that the War on Christmas was once and for all conceded as non-existent by our beloved Bricker.
Yeah, but the joke was on good ol’ Joe, because Rudolph’s nose exploded, showering Joe in a fiery, napalm like substance. Now he’s so horribly mangled that he won’t come out from under Barbie’s Dream Bed.
Random, your defense of the OP is interesting and well-constructed, and I appreciate the compliments–but I still disagree with it.
Yes, I think it’s a bit peculiar to offer a child a lollipop, take it away in order to cause crying, and then give it back, for no reason. The thing is, that’s impossible: people always do things for reasons, whether or not they’re aware of them.
And whatever the reason someone has for doing this, the discomfort caused to the child is such that, by itself, regardless of the reason for doing so, I don’t care about it.
Your argument fails on this point: were these photographs taken for anti-Democratic purposes, I’d object to the purpose of the photographs. But I still wouldn’t get upset about the momentary sadness on the part of the children. In other words, the crappy reason for causing the discomfort doesn’t matter to me.
As an aside, endnotes drive me up the wall, especially on a long post: I don’t want to have to scroll up and down constantly to follow an argument.
Yes, but I’m not sure I had the authority to bind anyone to my concession besides myself. If John Gibson is still up in arms about it, it ain’t my failt.
How did you get his controllers to set you up like that?