Back in the McCarthy Era, Ben Shahn put that on a lithograph, without which no right-thinking leftist household was complete. Of course, that was pre-internet, therefore Oldthought, and obsolete. Because if “we” can cyber-bully someone into shutting up, WIN!…
No.
I apologize in advance to those of you who don’t care for internecine blogwar, but Cole doesn’t read my emails any more than he reads my posts. And now Balloon-Juice has its very own James O’Keefe playing dress-up, who’s succeeded in tweaking the delicate sensibilities of our Very Dedicated President Obama Supporters in order to get another long-time commentor banned. This is not only despicable, it’s counter-productive. There are good reasons why Cole has always reserved banning for genuinely non-sequitor hate speech and personal attacks/stalking… not for protecting the tender feelings of wannabe tribalists looking for a warm bath of positive affirmation.
__
__
To ABL:
Echo chambers are for narcissists. Hunting for logic-chopping excuses to ban commentors who don’t agree with you is petty, small-minded, and ultimately works against your (our) best interests. As some ten thousand previous voices have said, if you don’t like someone’s words, don’t read them.
__
Strutting your Mighty Ban Hammer in front of a cheering crowd of hand-picked supporters may make you feel like you’ve accomplished something, but the Ari Fleischer “Some people ought to watch what they do, watch what they say” philosophy is best left to our enemies.
__
__
To ABL’s Hallelujah PC Troll Choir:
President Obama is not reading this blog. President Obama’s people are not reading this blog. President Obama’s peoples‘ people are not reading this blog. (If there is an entry-level NSA employee tasked with monitoring this blog, I hope they at least enjoy the pet stories and food pr0n.) Your fervent adulation herein cannot gladden the President’s heart, nor our occasional misgivings weaken his fierce resolve. And the chances that any one of you will be offered Kalpen Modi’s old job are vanishingly remote. President Obama is assured of my vote; he neither needs nor desires my fealty.
Unless she wants pet stories and food pr0n, Jane Hamsher doesn’t need to read this blog. Every scrap of political information relevant to her interests, however peripherally, will be recursively tweeted by this week’s version of #TeamFvckYeah as they mob her like starlings over a farm combine. John Cole’s house has many mansions, and you can be sure of multiple posts on any given day where fondling your joint antipathies is on topic. Compulsively befouling every single thread with the millionth iteration of how you hate emoprog firebaggers soooo bad will not impress us with your winning ardor; it will make us wonder if part of Balloon Juice’s service to the general community involves distracting you from cyberstalking strangers on Facebook or torturing small animals. This is not instructional, inspirational, entertaining, or helpful to your larger goals. Demanding that anyone who injures your self-esteem be silenced marks you as just another authoritarian thug playing Tuff Guy on the internet.
I know good, thoughtful people have quietly left as a result of previous PC crusades, because I’ve missed their voices, and because one or two of them have sent me farewell emails. And I know this post is going to attract another spate of abusive comments/emails darkly insinuating that I can be tracked down and dealt with as I deserve, to which I reply: Your mamas must be very proud, right now.
cleek
this is not why i come here.
and yes, i am aware of my options.
Odie Hugh Manatee
All I’m going to say is that I disagree with everything you said.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
So, did the dude spout some racist shit or not?
AA+ Bonds
I’m going to the lobby and get myself some snacks, y’all wait here
Cowbelle
Oh noes, not a “PC Crusade.”
Excuse me, your white sheets are showing.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
I wonder if any of my “friends” at the Lake went to bat for me when I got banned for calling them a bunch of hateful assholes?
arguingwithsignposts
oh, fuck. ducks
J
Bravo Anne Laurie. ABL is a noxious presence on this blog.
magurakurin
You’re lamenting the loss of Corner Stone? seriously?
don’t worry. He’ll be back soon enough. Corner Stone was merely the latest sock puppet of whoever that persistent troll is.
And using the name Darrell is only “baiting” if someone really, really, really is deep down a racists dickhead. I never even noticed that the D in LA’s name actual was Darrell or that it could be seen as a black guys name until after the dust up. Only a racist dickhead, like Corner Stone, would have zeroed in on that.
And clearly “those other blogs” do read this one because Armando over at the GOS is going off on Cole right now.
AA+ Bonds
I’m just glad that this is now the Age of Trolls here and literally no one can deny it and especially not the front-pagers.
This is . . . this is a beautiful day.
Y’all had to graduate from “snark” sometime.
Baud
As much as I love punching hippies, I’m foursquare in this category. The winner of the next Presidential election will not be a hippie; it’s either going to be Obama or a Republican.
Unfortunately, this is too rare a statement on the Internets.
Alison
Wow. I find this post way more inappropriate than banning a long-time-but-also-generally-assholish-and-in-that-instance-racist-fuckwad-commenter.
If you have an issue with ABL, you could, y’know, email *her* (not Cole). Making this public stance about it is surely just as “strutting…in front of a…crowd” as banning someone and noting that you did so, isn’t it? Which I don’t think was “strutting” at all – she was letting people know why they wouldn’t see CS’s comments for a while. Makes perfect sense to me.
Whereas this? Is childish malarkey. Way to be.
Heliopause
Anne Laurie, I am an atheist.
God bless you. You win the internet for the year.
Spaghetti Lee
I’ll try to lighten the mood (pre-emptively) and say
John Cole’s house has many mansions
New tag?
gwangung
This is exactly as tiresome as some people think ABL is.
Blahblah
This place sucks so bad.
arguingwithsignposts
@Spaghetti Lee: 2 minute hate! 11tyone!
AA+ Bonds
Okay let me show you the true paradigm of what happened outside of your Important Blogging Ideals:
Two trolls met in Dark City style combat and all the weather went fucky as they traded lightning bolts, and at the end only one emerged, the victor in manipulating “griefspace” against his opponent.
Now the thrones war over the principle of the thing based on preexisting concerns and grudges, like Europe after Princip and Ferdinand.
Y’all can pretend this is about higher notions of justice or something but it’s really fighting over how many Christians the lion ate.
JGabriel
So, uh… What’s going on? Seriously, I’ve no idea what this is all about.
As far as I can gather, someone used a black sounding name (Darnell, which, frankly, I’d have thought was a white hick from Pennsyltucky), and then revealed him/her self to be white after someone accused him/her of hating white people, and then someone(?) else (who?) got banned?
I be confused.
.
whitney
this sort of meta-tripe is so provocative, so unnecessary and certainly not helpful.
i came here as a haven from this kind of nonsense. please…grow up.
Chris
@JGabriel:
Seconded.
Marginalized for stating documented facts
Corner Stone is no more a racist than John Cole is…I dunno…anti-gay. Or whatever.
Corner Stone got banned because he kept stating facts that enraged the obots far beyond the capacity for rational thought. Facts like, for example, that Obama has ordered the assassination of American citizens, that Obama persists in ordering the ongoing murder of innocent women and children in Pakistan via drones, facts like Obama has continued torture at the second secret prison at Bagram airbase, facts like Obama has continually said one thing and then done the opposite.
ABL remains the best writer on this blog. Her fanatical fetishistic support for every one of Obama’s many crimes and follies and far-right lunacies (like upping U.S. military spending by 8% in a year in which all other federal spending gets frozen, in the midst of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression) does ABL no credit. It’s behavior reminiscent of someone who collects and fanatically caresses women’s shoes.
As for the obots, they’ve now turned into the mirror image of the Tea Party. Same craziness, same disconnect from reality, merely inverted goals.
Tyrone
Best Ann Laurie post I’ve ever read.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@efgoldman: Heck of a football game on.
Spaghetti Lee
As for the controversy, I haven’t been commenting here for that long, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Corner Stone contribute anything substantial to the discussion. And him saying “you just hate white people”, even if he kind of stumbled into it, is pretty inexcusable. If Caz or Makewi or someone like that said it, I doubt they’d be getting many defenders.
I think it’s defensible to say that, on your own blog, you want to keep a certain standard of conversation going, and to keep people out if they don’t meet it. Crooked Timber enforces this kind of strict comment policy, and while it’s cold comfort to the people who get banned, I’m sure, I do think their comment section is better because of it. If you don’t think that’s right, couldn’t you hash it out in private with the other frontpagers?
John Cole
What in the hell is going on here? I didn’t ban Cornerstone.
Baud
@John Cole: Apparently, you have a lot of mansions. How come you haven’t invited us all over?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@John Cole: And no one else has the hammer, right?
hildebrand
Hmm. Perhaps the person you need to contact is ABL. I know it seems kinda quaint, but I have always lived by the notion that if you have a beef with someone, that is the person that you talk to – directly, discreetly.
Dragging the rest of the family into the argument is usually not done by someone who wants to resolve the problem, but to make damn sure it explodes in everyone’s faces. Be the grown-up, Anne.
J. Michael Neal
Sorry, Anne Laurie, but you’re way off base. Corner Stone didn’t get banned for disagreeing with anyone. He got banned because over the course of one thread, he went from annoying dickhead to foaming-at-the-mouth hatred to complete and utter incoherency to offensive and racist jabs at other commentors.
Yeah, I have a long standing grudge against CS because of the offensive way he attacked my disabilities several times, so discount what I have to say. Instead, go read the relevant thread and then come back to us and defend CS’s behavior.
AA+ Bonds
*record screeches off turntable as everyone looks to the door*
Allan
Wow. Just… wow. Dick Move of the Century and it’s only 2011. Congrats, Anne Laurie.
magurakurin
@Marginalized for stating documented facts:
see, CS is already back.
On the Internet, no one ever dies, that just come back as new, clever handle.
AA+ Bonds
It was me, I banned Corner Stone
eemom
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
depends on whether you consider “You hate white people” — directed to a person mistakenly believed to be black based on his screen name — racist.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@AA+ Bonds: No ME! I’m Spartacus!
Omnes Omnibus
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I agree with Alison. Why start a FPer fight? Perhaps I will just go away for a few days, this place is going to be intolerable. Thanks a lot.
AA+ Bonds
NEXT I’M COMING FOR YOUR OZONE REGULATIONS SO LOOK OUT DWAYNE, I’LL SEE YOU, ON MONDAY NIGHT
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@magurakurin: So, I just checked Armando’s post at GOS, and it didn’t seem like a big deal to me. On the other hand …
It had 1,247 comments! 1,247!!!! Who the hell is going to read all that? Who has time? Why did the 1,247th commenter think he or she had something to add that hadn’t been said before? Why did any commenter > 300 think the same thing?
Ugh.
Tyrone
BURN IT DOWN!!!
Liberal Sandlapper
This place is becoming less appealing by the day and this bulshit post is not helping. Can’t you people tend your dirty laundry in private?
Holy fuck, John, maybe you need to stop drunk tweeting and pay attention to this website. It’s slipping. Badly.
Lit3Bolt
Anne Laurie, methinks you ran into the troll internet drama trap, and thus have created more drama.
