The opposite of what you say is true. It is relatively rare for an established poster to get banned because of a single specific infraction. Generally such posters build up reputations as semi-jerks, progressing to almost jerks, finally ascending to full fledged jerkdom, when some final straw triggers their banning. You cannot focus on the final infraction as being the sum of why they were banned.
(You can pull up Ace’s final posts that led to his banning as well as I can. Do a search on his posts and pull up the most recent ones - they are in the JC & JD trashing threads, & his own sarcastic “apology” Pit thread in response to the others.)
My “evidence” is my witnessing at the time Ace’s transformation from energetic witty liberal to SDMB pariah. And it was primarily at the hands of the Gay Mafia, not the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
My point here is that it is true, as you say, that Ace was despised by liberals and conservatives alike. But he was despised by liberals for insufficient adherence to liberal dogma on one key issue. And therein lay his downfall. So you cannot use Ace as a counter-example to someone who is despised primarily for arguments in favor of conservative causes. To the contrary, if anything.
You may want to check on my post again. I deliberately included the phrase “for instance” in an effort to indicate that what I was talking about was simply and example. Perhaps I should have put that in the beginning of the post, but I honestly thought you’d be able to figure it out.
I understand that. Which means that you have catagorized gobear as “not conservative”. Which is very different from saying that the “commonly used definition of the term conservative” doesn’t include gobear.
I think the first mistake in this thread was the parenthetical order Scylla gave. Perhaps he forgot that we liberals aren’t so hot on taking orders :). That said, I think the OP is something on which I’m not qualified to comment: any comment I made would seem overpartisan, so I’m gonna leave it alone.
[sub]bravo Scylla[/sub]
I CAN comment on these two paragraphs.
First, I’m shocked tha tyou say people will “jump down your throat” if you express any support for Bush or the war with Iraq. Let’s look at the things you get called if you do either of these:
Shortsighted
Gung-Ho
Stupid
etc.
On the other hand, let’s look at what you can expect to get called if you express any opposition to the war with Iraq:
Traitors
Terrorist-lovers
Shortsighted
Stupid
etc.
Perhaps it’s true that you get jumped on for being pro-war – but from where I’m sitting, it’s nothing like how you got jumped on for being anti-war.
Furthermore, I know some posters expressed their support for the war in ways I found reasonable and defensible. I believe my conversations with Scylla on this war stayed respectful (although he sure jumped down my throat for defending draft-dodgers, and I jumped down his for attacking draft-dodgers, that was an issue unrelated to the current conflict). And while Sua Sponte’s support for the war dismayed me more than december’s – I kinda thought Sua was One of Us – I believe he remained civil and reasonable in his discussion of the war.
Finally, Shodan, you’re a pretty bad defender in terms of jumping down the throats of anyone who expresses opposition to W. How many times have you responded to a critique of W. with something along the lines of, “This is just more evidence of the shrill irrelevance of today’s liberals, and is why they’re becoming increasingly marginalized”? I’ll go dig up some examples if you doubt me, but I believe you’ll recognize that as one of your characteristic conclusions in Great Debates. It’s a smug, nasty, aggressive swipe.
Not all conservatives make swipes like that. I haven’t noticed Izzy doing it, for example; as others pointed out, Bricker remains a delight to run up against, because he’s both superficially polite (like december) and really polite (unlike december) – and he hands out smackdowns with a big dose of research and information.
If you’re feeling attacked, you’d do well to quit attacking first. Liberals hardly have a monopoly on down-the-throat jumps on these boards.
Crap – I forgot to address the second paragraph of Shodan’s that I quoted above. december supported equal rights for homosexuals in every relevant post by him that I saw. The only time I ever saw him being dishonest on the issue was to pretend that some North Dakota senator or something was running a homophobic campaign because the senator had a flyer that mocked his opponent as a bad hairdresser. It was actually the first time I tangled with december, the first time I ever had him twist my words around and thank me for agreeing with him, when I’d done nothing of the sort. (I believe I’d said that the woman depicted on the flyer could look like a drag queen if you squinted just right; december immediately thanked me for agreeing that the Democratic senator was depicting drag queens in a negative light).
So yes, he was pro-gay-rights; and yes, he was perfectly willing to subordinate that to partisan attacks. And yes, when people dismissed the suggestion that the senator was a homophobe, december called them homophobes, too. He was nothing if not consistent in his deceitful partisanship.
Unlike you, I can’t speak for all liberals on the board, but I can tell you that this particular liberal had it in for Ace long before his Joe Cool-fueled meltdown. The guy was an asshole, plain and simple, and the day he got banned was one of the highlights of my time here on the SDMB.
I also seem to recall that his most constant and vocal antagonist on the boards was the infamous pinko hippie liberal, Fenris.
