I read lots of old literature as a kid. 
Well, if Kaufman and Jobs come to your mind, you can just toss them right out again, because it’s another one of your bullshit arguments and false comparisons. Both were nutjobs with respect to quack medicine, but neither one promoted this fraud. IIRC, Kaufman quietly traveled to the Philippines for some sort of herbal treatment, and died shortly thereafter. Jobs was a health food nut who did ultimately opt for legitimate medical treatment, but it was too late. Again, neither of them promoted anything, AFAIK.
Charles most certainly did:
And, IIRC, Andy Kaufman only did that weird alternative fake surgery (checks wiki…“psychic surgery”) as a last resort after mainstream treatments didn’t work. When you have days or weeks to live, I can’t fault someone for trying anything, no matter how stupid it sounds.
Unlike Prince Charles, neither Kaufman nor Jobs started up their own company to sell woo remedies, got sanctioned for making false product claims, or lobbied high government officials in secret to thwart regulation of herbal drugs.
The thing that royals like Charles need to stop doing is being shallow dilettantes polluting the public mindset with their dangerously misinformed craziness. It’s not just the royals, either, it’s any of these stupid and/or unethical aristocratic assholes who have lots of time on their hands but limited money, and would like to trade some of their time and title for money. Like Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a lying piece of shit who has been a staunch denier of climate change and a major source of anti-science propaganda in the UK and around the world. The difference is that Charles is a moron, while Monckton is a well-honed grifter.
Again, this is an argument that Charles is a shitty person. That is not the same as evidence he has failed to rehabilitate his image.
I think I am beginning to see… were you trying to counter Martin_Hyde’s claim that the Prince enjoys public support from a majority of Brits?
ETA: Is this an accurate reconstruction of what you were addressing with the Reader’s Digest cite (underlying poll here)?
~Max
So, Max, when will you “begin to see” how dishonest it is for you to attack a source without considering the factual nature of what it reports?
A poll commissioned by The Independent (which recently received a top ten rating for reliability by NewsGuard, along with The Times and The Guardian,) does not suddenly become unreliable because it is reported on other sites.
And yes, poll results showing that nearly half of Britons would like to see Charles to defer to his son William rather than become King himself does not exactly speak to Charles having enormous popularity in his native land. And that was before the launching of a police probe into Charles’ foundation accepting millions in donations from a Saudi billionaire, allegedly in return for help obtaining honors and citizenship.
This multifactorial accumulation of sleaze may be “irrelevant” to Martin and you, but quite a few others feel differently.
A poll showing a preference for William over Charles, is again, not evidence contrary to the only claim I have made–that Charles’ image was successfully rehabilitated in the late 1990s after Diana’s death. This is borne out by consistent opinion polling in which he is viewed more favorably than unfavorably. The fact that his son is viewed even more positively is not a contra-point to that.
If you want to know my approach, here it is. (if not, I recommend the ‘j’ key)
The important things to know about a poll are the methodology and the actual phrasing used for the questions and responses. Without this information the results of a poll are only worth the reliability of its source. It was not apparent that The Independent commissioned the poll until you responded to me in this thread. You will have to forgive me judging your cite without first independently checking your original and undated cite’s non-linked cite’s commissioning publication for their reputation. I did not personally recognize BMG Research, and while I did visit their website it didn’t have a search function and I gave up. BMG’s website is the most vague and generic public research website you can envision. It’s not immediately clear what they do at all. I could have sifted through BMG’s newsblog but it didn’t have an index and I don’t know how many years ago the poll was conducted. Your original source, Reader’s Digest Australia, doesn’t tell me when the article was published or when the poll was conducted. It only provided:
In fact, a survey by BMG Research reveals that nearly half of the British public wants Prince Charles to step aside and give the throne to his oldest son when Queen Elizabeth II passes away.
Hence my characterization of your cite as “n=0” - in my eyes, your cite was worth as much as a survey of zero people. You responded with another cite. The Independent’s article provides some crucial context that Reader’s Digest Australia did not:
January 2, 2019
[…]
More of the 1,500 people polled said they thought Charles, 70, should abdicate than believed he should become king, with 27 per cent showing “strong support” for a move to directly pass the crown to William and a further 19 per cent saying they would “somewhat support” such a plan.