“Your overconfidence is your weakness.”
“Your faith that someone actually reads your posts is yours.”
(Which, given the confusion some of us are having, applies to pretty much everyone. BJ is rant space, not tribe space or drama space or fainting couch space. If your fee-fees be hurt, I suggest buying some tougher fee-fees.)
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Omnes Omnibus: Come on dawg, do what I do. Ignore the fucking topic and talk about whatever pops into your mind.
JenJen
What cleek and gwangung said.
Bleah
So boring. At least when Cole blows up it’s short and entertaining.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
ABL is herself a racist, but I wouldn’t ban her posts here. I assume that Darnell was banned too for his hateful language.
.
.
AA+ Bonds
@Lit3Bolt:
It’s not a trap
Yutsano
This post will generate much heat but very little light. I’m gonna back away from this one. But I’m still making popcorn.
Bruce S
“playing Tuff Guy on the internet”
Is that even possible?
arguingwithsignposts
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Dammit, it was me! I banned CS. 300!!elebenty!
General Stuck
Fresh off the press Charlie
Dedicated to ABL
Heliopause
@John Cole:
Why are you asking a bunch of commenters what’s going on in your own blog? You ought to run for office as a Democrat, you’d be perfect.
schrodinger's cat
What happened? I seem to have missed all the drama…
Off Colfax
Aaaaaaaand this is why I pay no attention to comments or commenters on any blog not my own.
#returntolurking
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
And it was so nice all day today. I guess I now realize why.
AA+ Bonds
suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Concur with Omnes and Alison. Everyone involved here fucked this situation.
t jasper parnell
@John Cole: You know, I can’t see as CS was banned, at least not on the evidence of that thread. It is clear that he/she/it made an obnoxious observations, but where is the banning documented? And, as by the way, O’Keefe lied about everything from the way he was dressed to what various people said to him, which is — quite frankly — not the case with the CS Darnell dust up, is it? The OP here strikes me as more than ten degrees to one side of what actually happened.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@schrodinger’s cat: cat fight
JPL
Anne, Why not comment on ABL’s post? Why is this a front page post?
The term Politically Correct was invented so people could have an excuse to be rude to each other. In the olden days we called it common decency.
Optical_Inch
Indeed.
Dave
Fuck me dead. Can’t you all just suck it up and hate on the GOP instead of each other until November 7, 2012? Considering the fact that anything THEY do is a hundred times worse than anything a firebagger/Obot will do? God damn…the GOP is burning the fucking house down and you’re all blaming each other for the color of the drapes on the windows.
Optical_Inch
Indeed.
AA+ Bonds
@schrodinger’s cat:
A plane crashed in downtown Cincinnati.
suzanne
@Yutsano:
You’re so damn smart.
dead existentialist
Well, this must mean that it’s officially time to crack open the bottle. Chin, chin, y’all.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
Should be mashed potatoes (picture Belushi, right before “FOOD FIGHT”).
Ben Cisco
(slowly backs toward the door)
policomic
@Alison: Seconded. And if you’re going to call someone out, do so in a straightforward way. WTF indeed. You may have a point, but not having followed every troll battle, blow by blow, I have no idea what it is.
Dennis SGMM
ABL’s high handed my way or the highway approach to blogging is a turn off to me. This is still an open forum. When I mentioned to her on a subsequent thread that she was first front pager in the history of BJ to close a thread her reply was “Deal with it.” The front pagers here come in for a lot of criticism at times. This is exactly as it should be, we’re a diverse group. ABL is the only one who has been arrogant enough to close a thread or ban a critic. Her apologists are quick to brandish the racism card in the faces of her critics. This is nothing more, or less, than an attempt to preempt any criticism of her by those whose itch for white guilt is scratched by her posts.
Allan
As when Anne Laurie deleted a comment of mine for… homophobia.
Paul W.
@gwangung:
Pretty much this, I find times where I agree with ABL without understanding the passion and over-the-topness of the actual message. Succinct rants by Cole or the thoughtful and clearly well prepared posts of Tom Levenson are, I think, the real model for what should be put on up this blog.
However, fuck if I care about some of the posts that I don’t get or like… as long as I get the stuff I do enjoy (the above, and pet pron), then they can have themselves a ball.
Dunno about the ban, don’t think it should be an excuse for one front pager to call out another right on top of their earlier post. There has GOT to be a better way to communicate that does not clutter up the hallowed (/snark) pages of BJ.
LT
ABL has very thin skin. This is going to cause problems. I’m happy to see her called out – because I fucking hate the “professional Left!” crap – but I’m a bit torn, I guess. I guess I shouldn’t worry about that, she’s an adult and chose this shit.
Skipjack
Take this how you like, but Democrats never fail to take their eyes off the prize.
Alex S.
This weekend must have been way too long.
JGabriel
@Baud:
Actually, Cole invited the entire Twitterverse to his home on … Friday, I think it was.
Don’t you read his Twitter feed?
(Or was that a reference to same Twitter feed that I failed to recognize?)
.
SST
I don’t comment much, ‘cuz I can’t type quickly, like to (heavily) edit my stuff and I don’t often have much to say, but one thing that’s occurred to me is that I think ABL and I have very different ideas of what ‘racism’ is. This makes sense to me, ‘cuz we’re different races, genders and probably lots of other stuff. I don’t think I’m right and she isn’t, just that we use and define the word differently.
But I’d be interested to read a post where she spells out why she thinks certain people, techniques, etc are racist, because she uses the term a lot. Has she written anything about this somewhere before?
ETA: And if not, that post would be interesting, at least to me.
res ipsa loquitur
@Dave: Oh yes, this. This. THIS.
Spaghetti Lee
@Dave:
Uh, what he said.
eemom
@Alison:
You said it.
I’m sure the fact that AL holds one of her famous Irish grudges against ABL et al for calling out her “sexism matters; racism not so much” meme has NOTHING to do with this sudden high profile crusade on behalf of the biggest asshole on this blog.
Hey AL –you gonna pull your trademark chickenshit disappearing act on this thread, like you do on all the others where people call out your bullshit?
4tehlulz
@eemom: It’s only racist when black people do it.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM:Does she or does she NOT have the ability to ban anyone?
Jason T.
@Lit3Bolt:
This to the 100th power.
Seriously, Anne? More than 500 words about a commenter getting banned when he or she may or may not really have been banned?
And making comparisons to McCarthyism?! Yes, getting banned from commenting on a freaking blog is exactly the same as losing your job due to government-sanctioned violations of the Bill of Rights.
Jeez o Pete.
Woodrowfan
me too. Um, shouldn’t ALB and Annie and JC work this out offline? I love this blog and I enjoy all three posters’ writing (although I skip the food pr0n).
I feel like quoting Caesar Rodney in “1776” Stop it! Stop it!! This is [Balloon Juice]! Stop it, I say! The enemy is out there!
LT
Oh for fuck’s sake. Was that ABL posing as “Darnell”? Is that what this is about?
kd bart
I gather that this is all good news for John McCain?
Jason T.
@Off Colfax: Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
JGabriel
@AA+ Bonds:
Pfft. I banned John Cole. Six months ago. All those posts and comments from Cole for the past six months?
Me, in a sockpuppet.
.
Lit3Bolt
@AA+ Bonds:
I’m sorry, but shit like this post is immature. I’m sure if I spent time and effort, I could come up with witty phrases because I mainly just try to lighten the mood and war with my own cynicism, but seriously wtf. This is an ass-spanking attention post that will only exacerbate the problem it tried to solve, and jesus getting upset over unregulated comments on a political blog is probably the most useless past time any being could come up with.
Follow my rule for the internets and most media these days: If you’re getting mad at someone, you’re being trolled. They want your indignation and a self-righteous response, so they can wallow in your hatred. Some of you masturbate to this shit. I don’t. I throw my shit out there, where you guys can read it and possibly get a clue, but I’m not going to enter a fucking internet dick-swinging melee to prove who’s the most self-righteous twit of them all.
Cole, delete this post and everything that references it, including this post.
Seriously, this is some World of Warcraft trade chat style bullshit here. Hurt fee fees for all.
schrodinger's cat
May be Tunch can settle this fracas.
licensed to kill time
Hoo boy. I’mma just lurk on this thread.
OK. I don’t like the banhammer except for the most egregious offenses.
That is all.
Skipjack
@eemom: Please don’t, this is precisely why we don’t make the progress on either that we need. Some people will be more committed and available to one fight over another, but we have to be humble enough not to demand our own preferences exclude another struggle.
SteveinSC
Well, if Corner Stone is not banned (vide Cole post) then let a hundred flowers blossom and ABL shriek.
Mark S.
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
That’s the spirit. Now take a look a this fucking one ton crocodile!
Jade Jordan
This place is becoming a hard place to live for non-Obots. However, I have thick skin and strong convictions so I will keep coming back to hear how stupid I am and how I am wasting my vote by voting for the candidate of my choice (pretending to live in a democracy and all).
Dead Earnest
To Anne: Well, I like you. And I’m entirely comfortable with what you wrote, why you wrote it. You always give this place a bright, clean, refreshed atmosphere. As for others who don’t feel that way, who perhaps add to the value of letting in some light and air; heck, more the merrier. Awful darn easy for me to read or skip.
Heliopause: my admiration for being able to say in about a dozen words what I struggle with in too many.
SpaggaLee: Lovely, thanks and good on ya. Lightened my mood …when it wasn’t even weighted down (and apologies for messing w your name)
To the rest of you that are one way or another generally amused: ‘Hey there brothers, sisters, cousins.’
The rest who are not: Yeah, …just do not understand how or why you choose to see the stuff of the world that way. Seems tiring and burdensome, but if it makes you happy…
Rommie
Somewhere, in a lonely chat room on IRC, a bunch of rats exchange comments and LOL’s at what their Truckery has wrought. And plan for their next set of targets, and the version of commenting poison they’ll use for the next round of Troll-ery.
It’s just too damn easy.
Alison
Dear people who *always* feel the need to mention ABL’s “thin skin” or sensitivity or what-the-fuck-ever – when she commented noting the banning, the two comments she said brought it about included CS calling someone “a little bitch” and saying the person hated white people.
If being offended by that nastiness makes someone thin skinned, then I’ve got skin like motherfucking tissue paper, and I don’t give a shit. Those comments were inappropriate and contributed nothing of value to the conversation. In fact, as others have noted, CS pretty much consistently contributes nothing of value, all while often racking up one of the highest comment counts on any thread.
Seriously, do not choose this bigoted hill to fucking die on. Is CS the new Bradley Manning or some shit? He acted like a prejudiced hateful asshole and ABL showed him the door, as is her fucking right.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Mark S.: Hell yes! I can’t wait to come back at 5:30 and see what happened here!
aisce
so, for those “in the know,” what’s the origin of the anne-abl feud?
when anne laurie kept posting that weird racist stuff in support of geraldine ferraro? i mean, this is downright hostile. and crazy. what do you even make of stuff like this?
also, too, corner stone has a supporter? like, for reals? let me guess, anne laurie is another hillbot, isn’t she? is that why she usually only posts pet threads at 4am?
