A. NO the article did not say he was seeking sex with ‘toughs’, rather the columnist assumed that he was. You do know the difference between a fact and an allegation based on assumptions, right?
Since it was the latter, vs. the former, all, repeat ALL of your further assumptions down that garden path are based on unsubstantiated rumor, and you should discard them, unless you have more proof. Further, all of the writers conclusions are also based on that unsubstantiated assumption. I am not interested in further debating her position.
In addition, you kept emphasizing “rough sex”, which is **not at all ** the same thing as ‘sex with ruffians’.
you seem focused on ‘how did he come to meet these guys’? According to the newsstory (to differentiate it from the opinion page), MS went to a bar. The other two went to the bar, intending to ‘act gay’ find some one and rob him. MS was the person who ended up with them. What more is needed?
So, instead of admitting that your argument was without substantiation, that your ‘source’ was fatally flawed and contained nothing more than assertions and assumptions based on (self admitted) little data, you keep trying to pump it up again. Nope. Until and unless you come up with evidence of your contentions, you should stop slandering the young mans name.
Grim I’m following your ‘1-2-3’ to a degree, however, I’m more comfortable with designations that I’d used earlier, in that no one has the right to monitor how I speak in private, others may have rights in public and on the job. And, regarding ‘on the job’, I do believe that my employer, since they may in fact be harmed by my actions/words have the power there, and may in fact get into the position of needing to ‘shade’ my language based on the lowest probability of offending/causing problems.
So, in your example of the stranger correcting you and your friend, I’d have agreed, she overstepped her bounds – while it was a public setting, the only persons who had a ‘right’ to object to your choice would have been the friends you were with/speaking about. Had she been your employer, I’d believe that her wishing to avoid even the appearance of offending would have merit in a public employment setting.
I do agree that the term has become so politically charged that it’s painful. I’m especially pained by people proudly proclaiming “I’m un PC”, while specifically using profane, rude, inflamatory language.
*Originally posted by wring *
** …The other two went to the bar, intending
to ‘act gay’ find some one and rob him. MS was the person who ended up with them. What more is needed?
december: Nope. Until and unless you come up with evidence of your contentions, you should stop slandering the young mans name. **
Wring, you have illustraqted a difference between PC and non-PC people of good will. You want to avoid slandering MS and to see that blame is properly placed. Paglia wants to understand the entire situation as well as possible in order to determine how best to help gay people. IMHO the approaches speak well of both of you.
A key assumption of PC seems to be that strict requirements for proper speech are one way to reduce bigotry and hate. Paglia’s judgment is that the PC requirements as applied by certain gay groups have been counter-productive. Perhaps other well-meant PC requirements have also been counter-productive. This question seems to me to be worth discussing.
Sometimes political correctness dictates nice words but not-so-nice actions. E.g., consider the impact of affirmative action on Asian-Americans. Many of them are rejected by top colleges, in order to make room for less-qualified students of other ethnicities. Given a choice, some Asian-Amercans might prefer to avoid a Harvard rejecton rather than avoid the word “Oriental.”
wrong. I want to avoid slandering MS and see that blame is properly placed. Paglia wants to speculate based on admittedly very little information and make conclusions about it. You want to assume that PC has something to do with my reluctance to speculate about some one I don’t know, and Ms. Paglia’s interest in pushing her own philosophies even if they have nothing to do with the case at hand.
You keep on making the assumption that Ms. Paglia’s trail of guesses is at all newsworthy and /or related to the MS case, and that major media outlets ignored Ms. Paglia’s guesses out of some concern for PC. I’d submit that they ignored it out of correct concern over lawsuit for slander (Ms. Paglia is a columnist, not a journalist)
Wring, I do agree with you that Paglia’s guesses were not factual enough to be newsworthy. I agree that it would have been improper for major media outlets to report them as news. I take your point about Paglia being a columnist rather than a journalist, although columnists in the major media could have addressed this subject.
