Mr. Moto's Misrepresentations

The BBQ Pit
1

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, dude.

In the “Tom DeLay’s Goon Squad” thread (link above), Mr. Moto said to me:

I was taken aback by this, needless to say. I couldn’t remember Mr. Moto having described the incident in question, and I certainly hoped I hadn’t been callously dismissive of the bahavior of goons who “pushed and shoved me, broke my signs, and groped the young woman I was with.”

I’ve found those three threads, Mr. Moto.

In a thread about “free speech zones” back in 2002, you said in post #19, “I’ve had anti-Clinton signs torn from my hands and have been physically intimidated by union goons at a Clinton rally.”

My first and only post in the thread was a response to something Libertarian said in post #3. Did I read past that point in the thread? Damned if I can remember; that was three and a half years ago. But it’s doubtful, considering that Lib responded about 20 minutes later, commencing with “RT brayed…” and it’s hard to believe I’d have left that alone if I’d read it.

The third instance was in the “Question for liberal dopers age 50 to 55” thread last summer. This thread asked what the Reagan years were like for Democrats. In post #110, you said, “Well, I attended a Clinton rally without signing one once, carrying a Bush sign. I wound up getting roughed up by union goons.” You see any posts by me on page 3 (the last page, btw) of that thread? Neither do I.

The second of the three threads, a July 2004 thread about the “free speech” zone at the Democratic Convention that year, is the only such thread where I responded to anything posted after your description of this incident (post #103, in this case). The record will show that I was in yet another back-and-forth with Liberal (a bad habit of mine, back then), and that seems to have been my sole focus in the thread. I have no idea whether I simply overlooked your post, or whether I noticed it, but just didn’t add my megadittoes to what MaxTheVool and mhendo had already said.

Did I say anything even remotely suggesting that I condoned the union goons’ (the right word, IMHO) behavior? Hell, no! There’s no reason to believe I even saw two of your three posts about this incident, and in the third case, there were good reasons why I might have either (a) not noticed your post, or (b) noticed but not responded. In any event, a bunch of other posters of a variety of political persuasions, including a number of conservatives, seem to have failed your test in that thread.

You’re apparently accusing me of hypocrisy on the basis of, well, nothing. But you’re trying your hardest to make it look like something, on the assumption that nobody’s gonna check.

So when you say:

I say:

Fuck you, and the horse you’re hopefully riding out of here on.

2

I didn’t intend that post to be a hostile one. I just wanted to see if your outrage at incidents like this is general, or if your ears only perk up if certain people do it.

Now I find out that you don’t really pay attention to threads that you post in, so I’ll give you a pass, and note your inattentiveness.

3

Frankly, RT, I didn’t see Moto’s post as an accusation of anything. Just an inquiry. And it seems fair to me that if he remembers your participation in those threads that the inquiry is justified. Rather unlike this pit thread.

4

Moto lied. Bears shit in woods. News at 11:00…

5

You were leaving, weren’t you?

6

I think you’ve got a fair point as regards the first and third threads – you didn’t participate after the post Mr Moto made, so there’s no reasonable inference that you read his post and chose not to comment.

However, the second thread, the July 2004 one, does seem to fit precisely with what Mr Moto said. He posted something, you ignored it, even though you were clearly in the thread after his post. Now, you say you were myopically focused on Liberal’s posts, and I have no particular reason to doubt the truth of that. But it’s equall true that, as Mr Moto claimed:

That’s a reasonable inference on his part. You can, of course, rebut that inference as you have, by explaining you simply didn’t read the post, even though you read others in the thread. But it doesn’t make Moto a liar to say it.

7

It was certainly a rather pointed question: ‘you didn’t condemn X when someone on your side did it, but you were quick enough to condemn it when someone on the other side did it.’ - “Does it only raise your hackles when someone on your “list” does it?”

Nothing hostile about that, nosir. (And the same comment’s directed at you too, Unc. That’s a strange notion of “just an inquiry,” y’know? Exactly how isn’t that an accusation of onesidedness and hypocrisy??