AxelFoley
Wait the fuck a minute! Is this place Balloon Juice or Daily Kos? What the fuck kinda shit is this, Anne?
policomic
Oh, and does:
equal “disagreeing with you”? Pot, meet kettle.
Dennis SGMM
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Apparently she does. That she chose to ban a long time commenter for what appeared to be an ill-considered mistake suggests to me that she should think twice before exercising that power.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Yeah, that’s probably the best plan. I hate idiots, and this whole thing involved a shitload of idiocy on the part of many people. I shall now talk about the book I just started: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It is set in Restoration England and tells the story of a murder from the point of view of four different witnesses so that one apparently does not get the full story until has read the all the bits. So far, it is quite captivating. Also too, the practice of medicine in 1663 involved the tasting of urine. Ew.
The Dangerman
@Lit3Bolt:
Some of you masturbate to this shit.
New tag!
Marc
Completely unmoderated comments become utterly useless.
I’m with the folks at Making Light on this. If you let people act like complete jerks to one another, you drive the not-jerks away from you.
The ABL threads in question did *not* have her baiting the evil leftists. They were factual arguments related to recent EPA rulings…which got turned into the eternal flamewar by people who hate her guts.
That’s why you set boundaries. Because otherwise you just end up having every goddamn thread be the same garbage.
If there is anything useful that Cornerstone has ever contributed I haven’t seen it. Juvenile baiting and name-calling isn’t “free speech”; it’s a way of making every conversation about you, and about abusing other people so that you can be the center of attention.
Baud
@Mark S.: Holy shit, that is one big ass gator.
JGabriel
@Dave:
Seconded, thirded, fourthed, and fifthed.
.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: Seems pretty strange that Cole knew zip about it and said HE banned no one. But fuck it, I’m gone.
MikeMc
Is this twit drunk?
AA+ Bonds
@Lit3Bolt:
tl,dr
A Humble Lurker
@Marginalized for stating documented facts:
Bull.Shit.
As for the current issue….what did I miss? Did it really warrant a new post and comparison to McCarthyism?
Ron
@Baud: You need to follow him on twitter. Just recently he invited the whole twitterverse to his house.
eemom
@Skipjack:
wtf? I am not, and never have been, the one who set one above the other.
Anne Laurie
@eemom:
Normally, I don’t bother responding to trolls.
For the record, the one time I remember you posting some “WE HAZ DRIVEN HER AWAY YAY US” crap, I was in the hospital having a non-metaphorical septic bite wound surgically cleaned out, and by the time the anesthesia wore off, the thread was dead. But, hey, you felt soooo important!
Comrade Kevin
Anne Laurie’s just nursing her grudge.
doofus
@JGabriel: Count me in on that too.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m reading “D-Day”, the first book on that subject in 20 years. It’s an enhanced eBook and has all this great video embedded. It’s so interesting I watched Private Ryan today and was pleased to see that the landing scene was very much as described in the book.
Short Bus Bully
Such tedious horseshit.
Cornerstone made a stupid racist comment and you’re pissed at the person who “baited” him into it?
Fuck that.
Svensker
@Lit3Bolt:
Amen. High school time. Cut it out.
soonergrunt
@Alison: Hear hear!
Yevgraf
Don’t know what happened here tonight, as I’ve been embarrassing myself by watching a “Dance Moms” marathon. Sounds like there was more drama here at the BJ.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Was this trip really neceessary?
Just…whatever. Here’s a French Bulldog barking funny. It makes as much sense as anything around here lately (my own despair catharsis around here included).
Alison
@Anne Laurie: I hope you’re not saying that anyone who calls you out is a troll. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what you *are* saying, but damn…
Plenty of people have expressed discomfort and disapproval of this post. Are we all trolls?
LT
@Alison:
I have a very specific reason for thinking ABL is thinskinned, and it has to do with her saying on Twitter that it was “the worst day of her life” over a BJ post, on how she was in tears about it.
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
so Corner Stone is an esteemed, long-term, First Amendment protected commenter…….and I’m a troll? Gotcha.
Let’s see — what could possibly be the difference between me and him?
Lockewasright
FDL SHOULD be shat upon at every turn.
whitney
@AxelFoley: f#4in ayyy, man. i felt like’ i’d stepped in to the GOSatan Zone. I used to love that place, until it turned into a bunch “taste great – less filling” meta feuds that are just completely counterproductive.
i almost laughed out loud when i AL lamented all of the people who’d left BJ because of all of the drama. how ironic, because i came here to avoid this kind of nonsense.
if AL has issues to work out with ABL, she should take it where it belongs – face to face (or email to email as the case may be) and in private.
this is just a stupid pie fight from someone who should know better.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: Okay, that is some weird shit.
Allan
OT: Good post from Dana Houle using Matt Stoller’s screed as target practice:
http://rootedcosmopolitan.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/should-heath-shuler-primary-obama/
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe part of the problem is that it’s not really agreed on what the comment section is supposed to look like. There’s some places that just let anyone post-that’s how HuffPo and Kos can get thousands of comments every thread. But a place like, say, Crooked Timber has a very strict comment policy for the purpose of keeping the discussion on-topic and intellectual. Now, I think their comment section is one of the best out there, as a direct result of that, but I can see why some people wouldn’t like that system. I think banning people who aren’t being egregiously hateful or malicious, but just generally name-calling and dicking around, is absolutely defensible, but has there ever been an agreement that that’s where Balloon Juice wants to go in terms of moderation?
cleek
@Dave:
spoken like someone who doesn’t understand the long and rich history of the symbolism of colors and how drape cloth selection affected the Valence movement of the early 1910’s. without the sacrifices of the brave and multi-ruffled Damasks, we’d all be living under the iron rod of the Taffetas. which i’m sure you’d love. because, what’s better than a long green taffeta cloth, luridly dragging on the floor for all to see. you’d like that, wouldn’t you?
fuck this place! you can all put up fucking Venetian blinds, for all i care.
Alison
@LT: IIRC, there were a couple of posts where people said some seriously fucked up, mean shit to and about ABL, and were seeming to take immense joy at being assholes. And a lot of it had nothing to do with the content of the post, but rather the typical stupid whinging about her use of caps and whatever. She had some back and forths with people who seemed to have no other goal than just being jerks.
I’m sure it probably wasn’t the “worst day of her life”, but show me one fucking person who hasn’t occasionally engaged in a little hyperbole on the internet when upset. It’s perfectly human.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Alison:
Thank you.
MikeBoyScout
Good grief.
In other news I hear our president has a magical speechy thing happening this week. Our long national nightmare must be near its end, right?
notreally
So CS never contributes anything worthwhile, but I still gotta read all that “cudlip” bullshit?
Lopsided justice in this mansion.
joeshabadoo
So Corner Stone was banned because he assumed someone with the name Darnell From LA was black? The commenter then revealed he or she wasn’t black despite purposely picking a name that makes him or her seem like a black person which somehow makes Corner Stone a racist?
If someone had the name Colin from Boston I would certianly assume they were Irish and probably proud since they picked their name to insinuate that fact. I don’t see the big deal.
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ditto that.
@John Cole:
Do you guys only communicate via the comments? Jeezus.
I’ll see you guys tomorrow, if the blog is still standing.
No one of importance
Aaaaand the Nice White Lady done schooled that uppity negress again, and told her the polite way to deal with shithead racists.
Christ, Anne Laurie, are you five? You can’t go see the teacher in private instead of sharing with the class? ABL has had to carry out extraordinary measures like close comments and ban people because SHE FACES EXTRAORDINARY RACISM ON THIS BLOG! No other commenter gets the regular round of sheer, unalloyed, racist and sexist abuse that she has. She even stopped blogging here because of it (which must have made your heart glad) and the other FP’ers begged her to return. And in days, again she’s getting shit at mass production levels.
And this snit fit is inspired by Corner Stone of all people? Long time commenter be buggered – the man is a pure shit, like a few other treasured denizens. Frankly, He and you and others are doing more to silence honest discussion than ABL is.
If you’re going to make it you or her, then tell Cole that. But forcing people to pick sides here? Is a dick move.
Not that you are ever anything other than dickish when it comes to posters of colour, that I have seen.
Don’t worry. I won’t be emailing you, with or without threats. You insult people in public, be prepared to be slapped down in public.
EDIT: I assume your O’Keefe remark was accusing ABL of sockpuppeting in her own post. If you have proof, lay it out. But you aren’t going to prove that Corner Stone was somehow forced to be a racist by a sockpuppet’s *name*, are you? Because that would be low even by your standards.
RossInDetroit
Are the comments closed yet?
Dustin
And this, folks, is why I simply don’t read ABL’s posts anymore since threadlockgate. If I want thread locks and “lets ban longtime commenters because they hurt our fee-fees” bullshit I’ll go over to DKos. Nobody but Cole has ANY business banning anyone, for any reason. The fact that he’s apparently shared that is… unreal.
Omnes Omnibus
Seriously, anyone else reading anything good?
Baud
@MikeBoyScout: Our long national nightmare will be over right after the speech because NFL football will be back!
Dave
@cleek:
As a stereotypical male, I have no idea what any of that meant. :)
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
and just btw, it wasn’t “we haz driven her away yay us.”
It was more like “This woman is a front page poster, posts some hideous racist shit and then runs away — what the fuck??”
Obviously I had no way of knowing you had a medical issue.
And yeah, by the time you got back the thread was dead. Cuz NO thread on this blog has ever dragged on for days…..or its topic revisited in later threads.
Oh wait…..
Wannabe Speechwriter
I propose a new tag-
Sayre’s Law
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
Ahhh, the “I’m finally proud of our country” excuse to bag on ABL.
Nice reach. You play outfield?
Marc
@Anne Laurie:
This isn’t about your petty front-page grudge match. This place has gotten just plain nasty recently, and unless you police the personal nonsense you end up with nothing but the same people shouting the same nonsense at one another.
I’ve been on net discussion groups since Usenet, and unmoderated discussions aren’t “free”. They end up getting owned by a handful of ranters.
celticragonchick
@Ben Cisco:
Screw that. I’m running for the door. Somebody is gonna pull a gun in a moment.
Dead Earnest
@cleek:
So are you saying you did make the dress?
Frankly my dear Cleek, you make it look divine.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m in the middle of the first Game of Thrones book. It’s gotten such rave reviews, but it’s long, and I’m having trouble getting into the characters and storyline. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for that type of story right now.
smintheus
The blogger etiquette panel still has plenty of muffins and coffee in the back.
cleek
@Dave:
that makes at least two of us.
RossInDetroit
I have only this to say about that:
What matters is elections. Elections are decided by colossal masses of people all walking into a voting booth each with their own priorities and dim, incomplete understanding of issues and candidates.
