Check out McMegan's fascistic new comments policy. Reminiscent of nothing so much as the letters page at Pravda if you ask me.
« Good Map | Main | Mmm...Fraud »
Jackboots
29 Aug 2007 06:21 pm
Comments (75)
She's missed a real opportunity to find the truth. Simply charge people to post. By her lights, those with the most money obviously have the best ideas.
Excuse me while I set up a blog and try to convince people Rand wasn't a talentless hack.
I believe Matt's comment is firmly tongue in cheek.
However, you probably shouldn't listen to me at all on issues involving funny things. Sadly I have no sense of humor (as was pointed out to me by Megan) and I hang out with a crowd of miscreants(as was implied by a fellow commentor).
All this within one day of reading her blog!
szr, who thinks the intertube gawds are telling me to stick within Matt's domain. And who is he to question the intertube?
I've seen these comments policies on other blogs, and while they seem reasonable they always backfire.
You would think that a moderator should be able to delete insulting, boring, or contentless posts without touching posts that disagree with his views, but the result of declaring that you are going to do that always winds up chilling discussion. I think the problem is that just the threat by a moderator to delete posts is usually interpreted as a threat to delete posts the moderator disagrees with, or doesn't like for some random reason. So everyone walks on eggshells.
What I would like to see, and I don't know if the technology will support this, is a daily posting limit, which is a neutral way of weeding out persistent trolls, people who like to shout down their opponents, people in love with contentless posts, and people living in their mothers' basements. A ban on profanity might work, but I wouldn't go futher.
the funniest part in there is when she says she makes her living by IP.
which is a neutral way of weeding out persistent trolls, people who like to shout down their opponents, people in love with contentless posts, and people living in their mothers' basements
And Petey (to the extent he is not covered by the above).
J/k.
Serious question: does anyone know if Matt reads the comments? I've never seen him wade into a thread. And given his output, it would make sense that he posts and then moves on. But I'm curious to hear the observations of others.
Thanks.
I think Ed is wrong and people will continue to post whatever they feel like (both profane and disagreeable) regardless of any policy. Writing a comment isn't a very high cost.
I think her policy is foolish and most sites don't have it because it's an amazing amount of work to do, on an hourly basis. The funniest part was where she encouraged people to email her what they thought should be deleted. I bet she's going to regret that little line soon.
There's been lots of pearls-clutching and vapors-getting over there by the Church Ladies who came over from the Jane Galt enterprise.
Libertarians loves 'em a bubble.
"And Petey (to the extent he is not covered by the above)."
I live in the subway tunnels, not my mother's basement.
You'd be surprised how good the WiFi signal gets down here once you're three or four levels below street level.
The albino rats are always sucking up bandwidth to download their albino rat porn, but there's enough bandwidth left over to handle humble text reading and writing.
Matt just did her a great service; this was the first time I bothered to even check her blog, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Previously I sorta vaguely remebered the name as someone who took over when Glenn Reynolds was on vacation shooting off shotguns and pretending he was in the Marines.
And I believe I've conclusively defeated Megan's system with my 7:06 comment on her thread.
All your comment are belong to us.
YOU ARE ALL FUCKING FASCIST MORONS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I live in the subway tunnels, not my mother's basement.
It seems that this would make you a Morlock, rather than a troll.
I don't know what her comment policy is; I'm sure it's overlong but fine. I think, as a general rule, people should understand the comment policy of any blog to be "whatever the fuck I, the owner, feel like deleting gets deleted."
And then, when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out, because everyone's head had exploded at the sight of a "libertarian" censoring comments.
Many of us couldn't care less about Megan and think it's kind of silly that you "just happen" to be linking to and discussing her posts more that she's been given a blog on The Atlantic, giving her more attention than she deserves. It enters the theater of the absurd, however, when you start linking to posts about her comment policies.
I mean, really-- this is a banal comment policy post from a blogger whose posts about policy and politics are banal to begin with. Now, if you decided to have a recurring "Megan McArdle" feature similar to the way roy recurringly links to Ann Althouse, that would be different.
"And then, when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out, because everyone's head had exploded at the sight of a "libertarian" censoring comments."
Kudos, Freddie. I briefly tried to piece together a gag like that and failed.
I will give Megan credit--she did come up with an argument against universal health care that I hadn't heard before, though it was basically just a retread of the same anti-redistributionist argument that conservatives use for everything. It's immoral to have well people pay for the health care of sick people? By the same logic, then, is it moral to have states at a low risk of a terror attack (e.g. Montana) pay money to those with a high risk (New York)? Oh, wait, it's the other way around. Never mind.