That language was clearly suggesting that the burden of proof was on me to show why I wasn’t a bleeding hypocrite. When I went looking for those threads, I was racking my brain, trying to remember just what I might’ve said to suggest I was soft on union goons.

Now I find that that implication of hypocrisy was based on my having said nothing at all - and really no reason to believe I should have.

I should point out, Moto, that you said:

You neglected to tell anyone that in two of those threads, there’s no reason to believe I was still participating when you posted. And the tenor of those remarks left the impression that I’d participated in a discussion about your maltreatment without condemning it, which wasn’t the case.

As you well know, a SDMB thread quite often has several only somewhat related discussions going on in it. It is not that abnormal, I expect, for posters to skim a thread for new posts pertaining to the threads of the discussion that they’re actually participating in. At any rate, it’s clear that many posters are only actively paticipating in some, rather than all, of the discussions going on in a thread; whether or not they’re reading the less germane posts isn’t apparent.

If I hadn’t participated in the part of the discussion pertaining to your maltreatment, what exactly was the reason for the question at all?

And is it too much to expect you to go back and read the threads on which your accusation was based, before making it? Apparently so.

What swill.

So what’s this - an expectation that once you post in a thread, you (a) stay with it until it dies, and (b) read every post in it, whether or not it’s related to whatever thread of the discussion you’re actually participating in?

That’s bullshit. I see you’re willing to base a new insult on such bullshit. Am I surprised? Not really. Will I miss you when you go? No.

8

What Bricker said. And that givves you every benefit of the doubt. Rightly so.

9

It was a pointed question.

I think we are inclined to search mighty hard for the specks in other folks’ eyes while ignoring the planks in ours. I plead guilty to this temptation. It does run strong.

And you, sir, are guilty of it as well, from what I can see.

All I did was indicate that you might have been much more inclined to notice this behavior when DeLay’s minions engage in it. You did, by your own admission, not notice when I posted similar stories.

Invited to demonstrate your evenhandedness now, you choose instead to attack the messenger. It does not indicate to me that you are willing to look at this serious topic in a fair way in the future.

I’m sorry you’ll not miss me when I go. I shall miss you. I had a wonderful conversation with both you and your wife when we met at Taqueria Poblano.

But I won’t miss this particular side of you, I must admit.

10

It doesn’t make Moto a liar, but he’s certainly painting a different picture than the events warrant. His clear implication is that if I’m gonna criticize DeLay’s goons now, I should have spoken up then, otherwise my guns are only aimed one way.

I’m calling bullshit on that whole notion. Even assuming I read his post in the 2004 thread, there was no reason why I had to say “me three” after Max and mhendo had said what they did. And that’s demonstrated quite well by the failure of posters such as Mehitabel, SPOOFE, and JohnBckWLD to add their sentiments to what had already been said. If they’re still active, should their criticisms of similar violence be met with similar questions? That’s just plain silly.

Each thread has its subdiscussions. You’re not always participating in all of them. Sometimes something needs to be said, but it doesn’t need to be said three or four times. Just because something was said in a thread that you were in, doesn’t mean your failure to respond to something that was said in one subdiscussion means anything. That’s just how it works.

11

Bricker does have a point. I suspect (and I know I could be wrong) that if they had been threads about a person on your “list”, you would have been very careful to check the opposing debater’s posts.

Why not just a “Sorry, I will try harder to condemn equally next time”?

12

I don’t much care, but I find it a shame that, in the last 3 days in this and other threads, you’ve exhibited what appears to be genuine self-reflection, patience, and nearly saccarin sweetness. This new Mr. Moto, and not the unthinking Republican shill I’ve seen the last 3 years, may well be missed on this board.

13

I don’t think that was called for, Scumpup. He’ll be gone soon enough, and there’s no need to taunt him with that fact.