No voting adult that I know personally is even aware of the Firebagger/Obot wars or would give a fig if they were.
BJ is a tiny corner of a tiny corner of the political world.
LT
@Alison: Eh.
Seriously, Eh. As others have pointed out ABL has been a firehouse of arrogance and “my way or the highway,” not to mention just 100% pure vileness at any Dem more than a millimeter to the Left of her. She’s then going to whine about people being mean?
Fuck that.
Sharl
Gawddam, no one can even be arsed to post links to the comments that brought this on?
There are a number of them, but to stay within the limit of three: start here, then see here. Those and other comments led to this.
My $0.02 worth: reserve the banhammer for only the most blatant abusive language and outlandish expressions of the nasty -isms. But it ain’t my blog, so ain’t my rules.
Party on.
Anne Laurie
@eemom:
You never show up except to fling shite and try to incite flamewars. Your only “political” opinions seem to be that everyone else should be fighting over the hot-button topic of the day, when you’re not just baiting one of the BJ obsessives. If you’re on-topic, which rarely happens, it’s to add a ME TOO ALSO to the latest hate-fest.
CS, for all his flaws, at least makes laugh — sometimes at myself.
burnspbesq
@Jade Jordan:
” I have thick skin and strong convictions”
Good, because as long as you believe that your fee-fees are more important than the quality of the lives of your fellow Americans, I will make it my personal mission to rip you a new one every time you show your ugly mug here. This is personal.
C.J.
This is why I lurk.
Marc
@joeshabadoo:
Would you write that they hated black people because they chose an Irish name?
Wouldn’t that come across as being, well, completely bigoted nonsense?
That’s precisely what troll-boy did, only with the ethnicities and colors reversed.
Yea, I have a problem with that.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m re-reading “Watership Down” by Richard Adams. I was ten when I read it last time, and it’s every bit as excellent thirty years later.
Heliopause
@eemom:
No, just the biggest goddamned idiot on the blog. Anne misfired on this one. In the spirit of Christian charity allow me to apologize on her behalf.
eemom
@No one of importance:
thank you, fortunate Aussie.
eemom
@Heliopause:
kiss my ass, sunshine.
amorphous
To be fair, ABL does suck at blogging.
soonergrunt
@celticragonchick: I got your back. If anybody pulls a virtual gun on here, I’ll use my virtual combatives training and virtually disarm them.
aisce
“darnell from la” is a true internet hero, in my book.
it takes a special kind of screwed up dedication to pose as a black person online (or however he described it) so he could see which fellow posters immediately disregard everything he said based on presumption of race. so, congratulations, “darnell.” victory was yours.
there should be no controversy here. corner stone is a fucking asshole who believes that all black people are mindless sycophants who have no business pretending their support for the president has any intellectual bearing, all because they “denied” his darling hillary the white house. he exposed himself. move on.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Anne Laurie-
I’m sorry, but Corner Stone rarely makes an argument- you know, presenting facts and such- but rather dives in for the sticks and stones straight away. Go take a look at that thread of discussion. Corner Stone, who’d been doing the same thing all fucking day long, opened with flames against Darnell, closed with flames, and did nothing but flame in between.
Darnell:
Okay, good spot for someone to use their Google Fu and disprove Darnell by linking to articles and blogposts that appeared before Friday, right? Sure. So what do we get from Corner Stone?
Uh, right. Great
argumentinsult. The same type ofargumentinsult Corner Stone resorts to multiple times per thread if he’s around.Anne Laurie, you wrote:
Sorry, but that’s a misdiagnosis. Plenty of people disagree with ABL in the comments and don’t get banned. The difference between those commentators and Corner Stone is that they argue against ABL’s posts with facts. More importantly, they don’t cyber-bully.
I’ve had disagreements with a few people here at BJ, but I’ve never lost any respect for any of them but one, and that’s the one who uses
argumentsinsults in effort to chase away those who disagree with him. Yep, that would be Corner Stone.Jamie
I would just like to say that dinner was OK. Too salty, but otherwise, would eat again. ++
TooManyJens
You mean like Corner Stone randomly telling a dude “You hate white people” because said dude disagreed with him? Honestly, I think that qualifies.
I also think drawing a parallel between McCarthy’s victims and Corner Stone (or whoever you’re trying to draw the parallel between; it’s not exactly clear) is overwrought at best.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hear, fucking hear, and tonight, a very strange one. I actually think Corner Stone is the best of the whiny, bitter contraritrolls. S/he at least has kind of a sense of humor, but s/he was pretty weird yesterday. Mayby s/he got a big box of wine for hte holiday.
No one of importance
@eemom:
Word to everything you wrote.
Storner Cone
Wow, did I dodge a motherfucking bullet!
elisabeth
This is about the saddest thing I’ve read on this blog in awhile. Jesus, be an adult and confront ABL to her virtual face with some iota of respect. You’re going to chastise someone over two comments by writing a whole lengthy piece? There’s some arrogance.
Dustin
@Omnes Omnibus #142
If you’re into fantasy check out “Taming Fire” by Aaron Pogue on the kindle. He may be an indie self published author but I just finished the book and it’s stellar. Now I’m on to “The Kinshield Legacy” and so far so good. The best part? They’re both dirt cheap ebooks.
TooManyJens
You mean like Corner Stone randomly telling a dude “You hate white people” because said dude disagreed with him? Honestly, I think that qualifies.
I also think drawing a parallel between McCarthy’s victims and Corner Stone (or whoever you’re trying to draw the parallel between; it’s not exactly clear) is pretty Hoekstra-esque.
drkrick
@cleek: Where would you like your internets delivered?
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
You’re full of shit, fact-challenged, and just as much a liar as your boytoy Corner Stone.
SST
@Omnes Omnibus: Recently finished Winner Take All Politics. Nothing I didn’t already know, depressing as shit, but full of a lot of info I found interesting. Also thought it had a good focus on organization & advocacy groups and how those have changed.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: I read it at about the same age and haven’t reread it. Something to add to the list, I guess.
CaseyL
This blog has slowly and steadily become a non-stop food fight between Obama supporters and Obama haters. It’s gotten quite boring, to tell the truth, and that breaks my heart because I love this place and this community.
John, I love you to pieces, but I think you need to spend more time here policing things. When the FPers go out of their way to cause fights – not conversations, not discussions, not even debates, but feces-flinging fights – IMO they need to lose their posting privs for a while.
JGabriel
@John Cole @ 27:
John, that was 150 (or so) comments ago. If you’ve found anything out, could you please let us know?
As you can see, we get very excitable when the adults fight.
.
AxelFoley
So, is Cole the only one who can ban people on this blog? Or did he give front pagers the ability to ban? And if so, couldn’t Anne just unban her boo (if Corner Stone was in fact banned)?
And Cole, you don’t pay attention to what the hell is going on on your blog? What the fuck, man?
A Humble Lurker
Okay. For those of you who were clueless like me, the event in question took place in the thread titled ‘OzoneGate’.
A poster calling themselves Darnell from LA was making the case (and be warned I’m paraphrasing here) that FDL hadn’t started bitching about OzoneGate until now and hadn’t bitched about the GOP’s TRAIN act (a bill to stop ozone regulations) at all. Corner Stone and Darnell started arguing back and forth about this (and I use the term ‘arguing’ very loosely) when Corner Stone accused Darnell of arguing their point because of their (deep seated?) hatred of white people when Darnell had not mentioned white people or anything the slightest bit related to race. Darnell than said they were white.
As for Corner Stone being banned? I don’t know about that. But if ABL did ban his racist ass, I don’t think it warrants this post that is scolding her and not said racist ass.
eemom
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
oh please. He’s a he, and a woman-hating one at that.
Except for HRC of course. And perhaps now his new virtual Mommy, AL.
AxelFoley
BTW, what’s the over/under on post count on this thread?
Lit3Bolt
@Alison:
It’s human, but humans tend to learn from their mistakes, and one of those mistakes is FUCKING ENGAGING WITH TROLLS. There I used caps so you’d understand. You know why BJ doesn’t have a lot of trolls? Because the posters, for the most part, utterly ignore comments. They’re not worth engaging, except for quick agreement perhaps, but nothing more. That’s the magic of positive reinforcement. It impacts all behavior, including the trolls, who have to moderate the own posts to get attention, and thus try to make their points coherently in the first place.
If, however, you engage in the endless back and forth of the internet, then you ultimately lose. You will convince no one. You will win no one. In defending yourself from harassment, you come off as self-absorbed and self-righteous. Ignoring it utterly is so much simpler but some people simply CAN’T RESIST to see what other people, even if they’re hundreds of miles away, are saying about them.
Don’t. Feed. Trolls. Especially for posters. Take the high road, don’t comment on drama, or bullshit, or even high minded rebuttals full of corporate propaganda. Commentators are begging for attention, thinking that useless typing about societal problems validates their worthless and futile lives (the same could be said of bloggers, but at least they have blogads…what do you the rest of you mofos got). Posts like this shit from Anne is utterly worthless whining for divine intervention from the blogmaster and a waste of everyone’s time.
In other news, please remember that the last Republican President was such a bad president that he managed to get the United States to elect its very first black President, which should be all the information you need about Republican governance.
So think long and hard about your worthless, meaningless “protest vote” in a corrupt and rigged political system.
Alex S.
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Corner Stone started even sooner, at the 2nd comment already:
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/09/04/ozonegate/#comment-2758976
He wanted this fight.
ABL
Well, well, well. You go to happy hour and look what happens!
How embarrassing for you, Anne Laurie. How incredibly embarrassing for you.
TooManyJens
Sorry if I’m multi-posting; my internet is going down literally every 5 minutes.
NickM
I’m reading Hellhound on his Trail by Hampton Sides. Did you know James Earl Ray took the alias Eric Galt for a while?
General Stuck
Gonna be interesting where Cole comes down on this. Sort of a seminal moment for this blog. I just remember Mike Kay getting banned for next to nothing, so we shall see how this turns out. Now back to my lurk status.
dead existentialist
@Omnes Omnibus: Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason. Her thesis: a lot of Americans are not reasonable. Still fun to read even if a little discouraging.
Allan
I’m surprised Anne Laurie didn’t go with a Julius and Ethel Rosenberg analogy instead.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bruce Ackerman’s “The Decline and Fall of the American Republic.” There is a lot I don’t agree with, but it’s well-reasoned and well-written.
joeshabadoo
@Marc:
Is that what happened?
Then why the big reveal?
Why this, “I’m not really black I just post this way.” stuff?
If something is racist it is racist, some kind of blog sting seems entirely unnecessary.
Cowbelle
Why is AL only responding to eemom and not to anyone else on this thread?
She’s making a deliberate decision to not engage with the rest of her critics, and instead concentrate on one person she seems to label a troll.
Why is that?
RossInDetroit
Oh, man. How are we ever going to make it another 14 months?