The question I’m getting at is whether it’s good or bad for gays to have such items publicy discussed, whether by speculating columnists or by investigative journalists (if there turns out to be any factual basis.) You see slander; Paglia sees sympathetic understanding. You may both be right.
question: you focus on ‘is it good/bad for gays’.
How about ‘is it good/bad for people’? You obviously felt that the publicity about charges against your friend was awful. And yet, she had been charged with a crime, and the details were about the event. And yet in this case you seem to think that ‘the public’ should be discussing irrelevant details about a crime victim’s personal life. MS did nothing to warrant public intrusion into his life. He was the victim of a horrendous assault. I see your stances contradictory. You were appalled at what your friend had to go through when she was the accused. And you seem quite interested in having MS go through quite a bit more intrusion, even though he’s the victim.
Strange reading of Paglia, or her desire to “understand” the “entire” situation.
Given her numerous unsupported suppositions, I don’t see this as helpful nor would I characterize her actual concern, as opposed to the her rhetorical position-- with “helping gay people” – but whatever.
It may very well be, but hanging this on MS’s case strikes me as forced.
Your characterization of the coverage as PC as even more so.
Affirmative Action
Confusion of different subjects willy-nilly under the category “Political Correctness” is hardly a hallmark of clear-headed analysis. It usually is a hallmark of political hatchetry. I would grant you putting the program in question outside of the realm of criticism would be “PC” but the program itself is harldy “PC” – whether you like the goals or operation or not.
Now, in regard to the above, we could be talking about many different things. Private colleges frequently attempt to achieve a mix of students which is not solely based on by the numbers “merit” – regional, ethnic etc. diversity. You might be referring to this. Or something else.
In any case, it does not belong factually or logically in this particular discussion, except perhaps as an example of the confusion of some participants or as a symbol of how some people use PC as simply a generic term of abuse for anything one does not like. Or an easy way to hand-wave away substantive criticisms.
Wring, if you’re implying that good for gays also means good for people, then I agree. In particular, eliminating assaults on gays is also good for society. The question is whether an analysis like Paglia’s will help reduce these assaults or will it tend to increase them? Will maintaining politically correct taboos tend to reduce or to increase them?
What makes a statement politically incorrect? Some writers have pointed out that one aspect has to do with claiming victimhood. (That’s why I bold-faced Wring’s use of the word.) There is a belief that the most pure victim “wins.” E.g., see A Nation of Victims : The Decay of the American Character – Charles J. Sykes. Presumably the quest for victimhood grew out of mimicking the Civil Rights movement. Also, the search for victimhood fits perfectly into our litigious society. It has made a lot of lawyers very rich.
(BTW gains in civil rights have not always flowed from claiming victim status. E.g., Jews didn’t revel in being victims. As someone said many years ago, “When Miami wouldn’t let the Jews in, they bought up Miami Beach.” I’m a big fan of Cole Porter. He didn’t whine about prejudice; he wrote hit show after hit show. Talented, hard-working minorities have been successful for many years.)
It seems to me that a being politically incorrect equates to being taboo. (taboo – adj 1: excluded from use or mention) C’bury’s and Wring’s criticism of my MS remark essentially was that it violated the taboo. They couched their criticism in terms off irrelevance and speculativeness. But, many comments on this site are irrelevant or speculative. IMHO the reason my comment was taboo is that it questioned MS’s victim status.
Is Affirmative Action PC?
C’bury disputed this. IMHO reducing the number of under-represented minorities on campus is politically incorrect. In particular, SAT exams are now politically incorrect and so is ending affirmative action. However, as has been pointed out, there isn’t any “Official PC List,” so anyone is are free to disagree.
Can’t speak for Collunsbury, but my objection to your entire sidebar on “MS was into ‘rough sex’ etc” was objectionable because not only was it not apparently true, but it had nothing to do with the criminal case, and less than nothing to do with this debate.
You keep on insisting that it does, despite evidence that your original position (MS was into ‘rough sex’) was not only absolutely wrong, but even the original allegation was not based on any kind of factual inquiry at all.
You can insist all you want that you know my motivations better than I, and you will be as wrong in that as you were about MS.
