Dependable Erection

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Comments

Big discussion over at Kevin's place on the Great Wi-Fi Controversy of 2008, aka Mad Hatters Cut Off My Internet Access, And All I Got Was This Lousy Glass Of Water.

But i don't want to talk about that. (Full disclosure - i shut down a thread on that topic on the neighborhood listserv i moderate that started getting into anonymous slamming of the establishment. I don't like that.)

There's a specific comment in the thread that bugged me enough to isolate it for further discussion.
Duke students and health services drive Durham's economy (and employ the author of this great blog!). Students need places to study, and in every college town off-campus institutions help provide those spaces. If you don't want to interact with college students, don't go near campus. For a bunch of open-minded liberals, y'all sure have a lot of hate in you.

Aside from being misguided (very few of the complaints specifically referenced Duke students; and the claim that "Duke students and health services drive Durham's economy" is a tad bit hyperbolic), i really want to focus on the last statement.

First off, the assumption that all the commenters, especially any that may have said anything remotely critical of Duke students (which, after once again reading through the comments i simply can't find) are "open-minded liberals" is totally unsupported, and says much more about the commenter than about anyone else who's posted. But the second clause, which implies that those same liberals "sure have a lot of hate in you" is just stupid. Again, there's nothing in the comments remotely "hateful" to anyone. But more importantly is the implicit assumption that anger or hate are emotions which "liberals" are somehow supposed to have eschewed.

So it's OK for assholes like Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh to go on the radio on a daily basis spewing hate, but if "liberals" say the first thing critical about you, then they're "haters?"

Maybe when i was at the Lord Fauntleroy's Panty Waist School for Liberals as a younger person i missed that lecture, but when i read about shit like this, why shouldn't i get angry? When i've watched a group of incompetent morons tear my country apart for the better part of the last 40 years, what's there left to be "open-minded" about? Conservative ideology, pitting one group of people against another in a never-ending sequence of class, racial, ethnic, religious, and gender conflicts, has damn near destroyed the American experiment in my lifetime. You think that makes me a hater?

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, but i don't think you understand the meaning of the word.

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4 Comments:

  • "Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick"...

    Does the "H" stand for "hater"? :-)

    "Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace."" John 2:13-16.

    Man, I never thought I'd be quoting the Bible to a New York atheist, but in a blog about righteous anger, who could resist?

    By Blogger Marsosudiro, at 4:48 PM  

  • When people say I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, I assure them that in some circumstances I'm a bleeding-knuckles liberal.

    By Blogger Durham Bull Pen, at 5:17 PM  

  • Sorry to dwell on the Bush clip, but was that ever shown on US television? Of course not, but how did I miss that?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:30 PM  

  • I love the smell of liberal anger in the morning.

    Couldn't a said it better myself, Dependable!

    Reminds me of something Moe once said, "Pick two, porcupine!" --followed by a liberal eye poke.

    The idea that "liberals" are supposed to be, endlessly, without ever reaching bottom, "open-minded" is one of the most tired examples of so-called "conservative" bear-baiting games. It's akin to the way "conservatives" like to change the subject in the middle of a debate.

    Thank you for tossing that one into the shit can.

    T

    By Blogger Tony, at 11:43 PM  

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