MikeBoyScout
@143 Baud:
As a Stiller fan I can find no snarky response to that.
Baud
One might even say, this dispute is John Cole’s Katrina.
JCT
Meanwhile, CNN’s site took a clue from TPM and described the SC circle-jerk with King DeMented as “Five of the GOP’s leading presidential contenders traveled to South Carolina to kiss the ring of tea party kingmaker Jim DeMint at a first-of-its-kind forum”
And that idiot Bachmann went on and on about adhering to the holy Constitution (that Obama doesn’t understand”) and then detailed the changes she wants to make. You can’t make this shit up.
MM
Passive-aggressive blog post is passive-aggressive. And opinions are like assholes and such, but as a lurker, mistermix and Doug J are in my mind FAR worse contributors than ABL.
Comrade Kevin
@ABL: I suggest you leave it at that, ABL.
CaseyL
FYWP sideways with a rusty saw!
I tried to edit my comment at #178 because I did not want to single out AL; I was referring to both her and ABL. I also wanted to change “lost their posting privs” to “The Blog Boss needs to step and in moderate.”
WP wouldn’t let me edit my own damn comment AND it wouldn’t let me delete the comment.
Dammit.
Random User Name
So this is what it sounds like, when doves cry?
Jay
I have strong disagreements with ABL, but as a commenter upthread pointed out, “Corner Stone” already stepped in it once, joking about our (black) president’s “black, spiny jism” (Racism AND homophobia! A Limbaugh-esque two-fer!). I’m going to urge A.L. to go polish her Ferraro campaign buttons, and leave it there.
Omnes Omnibus
@AxelFoley: I don’t know, but I think I am going to go pay attention to the stupid vampire vs. werewolf movie on SyFy.
JGabriel
I bet we could straighten this shit out if we all just got together for a beer with Obama in the backyard o’ the White House.
.
C.J.
@Baud: It will be his Waterloo.
Dave
@RossInDetroit:
Bourbon.
aisce
@ stuck
didn’t mike kay get banned for calling bradley manning a homo over and over again and saying that was the only reason greenwald cared about him? and then something about brazil? or was that something else? i forget, he gets banned as often as matoko-loko does.
it’s interesting to see which posters draw support from which corners. very interesting.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@cleek: Let’s see, which part of this would be best for the next rotating tag? I’m voting for
although this is quite good too.
Thanks for the larf.
Baud
OT: FWIW, NYT is reporting that Ed Rollins has stepped down as Bachmann’s campaign manager for health reasons.
Alex S.
@RossInDetroit:
Common enemies unite, lol.
The Dangerman
@ABL:
Shit, if I went to Happy Hour, I’d be well, well, well, too.
LT
The post was worth it just for that.
eemom
Just curious: does anyone know of another instance where a FPer on a high traffic blog has openly played schoolyard bully against another FPer, ON the front page of that blog?
Cuz I’ve never seen it. Shit, even Hamsher had the decency, when she backstabbed TRex, to do it behind the scenes.
Heliopause
@eemom:
I prefer difficult targets.
SteveinSC
@eemom:
Drat, make up a new law and there’s exceptions in it before it’s published. Swing and a miss. Want to try another?
JGabriel
@Random User Name:
Maybe we’re just too demanding.
.
LT
@Comrade Kevin:
Yeah, fat fucking chance. That’s 98% of the problem right there.
JCT
@Baud: She probably drove him insane.
LesGS
@cleek: Beautiful. I snorted in amusement and my absinth went right up my nose.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Oh for the love of God.
I’m sure some people left because of whatever it is you think is a PC crusade. I left because of bullshit like this, and the asshole commenters who think that being assholes constitutes useful criticism.
And I quote:
eemom
@Cowbelle:
I’d like to think it’s because I’m so darned cute.
magurakurin
@aisce: except, he didn’t pose as a black person other than choosing the name, Darnell. Nothing in his posts gave an indication his race or any opinions of race. That’s what was so fucking awesome about it.
Only a racist dickhead would see, Darnell, and then have their hard-wired racism take over.
Fucking brilliant.
Just smashing.
soonergrunt
@A Humble Lurker: that’s about it. It’s certainly a much fairer (to CS, that is) accounting of the one I wrote before deleting it.
@AxelFoley: 450, easy. I just called in sick for work tomorrow, and popped the top off the second of what I expect to be many Coronas this evening. The popcorn will be ready in a second. Here we go!
CaseyL
As a matter of general principle and policy, I think only the Blog Boss (Cole) should have the authority to ban commentors. For all his curmudgeonly ways and profane rants, he has a very long fuse when it comes to banning people (IIRC, we had to practically beg him to ban Darrell, back in the day).
If a FPer wants to ban someone, they should present a case for doing so to Cole.
LT
@eemom:
I know this seems like the smartest thing you ever came up with (maybe it is?) but can you stop? We heard you. And it’s fucking dumb.
And it’s Cole’s fault for letting a lunatic on the FP. (You’re own choice who…)
Marc
@CaseyL:
It’s gotten shitty across the board on left-oriented political forums. BJ is in a distinct minority – one where the critics of Obama don’t completely dominate the conversation. Go over to Daily Kos. Or Digby. Or Atrios. Or…..hell, go pretty much anywhere and read the comments.
It’s incredibly depressing. A passionate group of politically active leftists have decided that they despise Obama, and not surprisingly this sits badly with liberals who strongly support a Democratic president.
I’m praying that a repulsive republican plus a reinvigorated Obama knocks some sense into people. But I’m afraid that there are a lot of folks deeply invested in this, at least in our corner of the pond.
Spaghetti Lee
@Baud:
Well, working with Wacky Bachy would make anyone sick.
Cowbelle
@LT: The problem isn’t ABL here. AL is the problem, with this grudgewank nonsense.
Mark S.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m (slowly) reading Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power by Robert Kaplan. I’m finding it really interesting because it’s a region of the world I haven’t read much about before.
lamh32
Ya know what, if I do have one pet peeves, it’s a grown ass man/woman, who has a problem with me, but isn’t man/woman enough to come to confront me personally and I sorry, but this is petty, childish and stupid.
If you have a problem with ABL or what she did, you and ABL should “talk it out” offline, like two fuckin’ adults should. Not like a high schooler posting some shit on the bathroom wall about their “frienemies”.
Yevgraf
Mmm – some white hot eemom on AL throwdown.
Omnes Omnibus
@LesGS: You have absinthe and you aren’t sharing? OTOH, maybe the green fairy is the last thing the thread needs.
doofus
@Baud: Thanks. I knew if I followed this stupidity long enough that a real nugget of information would be my prize.
Yevgraf
Mmm – some white hot eemom on AL throwdown.
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
Oh my motherfucking God. This is a genuine statement _in support of_ Corner Stone? Who spends the tail end of every thread, even when there are discussions actively going on, calling people pussies and bitches and storing up grudges, to the point where he insulted J. Michael Neal for the way he talked about taking care of his chronically sick cat? What the fuck is going on here? This is beyond comprehension.
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
Oh my motherfucking God. This is a genuine statement _in support of_ Corner Stone? Who spends the tail end of every thread, even when there are discussions actively going on, calling people pufsies and bitches and storing up grudges, to the point where he insulted J. Michael Neal for the way he talked about taking care of his chronically sick cat? What the fuck is going on here? This is beyond comprehension.
soonergrunt
@Baud: Win!
AxelFoley
@General Stuck:
He got banned? When? And for what?
Alex S.
@Baud:
Since Perry entered, the health of her campaign has left something to be desired.
LT
@Marc:
This says it all. It mentions no issues. These comments never do. Because for this sort issues don’t matter, all that matters is that people are criticizing Obama.
Can you not see this? Honestly, please tell me you at least see what this means so I dont’ lose my mind.
Marci Kiser
In light of this blatant (insert grievance here), it is obvious that as 2012 approaches we must primary Anne Laurie.
maye
Did you know today would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday?
AxelFoley
@Baud:
(spits out drink)
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
Well, this post sure is laughable.
No one of importance
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Um, quoting a man who is infamous for his abusive treatment of livejournal bloggers, is not actually helping.
Although I agree the person responsible for the tone of the blog is the owner of the blog. Cole doesn’t even abide by his own quidelines, refusing to act over blatant racism, sexism and homophobia. If you let shit like that slide, then you may as well call ‘Sooeee’ to the hogs and let them shit all over your site.
That’s what’s been happening. The posts have the potential to be fascinating but as soon as I dive into the comments, I find the same hateful trolls spewing garbage at the poster and everyone else. That happens x 10 on an ABL post.
I also read Boing Boing. They just don’t have this kind of problem. The difference is not the people who read it but the people who comment – and the comments which are struck out for doing nothing but adding faecal matter to the discourse.
eemom
@LT:
oh yes, of course I’ll stop if you want me to. Why didn’t you say so before?
And I am sorry if I’m not as smart as you’re. I did make it through fourth grade grammar, though.
Comrade Kevin
@LesGS: That stuff’s expensive. The price tag on a bottle alone has kept me from ever buying any.
Marc
@LT:
I said that the overall tone was shitty, because it is. I also said that the big difference between here and Digby, etc. isn’t the tone – it’s which group is larger locally.
The boring conversation is critics of Obama upset that their criticism is being challenged, and defenders of Obama upset that their challenges are being dismissed as robotic cultism. It’s utterly sterile, and it’s taken all of the oxygen from leftist discussions.
Judean People’s Front nonsense all over again. Except that was, you know, funny.
soonergrunt
@JGabriel: Maybe you’re just like my father–
Too bold.
AxelFoley
@Random User Name:
(spits out drink again)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Ok, ya’ll killin’ me tonight.
whitney
@Marc: THIS!
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
(Also, not for nothing but comparing “Darnell from LA” to James fucking O’Keefe is in the running for the most nonsensical thing ever said on the internet. It beggars description, that comparison).
Lysana
Drama queening at its finest, Anne Laurie. You have ABL’s email, you should’ve gone to her. So now you’re the butthurt queen of this blog. Congrats. You’re barely worth my pointing out you fucked up.
But since I’m one of ALB’s cronies, you’re getting what you expect from me. Regardless, you’re being a twit.
whitney
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: and THIS too!
RossInDetroit
I see the Fox Effect taking hold. Manufactured conflict makes it look like something’s actually happening. We know that Fox is full of shit and the sky isn’t going to fall if the budget isn’t balanced.
Why can’t we recognize that blowing disappointments over the president’s performance into colossal, all consuming conflagrations is just doing the same thing to ourselves that Fox does to their viewers?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Good advice; thanks.
clayton
Fuck you Anne Laurie.
Go back to wanking about different tomatoes when some of us can’t GROW SHIT BECAUSE OF THE DROUGHT. Thank for rubbing that in our faces for weeks.
Just FUCK YOU and your stupid comics and PUMA shit.