I hated Ace for a long time, too, and only became aware of his anti-gay schtick after the fact. For me, it was when he was a twit about indoor versus outdoor cats; unlike other people who disagreed with my stance on the issue, he just about called me a liar for suggesting indoor cats live longer. He was a nasty piece of work.
Don’t tell me that being pro-indoor-cats is a liberal stance ;).
He did in fact post things that were supportive of gays being able to marry, for example. however in the thread “PC= polite”, which is where I first recall meeting up with december he displayed a, well, ‘interesting’ POV. He claimed that the ‘main stream media’ gave a pass to Matthew Shepard, allowing him to be the ‘perfect victim’, but did a disservice by not pointing out things that december claimed were potentially relevant to his murder. After much going around and around, asking for proof of his claims (that MS was ‘into’ a particular type of sexual encounter), asking how was consensual sexual behavior at all relevent when discussing MS’s brutal murder etc etc, it came down to:
december’s original claim (I know you’ll be surprised when you hear it) came from a misinterpretation of some one’s OP/Ed piece, where the writer made assumptions about MS in the first place. So, not only was the actual claim not supported, and the actual claim wasn’t even what the writer had written, but the actual writer was just pulling it outta her ass, too. Of course, you’d think that our friend would then have backed off and said ‘never mind, I guess I was wrong’, but no, he kept at it, insisting that if if if if if if if then his conclusion would be sorta supported a little. (after the fact, I suspected that he’d come to his original thought by reading one of his infamous blogs, 'cause it always struck me as odd beyond belief that he’d have read and remembered some obscure piece in the Advocat - iirc where it was )
So I always reflected on that really odd exchange whenever he posted wrt gay issues.
oh - and another liberal checking in saying ace was a jerk to many.
Izzy - you made the claim, you don’t get to come back here and tell me I can ‘pull up threads’ like anyone else.
you also misunderstood my point. In the case of a newbie type poster, it’s likely that no explanation will be given, but it’d be pretty easy to see (ie link to porn, spam etc, or probable sock). In the case of a long term poster, it’s likely that there will in fact be a thread talking about it, or comments from the staff etc. that’s the distinction that I’m talking about. thought it was clear.
now, will you please defend your characterization of Ace’s banning? as requested now for the, what, third time?
well, talk about putting words into some one else’s mouths. you’ve just made the claim that you know, better than we do, apparently, why some one of a liberal persuasion disliked Ace. Gosh, and here I thought I’d disliked him 'cause he was a jerk, an asshole, and all the while it was 'cause he fell off the liberal bandwagon cause celebre!
Actualy your post was pretty hard to figure out. Because your first words in response to my post were: “I am not aware that the “commonly used definition of the term conservative” refers to those on the scale starting at George Bust going to the right from there.” No “if” or “for instance” there - you were implying that I had said that, and I had not. So I saw your “for instance” and assumed (and still assume) that you were still working along the same lines, looking for an opportunity to accuse me of “playing the same game”.
I am not aware that lying and misrepresenting are acceptable parts of liberal strategy. If, for instance, you deliberately skew your response to my words to make it look as if I’d said things that I hadn’t then you are nothing but a lowlife slimebag. How does this read to you?
For me these things are the same. It is meaningless for me to categorize someone as anything if that categorization is based entirely on my own invented definition of the term. I can categorize myself as a genius if I redefine genius to mean “SDMB posters with the username IzzyR”. Meaningless. When I say that I categorize gobear as not conservative I mean that based on my observation of his stances in numerous posts, I am convinced that the commonly used definition of the term conservative does not apply to him. He is liberal on some issues, and conservative on others. A draw overall. Middle of the road.
I tried to look up a bit of Ace stuff. His run-ins with the Gays occured in multiple threads, going back at least to 9/02 (there seemed to be several in that month). He was banned (for the second and final time) in 4/03. The cat thread was at the end of 10/02.
I will point out that this whiny liberal (well, okay, fiscal conservative, social liberal) defended december in a thread questioning why he hadn’t been banned yet.
We’re not all out to get you. Hey, I’ve even fucked a few conservatives.
And why ban conservatives? We just wait around; if they get powerful enough, Al Franken will write a book about them. Which is punishment in a number of ways.
Not all Republicans are conservatives (and, of course, “conservatives” is itself a term open to definition). And even if they were, not each and every thing they do is conservative. The mayor, for example, proposed and got enacted a massive tax increase in addition to shepherding the smoking ban. And, of course, the city council remains solidly Democratic and mostly liberal.
I’m disappointed to have to explain this on a message board of this caliber. Maybe the Reader should set up a practice board for persons such as yourself.
I’m disappointed that someone of your presumed intellect makes sweeping statements about “left-wingers”, and then follows it up with “not each and every thing” in re conservatives. Amusing, but still disappointing. Perhaps the Reader should set up a message board for “brilliant” hypocrites.
Thankfully, you do not represent the Reader, its Mods, writers or readers.
