Whoops. The Unwelcome Visitor!
Yesterday, in the midst of an interesting discussion on Steve Bates' Yellow Doggerel Democrat, about C.Rice as a possible VP candidate to run with J. McCain, an unusual "guest" appeared. It was a Republican,.and he gave his view on the matter, which, as you might expect, ran counter to the tenor on that thread. Steve took exception and though he didn't delete that post, he immediately banned the interloper henceforward from his site.
That's when I thought, "Whoops!" Because it put me in a strange position, and meanwhile you can smile now. I realized that I would not have done the same, but that's because of a number of factors making Steve's situation very different from mine.
First, I am not as passionate and straightforward as he is, though, paradoxically (for a maximum of three comments), I would have been more disposed to duke it out with the man, especially on my own site. (Is that a residue of my nevertheless always limited chess pugnacity?) The man at least had going for him the fact that he didn't speak with obscenity or outright idiocy, despite being a Republican, and I could tell that he had taken some pains with composing his message, which I likewise always try to do, maybe to a fault.
Second, unlike Steve's, my site is so unpopular (fitting in with its name) that I feel that I don't have the luxury to ban people, even if I knew how to do it, which I don't. I can afford to say that because the occasion has never presented itself, and during this latest return to weblogging after a long absence, for some reason so far not even the spammers that I used to get, much less antagonists, have found me, though I haven't taken any preventive measures. Third, my site is free, whereas Steve's is not, and so he quite properly didn't like the idea of hosting objectionable remarks in space for which he is paying good money.
But all that is still not at the heart of why Steve's booting of that guy really threw me for a comical loop. The chief reason is that lately, on another man's site, I have been guilty of exactly the same crime! And I wouldn't be distressed and definitely not surprised to find that, by now, I have been banned from that site, too, though I haven't tried to confirm that.
As the Lifelong Outside Man, I almost never read anything by the proprietor of The Field Negro site or its many commenters that I agree with. Yet these are supposed to be among "my people." But in this run-up to the Presidential elections, I see these guys as headed down a path that I believe to be suicidal, and I've been saying so, by every few days throwing in a dissenting comment and then going my merry way, without checking the reactions -- partly because so often when I expect reactions to stuff I say, on that site and others, there aren't any.
A few days ago, in exactly the same fashion as Steve's "friend," I threw in the following response to F. Negro's theme of that day:
When I saw that headline in the Google News first thing this morning, about H.Clinton and the Bosnia sniper fire, I thought, "Uh-oh! Field Negro and his crowd of other professional Hillary-haters are going to have a field day with this one!" And sure enough, right on cue and on time, you didn't disappoint.
Where I come from, piling on is considered to be unsportsmanlike and even criminal, and unthinkable when the person being buried is a lady. But then you don't come from the same place as I do, and for that we are both overjoyed.
Still, I would think you would be uneasy about lining up with the mainstream media and the Republicans, who are likewise sure to jump on that report with all four feet and joyfully accuse her of something akin to the biggest lie of all time. Meanwhile surely you've heard that saying about people who live in glass houses....
Just the other day, Mr. F.N., you yourself took some liberties with the truth, , when you happily followed other mistaken souls by calling Rod Parsley "McCain's pastor."
Maybe you didn't notice that McCain didn't call Parsley his "pastor." Instead he said "spiritual advisor," suggesting that the title "pastor" belonged to someone else. And he had to have used the words "spiritual advisor" only in a spirit of exuberance that ought to be familiar. McCain is just going around trying to pick up as many conservative vouchers as he can. Megachurches are good sources of those, and he might call the ringleader of any of those teeming dens his "spiritual advisor." Shortly before Parsley was handed that honor, people had John Hagee playing the same role. Actually, McCain is such a thoroughgoing screwball that I don't think he would recognize "spiritual advice." But that's another matter.
In reality McCain's pastor is a man named Dan Yeary. He presides over the North Phoenix Baptist Church, in Arizona. His credentials for being McCain's pastor are solid, if you put any store in the fact that McCain and his family have been attending Yeary's church for the past 15 years, not far short of Obama's attendance at Rev. Wright's place. You might be interested to hear that while Rev. Yeary, being a Southern Baptist, does not agree with what Rev. Wright said, he otherwise defends Wright, by stating that ministers can become the victim of their own exuberance. "All preachers have a tendency to overstate because our passion is so intense," he is quoted as saying.
You would do well to zero in on the word "exuberant," Mr. F.N. You yourself are nothing if not that, and politicians are just as guilty of it as are preachers and weblog proprietors. And H. Clinton is not the Devil incarnate, as you and your constituents would like to believe. She is just a politician, who, purely because she is a woman with a longtime record of not "knowing her place" (a charge that ought to be familiar to folks around here), she is fated to be constantly fired at by dummies of all hues who can't distinguish feathers from cannonballs.
Have you heard of lead balloons? :)
That's when I thought, "Whoops!" Because it put me in a strange position, and meanwhile you can smile now. I realized that I would not have done the same, but that's because of a number of factors making Steve's situation very different from mine.
