Reading for Comprehension Test - Just Like High School

[Bricker]

@MsWhatsit

OH COME ON. Seriously?! This is about a post that was made three years ago?!

Christ on a cracker.

Edit: This is really obnoxious behavior. Taking another SDMB poster’s words (made 3 years ago, no less) and putting them up here “anonymously” to get a bunch of reactions that you can then take to that poster and say “ha, I was right,” when nobody in this thread knew who you were talking about, much less that it was a fellow Doper, is really low.

No. The basis of the poll was a more current post. This one.

@elucidator

Senator Kirk and the Constitutionality of Expedient Law Switching - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board

…The Pubbies bluffed, and got called. They refused any accomodation to the facts, and dared the Dems to commit a sordid and partisan act. The Dems called…

I believe that the word “sordid” are widely accepted to be a “negative thing”. Your groveling apology is presumed, and gracefully accepted.

THAT is the post that occasioned this poll.

elucidator offered up his own post from three years ago as evidence he criticized the Democrats for the swappero law changes. I said to him, in reply:

@Bricker

Here’s your entire post. This post is supposed to be you saying that the Democrats did something negative?

As God said to Noah, in Bill Cosby’s telling of it… “Riiiiight…”

His response:

@elucidator

Unless “sordid” means something different than what the dictionary says it means, then I said the Democrats did something negative. Which directly contradicts your statement. Its really quite simple.

If you have a different definition of “sordid” than the rest of us, perhaps you will share?

And I responded:

@Bricker

No, no – although the word itself does mean something negative, the entire post does not. You actually never even said, directly, that the Democrats did something sordid. You said the Republicans dared the Democrats to do something sordid, and the Democrats “called their bluff.” The overall impression given by your post is that the Democrats did a finer thing – balanced the scales, kept karma where it should be.

Of course, the advantage you gain by this overly flowery, rhetorical flourishes, laced heavily with sarcasm, is that you can come back to a paragraph like this and claim it means any damn thing you like.

But the fact remains that this paragraph, read fairly and fully, does not cast the Democrats in a negative light.

Want to use this post as a poll subject in IMHO?

We’ll post it as written, and ask readers to vote on whether it shows Democrats, Republicans, both, or neither, in a negative light.

Care to predict how that voting will go?

All that was from posts made June 11th, 2012.

Please explain how this was wrong, obnoxious, whatever.