I would have left this comment on Megan's site, but it probably would have been deleted.
Before reading McArdle's blog on The Atlantic I never knew that libertarianism meant "compassionless conservatism."
Tyro: I'm glad you mentioned Althouse, because it seems to me that she and McArdle have a lot in common in that they seem to attract a high degree of vitriol and outright hatred disproportionate to their actual views and deeds. Particularly they seem to be frequently accused of being just plain stupid, yet I see no evidence that this is actually case. I don't agree with them on many things, but they seem perfectly intelligent to me.
I can't help but belief that latent sexism is a partial cause of this, or a desire to rein women who have gotten out of the proper liberal female line, even though both women are pro-choice and socially liberal. (Indeed, I rarely hear the stupidity charge made at actually pro-life women like Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter; they seem more likely to be accused of having an unpleasant personality. I guess Kathryn Jean Lopez is pro-life and attracts stupidity accusations, but since she is part of a group blog she seems in general to be attacked less frequently.) People seem to have a greater willingness to accuse a woman of out-and-out stupidity than to accuse a man of the same. People like Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, and Jonah Goldberg are frequently attacked as hacks and sometimes (especially Goldberg) are frankly accused of stupidity, but it seems to happen to Althouse and McArdle more often. In particular, men like the three I have mentioned are usually attacked only when they make some of kind of major statement, whereas McArdle and especially Althouse seem to attract people who jump on their smallest aside.
Since this is now the place to leave non approved Mcardle comments:
NAZI, HITLER, SHIT, POOP, FASCIST.
I can't help but belief that latent sexism is a partial cause of this, or a desire to rein women who have gotten out of the proper liberal female line, even though both women are pro-choice and socially liberal.
But you realize, of course, that that is used by there supporters over and over again as a device to inoculate them against criticism. I think that if you take the time to actually read her blog, you find (I find, anyway) that she constantly makes intellectually frivolous arguments. I mean she just doesn't meet the threshold for quality argumentation, and I find tons of either lazy or deliberately obtuse bits of logic. Whenever someone criticizes her, though, someone pops up and says "You just think that because she's a woman." No, I think it because her arguments are flatly unsound.
Ed opines: "What I would like to see, and I don't know if the technology will support this, is a daily posting limit, which is a neutral way of weeding out persistent trolls, people who like to shout down their opponents, people in love with contentless posts, and people living in their mothers' basements."
How about banning people who use that vapid old "mother's basement" line? I'm almost as sick of that one as I am of the constant use of "vitriol."
Dammit- we just want our dignity back.
This explanation by her in comments is pretty funny, in its own way:
Fascism isn't quite just state-authoritarianism; the communist states were that. It's an ideology that had specific ideas about a will of the people and national greatness that are expressed through a single leader, which doesn't very well describe anything close to what Republicans believe.
Hell, the Republicans even use the terminology, babbling about "will" and "national greatness," although they say "unitary executive" rather than "single leader".
Of course, Fascism also had an element of street violence--to really show the identiy between her side and the Fascists, you'd have to find an example, something like a party media figure calling for peaceful lefty protestors to be beaten with 2 X 4's . . .
If a blogger starts deleting non-spam comments for any reason other than legal liability*, that's a sure sign that the blogger is scared out of their wits. It's also a sign that every single last thing the blogger says has to be double-checked: comments pointing out how they're wrong may have been deleted or edited.
Just recently, Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly has been deleting and even editing non-abusive comments without notice. Somehow I suspect he's going to be taking some time off to "write a book" or something in the near future, because doing things like that is usually a sign of extreme desperation. (At the same time, their older entries are clogged with pr0n spam.)
More about this issue, including other sites that have banned me or deleted my comments at the link.
* Deleting or editing non-spam comments may, of course, increase that liability.
Dear Megan (my comment being 'held' for review at her place for what reason I cannot determine)
I suggest you read several other common definitions of the f*s*i*t term, since your definition is unconventional and incomplete. Here's one take on that: http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
- Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
- Supremacy of the Military
- Rampant Sexism
- Controlled Mass Media
- Obsession with National Security
- Religion and Government are Intertwined
- Corporate Power is Protected
- Labor Power is Suppressed
- Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
- Obsession with Crime and Punishment
- Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
- Fraudulent Elections
(obviously, mileage will vary from one country to another on particular items.)