Baud
@Alex S.: Make the race kind of inviting for Palin, with the only other woman falling fast. Not that Palin is a serious candidate, but she would love the constant media attention she would get.
doofus
@LT: According to the KOS weekly tracking poll only 14% of Democrats think Obama is too conservative.
Comrade Kevin
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: HELL YES.
TooManyJens
@LT:
Re-read what you blockquoted, please. “Critics of Obama completely dominate the conversation” =/= “People are criticizing Obama.”
dead existentialist
@AxelFoley: 350
Take the over if ABL and AL continue this hissy-fit in-thread.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I demand an apology to those of us who now have a headache because your comparison of McCarthy’s career of life shattering evil to a single banning of an anonymous person on a damn blog caused us to roll our eyes at 500 rpms.
Jesus Christ, get a grip.
Allan
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: It was especially clever of “Darnell from LA” to selectively edit Corner Stone’s comments in order to misrepresent what he said… oh wait.
gocart mozart
@Marginalized for stating documented facts:
Your comments are notable for their complete lack of “facts”. Hint: If you make a wild accusation, it is good manners to cite what is commonly called evidence. I don’t have the time or inclination to “fight” over everything you said but if you want to highlight one or two with “Evidence”, I’ll be glad to take you on.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@No one of importance: Boing Boing doesn’t have this kind of problem because the people in charge make sure that they don’t.
Heliopause
@lamh32:
Oh yes, just as ABL does with regards to Firedoglake.
John, do you see how irredeemably, horsefucking stupid a good deal pf your commentariat is? Blasting Anne for copping ABL’S STOCK IN TRADE, INDEED, THE LONE NOTE IN HER CANON?
Used to be an informative blog, John “what the hell is going on here” Cole. Used to be.
Big Baby DougJ
It wasn’t a ban, it was a time-out. There’s a difference. I have given a lot of commenters time outs (it’s when you’re in the spam filter for a while). So has John.
I don’t know if ABL used the spam filter (time out) or the blacklist (ban) but if it was the former, this isn’t a big deal.
EDIT: I mean that ABL meant to give a time out, I don’t know which she actually used.
aisce
@ lt
because you’re the one who’s not playing in the proper plane of reality.
it should be the default, the empirically-derived default setting to show overwhelming support for barack obama and the works he has done in his presidency. straight up fact.
yeah, yeah, yeah, the economy. well, guess what? the economy sucks everywhere. it sucks in europe, it sucks in japan, it sucks everywhere in the developed world. if there’s a global leadership failure of the moment, then president obama is still the cream of the fucking crop.
health care reform alone is enough to enshrine the president and the congresspeople responsible as all time greats in this country’s history.
you have no idea how fucking insane you look, denigrating the president over every single little thing every day. you’re like republicans. you’re like teabaggers. that’s where the firebagger name bloody came from!
open your eyes, man. history will show you to be absolutely foolish.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to you any pain
I only wanted to see you laughin’
I only wanted to see you laugin’ in the purple rain
Neal
I’ve been lurking here for years (since shortly after Cole’s conversion). I rarely comment. I’ll just say the more FPers, the less I like it. This particular issue is ridiculous…
jaleh
@RossInDetroit:
I wish I knew. It’s going to be hell. I wish I could just leave the country and not give a shit about this election.
Spaghetti Lee
@LT:
I think this is kind of a conflict of values in a lot of ways. For a lot of the ‘Obots’ (and I’d include myself there, more often than not), politics is about strategical decision-making. It’s either going to be Obama or a Republican in office after the 2012 elections, and they would prefer it to be Obama. They think that internecine conflict within the Democratic Party hurts Obama and helps the Republicans, which is bad for the country, so they encourage unity and discipline as ways to help Democrats in general. Because according to this theory, goal #1 should be to maintain power, because when you’re out of power, disagreements about issues won’t mean much.
A lot of the liberals who don’t support Obama don’t agree with his policies, and don’t see why they should have to support him, given that. A lot of them, from what I’ve seen, think that conflict actually helps the Democratic party and other left-leaning groups, because it allows them to define themselves and what they stand for, which will make them stronger and more cohesive in the long run.
I think both groups have decent moral arguments in terms of trying to do the right thing. I think the first group has a better handle on how politics works in practice, so that’s why I tend to side with them. But unlike some Obots out there, I don’t get my rocks off by hippie-punching, and I would really, honestly love to live in a world where you could vote your conscience or disagree with your party without helping the other side in the process. But we don’t live in that world, so I’m not helping myself if I pretend that we do.
Alex S.
Jim DeMint will probably skip Obama’s speech. And since today was his big Tea-Party-worship-whatever event it probably means that attending Obama’s speech is going to become another Tea Party heresy.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@LT:
I see it. That’s why I’ve called these balloonbaggers a Cult of Personality for some time.
.
.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
That’s great – thanks!
Cowbelle
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: At the very least, it shows that she has no idea what O’Keefe did and how many people he hurt through his actions.
Which may be par for the course, when you consider that black people were far more damaged by O’Keefe than white people. (There’s a huge racist element of the targeting of ACORN that is the elephant in the room, and it became obvious to most in the Sherrod incident. “ACORN” and “community organizer” have been employed extensively as racist dogwhistles.)
Unsurprisingly, to AL, “using a black name when white” is the same level of evil as “trashing the lives of lots of impoverished black and white people.”
BillinGlendaleCA (aka 10amla)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Think I’ll join you and Raven. Just took the dogs out for a nice walk. Let ’em out in the yard and the cocker got a chicken bone, had to put ’em inside after that.
JenJen
@Allan: Oh, gawd, I needed that LOL.
JCT
@maye: He was a terrible loss, spectacular voice. Go dig up his Live Aid performance from 1985 — easily one of the best live rock performances ever.
AxelFoley
@soonergrunt:
Hell, I gotta go to work tonight (or rather, this morning) at 2am. Good thing is I get time and a half and only have to work 4 hours (I work in a computer room that has to be manned 24/7).
I bet by the time I get there, this shit’ll be off the charts.
RossInDetroit
@No one of importance:
I know their head Mod somewhat. He’s incredibly patient and dedicated and works long hours. Riding herd on the Boing Boing comments is very labor intensive. You either commit to do that or you open the gates and hope for the best.
I remarked some time ago that this site was remarkably free of trollage and interpersonal conflict. I guess it had to happen.
Marc
…and the personal stuff re: AL doesn’t improve things people. Just sayin’…
Chris
Question. What’s this about an ABL vs AL having some kind of Sicilian vendetta?
I’m sorry, I’ve been here less than a year and I often don’t even notice which front-pager is posting what, so this might’ve gone over my head. I’m just curious about the backstory to this entire event…
martha
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m really enjoying The Greater Journey:Americans in Paris by David McCullough. I get to indulge my history/travel/biography obsessions in one well-written book. And anyway, I just imagine he’s reading to me…prolly shoulda bought the audio book…
martha
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m really enjoying The Greater Journey:Americans in Paris by David McCullough. I get to indulge my history/travel/biography obsessions in one well-written book. And anyway, I just imagine he’s reading to me…prolly shoulda bought the audio book…
suzanne
@Baud:
LMMFAO.
Comments like THIS are why I love this blog.
Anne Laurie
@No one of importance:
No, I was accusing one of ABL’s camp-followers (who claims to be a white man of German/Swiss extraction, but on the internet, who knows?) of trolling behind a fake persona in the hope that someone could be baited into saying something that would give ‘Darnell from LA’ the excuse to shriek like a scalded ferret about his own high-minded political sensibilities. And now you’re attempting, ham-handedly, to achieve a similar goal. I don’t agree with ABL’s ban-veryone-but-the circus policy, but I’d never doubt her ability to attract adherents.
ABL has the wormiest, wordiest, least coherent “supporters” in this little corner of the internet — which is why I usually don’t bother reading the comments when I read her posts. Do you add your voice to that choir ? Because I’ve only ever noticed your nym blog-stalking my posts to remind me & the dead thread that you’re firmly Team ABL, which never inspires me beyond, how nice for you.
clayton
@Big Baby DougJ: Anne Marie wrong again.
Next time stick to flowers and tomatoes, since you are playing to type.
disgusting.
LT
@Spaghetti Lee: Great comment, S.LEE.
soonergrunt
@Big Baby DougJ: Well, it shouldn’t be a big deal either way. It’s not something that one front pager should be calling out another front pager for. Issues between front pagers should be kept between front pagers.
Sentient Puddle
THIS IS JUST LIKE WHAT HITLER WOULD HAVE DONE!
(thread needed more Godwin)
Jay
@Mark S.: Careful of Kaplan. This long, but very intelligent article (http://bit.ly/9SJ11B) received play all over the blogosphere awhile ago; I think it makes a good case that Kaplan very often thinks he is less over-his-head than he really is when he’s out in the world. His belligerent hawkishness in recent years certainly hasn’t been helpful.
Lit3Bolt
@Big Baby DougJ:
Time for DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAA though, from one of your prominent commentators.
Jesus. I prefer Cole yelling about Terri Schiavo. This blog was much better back then. I wonder why.
stormhit
I don’t see the comments most of the time since I just read the rss feed, so I’d prefer if those of you on the FP who happen to be morons didn’t ruin the blog proper with petty bullshit nobody cares about.
AL in particular- you aren’t intelligent, and you absolutely never have anything original to say. If you won’t just go away, the quality level of the blog is best served if you’d please just stick to re-posting other people’s pet stories and recipes. Your only value is as a content aggregator. You really need to accept this.
Cowbelle
@Anne Laurie: No, I was accusing one of ABL’s camp-followers …
Camp-followers, really, AL?
Marc
@Anne Laurie:
Christ, this is a childish and petty thing to write. Step away from the bloody keyboard for your own sake. I expect fans on gaming sites to do this, not front-page bloggers with experience under their belts.
LT
@aisce:
Go fuck your own king, you fucking wannabe groupie. Jesus.
SST
Pretty decent game between Maryland and U of Caligula on tWWL
lamh32
@Heliopause: there is lies the problem. THIS IS NOT FDL. If ABL was a FP over at FDL and another poster did what AL just did, it would apply.
how about yo forget about your ABL hatred and think like the adult we both are supposed to be.
if you have a co-worker who you have an issue with, do you get on the loudspeaker and proceed to rant and rave about said co-worker..fuck no.
you either talk directly to your co-worker or you talk directly to your damn supervisor. you sure as hell don’t write a fuckin’ op-ed in the company newsletter about one fuckin’ employee.
so get off your fuckin’ ABL SUCKS high horse.
LT
@clayton:
Why do ppl say stupid dumb untrue shit like this?
TooManyJens
@Anne Laurie:
Wow, this is assolish. Corner Stone out of the blue told a person “you hate white people” because someone he thought was black disagreed with him. And your problem is with the person who used a name that suggested he might be black?
If you had a leg to stand on, you wouldn’t need to resort to nonsense like this. I’m with Marc; you should probably back away from the keyboard.