I have less than zero desire to continue to ‘debate’ baseless allegations, and the ‘analysis’ made regarding them. Ms. Paglia’s article was brought up by you to ‘prove’ your assertion that main line press ignored unpleasant facts under some guise of PC ness. You were wrong to assume that there were ‘facts’ involved at all. so the basis of your assertion is wrong.
Specifically this
Ms. Paglia’s "analysis’ as you refer to it, is based on her assumptions about people she doesn’t know and admittedly had little factual base. You may enjoy engaging in debate based on factual unprovens, I don’t. But to call her piece an ‘anaylsis’ is ludicrous. And, again, maintaining ‘politically correct taboos’ is yet another unproven assertion by you. Please stop. Her piece contained no factual information. Mainline press attempts to not print factually unsupportable information - they get into trouble when they do.
And I am especially disheartened by this:
Dammit. I refered to MS as a victim, because he was most assuradly, a victim of a criminal assault. Please do not re-define my very clear terms for me.
and it seems to me, that despite proven evidence that you were incorrect in all of your assumptions, you still maintain your position is correct. You reject logical presentations of the evidence, contend that our motivation is not what we say it is. Your comment was outratgeous because it was based on a faulty memory of an article which based it’s assumptions on ‘scant’ evidence.
Tell ya what, I’ll misremember an op ed piece that refers to all conservatives as being self centered, bull headed, sexually repressed foot fetishers, and what we should do to help them, then when confronted with the original piece which instead referred to conservatives as being self assured people with small feet, basing it’s assumptions on looking at a single photo of Newt Gingrich, then continue to assert that the underlying analysis of the piece is germane to the subject at hand. And when you protest, telling me 'look, not only doesn’t the piece prove what you originally thought it would, but it doesn’t even prove anything at all" I’ll just point out that according to the analysis, you’re bull headed and that’s why you’re focusing on merely the truth of the report. ok by you?
*Originally posted by wring *
**Can’t speak for Collunsbury, but my objection to your entire sidebar on “MS was into ‘rough sex’ etc” was objectionable because not only was it not apparently true, but it had nothing to do with the criminal case, and less than nothing to do with this debate.
You keep on insisting that it does, despite evidence that your original position (MS was into ‘rough sex’) was not only absolutely wrong, but even the original allegation was not based on any kind of factual inquiry at all.
I have less than zero desire to continue to ‘debate’ baseless allegations, and the ‘analysis’ made regarding them. Ms. Paglia’s article was brought up by you to ‘prove’ your assertion that main line press ignored unpleasant facts under some guise of PC ness. You were wrong to assume that there were ‘facts’ involved at all. so the basis of your assertion is wrong…
Ms. Paglia’s "analysis’ as you refer to it, is based on her assumptions about people she doesn’t know and admittedly had little factual base. **
Wring – I admit that I misrepresented Paglia’s speculation as factual. The mistake was based on faulty memory. I was wrong to criticize the mains stream press for ignoring the article, since it was based more on speculation than on fact.
You can insist all you want that you know my motivations better than I, and you will be as wrong in that as you were about MS.
OK, I must accept your statement of your motivations.
Specifically this [has little factual basis] The question is whether an analysis like Paglia’s will help reduce these assaults or will it tend to increase them? Will maintaining politically correct taboos tend to reduce or to increase them?
Because you found the article, we now know that Paglia’s conclusions were mostly speculative. Still, she is an expert in gay culture (or at least represents herself as one), so even her speculations may provide some insight. It seems to me that one can still ask. Which helps gays more – Paglia’s article or refraining from criticism of gays?
**And, again, maintaining ‘politically correct taboos’ is yet another unproven assertion by you. **
True, I haven’t proved here that political incorrectness is lke a taboo. This is central to my POV, so I will need to seek proof.
Here’s a related assertion, which also isn’t proved on this thread yet: Some PC people want to censor speech (beyond just prohibiting inappropriate group labels). However, these people typically think of themselves as defenders of free speech. When the contradiction is pointed out, cognitive dissonence may cause discomfort.