This is a pretty handy checklist, and since so many items thereon are currently being practiced or attempted in a certain leading global power, does it not seem wise to allow a spade to be called a spade, even if it is only a tendency at the moment? When the full-fledged thing breaks out will it not be named (see Oscar Wilde)?
Along the way, would you discuss what other definitional terms for political movements or ideologies are off limits. Can someone say the 'libertarian' word, or 'liberal' or 'Democratic' or 'neo-conservative - all of which are much used and much debated as to their meaning?
How can commenters (or bloggers, even, if they are being truth-tellers) refer to the set of political tendencies that were common to mid-30's-40's Germany, Italy under Hitler's buddy, Spain under Franco, and Japan during the pre-end of WWII (see how difficult things become?)
Terms are shorthand, for nearly every concept and phenomena known. Since you now have limited yourself and commenters from some/all of the terms you don't like for whatever reason, you will find that this leads to verbal mayhem.
I don't know why anyone would leave comments there. Why feed the Megalomania?
In fairness her comments section was a cesspool. And that was just from the little I read. I don't begrudge her new policy, though it sure does sound like a lot of work. Who has time to read and moderate all those comments? And who would want to? Maybe she can hire an intern!
Yglesias is the democrat; McArdle is the tyrant. It is time for regime change at Asymmetrical Information. If you don't act soon, Matt, the smoking gun of Meghan's new comment policy could be the mushroom cloud of a policy that explodes across all The Atlantic blogs, whereby James Bennet deletes whatever he doesn't like on any blog.
And this lady calls herself a libertarian!
BTW, I would be interested in knowing why the magazine does not establish a consistent comment / blog policy across all its blogs. Seems kind of silly to host one blog where comments are so heavily regulated and one (yours) where the policy is, uh, more liberal. Matt, can you shed some light on this issue? What was the deal with the extent to which you could control your own content, blog policies when you signed with the Monthly?
Megatron, it seems, is not yet ready for the NFL.
A pity.
Sounds like Matt's getting a little wood.
Jim from Portland: At both Ross's blog and Megan's blog I have had comments "held for review" because the spam filter mistakenly considered them spam. This happened at Ross's over ten times. Finally I realized that it was something to do with my e-mail address and switched to submitting a different e-mail address that I have but rarely use, and since then I have had no trouble. I still use the old e-mail address here at Matt's and there is no problem, which is odd since one would think all Atlantic spam filters were the same. So in short, I don't think McArdle has instituted any kind of prior restraint; I think you just got mistaken for spam for some unknown reason.
If a blogger starts deleting non-spam comments for any reason other than legal liability*, that's a sure sign that the blogger is scared out of their wits
Great, then you know who not to read.
So McArdle has some crazy comments policy. Why does anyone else care? It's effectively her blog. Let her police it the way she wants. If you're afraid she's somehow getting away with something, start a blog, link and critique.
BTW, I would be interested in knowing why the magazine does not establish a consistent comment / blog policy across all its blogs
For gawd's sake, why?
McArdle's new comment policy, if applied as described, seems entirely unobjectionable. And I have seen some frankly misogynistic comments in response to McArdle (8:51 PM of this thread comes to mind).
But mostly what I saw in the comment threads I've browsed at McArdle's - admittedly only about half a dozen - is her arguments being comprehensively shredded and justifiably derided. I haven't seen even nearly the like in the comments of any other blog, but McArdle seemed regularly to lose these arguments on the merits (in making this assessment I concede that my ideological biases do not accord with McArdle's).
The worst of the personal and/or sexist anti-McArdle comments I remember seeing - and I've seen some bad ones - weren't actually posted to her blog, but to this one and to Ezra Klein's.
P.S. I've always rather liked the comment policy - whose, I cannot recall - that personal comments can only be made against the blog's proprietor, not against other people, including other commenters. But of course I'd count sexist comments as attacking a whole class of people, not just the one woman in question.
I think, as a general rule, people should understand the comment policy of any blog to be "whatever the fuck I, the owner, feel like deleting gets deleted."
Exactly right, except that I would add that the comment policy of any blog may also include: "fuck comments - you people have no right to comment whatsoever on my blog". See, e.g., Andrew Sullivan and James Fallows.
This is a test of the Richard Steven Hack Matt Yglesias "hold until improved" "anti-Semitic" comment system.
"Yglesias is the democrat; McArdle is the tyrant. It is time for regime change at Asymmetrical Information. If you don't act soon, Matt, the smoking gun of Meghan's new comment policy could be the mushroom cloud of a policy that explodes across all The Atlantic blogs, whereby James Bennet deletes whatever he doesn't like on any blog."
