So, Demmies, make up your hive mind: Is it okay to compare politicians to Hitler, or not?
[HIVE] X> CONDEMN BUSH
INPUT ENEMY INTELLIGENCE
[HIVE] X> BUSH = HITLER
ERROR: LINE 666 {
BUSH != HITLER
}
DATA MISMATCH CANNOT PROCESS
FATAL SYSTEM ERROR
:dubious:
Of course not. It’s stupid, hysterical mudslinging that insults the memory of the millions murdered by the Nazis and seriously weakens the arguments made by the parties employing this cheap tactic. Hitler was an evil, genocidal maniac; Bush is just a corrupt boob.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot are all way off in describing Bush. Now, Warren G. Harding, an amiable, stupid politician who was blind to the grasping avarice of his administration (see Teapot Dome) or Woodrow Wilson, whose attorney general violated the Constitution in search of suspected subversives, would be much more apt comparisons.
Good question, Scylla.
I have another question, gobear: Why do you hate America?
Mhendo:
You did know that the actual “prize” for this contest is getting your ad nationally recognized, don’t you?
Which as is in the news right now, the winning ad, or the two Hitler ads? Which do you think has the more recognition?
These ads have gotten more than the winners. That’s not “squat,” but thanks for bringing it up.
And since you ask, I asked the question because I was curious. Do you have an answer?
Not at all. I simply hadn’t heard of Norquist’s interview or the Post’s editorial. If and when I hear or see them for myself, I will say bad things about them if they are as has been represented, if I see a thread on those topics and feel like participating.
Meanwhile, I will not be swayed by the “look he did something bad” tactic. This thread is specifically about Moveon and the RNC’s response.
That reasonable to you?
I find apologies pretty meaningless when they come with accusations of maliciousness and hostility. Does “I’m sorry. Fuck you!” sound like a meaningful apology to you?
Political criticism like… the… Hitler ad which was apparently reviewed for appropriateness and then published on Moveon’s web site?
I think it’s a good thing that we don’t have Hitler ads on the RNC website.
When it devolves to the level of ad hominem, I see no difference.
Nonsense. They sponsored the contest and provided the bandwith and the forum and they vetted the ad. To deny a connection between the organization and the content of it’s website is thick and dimwitted. I’m recognizing a couple of basic facts.
- Their contest.
- Their bandwith.
- Their website.
- They reviewed the contents prior to publication.
And yet you would have me beleive they have no responsibility or connection or culpability to what is said. I think you should look at your own thick dimwittedness in this before you cast the aspersion on another.
Because it’s a bullshit excuse and attempt to weasel out. If you come into my house with a sniper rifle and tell me you intend to shoot at school children and I help you do it, I am jointly responsible for your actions.
Move on solicited these ads. Offered a prize and reviewed them prior to publication.
Trying to distance themselves now is like climbing naked off of somebody’s wife in a bed at 3 o’clock in mid flagrante delicto and claiming a “regrettable accident.” “Yes sir, I slipped on a banana peel, then my clothes fell off and then I landed naked on your wife.”
That’s a great example. You see NBC is responsible for the content that is aired on their network. The fact that it’s produced by a third party has no bearing on this. Much network content is produced and owned by third parties.
By choosing to put it on the air, NBC accepts legal responsibility for the content.
I think this is an untruth. Please show me a specific quote by the RNC or their spokesperson(s) showing this.
I agree. The idea that we’ll see any this election is pretty ridiculous.
Ok cool. I can respect your different perspective. It seems to me, beleiving what you do, you should be pretty clearly in support of Bush and in denouncement of all those associated with the ad in question as well as those stupid enough to allow it to be published on Moveon’s website, as far as this one and only one particular issue goes
Jeebus Scylla, how many times to I have to apologize for that before you stop bringing it up?
Couple a minor points here. First off, the RNC has posted on of the ads for our perusal. Pretty stupid, IMO. Gotta say, all of this would have been a lot weirder if that had been one of the finalists. The other one, as referenced in above and in Buzzflash seem pretty innocuous. It just goes into that Goebbels quote about scaring folks out of thier rights, but not much more than that. No visuals offered, so they may be a mosaic of Bush’s face made entirely of swastikas, but so far, pretty harmless shit.
So we got one, count 'em one! out of the 1,500 submissions that stinks the place up. Bigga fukka deal!
So you gotta wonder, don’t you, how it is that the RNC managed to find itself in such high dudgeon. Or would that be Drudgeon? Since the stinker in question was destined for oblivion, how, exactly did anyone hear about it who was not intentionally seeking something to be outraged about! The RNC finds itself in the interesting position of bitching about something on a website it clearly knows is partisan, and screaming for abject apologys from everybody. Like they don’t know what to expect?
