Stupid Political Moves 101
LESSON ONE: Don’t mischaracterize a blog and demonize a blog. It has readers and it can talk back (and probably lose you votes).
PS: This whole new line of calling political sites people don’t agree with “hate sites” is a bit ironic because so far most of the people calling sites “hate sites” are trying to inflame their readers and listeners to a) hate another site b)hate those those who agree with the views of that other site and c)ignore people on THEIR side who indulge in the same kind of gratuitous adjective-hurling and lashing out.
It’s one more sign of how our politics has deteriorated where name-calling is accepted as arguing issues. It increasingly resembles elementary school kids calling others “poopy pants.” But it builds ratings and blog hits. And ranting and calling names is SO much easier than simply laying out and countering arguments with stronger arguments.
5 Responses to “Stupid Political Moves 101”
The internet is a relatively new invention and the blog is even newer. This new found freedom of expression will require quite a bit of getting used to.
I truly believe that the Bush administration has failed to understand the power of the internet in eeking out details that in the past would have never been uncovered.
This has been their demise every bit as much as Richard Nixon did not understand and appreciate Television and JFK did and used it to his benefit.
This new fangled invention is going to take a lot of fine tuning before we all figure out how to run it right.
For now we have to take the good with the bad.
Joe, you make an excellent point. It’s unfortunate but true that some blogs attract a few mean-spirited and foulmouthed commenters. In some cases, I suspect provocateur trolls deliberately seek to bring out the worst in regulars by starting flame wars where the exchange of views deteriorates into invective, with little or no fact-based and reasoned argument. Then, too, you’ve got some folks who don’t care about politics at all, but think starting trouble is fun.
It’s not fair to judge a blog by the worst of its commenters, which is exactly what the linked site does about DailyKos.
The writer of the linked post destroyed his credibility when he described the Democrat operative who showed up for the Collins appearance as a “creepy character.” Anyone with eyes to see can tell from the photos the Democrat operative looks as normal, clean cut and nonthreatening as can be.
I have only a few stalwart commenters at Oh!pinion and would love to have more. I’m wide open to being disagreed with on ideas, opinions and issues. But if someone comes along who can’t do any better than spew bad language, call poeple names and gratuitously bash other commenters, he or she earns our patented sidewalk sendoff — the electronic equivalent of the old saloon bouncers’ heave-ho.
They characterize the entire site as anti-Semitic based on one Jewish diarist leaving the site with that criticism. Meanwhile there are multiple Jewish diarists and posters simply debating about why there are people there who are like that. The claim is made in the conservative blogosphere that DailyKos is a comfortable place for those bigots. Somehow it is never noted that they receive a great deal of criticism in the responses when anti-Semitic posts are written. Sheesh.
I think it was the Reaganites who started this trend toward ‘hate’ as an epithet. Pro-abortionists were said to hate fetuses, rather than love women’s rights.
for every clear and salient post/column, there are 100 idiotic inflammatory troll posts.