** Mainline press attempts to not print factually unsupportable information - they get into trouble when they do.**
I wish they got in trouble for false and unsupportable reporting. There are several web sites devoted to documenting the enormous number of errors and biases in the main stream media. Three of the best are http://www.smartertimes.comhttp://www.dailyhowler.com and http://www.mediaresearch.org. Two of these are conservative and the Daily Howler is liberal. It’s written by Bob Somerby, who was a college roommate of Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones. I recommend spending whatever amount of time you have reading their archives. It’s eye-opening.
**And I am especially disheartened by this:
Dammit. I refered to MS as a victim, because he was most assuredly, a victim of a criminal assault. Please do not re-define my very clear terms for me.**
Indeed he was a victim. He was also lots of other things. He was a 22(?) year old, he was a man, he was gay, he is deceased, he’s from (wherever), his profession was (whatever), he had been educated in (whatever), he had certain hobbies and interests, etc. Your quote seemed to indicate that his victimhood was his salient characteristic. It certainly was for me. The news media portrayed him more as a victim than as a person.
**
and it seems to me, that despite proven evidence that you were incorrect in all of your assumptions, you still maintain your position is correct. You reject logical presentations of the evidence, contend that our motivation is not what we say it is. Your comment was outratgeous because it was based on a faulty memory of an article which based its assumptionson ‘scant’ evidence.**
It’s true that my comment was based on an inaccuracy, but you and C’bury didn’t know that when you first objected to it. I think it’s directly relevant to this thread to understand the exact reasons that my statement was objectionable. BTW I knew it was objectionable when I wrote it. That was its purpose.
Compare my MS comment with my comment above about Somerby having been Gore’s roommate. Both are irrelevant to this thread and both are unproved. But, the Somerby comment isn’t objectionable in the same way as the MS comment. I want to get a clear understanding of the difference. This desire to define sets as well as possible is typical of us mathematicians.
Tell ya what, I’ll misremember an op ed piece that refers to all conservatives as being self centered, bull headed, sexually repressed foot fetishers…
No need for misrembering; the New York Times and the Washington Post have one of these on their op-ed page almost every day.
… and what we should do to help them…then continue to assert that the underlying analysis of the piece is germane to the subject at hand…
Again I apologize. I was wrong to say that this article was based on fact. However, I do think the ensuing discussion has indicated that the concept of “PC” means more than just avoiding improper group labels, which was the OP’s question.
I think we need to “Ask the Gay Guy” about Ms. Paglia’s supposed expertise in gayness. She is a lesbian, so I suppose she gets some credit, but I’ve seen her misrepresent feminists so often while claiming to be an expert in that culture as well that I’m a little wary. I’ll go post, if someone hasn’t already.
Your capacity for reading this the way you need/want to read the criticism, despite the illustrations of why your argumentation was logically faulty and factually specious are impressive.
Now, since you have finally indicated that you did in fact intend to cast aspersion of MS through this statement --after so many denials – perhaps one could question your understanding of ‘victim status’ but I think wring has already addressed this beauty.
Is Affirmative Action PC?
I’m afraid I am unable to parse the above statement.
SAT exams have been criticized on factual grounds. I do not see that this criticism is ipso facto politically incorrect.
Perhaps there are some aspects to be found in re the discriminatory charges insofar as while it strikes me as quite valid to observe the tests have a cultural bias, that bias is also part of necessary knowledge to move ahead in society. However, much criticism has come from other quarters entirely.
So, once more we see the strange mixing of subjects, I would call this arm flailing.
Some arguments against ending affirmative action might adopt what you are calling PC positions. Others of course do not. Sweeping assertions in themselves part of the same phenomena.
Well, speaking for myself
(a) based on my recollection of the reporting at the time, I was fairly certain it was inaccurate – you will note I in fact raised that issue, in re questioning the reliablity of Paglia’s report/assertion based on my recollection. I don’t do so for trivial reasons.
