Never mind. I give up. I totally surrender. Where do I have to sign?
sailor, help to fight ignorance. I’m clearly a moron, so I need something pointed out. What is it on this page that is actually funny/ironic, rather than ignorant or bigotted or misleading. I can point out a dozen things that are hysterically funny, in their own right, on the Americans for Purity site, but so far, the only thing you’ve given us to show this is a joke is that, well, IT’S A JOKE. Unless you put up the page yourself, and your posts here are part of the joke, this doesn’t help us.
HenrySpencer
sailor: At the same time, anti-male positions are much more socially acceptable and nobody seems to care that much.
So you keep saying, but you still haven’t shown evidence for it. The fact that something like the “SCUM Manifesto” appears on the reading list of a college course in political philosophy doesn’t mean that the views it espouses are considered “socially acceptable,” any more than the fact that anti-female writers like Thomas Otway and St. Jerome are also studied in college courses means that their views on women are considered “socially acceptable.” Try harder: we’ll get a Great Debate out of this thread yet.
Here’s another shot. Suppose you, a woman, agreed with the analysis of the referenced site. IOW, you agreed that the overall impact of woman voting was a negative one. (This due to the fact that other women were not as enlightened as yourself). Would you give up your own right to vote in order that the principle of women voting be kept? Or should the principle outweigh the practical aspects?
This is not intended to endorse, in any way, the suggestion that women lose their right to vote, or the analysis of women’s voting.
The question could be put thus to any number of groups. (e.g. Would a Jewish conservative support taking away the right to vote for Jews, as they generally vote liberal?)
Sounds a little over-pragmatic to me, Izzy. Once we shift the central issue of voting rights from “which citizens are rightfully entitled to vote?” to “which citizens do I generally like to see voting?”, we’re all doomed, IMO.
And I fell for it. :o
If you look at the homepage, you’ll see a photo of Downtown Los Angeles (I know where that is, because that’s where I live). Yet Los Angeles has no Fathers Manifesto Square, certainly not in the area pictured. (I see the Arco Center, Sanyo Bank, Union 76 and the red-and-white brick building in the center of the photo has a Washington Mutual in the first floor. Across the street is the building that used to house Home Savings. Beneath that is a subway stop for the Red and Blue Lines.)
Has anyone called the number for their World Headquarters? Toll-free (877) 794-0627 for phone and fax? The same number for phone and fax would be a neat trick.
Um, I can produce about 20 clients from my database in just a few seconds who have the same phone and fax number. Devices made to distinguish between phone and fax calls on a single line have been available for over a decade for folks who can’t afford two phone lines. Not that this has any bearing on whether the site is a joke, but just clarifying.
Oh. Okay.
I’m quite sure the whole bit about a huge office building and “Fathers Manifesto Square” is a gag. The question is, is it one more bit of silliness in an entire site(s) intended as some kind of performance art/very deadpan prank, or is it the heavy-handed and self-pitying attempt at humor by a bunch of White Supremacists who consider themselves plucky little underdogs victimized by jackbooted Federal agents, the Jewish media, and Hillary Clinton?
I checked out the site and I’m pretty sure it was a joke, just not a very funny one.
Well, I guess it is funnier if you can understand it. I had decided not to post to this thread anymore as I thought I had contributed all I could but I remembered the case of a guy who wrote an article and fooled the entire scientific establishment and had it published in some scientific journal… does anyone remember this case? I remember seeing an excerpt of the article and, since I did not understand it, it just looked like boring stuff…
Regarding this site, besides the obvious clues I have pointed out, anyone who analyzes the data (graphs, stats, etc) can see it is totally unrelated and they do not attempt to draw any serious conclusions from it. I think the main problem here is that the people who are missing the joke would not really understand well the pages even if they were a serious scientific work. To me it was quite suspicious from the beginning but I guess it may be because I have a technical background that most people do not have.
Many years ago I saw a similar joke. It was written in the form of a scholarly paper which attempted to prove WWII was caused by the building of churches in the years immediately preceding it. The form was that of a scientific study but the contents hilarious. But I can see a foreigner who does not understand the language well trying to interpret it in all seriousness and then scratching his head and wondering.
Anyway, does anyone remember the case of the guy who fooled the scientific establishment and had his paper published and taken seriously when it was all a joke?
sailor, I don’t know if it’s being a bit forgiving to call it a joke, as this suggests that the people behind the site don’t actually have any ulterior motives. Here’s another theory, which I’d be interested in you commenting on:
You’re correct, there is no such organisation, and they made up a phone number and address so that nobody could track them down. Despite this, the people behind the site actually have a number of extreme right wing views, including that women are inferior to men, and that Jews are evil. By putting their message in the context of a controversial subject such as stopping women from voting, they are able to have hate literature read by a lot more people than those who would read things at a site called ‘killthejews.com’. Even though you can see through the graphs as a hoax, and I can see the absurdity of the criticism of the Talmud as being completely removed from the bible, many people who come across the page won’t be able to do so. They’re not necessarily idiots, they just might not have come across the truth about these things.