Hokily Dokily, fairs fair. I don’t know the way to Freepers pages, but I’ll Family Jewel Alpha some of you do. Whaddaya wanna bet we can find something there at least as scurrillous as the aforementioned stinker?
Well aren’t they sponsoring it? Aren’t they supporting it? Aren’t bleating cries of self-abnegaton demanded? In the interests of fairness, and all?
Second point - how interesting that they got so many entries! I got two bits says they were not suspecting that they would have so many to screen! I think if I were them, I might expect a couple of hundred, tops. Or even for it to thud to the ground, dead as a doornail. But no.
1,500 entries in a contest for ads against GW. And some of them in my estimation, are pretty spiffy. Cogent, precise, and, most importantly perhaps, utterly devoid of hysteria, and well armed with honed wit. Do avail yourself, if you’ve a mind to (Not you, friend Scylla, your health is rather delicate of late…my reputation is bad enough without sending someone to the cardiac ward…)
Oh, yeah, almost forgot. The people who did these 1,500 entries? Did them for free, didn’t they? Hmmmmm. Interesting.
PS: if you’re checking them out, they take a long time to download. But with some players you can start it playing almost as soon as it starts to load, and that saves time. Several of them are well worth the looking (and a couple look like those TV ads where the owner of the car lot wants to be on TV…)
Yep, I deserve that (I know you’re kidding, but I really have it coming.) I was rabidly pro-war because I had the assurance that the military knew there was a real threat to our nation from Saddam. Turns out they were lied to, so their info was, well, wrong.
I still believe that toppling a vicious dictator was the right thing to do, but not lying about the reasons we went to war, or the callous indifference paid to the welfare of the people we were supposedly “liberating.” I supported the war because I believed that the Bush administration had a well-thought-out plan to install a just goverment in Iraq and an organized exit strategy for our military. Turns out they didn’t. What’s the benefit to the Iraqi people if we exchange tyranny for anarchy?
I tried to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, but he’s a cheap, lying sonofabitch who needs to get kicked out of office.
Gobear:
Just for fun:
I’m afraid you’re right.
I believe this is obviously false.
I don’t know about this enough to comment.
These tax cuts were instituted in response to a crippling collapse in the economy that occured during an irresponsible speculative bubble in an overheated economy that occured under the previous President. Not that I’m blaming the previous President, I’m not. But, you can hardly blame Bush for the economic collapse.
These tax cuts have pulled the economy out of recession into the fastest growth in 20 years, restored the NASDAQ to a two year high, and saved us from economic disaster.
That’s what they say. Too general to discuss. I happen to agree that environmentalism is not a Bush strong point, though.
Sorry, Bud. Enron happened on Clinton’s watch, as did Tyco and El Paso and the whole Dot com defraud the investor’s thing. The dirty laundry just didn’t show up until Bush was in office and Clinton was gone. It’s not really Clinton’s fault either, but if you want to blame the person under whose watch it occured you can’t blame Bush.
Too general to discuss.
All that and more!
Indeed I am, and possibly you do.
You will find no argument here.
I could have written that paragraph, were I able to write so eloquently, so we find ourselves in agreement. However, we seem to be getting off the subject a bit, don’t we?
Ah, back on topic.
Scylla, you fail to acknowledge that A)Move-On did not produce or sponsor the Hitler ads. All they did was post it on their web site, which they apologized for.
But we are agreed that GOP-Nazi comparisons are way inappropriate, [sub]unless Ashcroft begins tossing Arab-Americans into boxcars and shipping them off to death camps, of course[/sub]
**
I agree they did not produce it, but they clearly sponsored it, I mean they had the contest, vetted the ad and supplied the bandwith and storage and forum for it for free. I call that “sponsoring.”
As for the apology. Well, you can’t call somebody vicious malicious and hostile and then apology for comparisons of them to Hitler in the same breath and really mean it, in my book.
Well, that’s something.
How is pointing out differences between Hitler and Bush a “comparison”?
I don’t think Bush is Hitler. Sigh. Sorry I have to provide a gloss on such cryptic irony.
But being unlike Hitler doesn’t qualify a person to be president. I’m sorry if the best thing you can say about your man is that he’s not Hitler.
–
Off the point, but:
I often wonder if two men at a Berlin coffee shop in 1929 or so are talking politics, and one of them says, “you know this place is turning into Nazi Germany!”
And the other one says, “come on, don’t exaggerate!”
I can imagine some fucking intern was paid to root around on moveon and find the most objectionable ad of 1500. I guarantee someone was ASSIGNED to that task. “Chip, we need you to stay late and watch every one of these ads on the MoveOn site so we can spin it.”
“Yes, Senator!”