(b) your indirect suggestion, once more, that I objected for “PC” reasons, as opposed to my already stated and fully argued rational that your raising the issue was a form of ad hominem, irrelevant to the actual facts and intended to muddy the waters of the argument is specious and reflects the worst defect of your argumentation (and what it has in common with what you call PC).
None of these reasons are “PC” – insofar as you have failed, repeatedly to address any criticism of your faulty logic, I have to presume that you are so wedded to the idea of PC that it is no longer something of rational discourse, but rather knee-jerk reaction. In other other words, your use of the term, including here, appears to be in fact, PC – in the sense of using pre-concieved ideological categories to attack or exclude criticisms/facts while failing to deal with the actual argument/problem/facts.
Ironic, no?
Well, that’s because its not an ad hominem attack to most ordinary persons as simply being someone’s roommate says nothing about someone. It’s still illogical insofar as being the roommate of Al Gore (or not) is irrelevant to what he writes. I fail to see how you fail grasp the basics of logical thought.
Well, a suggestion. Review formal logic. For someone who has worked with statistics, you show a suprising inability to logically define your categories.
No it also means mischaracterizing your opponents argument on ideological grounds (they must mean this…), ignoring inconvenient facts etc. That would be you by the way.
My criticism of MS was intended to offend the PC brigade. He’s a heroic icon to them. People typically get upset when our heroes are accused of having flaws. E.g., it has been uncomfortable to hear Margaret Sanger accused of racism, Albert Einstein accused of marital infidelity, or Thomas Jefferson accused of having impregnated his slave.
Two points:
The aspersions in my statement about MS were mostly the implication that he had put himself at risk – a far weaker criticism than the above examples. C’bury’s reaction helps make my point that attacking someone’s victimhood is a big deal to him.
MS was a heroic icon because he was a victim. He didn’t found Planned Parenthood or discover the Laws of Relativity or write the Declaration of Independence. He was idealized as an example of a victim who was a member of a preferred class of people.
Here are some other examples where statements about preferred groups have been censored by Political Correctness:
The song, “I’m an Indian, Too,” from “Annie, Get Your Gun.” This song
is an expression of positive feelings toward Indians on the occasion of a
character being made a member of a tribe. But, today’s PC rules prohibit
mentioning Indians, even in this moderately positive way. The song was
censored in the current Broadway hit revival.
2 David Horowitz says he “had every intention of lobbing a grenade at campus political correctness when he submitted “10 Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea for Blacks–and Racist Too” as a full-page ad in more than 70 college newspapers.” See http://frontpagemag.com/index.htm The ad is so politically incorrect that
it is considered proper for students to steal and destroy newspapers that
run it. It’s acceptable to have violent demonstrations threatening the staffs of
newspaper that ran the ad.
IMHO Horowitz’s most offensive point is that Blacks in America today are
far, far richer than Blacks in Africa. Although slavery was
horrendous, he says, today’s African-Americans are better off than if their ancestors
had stayed in Africa. This point is financially correct. It’s offensive because it undermines.
the victim status of Blacks.
At the behest of certain gay activists, the Food and Drug Administration recently banned advertisements for advertisements which show healthy looking AIDS victims looking healthy. Here again, the PC crowd resorted to censorship to defend the victim status of a preferred group.
december you are proud of your intentional and incorrect smear on a crime victim that you didn’t know? and you see your actions as good? Baffeling.
I am asking for a site reference on
at this point, you have no credibility with me - we spent way too much time on something that you remembered incorrectly. I’ll want to see what you’re claiming directly.
You still have not come up with cite evidence to support your claim re: PC ness. What you have come up with is a reference to an old broadway show, a ‘this happened, I’m sure of it’ and yet another columnist’s opinion pages. Try news sources, please?
He was a crime victim. “preferred class of people” ??? how so? his ‘preferred class’ got him kidnapped, beaten, robbed and killed. His case has been widely publicized, yes. So was JonBonnet Ramseys. James Byrd. Some crimes seem to horrify us more than others.