You mean, like anybody who says SLC is a Zionist thug?
the elf would benefit from being more partisan and less ideologically mixed. as it is she has no defenders on either side (libertarians are too disinclined toward pack behavior) and gets called a retard constantly from what i have seen. frankly most blogs are hackish and retarded, but usually they have a nice amen choir that's always saying "right on!" hard to do when the elf is both liberal (social) and conservative (fiscal) "retarded" from the perspective of a particular pack.
I've always rather liked the comment policy - whose, I cannot recall - that personal comments can only be made against the blog's proprietor, not against other people, including other commenters.
I think that's the policy at the Good Megan's blog (fromthearchives.blogspot.com).
I guess libertarianism doesn't work when it comes to comments or the internets.
Really, though, Atlantic, what were you thinking when you gave her a blog? No, really. Any intern at CATO would be better. Or just YouTubes of Ron Paul. Anything.
To veer off slightly from Al's comment, I absolutely believe if Glenn Reynolds (and others) had comments, it would be brutal, and telling.
Insta is a coward, because if he engaged in discussion with his readers, he would be embarassed on a daily basis. At least MegMcC will engage with the proletariat.
"Fascism isn't quite just state-authoritarianism; the communist states were that. It's an ideology that had specific ideas about a will of the people and national greatness that are expressed through a single leader, which doesn't very well describe anything close to what Republicans believe."
Yeah, righto!
From Wikipedia: "Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, statism, militarism, corporatism, populism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism."
Clearly, the modern republican party is not fascist.
More:
"Paxton further defines fascism's essence as:
* "1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."
Just go and read it at wikipedia. It is a real eye opener. The daily rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh clearly is fascist by even the most stringent, limited interpretation of the word. The Vice President is a regular guest and avowed fan of Rush, which makes him a supporter of fascist statements.
Cross posted at Matt Y's Place.
when the elf is both liberal (social) and conservative (fiscal) "retarded" from the perspective of a particular pack.
That's not it at all. There are plenty of socially liberal conservatives with crowds of admiring groupies (e.g. Instapundit). Megan is not socially liberal at all, she's at best undecided on all the social liberal positions (abortion, war on drugs, etc.). And she's not just fiscally conservative, she's a straight-up Bush partisan on a whole host of issues, like the Iraq war.
Plus she's smug as hell with no cause to be.
>>Many of us couldn't care less about Megan and think it's kind of silly that you "just happen" to be linking to and discussing her posts more that she's been given a blog on The Atlantic
Exactly. Sullivan does this constantly. "Here's a link to every post by every other blogger at The Atlantic. And now here's a link to my own posts from yesterday! And in case you missed them, here are links to all of my posts from 20 minutes ago." I wonder why he doesn't allow comments???
I don't really get it. If you don't like McArdle's policies and her ideas, great, don't read her stuff or post there anymore. You don't need a V-chip. Just walk away. It's not worth all the parsing of fascism and the dissection of her worldview.
Frankly, I don't agree with her about much, and I find her writing to be impenetrable. That might mean I'm dumb or it might mean that she's not a superlavtive blogger. Whatever the case, I just stopped reading over there. Give her what she wants: let the market decide.
Really, though, Atlantic, what were you thinking when you gave her a blog? No, really. Any intern at CATO would be better. Or just YouTubes of Ron Paul. Anything.
This is the best suggestion I've seen yet.
The one and only time I've actually followed a link to her blog was worth it. The comments over there were hilarious.
The funniest bit was the Jane Galt fans hating on all the new commenters (cesspool = cognitive dissonance, apparently) or was that a goof too?
jim writes: "Sullivan does this constantly. "Here's a link to every post by every other blogger at The Atlantic. And now here's a link to my own posts from yesterday! And in case you missed them, here are links to all of my posts from 20 minutes ago." I wonder why he doesn't allow comments???"
Sullivan was one of the first (and most prominent) of the conservative bloggers to jump off of the Bushpig idiotship. That alone would have made him a target. Add in the fact that he's gay, the most well-established proponent of gay marriage, and a Catholic who takes on both the SuperChristians and his own Church...
Well, if he had a comments section, it would be like one neverending Rollerball match. The James Caan version, not the remake. You'd need the KGB and Daley's cops from 1968 to moderate the mess, and even then it wouldn't work. Would it be fun? Would I be in there every day? Yes. Yes.
But I can see why he doesn't want the headache.