The people who used the infamous forgery ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ to spread hatred of the Jews knew it was a forgery, but they were counting on the people reading it not being aware of this. There’s nothing on the site to suggest that the people behind it are taking the mickey out of the hate site they link to, or that they mean it as a joke.
Again, if there’s something I missed on the site that disproves my theory, could you point it out, otherwise, I’m going to have to go on believing that although it may just be some guy sitting at a computer making all this stuff up, he’s still doing it to spread hate, not to make a joke (even a sick one).
HenrySpencer
>> Sailor’s right, it’s a gag. And I fell for it
Jab1, I have fallen for jokes quite a few times myself. I never understood the people who, when they realize they’ve been taken, instead of admitting it and laughing, they will try to find justification (well, maybe this is a joke but there are other people out there who are serious).
I remember quite a few years ago, I was working as a consultant and commuted by plane. I was on an early morning flight with a colleague. The plane was freezing cold as it was the first morning flight. I start reading the local the local paper and the headline was about a very controveersial bridge which was costing millions to build and many people were opposed to it. The headline said that, now that it was almost completed, it was discovered that due to bad quality control in the concrete pouring, it would have to be torn down and built over again which would almost duplicate the cost.
Man, I went ballistic in a tirade against government bureaucrats who wasted taxpayers money etc… Anyway, only later in the day I mentioned it again to someone else and he said “Do you realize it is April first?” … oh, boy, did I feel sheepish. All the warning signs were there. This was really an unlikely story but it was in the newspaper headline and I took it in, hook line and sinker. I still get a chuckle when I remember. And the guy who was with me will not let me forget it either 
Henry, I disagree with you very strongly. First I must say that just because a subject is controversial does not mean we are forbidden from joking about it. One thing I greatly dislike about the PC crowd is that their sense of humor is greatly impaired.
Having said that, I think the main fools are people who criticize what they don’t understand just on the appearance of it. In other words, they believe A to be true, this source appears to state A to be false so they will proceed to blast it without further understanding. To me this is a fool not worth listening to. If he cannot be bothered to understand what he is about to criticize the correct procedure is to shut the fuck up. Or he can take the trouble of understanding what the other guy is saying and refuting it with reasonable arguments.
I think anyone who attempts any kind of understanding of that site will see it is a joke (as I did right away) or may think “this is over my head”. If you think it is over your head just shut up. Now if someone who does not understand the entire thing is taken in by it, I do not think the author can be blamed in the least, only the idiot reading it. It is your responsibility to understand what you read not the author’s responsibility to make sure his stuff cannot be read by people who may not get it.
The problem as I see it is that people, instead of judging things on their own merits, will grade them in accordance with how they jibe with their own opinions.
Let us judge things objectively on their own merits. I say that site is clearly a joke for anyone who attempts to understand what it is saying. If you do not care to understand it, then you should not be judging it. You cannot judge a paper by how it jibes with your opinions. If the logic is flawed then criticize that. As soon as you start doing that it becomes apparent that every page is a joke. The graphs make no sense, the figures are made up, come on! I, for one, got a good laugh out of it.
twitch
Not the Father’s Manifesto! twitch
I’m afraid they’re not a joke. They’ve been cussed and discussed here before, though not for a while: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=3182
A few of us posters went around and around with them and their half-witted “sisters” at the Ladies’ Manifesto site. Just as I hate the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance for taking Oregon’s name in vain and painting us all with the same broad brush of hatred, I hate with this site has done for “fathers.” My daddy wouldn’t have agreed with a word on that site and that doesn’t make him any less of a man!
twitch Must lay down now.
Wait, call me seriously dumb for not reading the entire thread before posting, but is everyone really and truly sure this site is meant as a joke? Because it sure took people in before. Are jokes allowed to have .org URL’s? http://fathersmanifesto.org/
You are probably refering to the Sokal case where he (being a physicist) published an article on quantum gravity and how it fits into post-modernist ideas in a journal called Social Text. I think kimstu is more up on the details. So, he didn’t really fool people in his own field…but people in another field by talking about work in his own field in the context of their field of study. It gets a little confusing.