[…]
Source note: BMG Research interviewed a representative sample of 1,508 GB adults online between 4 and 7 December. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British Polling Council and abide by their rules
Of note, now I know the date of the polling (early December of 2018), the number of people in the sample (1,508), and the nature of the poll (online, and apparently a sample that has been weighted so as to represent the British public). The date is important because 2017 was the 20th anniversary of Princess Dianna’s death, the only major dip in Prince Charles’s favorability this century as per Martin_Hyde’s source.
Before I can form an informed conclusion about the survey I need to know what specifically was asked of the sample that The Independent reports as “a move to directly pass the crown to William”. The “move” is necessarily made by Parliament as law governs the line of succession, but the critical distinction is whether Prince Charles wants to abdicate. Am I to understand that 48% of respondents at least “somewhat support” the Parliament directly passing the crown to William, regardless of Prince Charles’s wishes? Or did they say if Prince Charles wants to abdicate, he should be able to?
So with this question in mind I tried again to find the underlying report from the pollster. I finally found it here. The graphic presents the question asked as,
In the event of the Queen’s death, to what extent would you support or oppose Prince Charles abdicating and passing the crown to Prince William?
But the responses in the graphic are shown as “support”, “oppose”, and “no opinion/don’t know” which doesn’t match The Independent’s distinction between “strongly support” and “somewhat support”. Therefore I don’t know for sure if this is the actual question asked, or just a summary.
BMG’s website does not seem to provide any further data such as specific methodology or toplines except on request,
Methodology, fieldwork dates, and a breakdown of these results can be found here.
I’m not particularly interested in this topic so rather than bother them I’m just going to give up on it. Besides, there’s another problem with your cite.
You haven’t countered Marten_Hyde’s claim. Martin_Hyde claimed that a majority of Brits view Prince Charles favorably. You agreed that this is the claim you are trying to counter.
Your counterargument is a poll purporting to show that a minority of Brits want Prince Charles to abdicate. A sizeable minority, but a minority nonetheless. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that all of these people who would prefer King William view Prince Charles unfavorably, that does not refute Martin_Hyde’s claim that a majority of Brits view Prince Charles favorably.
You have brought up a police probe regarding donations from Saudi Arabians, and I understand this to have become a public scandal very recently. It is certainly possible the majority of Brits no longer view the Prince favorably; but as far as the facts go, such an assertion is unsupported.
~Max
Well, that’s a hell of a lot of useless verbiage.
The fact remains that you attacked a source without bothering to confirm its factual reporting. That’s a sleazy ploy you’d do well to avoid in the future.
Nope, never said that. I pointed out that a substantial number of Charles’ erstwhile subjects have problems with his behavior, while his defenders try to gloss over his actions using the argumentum ad populum fallacy.
Good.
It’s high time that you stopped hogging Martin’s time in the spotlight, seeing that your own postings have already gotten you the attention you seem to crave.
This is full of rich irony.
Note - I agree with Martin’s stance in the first quote.
I don’t. He’s saying he doesn’t want to do the work, but demanding that others have to do that same work. He’s the one who has already read it, and should have a summary in his head of what parts he thinks are important to his argument.
With the length of the document on question, the whole thing becomes similar to Gish Gallop, making it take too much time to debunk everything.
Surely he has a summary in his head that he could write with little effort, a summary he could use as an argument.
If he doesn’t do it, then his argument is unconvincing.
That said, I do tend to agree with him on his most recent argument in this thread. It does seem like the poster angry at him was missing his point.
If his “point” was that it’s OK to use dishonest debate tactics such as attributing statements to someone that they did not make and dismissing valid evidence by attacking the sources that present it, then yes, I fail to see his “point”.
Nifty. I start a thread to talk about the interrelationships between systemic oppression, personal bigotry, and jerkiness. The first response is good old Martin, trying to hijack it with a discussion of merit scholarships. When I refuse to take the bait and gently redirect him to the thread’s topic, he gets petulant and snitty:
I posted a polite inquiry, you declined to respond, and asked me to respond to a question of yours which I politely declined. The only person acting rudely here is you. I suggest getting emotional help.
Fuck off.
You wrote 660 words to conclude this:
“Three things which are clearly not the same, are different, but all three are bad.” I’m sorry that I tried to help you out by finding some salient discussion point, but as it is it looks like you bloviated in some dumb ass blog post about how three different bad things are … not the same thing? And you want to discuss that as some sort of debate? And then you get mad because someone tries to help out what was clearly a feverishly typed out and terrible post by correlating it to obvious matters of discussion related to it? You’re not just being childish and rude, you’re a poor writer and not very intelligent.
such a douche