One of Several Possibly Black Names I Use To Try To Prove Some Point (Usually Son of Prog)
I hate white people, A-HA! I didn’t know, but I’m actually white myself. That’s a trap I use to catch myself in the act of being a horrible person via a few words on the Internet. What a racist I am, I’m so glad I finally caught myself in the act, and subsequently revealed my true identity as a secret/not-secret racist. Furthermore, I’m a little bitch, but just happen to have data showing that I am, in fact, a man who stands 5’8″ and weighs 200lbs. I’m pretty sure there’s a ban-able offense in there somewhere, so go nuts.
Cap'n Magic
As I am reading this thread and it’s comments I hear King Crimson’s “Epitath” playing in the background, and am reminded of one of the verses: “The fate of all mankind I see, is in the hands of fools.”
Omnes Omnibus
@martha: Looks interesting. I have been on a France kick for a while now. I think discovering La Baguette on Mineral Point Road did it to me.
Marc
@LT:
Because AL has been writing low-value insults in this thread comments instead of anything substantive.
EDIT: out of here; this is just getting embarrassing.
Alex S.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Argive
This is why I lurk. I like this blog a lot, but is it really necessary to have these little wars? I’ve often thought that online forums are kind of like bars, in that things said within them do not matter. Therefore what’s the point of getting into a fight? I honestly don’t mean to sound preachy, but that’s just my two cents.
aisce
@ lt
that’s some incisive issues-based commentary there, champ. well done.
whitney
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: and i’m OFF to boing boing. see ya on the twitters n ablc, too (;
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d ask DougJ for an open thread, but I think I’d keep reading this one, the fascination of a rolling, on-going, none-too-soon-ending trainwreck
Evolved Deep Southerner
Wow. Anne Laurie’s “Goodbye Cruel World” speech. Never would have thought I’d see it. Never have thought about it one way or another at all, actually, so … yeah. I went back to the thread in question and, swear to fucking God, I’d never have noticed it if no one had pointed it out.
If this is the forum we – commentors and lurkers alike, and I’m much more the latter than the former – get to vote on which front pagers we like, I’m just not an ABL fan, but her presence doesn’t offend me here. There are enough electrons to go around.
I do wish folks would read each others’ posts more just so we don’t have three competing front page posts on the same damn thing. It looks like they’re not reading their own blog, and that’s arrogant.
Otherwise … I love Cole when he’s good. Dennis G is always right up my alley (though he needs to find another copy editor before he hits submit sometimes.) DougJ is … DougJ. Sometimes on, sometimes mailing it in. I like Levenson. I’ve been indifferent to Tim F. I’ve generally skipped ABL.
Like y’all wanted to know my opinion. Carry on. And good luck, Anne Laurie.
Halffasthero
Wow, do I know when to visit a blog. I have never seen anything like this. The posts are piling up faster than any human can keep up.
I don’t know ABL or Anne Laurie but I like both of them because of the content of their posts. As for Cornerstone, he had nothing on some posters from days gone by.
Considering the traffic that this blog has seen and the number of people that have come onto this blog, it is a tribute to how well it is run that blowouts like this do not happen more often.
By the way, I have been here since before the original “Darrell”, not just his other brother Darrell. I was actually on here when John was once a dedicated Republican. By today’s standard of what is Republican, he would, sadly, be regarded as a leftist, socialist, American-hating, union loving, atheistic, arugula eating, Democrat.
Just passing through. John, hope all is well for you. I am a faithful reader even if I rarely post anymore.
Cowbelle
@TooManyJens: It’s not just assholish, it’s racist. AL is a big supporter of racism, and one of the reasons I’m most glad that ABL is around — because nice polite racist white ladies really do need to have an angry black lady shoved in their faces from time to time.
(As do I, from time to time, being a polite racist white lady myself.)
Dave
You see…this is why we can’t have nice things.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Anne Laurie:
I guess my nym must mean that I’m…
You assume, AL. Just like CS. No wonder you’re defending him.
FlipYrWhig
This is seriously because Anne Laurie wants to stick up for the valuable contributions of Corner Stone? Seriously? No, really, I’m going to go back to the top and read it again, and _that’s_ what it’s going to be about? How about instead of this one, a blog where people discuss politics, there could be a blog about vegetables, and Corner Stone could come by every night to tell everyone how ugly their gardens were and how they didn’t know how to hold a damn spade and he could probably kick all your wussy gardener asses while never discussing his own. Sounds like it would be right up Anne Laurie’s alley. It would make her laugh at herself.
maye
@JCT: I’ve seen them all! Last year I visited his adopted hometown (Montreux) and they have a huge statue of him in the city plaza alongside the lake.
AxelFoley
Soooo…how did Anne ever become a FPer? Seriously.
This is some petty, childish shit here. Fuckin’ middle school-type shit, and hell, I might be selling today’s middler schoolers short.
TooManyJens
Seconded.
handy
@Lysana:
This thread is going places. 260+ comments and counting as I send this. Somewhere Tunch is smiling at all this.
MacKenna
THANK YOU ANNE LAURIE!
Here’s my tweetened variation:
It just kills me when some lame ass democrat calls me a Republican for criticizing a President who enacts a Republican policy.
No shit, people like ABL not only are blocking liberals but accusing us of being Republicans when we have a criticism or two.
Comrade Kevin
@Anne Laurie:
Now that is just pathetic. Stop digging that hole, before it caves in on you.
magurakurin
@Anne Laurie: How the fuck do you know the poster is an “ABL camp-follower?” Seriously. The guy said he uses names like Darnell and Tyrell all the time when he posts on blogs, because it draws out the racists. Sounds pretty clever to me. Nothing in what the guy posted suggested he was an underling of some greater ABL caliphate (which really only seems to exist in your mind.)
You should take a break from this.
lamh32
@Anne Laurie:
Wow. Just wow.
I think I’m gonna do like some have suggested and step away from this. cause that right there what you said is just…wow!
Jamey
Who here watches “The Hour” on BBC-A?
Good stuff. First installment is slow and meanders a bit, but it picks up pace nicely.
Cowbelle
I can’t wait until someone mistakes me for either a cow or a bell, and accuses me of hating white people.
soonergrunt
@Alex S.: Remember: short, controlled bursts.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: The Brain that Changes Itself.
LT
@clayton: Prove you wrong? ABL trolls her fucking comment threads fucking constantly.
RossInDetroit
I’d love to hang out for the inevitable Cole “THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS! DON’T MAKE ME HAVE TO COME UP THERE!” but school starts tomorrow and I have to be rested.
I’ll have real people to be genuinely mad at in 12 hours.
rikyrah
why is ABL supposed to just ‘ shut up and take racist shyt’ from some mofo?
hell no.
Sophia
@Baud: I don’t care what the subsequent 50 comments say… this is John Cole’s Katrina made me smile and that’s why I read these comments.
Spaghetti Lee
Anne,
Unlike some people here, I do generally like your contributions to this blog. I think you overreacted and will regret it later, and I think the piling on is getting a bit much. (People, if you don’t like the gardening threads, don’t read them. You’re seriously yelling at her because your garden hasn’t gotten enough rain and hers has?)
That said, step away from the computer. Like, right now. Your comments in the thread have been getting worse, and it won’t be long before you can’t climb back out of this hole.
AxelFoley
@Dave:
ROFL
Keith G
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Did he?
My skin hurt when I read the post in question. It was something I felt was fucking stupid. As I then read the complaints of racism, I did wonder:
What definition of racism did it violate if any? What is the difference in being racist, or stupid, or insensitive, or just an ass?
For the record, over the last year +, I have “talked” to Corner as much as anyone here. We are both Houstonians and we have chatted about life, sports, cooking and events down here. I have never once sensed racial antipathy from him and had I, I could not have continued communicating with him.
I make no excuses for his choice of his “voice” here at B-J. It is not the way I choose to communicate with others. I just figured it was performance art (maybe goosed with tequila). As with some other posters here, there are times when I just move on.
Name calling just proves that you can type a name and that you can behave just like Cornerstone.
Now, I’ll grab a drink and read the rest of the 230+ comments.
martha
@Omnes Omnibus: That place is heavenly and evil (for one’s waistline)…I have to ration my visits! No place here comes close to their pastries.
Gwiwer
I’ll just point out that a front pager criticizing another front pager on here is far from unprecedented. Dougj was pretty merciless in mocking E.D. Kain back in the day. Mistermix got into the mix as well, pun totally intended, if memory serves correct. That’s how the phrase “readership capture” or whatever that goofy phrase is became something of a running joke around here. So, all of the “holy crap, this is UNPRECEDENTED!!” concern trolls should probably stop whining about that now.
Oh, and, yeah, I’ll agree with the notion that ABL has been extra obnoxious ever since Cole deleted her one post, hasn’t been contributing much of substance these days, and often seems to post here with the sole intention of starting fights and stirring things up. I don’t really care though. Unlike the majority here, I seem to have acquired the rare ability to just ignore things that annoy me.
Omnes Omnibus
@maye: Montreux? On the Lake Geneva shoreline?
eemom
maybe we’d better stop before we drive Cole to drink.
General Stuck
@Cowbelle:
We need more of you :)
Big Baby DougJ
@rikyrah:
She can give time outs if she wants, obviously. Other FPers do too. I don’t see the big deal.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Imma stayin’ on the boat. Laughing my ass off, especially after this just last week, but stayin’ on the boat.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Anne Laurie: Look, we’re still trying to find the pony in the first pile of horseshit you keep dumped in here. Please stop adding to it.
MacKenna
@AxelFoley: See and I think ABL’s behaviour is “some middle school childish shit.” Blocking and condemning people who are critical of Obama is lame.
Bruce S
#275 – Spaghetti Lee:
You’re making a binary fallacy – you either agree with Obama or you don’t support him. There’s lots of shit I disagree with Obama on – some is stuff where it’s just that I understand we disagree and some is stuff where I think he’s engaged in political malpractice (like his tendency to frame the deficit issue in GOP terms), but that doesn’t mean I don’t support him. If “you can’t disagree with your party without helping the other side in the process” you must have joined some Communist Party somewhere. The history of the Democratic Party is quite different. The Democratic Party is a very contradictory, almost ridiculously “broad” coalition. If I can’t disagree with some marginally competent bozo like Gene Sperling when he blathers on my TeeVee, you’re asking me to eat shit. Obama is not the Maximum Leader of an ideological clique nor is criticism from his left is not going to tank his election campaign. If anything, it will make him a stronger candidate – both in terms of dealing with the reality outside of the White House bubble – and there IS a bubble among those people – and giving him some credibility as a guy who IS NOT the tribune of the Democratic Left, such as it is.
SST
@Keith G: Yeah, those qs ’bout racism were what I was trying to get at.