By the way, as for your comment about your technical background being useful in seeing that this page being a joke…Well, I don’t think it is quite that simple. We all seem to agree that the arguments are ridiculous…the question is whether they are made sincerely by ridiculous people or whether they are purposely ridiculous. (I think some of the arguments made in a Heritage Foundation article cited in another Great Debates thread here are also sort of goofy correlations…but they are certainly meant sincerely.)
>> call me seriously dumb for not reading the entire thread before posting
Ok, I’ll be happy to oblige: You are seriously dumb for not reading the entire thread before posting.
You are welcome.
Or do you just want everybody to post all their posts once again in answer to your question? (So you can not read them once again?) You want to know our opinions and our reasons? Read the thread! Anything we have missed or not covered? Then it is time to post. I have expressed my opinions and my reasons as clearly as I can already. I have noticed some people will post without reading what has already been said and I try to ignore such posts if I feel I have already answered in previous posts.
>> We all seem to agree that the arguments are ridiculous…the question is whether they are made sincerely by ridiculous people or whether they are purposely ridiculous
Well, I am not sure it would make a ton of difference. When I see some charlatan preaching some crazy stuff I laugh and I am not really concerned on how much of it he really believes or how much is just added flourish.
My impression is that it is so obvious that it cannot be done with any intention to mislead anyone. I mean it’s not like they have taken some numbers out of context or something, it is that they are totally laughable and only those who are quite ignorant could take it seriously.
Take this: US GDP per Worker declined by 57% since Affirmative Action was implemented, plunging from three times higher than Japan to one third lower What does that tell you?
Suppose I am trying to defend my position that we should not hunt whales in the Pacific and I give you as a reason that the population of Europe is about 1/10th that of the USA.
Your reaction would be WTF? Either this guy is joking or he is a total moron. It is not only that the population of Europe compared to that of the USA is totally irrelevant to the matter we are discussing, but on top of that I am giving you figures which are totally wrong by an order of magnitude.
When I come across someone like that, I laugh. I really don’t care much if the guy did not intend it as a joke. It is a joke.
If I see a man wearing a tinfoil helmet to prevent the CIA from listening in on his thoughts I think that’s funny. If I see a man trying to reason with him I think he is stupid.
OK, here is a new thought: I do not believe this site can seriously pretend to support any sexist views as it it too obvious that it is all fake. If they really wanted to do that, they would be a bit more careful. So, if it was intended to propagate sexist views, it fails.
OTOH, I see it clearly as a joke but it is also quite clear it is not so clearly obvious to many other people. So, if it is intended as a joke, it fails.
Could it possibly be that the intention is something totally unrelated to the two previous ideas? I have seen many sites that only have ONE goal: traffic. Traffic to charge for the ads they display. Joke sites, porn sites, etc that do not sell anything but the ads they display.
If this is the motive behind this site I have to say they have succeeded in getting a ton of people to go there. It would make sense to me from that angle. What do you think? Any other ideas on what their motivations may be?
Well, I guess you’ve got it all wrapped up there, sailor. I was a moron for not recognising that this site is obviously a joke, although you couldn’t give any reason why it was a joke, except that DAMMIT IT’S A JOKE, and that the phone number and address were wrong, and that the graphs were misleading. Oh, but then you say that maybe the person is serious, because there’s nothing actually funny or satirical about the site, only blatantly ignorant, and this wouldn’t be the first time that someone who hated all women, as well as men who aren’t white Christians has ever shown that they were ignorant in the presentation of their arguments. I guess I should cut them some slack for being so stupid, and not worry about the material they’re presenting, and the other websites they’re linking to, that I might find spreading GROSS ignorance, not for a cheap laugh, but because they really do hate.
This is where I guess we disagree, and because you’re so tolerant of other people’s opinions and beliefs, you’ve decided that I’m an idiot.
And if he was handing out hate literature to people, as well as laughing at him, I would try to point out to people that not only was his dress ridiculous, but so were his opinions. It’s called fighting ignorance, rather than just being happy to see people who are stupider than you get taken in by someone else’s stupidity.
I guess in my uncomfortable mantle as guardian of PC values, as nominated by you, I should be uncomfortable for how much I laughed at the Americans for Purity site (and started a MPSIMS thread to let people know about it), except that in that case, the site actually had things that were FUNNY - that line about ‘George Michael was also in a group called WHAM, and look where it got him’ KILLS me.
As you keep saying, you don’t want to argue about something so self evident as this, but what you seem to mean is that YOU think it’s funny, therefore it’s not to be taken seriously by anyone. So this is not worthy of the Great Debates.
HenrySpencer
And while we’re at it, unless you had some burning need to send this to the Pit, I can’t see why you’d make such a statement completely unprovoked.
HenrySpencer.