Oh really? Check this out. (.pdf):
[QUOTE=Campos Pardillos]
Parallel to its more frequent demostrative usage, this refers to a present common ground, whereas the occurrence of that in advertising is to be understood as a reminder of an even less objective space, supposedly common to both participants, with a strong evocative, emotional connotation. (p. 63)
[/quote]
;)
But in the example that you give, the question (“Why Do Republicans Continue to Fellate Rich People?”) is not one that is even amenable to the sort of factual answers that GQ is designed for.
It is, at best asking for an opinion, and belongs in either IMHO or GD. Given that it is such a bad example of a GQ question, i’d like to see an actual example of the problem you are alleging.
So would I. I can’t recall any situation remotely similar to that alleged by jtgain, even allowing for hyperbole.
Simply including “I’m only interested in factual responses” doesn’t get the OP a free pass to stay in GQ. If an OP appears to be clearly biased or not amenable to a factual answer, I’ll boot it over to GD or IMHO regardless of any “request for factual responses.” If there are political issues involved, I’ll generally only leave it in GQ if the OP appears to be genuinely looking for factual information, and if that factual information is likely to exist.
As I search, I can’t find an example of what I was referring to. Perhaps it was a misconception on my part, but I got the impression from being in GQ a lot. I withdraw my complaint. Ignorance fought.
I agree with you, for what it’s worth. There are often factual answers to political questions like, “Why do Jewish voters support the Democrats?”
There was a really interesting one from the 2000 election along the lines of “Why do Latino voters in Florida support Republicans.” The answer had a very specific historical reason that is still relevant to today’s politics.
The problem in those questions is that they are often provocative in nature, such as your example that used the word fellate. A political historian has probably looked at the how voter demographics has changed over the past 200 years, including key moments like post Great Depression era when the country got divided between those making money and those not.
Further to this, not everyone using this message board is American, and as a Canadian I am often baffled as to why the parties aligned themselves the way they did. Often the answer is based on who was President at a certain time. People strongly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons will for ever remember Truman as the one that dropped the bomb, and associate that with Democrats (as an example).
In 50 years (or maybe 1) people will wonder why there is the association of invading the Middle East with Republicans. There will be 70 year olds with deep seated resentment, and at the same time 20 year olds trying to to get factual information.
In Canada, there was a process in the 70s where the federal government transferred oil wealth from Alberta to the poorer provinces. Growing up in the 80s meant I didn’t understand that, but it continues to shape the relationship between Alberta and the Federal Government.
As you described, it’s next to impossible to get that information. Posting in GQ will ultimately fail, and posting in GD will get you nothing but bashing. Even wikipedia suffers from this, so it’s not exactly unique.
Thanks for the mega-guffaw.
When someone gets all undiebundled and indignantly proclaims: “I’m done with this thread, I’m taking my ball and going home!” :mad: snort :mad:
Then within two posts they’re back rehashing the same bologna they were serving up before.
Hint: If you want to stop posting in a thread, stop clicking [Submit Reply].
It sucks at doing my laundry.
Absolutely nothing to do with the SDMB, but my scanner has that kind of “programmer not thinking” problem. When I’m scanning a document to a multi-page PDF file, it says something like “Completed scanning 1th page,” then “Completed scanning 2th page,” then “Completed scanning 3th page,” then finally “Completed scanning 4th page” and is grammatically correct at least until I get to the 21th page.
The stupid part is, if they’d just programmed it to say “Completed scanning page 1,” “Completed scanning page 2,” “Completed scanning page 3,” there’d be no problem at all.
Boy, that felt good to get off my chest.
When you finish with your chuckles, maybe you could provide a few examples of left-leaning GQ threads that were given preferential treatment and right-leaning threads that were moderated unfairly. It being such an egregious problem that the very notion of the contrary induces paroxysms of laughter, I trust it won’t take you very long to find a few good ones.
Unless, of course, you’re completely full of it and just couldn’t help getting in an unjustified dig. That’s fine too, as long as we’re on the same page.
Until just now little annoyed me about this board. Now because of a goofy little traditional joke I make in this thread I get yelled at?! What the hell? I thought the dumb but exceedingly short & succinct Smirnov pun was a tradition here, like the plane on a treadmill. I’ve seen it many times and I only ever peruse GQ and Cafe.
Been I subscriber & contributor for over a decade, to quote Python, “You’re no fun anymore”… 
I was a little surprised at that mod note, too. Normally, you’re not supposed to make jokes in GQ until after the question has been pretty thoroughly answered, which you ignored, but it seems that your particular joke is never allowed. Not sure why that would be.
Oh wow dude. I really can’t believe the moderator response in that thread.
In fact, I started a thread about it.
While we’re on the topic of annoying things, i get annoyed that we apparently can’t discuss anything related to Russia without someone chiming in with a stupid “In Soviet Russia…” joke.
I should add that i think samclem’s response to the joke was way over the top.
It’s also somewhat paradoxical that he went so ballistic in a ralph124c thread, since he and the other GQ mods seem happy to let posters like ralph124c and Jinx clutter up the forum with hundreds of questions that could have been answered by the first Google hit or Wikipedia link.
Way to prioritize, guys!
I have no interest in fucking jet packs; I prefer women.
Recently, we, the GQ MODS, have tried to step up our new plan to euthanize both ralph and jinx. Yep. They have their problems. We could smother them before they post again.
We try to act moderately, and counsel them. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I think we don’t let them get away with what they did a year or more ago.
Please continue to report their posts that violate any board rules/protocols.
The words trope and meme. Also, when someone spells it hallowe’en.
All very pretentious.
It would help if you would publish a list of approved, non-pretentious terms so we’d all know what was allowed and what was not.