Serious question: does anyone know if Matt reads the comments?
Yes, I do. I only rarely contribute to the threads because I do a ton of writing for the blog as things are, but I try to wade in and participate every once in a while.
"I only rarely contribute to the threads because I do a ton of writing for the blog as things are, but I try to wade in and participate every once in a while."
Is it true that you do a killer version of "To All The Girls I've Loved Before"?
"Serious question: does anyone know if Matt reads the comments?
Yes, I do. I only rarely contribute to the threads because I do a ton of writing for the blog as things are, but I try to wade in and participate every once in a while."
Try harder, please.
You're getting a rep like the clowns over at "America Abroad" at TPM - which by the way hasn't had a post from anybody in months. The regulars are calling for it to be dumped. But it seems, according to Andrew Golis, that the whole site is going to have another major redesign, so that's a moot issue, I guess.
Still, you might emulate MJ Rosenberg and Larry Johnson who do participate. Hiding behind snark like Josh Marshall does would be beneath you.
Vintage Megan
That's killer - while the US is preparing for the biggest military invasion since Vietnam, they are merrily engaging in vigilante fantasies against window smashing hoodies.
Vintage Megan
Also, this fabulous thread shows that you can become a stockbroker in the City without even a rudimentary knowledge of maths, I should reconsider my options, lol.
When is it finally going to sink in with the pro-free-speech free for all" blog commentariart that they are their own worst enemy?
over the past few months I've noticed a definite deterioration in the quality of the conversation here at the bar. Trolls I can usually give the bum's rush pretty quickly - at least most of the time. But I'm seeing more and more stuff on the threads that strikes me as marginal at best....- people who seem to get their main kick out of insulting or picking fights with the other patrons; people who don't have anything particularly intelligent to say, and aren't very articulate about saying it....That's generally what the on-line world is like, I know, but for a time Whiskey Bar seemed to inhabit a different space: a bit more thoughtful, more intimate, less raucous, and - maybe most important of all - less crowded.
Wouldn't we all like to see comments on Sullivan's blog? Why do you think they are not available there?
I don't like excessive insults, but sometimes insults are deserved. Excessive concern for civility is just as bad--in practice when people in a group are civil it's either because they mostly agree on fundamental issues or because they have no stomach for endlessly refighting battles over the issues that divide them. Or they are mostly civil, but when one of the really divisive issues comes up it turns into a brawl and civility either goes out the window or people leave or get banned.
I just had this "civility" thing come up at another blog--the problem there was that one man's war crime was another man's preferred policy. Now if we can all agree to say with politeness "I think your position is the moral equivalent of advocacy of suicide bombing" while the other person replies "On the contrary, my good fellow, it makes perfect sense, as you would see if you could stop living in your utopian dreamworld", then I'm sure everyone would be happy. With luck, we could even draw in some representatives from terrorist organizations and argue about everything like civilized people, without any of us necessarily changing our positions.
Re: the point some make that it's too time consuming to moderate every comment.
Juan Cole manages to do it somehow, the comments there are held for review before publication, and one would think he's at least as busy as her. It might be an intern or volunteer doing it, though. I might add that he went in the opposite direction of the usual trajectory: he added commenting ability late in the life of the blog rather than shutting them off in disgust after growth of audience! Rules were published right from the start, with a link to them on the home page; they are here:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/11/comment-section-rules-comment-section.html
To: Tyro
Re: your rant @ August 29, 2007 7:30 PM about Yglesias linking to her
don't you get the teasing joke directed to "McMegan" about communism & fascism in Matt's post?
do you like to visualize The Atlantic bloggers being such pure dogmatists that they have fistfights over ideology at staff meetings or what? sheesh, get out of the basment more often.
Donald Johnson:
I don't like excessive insults, but sometimes insults are deserved. Excessive concern for civility is just as bad
That's why "moderation"--I prefer the term "editing" by the blogger or someone executing his/her preferences is the best possible method. If they like sophisticated insults, they'll leave them. And the reader can shop for the blogger who has the editorial touch you like.
Mho, Matt is very skillful at what I would call "pre-emptive moderation." His posts are not rants and his predilections in tone and writing style are not inflammatory, hence his commentariat to date are mostly not the boors and crass crowd that eventually overtook Billmon. But that's no guarantee that if his audience grows, similar problems won't happen to him.
I don't get the reference to Megan as an "elf;" isn't she in fact over six feet tall?