Mr.Moto, if I may, I’d like to offer an observation and a suggestion. As you point out, you have mentioned three times on this board that in 1992 you were roughed up by union goons at a Clinton rally. Well, four times now. And that’'s only in threads that Rufus here has participated in. In reading the links you posted, I did not find any of the red-highlighted words that tend to mark the results of a search. This suggests to me that you might have all of these threads in which you cite the incident bookmarked. Less far-fetched is the possibility that you are scrupulous about removing the coding from your links. I don’t blame you if that’s the case; I find that annoying myself. In any event, four mentions of the incident strikes me as kind of a lot, and I suspect that it is an important memory to you. Also that you wish for the incident and its significance to be recognized and validated by the SDMB community.

Which brings me to my suggestion: Before you allow your subscription to lapse, ask the mods and admins to change your username to Roughed Up By Union Goons At A Clinton Rally In '92. That way, every time a thread with a post of yours is opened, your ordeal will be commemorated, and another smidgen of ignorance eradicated.

14

Top ten Mr. Moto’s (allegedly) confiscated protest signs:

“Peace and Prosperity? NO !!!”

“Labor = COMMIES”

“Warfare / NOT Health Care”

“Open Government NO / Secret Government NOW”

“UNIONS = Mafia Infested Kennedy Lovers”

“Gays in the Navy? NEVER!!”

“Bill, Bill, Where’s your Hill? / Gone for a Morning After Pill!”

“Go Home Man from HOPE - Our Country Needs a DOPE”

“No War Under False Pretenses - No Peace”

“I’m An Insufferable Bastard And I VOTE”

15

…Of Thee I Siiiiiiiiiiiing.

16

Moto, you’re behaving in a nastily passive-aggressive fashion in this thread; every time one insult of yours is debunked, you, with faux-innocence, raise another question that implies another insult. This is beneath you. You owe RTFirefly a simple apology.

Daniel

17

About time you admitted that much.

Well, the big bright color pictures made it harder to miss the DeLay story than it would have been to miss your one post on the Dope that I might have seen. Oddly enough, presentation does count for something.

“Not notice” “stories”??

Dammit, Moto, you continue to misrepresent. One can neither notice nor not notice what one can’t see. If something happens in China that doesn’t make the news, I didn’t ‘not notice’ it; I just plain didn’t have any reason to know it happened.

And in two out of three of your stories, that’s the case. So you can at least get singular.

And in that instance, I didn’t say whether I noticed or not, because I don’t know, and neither do you.

If you want to say I’m a hypocrite for saying X in one place and Y in another, go for it. But to say I’m a hypocrite now for having said nothing in a thread two years ago, you’d better have a good standard for when a poster is expected to speak up about something, or stand accused by his silence.

Because only two posters in the 2004 thread responded to your post about what the union goons did to you and your friend. What to make of this? What of the numerous other subsequent posters in that thread?

On that topic, I’ll start off by saying that it’s one thing to be silent about a topic that’s in the headlines for months, and another to be silent about a topic that one may or may not have seen one Dope post on. I hope that’s a reasonable distinction.

Emphasis mine. Shouldn’t that be ‘in addition to’ rather than ‘instead’?

I guess my repeated references to the “union goons” who attacked you and your friend indicate that I condone what they did. :mad: What part of ‘goons’ is unclear? Should I have used ‘thugs’ instead? Consider it done. Thugs they are.

Nonetheless, I feel I have every right to attack the messenger, as well as indicate my condemnation of the union thugs’ behavior. On the basis of no evidence worth a damn - and apparently without going back and looking at your supposed evidence - you pretty much accused me of being a hypocrite.

That conduct is Pit-worthy, and I Pitted you.

I guess not. If my repeated references to the union goons/thugs doesn’t convince you I’m condemning their conduct, and am likely to condemn similar conduct in the future, it’s gonna take a lot to get the message through your thick skull.

And yesterday, I was going to say something about that in the thread about your leaving, and urge that you stay. But yesterday got busy while I was thinking abut what I wanted to say. But this morning, you unfortunately saved me the trouble.

18

Bullshit.

19

Dang, where can I get me a sign like that?

20

Nonsense.