Your asshole-meter resets to “0” on the news of someone’s death? Mine doesn’t. It stays right where it was.
I don’t get this ‘nil nisi’ stuff. Is this just a matter of good manners? You can say hateful but sincere things about Tony Snow until the day he dies, then you lay off? Forever? For a few tasteful days? Or are you just required to modify the invective from his death forward, but still voice it? Can I get a ruling, please?
Also: on the kids and family stuff? Is this an imporant factor in the nil nisi rules? Do pets count?
Is there any reason to think that Diogenes is posting stuff he doesn’t necessarily believe, or that his primary purpose here is to piss people off and get a reaction? If not, the fact that he does sometimes piss you (and others) off is immaterial, from a moderation standpoint. That’s where it’s out of our hands and into yours – if you find someone’s opinions to be objectionable, tell them so, call them a douchebag, prove them wrong with facts and cites, ignore them, whatever floats your boat.
Part of the message board experience is interacting with people who are very different than oneself, for better and for worse. Expecting the moderators to remove any and all extreme viewpoints would make this a very dull place.
For a guy like him? yeah it does, he simply no longer matters. He didn’t write policy, he didn’t make decisions, he didn’t commit crimes. He was just the asshole who talked to the press, doesn’t make him a good guy but his actions are now inconsequential.
Geez, humanity would dictate that we don’t act like assholes the same day someone dies, not because we respect the man so much as we respect those who love and cared for the man, his family and friends.
Jesus, you’re a bitter, nasty person. Let go of some of your anger, become a little more tolerant, and you’ll be happier. Clearly, there’s a lot more wrong with you than there was with Tony Snow, although in your case it’s cancer of the soul, or the personality, or whatever.
Snow worked for someone you don’t like. Whoop-dee-frickin’-do. It doesn’t make him a Nazi.
We’re also talking of what a large amounts of people reasonably don’t see as lies. Setting that aside…
It’s one thing to say you don’t mourn someone’s death. But it’s quite another to revel in the person’s agony and horrible death. And it reaches another level to wish for more “political shills” to die agonizing deaths.
So that’s a 24-hour nil nisi rule, then? Is it 24 hours from Snow’s death, or 24 hours from the AP ticker, or 24 hours from the SD posting, that I can tastefully rail against the man’s indecency and swinish pattern of behavior? Please LMK–I don’t want to offend anyone, here.
At some point, I will want to know what this 24 hour moratorium does for you, exactly. I’d think you’ll just have people stewing in their juices for a day, and then you’d get an ungodly blast of vitriol when the deadline is up–I don’t see any real gain for you in this buffer zone.
I will admit I didn’t like Snow, but I didn’t want him to die. When Jesse Helms bought it my only thought was “Rot in Hell, son of a bitch”, but I felt a twinge of sadness upon Snow’s death.
That said, I don’t feel DtC and others who hated Snow are trolling. Their feelings run deep and are consistent from what I have seen posted in my time here. Especially with DtC, I would not expect him to feel any differently than he does. He’s being honest, that’s all.
As kind as President Clinton was about Nixon, you may not have much official company. I personally hope that someone remembered to drive a stake through his black heart before they screwed down the lid.
Which brings up the point, how does it come to pass that the bad guys are no longer bad guys when they shuffle off this mortal coil?
I have always been a believer in “the punishment should fit the crime”.
Tony Snow was a shill and apologist for the Bush administration. But, as press secretary, that was his job. Every POTUS has had one, and their job entails spouting a line of bullshit to the press corps that will hopefully be bought by the masses.
A dirty, disagreeable job, to be sure. But hardly one that merits being pleased that they died a horrible, painful death. That type of “poetic justice” should be reserved for the Hitlers, Stalins and Torquemadas of the world. For Snow, disgrace before his peers and the public would have sufficed.
I find it disturbing that otherwise intelligent beings (as I have come to view the majority of my fellow Dopers) would take such pleasure in another human’s physical suffering. But, hey, if that’s what floats your boat, that’s your lookout, not mine.
Oh, come on. He was not running things, he was just Joe Isuzu. For that, we get all happy that his guts slowly rotted out and killed him? That’s fucking wrong. Save the hatred and venom for the real bad guys, not some doofus who got paid to look good on camera.
Snow also continued defending Bush long after he resigned.
A Press Secretary should IMO inform his boss that, the second he’s asked to spin some information in a way that he knows to be false, he will resign immediately. That might not do much for his job security, but it will help to keep Presidents reasonably honest with the American people. He can always hire a new Press secretary, but that may be more inconvenient than just telling the truth on some critical occasions. Without such an agreement, we’re all complicit in acknoledging that we’re being systematically lied to, and it’s ok with us.