What is truly racking the battered brains of blog visitors is the mental process by which McArdle was awarded this coveted(?) association with the grand masthead of the Atlantic.
Perhaps the editors of the Atlantic blog have no better means of demonstrating their unaccountable power than by installing inarticulate, third-rate libertarians who would not pass muster at the NRO Corner. Perhaps they have never actually read McArdle's old blog. Or perhaps she just aced the interview.
I fear that we are witnessing the "fair and balanced" concept creeping into every nook and cranny of American journalism. Just because 25% of Americans have a coin box instead of a heart doesn't mean that The Atlantic is obliged to represent their views. What next? A skinhead blogger to balance McArdle's compassionate Libertarianism?
What is truly racking the battered brains of blog visitors is the mental process by which McArdle was awarded this coveted(?) association with the grand masthead of the Atlantic.
Sort of like allowing all kinds & quality of comments on a blog?
What is truly racking the battered brains of blog visitors is the mental process by which McArdle was awarded this coveted(?) association with the grand masthead of the Atlantic.
Sort of like allowing all kinds & quality of comments on a blog?
I can never really tell when Matt is making a joke or being serious whenever he makes comments about libertarians:
A couple of days ago he called libertarianism a "lunatic fringe ideology" and now this...
Maybe my irony-meter is broken, but I really don't get it. Personally, I find it hard to believe that he means it, he seems like a nice guy - even if he disagrees with libertarians, this is really going too far.
artappraiser, what are you, Megan's groupie? If MattY's comment section is better than average because of his "pre-emptive moderation," what explains Kevin Drum's recurrent comment problems. What explains "pimp hand strikes!"'s recurring appearance here?
What explains the fact that roy and digby, whose posts are much more cutting, don't seem to have these problems at all?
Tyro,
On Yglesias, as I said,
that's no guarantee that if his audience grows, similar problems won't happen to him.
No, I am not a Megan groupie, I was not aware of her blog until this post. It might be, though, that if she moderates comments skillfully, I will become one.
See, I don't care about the ideology of the blogger, I care about the quality of the entire product they put out. High on my list of desires as a user is someone who can start or yes, "moderate," a high quality discussion. I am not interested in what every Tom Dick Harry feels the need to rant about, nor, like Billmon, am I interested in watching boys make blog commenting into a sort of replacement for sports. I like to encourage anyone trying to create the kind of quality blog product that I am looking for.
Indeed, I rarely hear the stupidity charge made at actually pro-life women like Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter; they seem more likely to be accused of having an unpleasant personality.
Malkin and Coulter aren't stupid; far from it, in fact. Both of them are ridiculously sharp and have an incredible ability to stay "on message". However, both of them are also EVIL. Evil evil evil evilevilevilevilevilevilevil.
Oh dear. She really is very used to having fanbois as her main commenters, isn't she?
More about this issue, including other sites that have banned me or deleted my comments at the link.
LOL. The link to your own shitty site whose name you feel compelled to hide.
Perhaps, Chris Kelly, just perhaps... it's because you basically spend your entire life spamming blogs by posting concealed links to your own fucking shitty site all the fucking time?
"That's killer - while the US is preparing for the biggest military invasion since Vietnam, they are merrily engaging in vigilante fantasies against window smashing hoodies. "
Posted by novakant
Isn't one standard and noticeable characteristic of fascism the demonization against an 'Other', which is something simultaneously so strong that it expains all defeats, while being so weak that it can be defeated with sufficient application of Will?
"the funniest part in there is when she says she makes her living by IP."
Posted by kid bitzer
Please note that scholarship or good analysis is merely a subset of IP.
I don't get the reference to Megan as an "elf;" isn't she in fact over six feet tall?
many types of elves are tall, cf. e.g. The Lord of the Rings with Hugo Weaving (1.88) and Liv Tyler (1.78) and Marton Csokas (1.85) as (half-)elves
"I can't help but belief that latent sexism is a partial cause of this, or a desire to rein women who have gotten out of the proper liberal female line, even though both women are pro-choice and socially liberal. '
Ahh, the good old "If you criticize Israel you are anti-semitic" argument. Is there any problem it cannot be used to solve?
Let's think of some new variants:
If you ever criticize a black person you are racist?
If you ever criticize a gay you are homo-phobic?
If you criticize any aspect of the US government you hate America?(wait, that one's already in use).
As someone who doesn't live by IP, maybe I could change that by patenting this type of meta-argument?
Comments closed September 12, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Alas, the honeymoon is over.
Posted by Steve | August 29, 2007 6:41 PM