First, I am not as passionate and straightforward as he is, though, paradoxically (for a maximum of three comments), I would have been more disposed to duke it out with the man, especially on my own site. (Is that a residue of my nevertheless always limited chess pugnacity?) The man at least had going for him the fact that he didn't speak with obscenity or outright idiocy, despite being a Republican, and I could tell that he had taken some pains with composing his message, which I likewise always try to do, maybe to a fault.
Second, unlike Steve's, my site is so unpopular (fitting in with its name) that I feel that I don't have the luxury to ban people, even if I knew how to do it, which I don't. I can afford to say that because the occasion has never presented itself, and during this latest return to weblogging after a long absence, for some reason so far not even the spammers that I used to get, much less antagonists, have found me, though I haven't taken any preventive measures. Third, my site is free, whereas Steve's is not, and so he quite properly didn't like the idea of hosting objectionable remarks in space for which he is paying good money.
But all that is still not at the heart of why Steve's booting of that guy really threw me for a comical loop. The chief reason is that lately, on another man's site, I have been guilty of exactly the same crime! And I wouldn't be distressed and definitely not surprised to find that, by now, I have been banned from that site, too, though I haven't tried to confirm that.
As the Lifelong Outside Man, I almost never read anything by the proprietor of The Field Negro site or its many commenters that I agree with. Yet these are supposed to be among "my people." But in this run-up to the Presidential elections, I see these guys as headed down a path that I believe to be suicidal, and I've been saying so, by every few days throwing in a dissenting comment and then going my merry way, without checking the reactions -- partly because so often when I expect reactions to stuff I say, on that site and others, there aren't any.
A few days ago, in exactly the same fashion as Steve's "friend," I threw in the following response to F. Negro's theme of that day:
When I saw that headline in the Google News first thing this morning, about H.Clinton and the Bosnia sniper fire, I thought, "Uh-oh! Field Negro and his crowd of other professional Hillary-haters are going to have a field day with this one!" And sure enough, right on cue and on time, you didn't disappoint.
Where I come from, piling on is considered to be unsportsmanlike and even criminal, and unthinkable when the person being buried is a lady. But then you don't come from the same place as I do, and for that we are both overjoyed.
Still, I would think you would be uneasy about lining up with the mainstream media and the Republicans, who are likewise sure to jump on that report with all four feet and joyfully accuse her of something akin to the biggest lie of all time. Meanwhile surely you've heard that saying about people who live in glass houses....
Just the other day, Mr. F.N., you yourself took some liberties with the truth, , when you happily followed other mistaken souls by calling Rod Parsley "McCain's pastor."
Maybe you didn't notice that McCain didn't call Parsley his "pastor." Instead he said "spiritual advisor," suggesting that the title "pastor" belonged to someone else. And he had to have used the words "spiritual advisor" only in a spirit of exuberance that ought to be familiar. McCain is just going around trying to pick up as many conservative vouchers as he can. Megachurches are good sources of those, and he might call the ringleader of any of those teeming dens his "spiritual advisor." Shortly before Parsley was handed that honor, people had John Hagee playing the same role. Actually, McCain is such a thoroughgoing screwball that I don't think he would recognize "spiritual advice." But that's another matter.
In reality McCain's pastor is a man named Dan Yeary. He presides over the North Phoenix Baptist Church, in Arizona. His credentials for being McCain's pastor are solid, if you put any store in the fact that McCain and his family have been attending Yeary's church for the past 15 years, not far short of Obama's attendance at Rev. Wright's place. You might be interested to hear that while Rev. Yeary, being a Southern Baptist, does not agree with what Rev. Wright said, he otherwise defends Wright, by stating that ministers can become the victim of their own exuberance. "All preachers have a tendency to overstate because our passion is so intense," he is quoted as saying.
You would do well to zero in on the word "exuberant," Mr. F.N. You yourself are nothing if not that, and politicians are just as guilty of it as are preachers and weblog proprietors. And H. Clinton is not the Devil incarnate, as you and your constituents would like to believe. She is just a politician, who, purely because she is a woman with a longtime record of not "knowing her place" (a charge that ought to be familiar to folks around here), she is fated to be constantly fired at by dummies of all hues who can't distinguish feathers from cannonballs.
Have you heard of lead balloons? :)
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 9:43 AM
1 Comments:
Carl, I cannot speak for your situation, at least not without reviewing what you wrote much more closely. But I think it fair to clarify why I banned the fellow from the YDD...
It was most certainly not because his comment "ran counter to the tenor on that thread." I am fond of countertenors, having accompanied several in my career. :) (Sorry; some puns are impossible to resist.)
Nor was it because he was a Republican: I have had several Republicans who sustained a series of comments on the blog, though all of them eventually depart of their own volition when I say something that offends them. No surprise there.
My issue with this fellow was that he referred to the community as "the extremists on this blog." That was in his introductory post on my threads. He also said something about his own party, that "we're not that stupid." Again, that was too much for me. Fallenmonk has a similar commenter these days, an arrogant, insulting professor of some sort in the UK; he came over to my site, and I banned him, too.
I do not see that either of these ungentlemen had anything to contribute to the conversation other than rancor, so I spared them and me both the trouble of continuing the exchange. Conservative commenters who are at least minimally respectful of the YDD community are welcome, but I do require that minimal respect.
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