Premidated outrage. Non-issue. Considering the shit that was available on the Web, Bush gets off easy.
Yes. And which of the Hitler ads is currently in line for such a prize, or was in line for such a prize when the RNC’s statement was posted yesterday? That’s right, neither.
Well, if you’re talking about right now, who is responsible for the Hitler ads being in the news right now? Those ads no longer even appear on the MoveOn website. If these ads have wider publicity right now, it’s thanks to the RNC.
And referring to the other ads as the winners is incorrect. They are the finalists, there will only be one winner, and if that winner makes it onto primetime national television, you can be sure it will have greater exposure than the two Hitler ads.
An answer to what? You asked elucidator if he had a cite for his claim that the two ads didn’t make the cut, and thus “got what they deserved: squat.” I would think that the absence of these ads in the final fifteen is reasonable evidence of this.
Exactly. And a key aspect of the RNC’s response is the hypocrisy attendant upon the fact that it fails to condemn such behaviour when it comes from conservatives.
You still can’t comprehend, can you, that MoveOn’s error in placing the ads on its website, and the RNC’s misrepresentation of the circumstances surrounding the ads are two separate issues? MoveOn apologized for the poor judgement, but an admission of guilt on this issue by MoveOn does not absolve the RNC of responsibility for its disingenuousness.
You find it very convenient to continually shift the focus from the competition as a whole to those two ads, don’t you. It should have been obvious to even the most dimwitted that my comment about political strategy was being applied to the competition in its entirety. In fact, my own comment was made in response to one by you, in which you say: “The purpose of this contest is mudslinging against Bush.” You referred to the contest as a whole, and i responded in kind. It’s disingenuous of you to now imply that my reference to political strategy was only to the Hitler ads. Been taking lessons from the RNC, have you?
Nice non-sequitur.
That’s right, i forgot. Any questioning of Bush’s policies, no matter how strongly bolstered by evidence, is, by definition, an ad hominem attack your eyes.
Show where i, or MoveOn for that matter, denied a connection, or responsibility for the ads being on the site. What i was referrring to, and what MoveOn was concerned about, was the disingenuousness of the RNC is failing to point out that MoveOn did not, in fact, make any financial contribution to the production of the ads, nor did they have control over the content.
They did have control over which ads to show on theuir website, and they admitted to making an error in exercising this control.
Weasel out of what? You keep implying that MoveOn denies any connection at all to the ad, or any responsibility for its appearance on the website, when MoveOn has explicitly accepted the association. This does not excuse the RNC’s misrepresentation of the situation.
You’re the master of the inappropriate analogy, aren’t you? Your stupid example has the culprit trying to claim that the situation resulted from circumstances beyond his control, whereas MoveOn admitted openly that the circumstances were under its control, and that it fucked up. MoveOn acknowledged an inadequate screening process, explicitly accepting responsibility for doing something they should not have done.
Yes, they are rsponsible for airing the content and for checking it beforehand. By doing this, they accept responsibilty for the content. But accepting responsibility for it after the fact is not the same thing as claiming responsibility for creating it. That’s why, when you see infomercials on air, the stations say that “The following does not necessarily represented the views of NBC.” The station accepts responsibility for the content of the ad, but distances itself from the production. Furthermore, who really thinks that the appearance of an ad on NBC constitutes actual endorsement of the product by NBC? I saw an ad for Chevy, and one for Ford, on the same station tonight. Does that mean that the station endorses both products, and supports the claims made for them?
It’s a lie of ommission. As i said before:
If you believe that the RNC’s statement constitute a good faith account of the whole situation, that’s your prerogative. I don’t share your opinion.
The RNC is far more at fault here than MoveOn. Anyone who can’t admit that the RNC account of the situation is a despicable piece of knowing spin is warped beyond my comprehension.
Is it so hard to realize that there is a market for manufacturing outrage by abusing the truth, and that both parties are heavy players in this market? It doesn’t seem so hard to realize when the Democratzis are doing it (in fact, that’s where the Bush-as-Hitler hyperbole comes from), why do people continue to be taken in when the RNC does it? Politicians? Spinning? No…
Just as a point of mild interest, I voted on about 250 of the ads, including the “Sound familiar?” one. I distinctly recall that it had a very low average mark, something around 1.6, where most of the high quality productions were getting 2.9-3.9 average.
This whole bruhaha is manipulative, deceptive bullshit on the part of the RNC. In case anyone wasn’t sure.
Nice to see they are so scared of little 'ol Moveon.org, tho.
What was it, 40 square miles? And how many people do we have in those 40 square miles? And when was the last time we told our purported allies in Pakistan that they can suck our dicks, because we’re going in to obliterate the motherfucker and anybody who gets in our way?
But then again, maybe Saddam will tell us where he is.