Not that his pittings and negative mentions are anything but richly deserved, but he has become a lightning rod for attacks that need to be spread out to other deserving parties.
For instance:
A search under “DeLay” in the Pit turns up well over 500 threads in the last few years, ranging from classic exprressions of disgust like “Tom DeLay, you fucking twit” to the mysterious “Get Bent, Toilet Paper Fascists”*.
But when you do the same search under “Frist”, there are only about 60 threads that reference him.
True, he has had less time to do mischief, but he is making up ground fast. This column by Richard Cohen provides a nice summary of how low Frist is sinking in his desperation to pander to the worst elements in his party.
DeLay is loud and stupid, but he’s not ever going to be President. Frist just might.
*After reading this thread I can’t figure how it relates to DeLay, except that maybe the search function has a sardonic sense of digital humor.
Um. Did you, uh, screen out those threads which contained the not-uncommon English word “delay,” which when experienced might cause someone to be in a Pitiful mood?
You mean the search function doesn’t distinguish between capitalized and non-capitalized terms? Better get on that right away.
It remains true that denunciations of DeLay far outnumber those of Frist, who I do not see you leaping to defend. Which is understandable, given the difficulties involved.
Could be, could be. DeLay’s been around longer, and my impression is that he’s a lot more cavalier with ethical concerns than Frist, abuses his power more, plays dirtier politics. Frist might get that way eventually, but as near as I can tell, his hands are currently a lot cleaner than DeLay’s.
I’ve never leapt to defend either person. That said, the search term “Tom DeLay” turns up 76 threads. Among people inclined to flame either or both of DeLay and Frist I can easily see that Rep. DeLay might be roughly 25% more annoying than Sen. Frist.
It only makes sense. Conservatism as a philosophy is characterized by a tendency to move slowly and cautiously; therefore support for delay is entirely appropriate for a conservative.
I’ll take that as a “No, I can’t find anything complimentary to say about DeLay or Frist, so I’ll try to create distractions without taking any risky personal stands.”
Thanks to Marilyn Manson, I’ve never been able to hear this guy’s name without thinking of the Manson comment that “Dick Armey” sounds like the name of a gay bar.
We could also use more mentions of Orrin “Lapdog Of The Supplement Industry” Hatch around here.*
*N.Y. Times registration required, though stories and yesterday’s editorial detailing Hatch’s defense of the anabolic steroid-promoting supplement DHEA can be pulled up on a Google search.
Distraction to or from what? I don’t see that you flamed Delay or Frist here; you just flamed that people had previously flamed DeLay more.
And they have. Rep. Delay has been mentioned 76 times (as Tom DeLay, at least) as opposed to Sen. Frist’s 59 times. In thread titles which mention one or the other by name, it’s even more tipped towards DeLay, 9 to 4. But not “well over 500” to “only about 60”, which is what you said. Is that not a factual error on your part? Are you not, as a person engaged in the fight against ignornace, grateful to have been corrected?
Wanna flame Frist? Flame away[sup]1[/sup]. Wanna complain that 9:4 is too wide a ratio? Go for it. But do it on correct facts.
[sup]1[/sup]: That said, if you’re doing it on the basis of his statement about the alleged hostility of the Democrats to “people of faith” I’d like you to compare it to Mr. Dean’s statement that “We need to kick the money changers out of the temple and restore moral values to America.” You know, equal time and all that.
Are you that reading comprehension-deprived? Clearly, by linking to the Cohen column I was highlighting Frist’s pandering to, as I said in plain English, “the worst elements of his party”.
And I guess referring to DeLay as “loud and stupid” might not be considered “flaming” him, in some Through The Looking Glass context. :rolleyes:
By the way, son, as you obsess over numerical search hits in contexts of your choosing, you might want to check up on those “76” DeLay citations you’re waving around, as a number of them seem to be on non-political subjects. “Correct facts” my ass.
If you want to start a thread lambasting Howard Dean, go for it. If you get responses on the order of “well, what about X Republican? Huh?”, they’ll be just as dodgy and contemptible as your responses in this thread.
So wait. Is it possible that you intended the title of your thread to be “Not enough DeLay threads”? That instead of the 500:60 ratio you previously cited because you didn’t realize that the search engine is not case sensitive (and good Ghod man, freaking Google isn’t even case sensitive) there actually might be more Frist threads than DeLay ones?
Face it, J, you screwed the pooch on this one. Your best strategy now is to beg a moderator to close this thing before too many other people see what a silly error you made when thinking about how to craft your OP and then open a Frist flame later.
What’s embarassing, manhattan, is your transparent and desperate attempts to hijack the thread with your goofy distractions.
You did briefly stay on subject just long enough to make a reference to ‘if you’re doing it on the basis of his (Frist’s) statement about the alleged hostility of the Democrats to “people of faith”’, so here’s the relevant part of Richard Cohen’s column:
*"I am pausing now to wonder if the phrase “people of faith” is meant to include Muslims of several wives or Hindus of several deities. I think somehow, however, that “people of faith” is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply.
The invocation of the phrase “people of” is no different when preceding “faith” than it is when preceding “color.” It’s a bold signal of mushy thinking, a corralling of people who have nothing in common other than a perceived - and often fictionalized - enemy. “People of faith” mischaracterizes what the political debate is all about. What Senate Democrats lack is not faith, but 50 votes. Frist knows this, of course, but his mad pursuit of the presidency requires him to prove to the Christian right that their cause comes before his principles."*
My disgust with Frist has only partly to do with his kissing up to people who think you are anti-God if you are firm in opposition to a handful of Bush’s more far-out judicial nominess - but let’s focus on that for now.
No attempts to drag in alleged Democratic misdeeds, search techniques or any of your other nonsense. If you think Frist’s panderings speak well of him as a potential Presidential candidate, explain why.
Jackmanni, take a good deep breath and relax for a minute.
Feel better? Good.
Now, I honestly have no idea what your problem with Manhattan is. He came into this thread and corrected a minor point. Hadn’t said much of anything in the way of defending anyone till you jumped his shizzle.
And dear sweet merciful christ Manhattan. You’re carrying nearly as much baggage into threads as Liberal used to.
As noted earlier, he pulled the same sort of crap in this thread. “I don’t have any relevant defense of this turkey to offer, so I’ll raise hell about the OP’s imprecision of language, and hope that his original point gets lost in the uproar.”
If he goes any further down this path, he’ll be reduced to raging at his political opponents for misuse of semicolons and dangling participles. :dubious:
But he wasn’t attacking anything. He may have been a bit snide, but he was correcting the op about his search usage. That’s it. He even did the correct search himself and posted what he found.
If you’re upset about what he did in the other thread, take it back to that thread or the other pit thread it spawned. Don’t go dragging that crap into yet another thread.