And,
Once again, you ignore the salient points of criticism of your argument/position, in favor of your own personal spin. Your ‘smear’ of MS was reprehensible, because:
You did not have proof of the truth of your assertion (and in fact it was demonstrably wrong)
even if it was true (and it wasn’t), it was irrelevant and done simply to besmirch a man whom you never knew and certainly had never done anything to harm you.
And yet, you remain confident that your intentional, falacious, irrelevant attack on MS was motivated by good things, and therefore proper, and our objection to your attack, (tho you grudgingly admit that it was intentional, done simply to ‘offend’, and intended to besmirch the reputation of the victim, and was totally lacking in truth.) is based not on what the points we’ve made, but on points you assume for us.
no use arguing with some one who, even while admiting they were wrong can’t see that they were, wrong.
Yeah, yeah, hand wave away. You claim whatever you like. I could give a fuck. I believe the upteen reasons why your idiotic statement has been critiqued stand on their own. That you are unable to comprehend this and keep scurrying behind some scurrilous “PC brigand” crap demonstrates your thinking differs in no way from what you claim to criticize.
non-sequitur. MS is just some kid who got whacked for dumb reasons. You still fail to comprehend why your argument and position lacks any substance. Somewhere between stunning and ludicrous.
Shrug, is it relevant to her status? Doesn’t ring a bell with me.
Irrelevant. Einstein’s achievements are in no way related to marital fidelity one way or another.
This at least is relevent to TJ as a public figure insofar as he commented on the same (i.e. interracial relations) and historians have made some point of this. Without such commentary on his part it would be irrelevant.
So, what part of the concept relevant/irrelevant do you still fail to grasp at the end of three pages of explanations?
What? You know… This is among the most intellecutally dishonest argumentation I have seen from anyone on this board. Frankly, its disturbing and despicable.
What means a great deal to me, and this I rather fully explained in painful detial are
(a) facts
(b) relevency
What irritates me is to see someone attacked on irrelevant grounds, which add nothing to understanding the event etc. This has been rather fully explained to you. You disregard and seem unable to comprehend even why your argument is logically unsupportable.
You seem to be unable to muster the minimal logical facilities to coherently analyze either your own statements or those of others. Or perhaps you just don’t want to insofar as your a priori position serves your ideological belief system better. My, now that would be precisely what PC is, now wouldn’t it?
Well, he got famous so to speak for being brutally murdered for no better reason than his sexual orientation (and for money of course).
Preferred class???
Hopeless, absolutely hopeless
David Horowitz went publicity seeking.
No David Horowitz’s most offensive points were his factually unsupportable assertions and racialized analysis.
And Jews who immigrated to the USA before WWII are better off than those who got killed in Nazi Germany.
No, it does not. This issue was already fully discussed on this board. Try a little search. Presuming you are open and/or capable of checking your cherished presumptions.
*Originally posted by wring * I am asking for a site reference…
OK – It was written by a gay, HIV-positive columnist http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
NANNY STATE UPDATE: Prompted by the neo-Stalinists who run San Francisco, the FDA has now ordered pharmaceutical companies to cease publishing or making ads for HIV drugs that show people with HIV as healthy, happy or physically fit. Some truly bitter activists in SF can’t bear the sight of some people actually doing well on HIV meds, thriving physically, repairing their lives and responding to ads that help keep their spirits up and their minds educated. The activists argue that the ads don’t accurately describe the nausea, fatigue, and other side-effects of the drugs and encourage unsafe sex because they reduce the stigma of HIV. Duh. Why would anyone want to access a drug whose ad implies it will make you look like hell? (Besides are some difficult side-effects more troublesome than the alternative?) And the reason people might think unsafe sex is less risky today is not because they just saw an ad. It’s because the risks of getting HIV today are far lower than they were just five, let alone ten, years ago. I can see the point of having small-print in the ads explaining side-effects (as the ads now include by law) but what on earth is gained by re-stigmatizing the sick and undermining the self-esteem of people with HIV? Don’t these people realize that a positive psychological outlook is critical to long-term survival? I thought I’d seen everything in lunatic AIDS activism. But this is a truly new low. Next they’ll be trying to force some of us who look physically healthy and are openly HIV-positive to stay indoors all day so as not to send out the wrong signals. Or will we all be banned from the gym?
**at this point, you have no credibility with me **
OK. I criticized your icon; you criticized me. Are we even now?
**“preferred class of people” ??? how so? his ‘preferred class’ got him kidnapped, beaten, robbed and killed. **
What you say is true. What I meant was that gays are “Preferred” by the PC crowd.
However, policemen, e.g., aren’t PC preferred. You haven’t written about any individual policeman killed or wounded by criminals.
**Once again, you ignore the salient points of criticism of your argument/position, in favor of your own personal spin. Your ‘smear’ of MS was reprehensible, because:
You did not have proof of the truth of your assertion (and in fact it was demonstrably wrong)
even if it was true (and it wasn’t), it was irrelevant and done simply to besmirch a man whom you never knew and certainly had never done anything to harm you. **
Wring, you don’t actually know that my assertion was untrue; you know that it was speculative.
And yet, you remain confident that your intentional, falacious, irrelevant attack on MS was motivated by good things, and therefore proper…
Consider artists Christopher Ofili who portrayed the Virgin Mary covered with pornographic images and elephant dung and Serrano, of “Piss Christ” fame. Do you think they’re embarrassed at having offended Catholics? Or, are they laughing all the way to the bank?
BTW I bet you’re not bothered by art that offends Roman Catholics, because they aren’t one of your preferred groups. Most PC people not only want to allow such displys, they also want to support then with public funding.
I, on the other hand, am content to mock policitcal correctness for free.
tho you grudgingly admit that it was intentional
Not grudgingly. I intended to offend you and C’bury just as Ofili and Serrano intended to offend RC’s.
Again, look at the relative magnitudes of the offenses. I didn’t suspend an image of MS in urine or cover it with pornography and dung; I only indicated that he might have put himself at risk. PC types are awfully sensitive…
A more apt analogy in my case is that I’m better off because my grandparents were driven out of Poland. I don’t excuse the Polish government for anti-Semitism, pogroms, etc. However, I don’t expect them to pay reparations to me for 90-year old crimes against my grand-parents.
And, on a personal, emotional basis, I can assure you that I feel enormously lucky to live in this country.
december remember, I asked you for factual basis, not columnists. Try getting some of your facts from news sources, perhaps you’ll have better luck.
Re: policemen, sympathy for, etc. Prove to me that I don’t have sympathy for cops getting shot. Or that the PC crowd doesn’t. Hint, look for news sources, not commentators suggesting what they suppose a stance will be. Until you find such evidence, retract it.
MS is not my ‘icon’ as you so quaintly call it. You dragged him into the debate. Your lack of credibility with me is that: 1. You’ve provided ‘information’ that later proved to be incorrect 2. when asked for factual sites to prove the basis of your arguments, you’ve only managed to provide columnist’s opinions. 3. When your argument was shown to have no basis in fact, you still maintained it’s accuracy. (and even now, all you’ll say is that it was ‘unproven’, not ‘untrue’. You make an allegation, fail to back it up and still won’t admit to slander?) 4. When all else failed, you relied on ad hominem attacks on your opponents, falsely ascribing motivations for them. That’s your lack of credibility.
and, by the way, you again ignore the fact that your unproven allegation was irrelevant as well.
And once again, your assesment of other peoples motivations is suspect. Please see Gaudere’s (moderator of this forum) posting in the first page of this thread re: the dung/art catholic church thing.
I still cannot see why you are so proud of intentionally maligning those who have done you no harm.
But, frankly, at this point, neither do I care. You’re happy believing that your world view is correct, and as long as you steadfastly refuse to examine evidence to the contrary, you’ll be happy.
I agree with you that december’s interpretation of objections to this sort of advertising is completely wrongheaded. This is not about “preserving the victim status” of gay people or HIV+ people—this is about not wanting to let them be victimized by false advertising. As this article on direct-to-consumer drug marketing points out, “FDA regulations require that ads only may make claims supported by scientific evidence, that are not inconsistent with the FDA-approved product labeling, and are not false or misleading.”
If advertisements are deliberately fostering a perception of their products that health experts call “a great misconception of the current HIV drug therapies”, that sounds pretty misleading to me. Similarly, if manufacturers of bone-pain treatment drugs for victims of prostate cancer showed happy-looking elderly men playing pingpong, I expect a number of people would be upset about that too. Despite the paranoid fantasies of the well-known neoconservative Andrew Sullivan and december, I think most people are reasonable enough to know that not every attempt at consumer protection is a mere ploy on the part of the “neo-Stalinists” of the “Nanny State” to enforce their “PC victimology” (what imaginations these people have, huh? and some folks like to claim liberals are hysterical and overwrought!).
Thank you both for an enjoyable discussion. I’m truly sorry to have left Wring frustrated. We all wish we could have convinced each other, but these sort of conversions seldom occur. (There’s a psychology of how people tend to reinforce themselves in their beliefs, but that’s another issue.)
I do think we exposed and illustrated several relevant issues. Hopefully viewers may have benefited from reading our posts.
Perhaps the first lesson december might want to learn for future discussions is in order not to argue by logical errors (straw men, ad hominem, fallacy of composition) it is necessary to engage the actual argument made, or at the very least show good reason --by which we mean logically and factually supportable-- why one thinks that another argument is in fact being made.
Else, one looks rather like a cheap ideological hack spreading ignorance.
No, you’re not even with Wring because you failed to address the actual arguments rather than your straw men. Your continued presumption of icons and whatever the fuck other buzzwords you’re picked up have failed to address the substantive critiques.
goggle What the fuck relevance is this you…? You brought up gays and subsequently made factually and logically incorrect arguments. You have failed to advance a single convincing argument on facts or motherfucking logic! Not that it would have been impossible to do so. I have seen fairly conservative views intelligently and logically and above factually defended here. What you seem to be unable to grasp is my, and I think wring’s problem, is with your argument as such.
Here is a typical example, rather than facing that you have failed to make a good case, but rather have shot the fuck out of your fucking position through poor argumentation, illogical response and the like, you drag in an irrelevancy. It’s rather as if we were discussing human rights situation in Israel and you suddenly, when caught in an uncomfortable, logically and factually indefensible situation come out suddently with, “but you’re not noting the abuses in Turkish prisons”
Non sequitur
God damn man, you desperately need some lessons in basic formal logic.
On argumentation:
Whatever, mother of god what inanities. Speculation without grounding in fact is not an argument. I can speculate that you’re a closet homosexual whose fear/fascination with Matt Shepherd’s case leads you to make borderline homophobic arguments for your own secret thrill value and that late at night you secretely dream of being violated by those two murderers.
However, without proper grounding --which is what you have failed to advance-- this is nothing but an empty ad hominem. Are you truly incapable of grasping this?
On Catholics:
BTW, why don’t you start checking your presumptions.
You’re also content to utilize illogical attacks, to mischaracterize your opponents arguments in egregious, intellectually dishonest manners and generally engage in all the behaviour which you claim so upsets you about “PC”.
Typical december. Ignore the entire factual and logical dismembering of his position to brush away criticism as PC.
You seem to be utterly incapable of grasping that one may disapprove of something yet still object to fatuous arguments.
Take your citation to that dumb publicity seeking fuck Horowitz. His offensive, in fact frankly racist diatribe offends me. Not for PC reasons, but for factual ones. I am against reparations for slavery, on whatever basis. I am also against illogic. Against lies. Against misrepresentations. I don’t need specious, unfounded and frankly dumbass arguments to help my position. Ergo, I am capable, by logic and reason, of critiquing even dumbasses who think they are ‘helping out’ – or rather going on self-serving publicity roundups e.g. Horowitz and idjit girl on “PC” science exploiting the credulous and the ideological hacks – what might be my own positions. I care about not just the position but its internal coherence, its adherence to clear logic and facts. You, quite frankly, appear not to.