No one of importance
@Anne Laurie:
First of all, who is the faker? Prove that accusation. Using a name that might be black (and I have no bloody idea because all yanks have weird names so far as I’m concerned) isn’t trolling. It’s fucking racist to make assumptions about race and *act* on them though. No one made Corner Stone come out with that crap. No one forced you to come out with the laughable notion that black women should subsume their rage about racism in the service of feminism, or forced you to double down on it. No one forced you to be an idiot. You just are, at least on that issue.
You’re reaching. You’re confecting a cause celebre out of a timeout given to a notorious tiresome tool, so you can grandstand and look like the heroine. Well, you don’t.
I do not *stalk* you, you paranoid fool. I commented a few times on various posts, but was either ignored, or subjected to fairly vicious sexist abuse – about which Cole, you or even ABL gave one fuck.
But yes, I have criticised you for your racism in the past (a dead post? Please. You’ve been grinding that grudge for months) and I will again. I don’t think ABL is all that as a poster, and at least one of her posse is a bigger, nastier fool than you are (hello Allan) but neither are you or even DougJ the be all and end all of blogging. ABL made comments about a fat man that made me want to kill her. But you know what? She hasn’t carried on a nasty vendetta against fat people or those who criticised her over that post, the way you have against her and her co-bloggers.
I’m pretty much done with this blog, at least reading the comments, so if you want to add another person to your ‘thoughtful’ losses, you can do it. Not everyone who’s sick to fucking death of the bitching and trolling and astroturfing and sheer, unbridled venom against women and miinorities on this blog, is ‘Anti-PC’. This blog could do with a bit more political correctness, if you give it the actual interpretation of refraining from using bigoted language to describe the actions of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male, non-christian posters.
Chris
@Dave:
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.
Cowbelle
@MacKenna: You wrote “Blocking and condemning people who are critical of Obama is lame.”
But we’re not talking about that, are we? We’re talking about Corner Stone’s racist bullshit that earned him a time out (not a ban).
Omnes Omnibus
@martha: They are getting to know my habits… I pick out some breakfast stuff and then go look at the tartes. This is why need to make sure I run every day.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Big Baby DougJ: I thought you said not too long ago this blog could use some drama?
Halffasthero
@Chris:
That is so HAL9000 of you…
General Stuck
@Chris:
Brilliant! Will I dream?
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@eemom: True. Especially because if he then tries to clean his bathroom, walk the dog, do work on the roof, cut his toenails, furminate Tunch or open a jar of pickles he’ll wind up in the ICU.
p.s. I really am black and usually thoughtful. In case anyone was wondering.
Mark S.
@Jay:
Whoa, tl; have to read some other time. I like Kaplan a lot, though a couple of his books (The Arabists) I thought were duds. I also skipped a couple of his books that seemed a bit too war porn to me.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
What you said, brother.
Spaghetti Lee
@clayton:
This post should be read aloud at a beat poetry revival.
aisce
i’m beginning to think clayton might actually be clinically insane. what is this stuff about rain and gardening?
MacKenna
@Cowbelle: Sorrry, I’m not familiar with that incident.
I’m only familiar with what ABL, Allan Bauer and others are doing on Twitter (which I know I know..lame social media but still).
Heliopause
@lamh32:
No, here “is” lies the problem. I’ll put it in big letters so it sinks in:
FDL AGREES WITH YOU ON 95% OF STUFF.
DID THAT SINK IN?
And the screamingly hilarious part of this is, John “what the hell is going on here” Cole will follow this up with his 10,000th iteration of the “circular firing squad” post.
By all means, keep the comedy up.
boss bitch
Anne Laurie, Hillary fucking LOST! get over it and fuck you.
jesus christ was this a dumb ass post.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Keith G:
Racist, no.
Mighty White is another matter entirely.
AxelFoley
@MacKenna:
Um, what? He got put in time-out because of some racist ass shit, not because he’s got a mad-on for Obama.
See, shit like this is why us Obots get all indignant and shit.
RossInDetroit
@Gwiwer:
Has a week gone by in the NYT that Dr. Shrill hasn’t taken a shot at Brooks on his blog? You can set your watch by it.
The sausage making used to take place behind closed doors. Blogs are like artisanal sausage shops where the blood and guts are out in the open.
maye
@Omnes Omnibus: the very same. Freddie died there in ’91. Beautiful spot.
handy
@Keith G:
I’m totally behind this post. CS is a cantankerous Obama critic, not everyone’s cup of tea obviously. But I’m guessing the bat-swinging going on here is about the latter.
The thing was, in the offending exchange in question, “Darnell from LA” was somehow making an “argument” that since FDL or whoever in Pumaville hadn’t criticized O for his Ozone-related policies before a few days ago, therefore CS was somehow disingenuous in his criticism–that he’s essentially a reverse-bandwagoner or something, told to “boo” when prompted.
Honestly that kind of stuff is weak and clearly “Darnell from LA” was trolling. CS took the bait. His own dumb fault, but whatever, I probaby would have been similarly pissed if someone tried to “refute” me in the same way.
clayton
@aisce: You don’t really read this blog, right?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Boy, I wish I hadn’t come late to this party, but I’m gonna add my two cents anyway: You missed a section bitching about those who come here wanting to start a fight over everything Obama does.
TooManyJens
@eemom: Wow, has that ship ever sailed.
LT
@handy:
Damn straight.
aisce
@ clayton
clearly not enough to know wtf you’re talking about. christians and droughts and persecution, oh my. and something about jeff goldberg.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: The way Corner Stone treated J. Michael Neal’s cat posts… tequila and “performance art” don’t explain that.
TooManyJens
@LT: And that argument needed to be responded to with racism, why? It didn’t. And that’s why CS got the time-out. This is not that fucking hard.
clayton
@boss bitch: AMEN
Anne Laurie needs to retire to rubbing her tomatoes in our drought faces.
Anne Laurie, just stick to poking us in one eye, not both.
HILLARY LOST DEAL WITH IT.
Son of Prog
@Spaghetti Lee: They still have poetry slams, I wouldn’t mind this set to music as it was read.
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Thank you, I personally appreciate your honesty: I saw the handle and couldn’t decide who you might hate or if you were trying to determine who I hate. Either way I’m sure someone hates white people or black people (those are the only two kinds, I hear).
Also, Cole: I have a bunch of homebrew conditioning in the fridge. It might be a little green but you’re welcome to as many as you need to get through this.
TooManyJens
@clayton: Psssst. Her name’s Anne Laurie.
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Apparently that undeniable fact doesn’t bother Anne Laurie so much. That’s just part of the quirky charm of the place and its gaggle of incorrigible ne’er-do-wells!
wasabi gasp
Ages ago, while on one of those wild Caribbean island vacations, I met a Swedish dude with cornrows. ON HIS NUTS!
clayton
C’mon Anne Laurie, threaten me based on my IP that you have access to, much like Jeff the “Wizdom” did.
Give me ABL and not a Jeffy wannbe Anne Laurie any day.
LT
@TooManyJens:
Who the fuck said it did? Dick.
Jay
@Heliopause:
“Oh yes, just as ABL does with regards to Firedoglake.”
The thing with Firedoglake is that much of their own commentariat keeps repeating, essentially, that Obama is the 2nd coming of GWB.
This just isn’t true, and they should be called on it in the light of day.
A bit of a DLC-er, this Obama? Yes. Another Dubya? No. Obama truly is closer to W.J. Clinton than many of Obama’s early supporters would like to admit. If Obama’s Democratic critics were mad at him for not making that case in the first place, they might have a point, but what we’re hearing right now are these banshee wails that so much of this President’s agenda is COMPLETELY outside the recent Democratic tradition, when it’s not. Cripe, Bill Clinton stopped his ’92 Presidential campaign to oversee the execution of a retarded inmate, yet I’m sure some of those now bashing Obama for supposedly going off the reservation voted for Ol’ Bubba twice, and without hesitation.
As for the A.L./A.B.L. dispute, it’s really simple: a commenter went all “You hate white people!!!!!!!!!111111one” Rightly recognizing that this was more a primal scream than an argument, a blogger showed the guy the door, then another blogger went public about what a grave injustice she thought this was. This isn’t about the President’s record-which is what ABL publicly rips FDL for distorting-this is about two co bloggers’ difference of opinion about what, exactly, the likes of Corner Stone brought to this blog. It’s a dispute that has nothing to do with the 2012 election; it’s a dispute that has nothing to do with wider policy or politics. Given all this, it’s a dispute that should not have been stoked publicly like this.
Chad N Freude
It’s taking a significant fraction of my waning years to sort through this and the ozone thread and figure out what’s going on. There’s a lot about the name-calling, vituperation, and tantrum-throwing that I don’t really get [Opportunity 1 for a personal attack]. Sometimes I find ABL smart, perceptive, and/or entertaining, and sometimes I don’t [Opportunity 2 for a personal attack]. In the latter case, I skip over what she says, and I pay little to no attention to the comment thread. I try to stay out of “CS vs the World” but occasionally I can’t help telling him how stupid he is. I have long admired AL, but I don’t agree with what I understand her to be saying in the post. It certainly doesn’t sound like the rational Anne Laurie I like to read; it sounds like something more personal than principle [Opportunity 3 for a personal attack].
From this point on, I have a bullet list, each bullet offering an opportunity for a personal attack:
1. Referring to a Ben Shahn lithograph as coming from “back in the McCarthy era” doesn’t sound to me like an accusation, it’s a fact.
2. I think the James O’Keefe reference is inaccurate, incorrect, and demagogic. I use a nym that’s a pun on a German word, therefore we can conclude that I’m trying to trick someone into revealing their racism by telling me I hate Jews. (Also too, I’d like to point out that Linda Darnell [you can google her] lived in LA and was white.)
3. I’ve been a BJ commenter off and on since about the time of John’s conversion (not always under my current nym), and The last year or so has been depressing. As BJ has attracted an increasing spitball-throwing commentariat, it’s become a lot harder to filter through the chaff to find a few grains of wheat. (Dumb metaphor, but it makes my point.)
I continue to visit as often as I can because of the humorous conversations (lookin’ at you Omnes), the book recommendations, the music recommendations, the video links, and the political journalism links. But my FSM, people, this has turned into a feces flinging match, and I don’t like how hard it’s become for me to navigate to find much serious commenting/discussion. [Big opportunity for personal attack. I recommend “So don’t come here you pompous jerkwad.”]
Thank you, and good night.
TooManyJens
@LT:
It’s like you’ve never heard of a rhetorical question.
FlipYrWhig
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
What about American? Or if I treat you as an American co-citizen, would you reveal that I had just been punked? “Oh, yeah, well I’m a Thoughtful Black _Canadian_ Co-Citizen, biyotch!”
Norwonk
Would all the people who pretend that they hate to read this sort of stuff kindly admit that they actually love it? If you were telling the truth, there wouldn’t be 390+ comments on this thread.
Methinks you do protest too much. There’s a reason why reality TV is popular.
Arundel
I’m totally seeing Anne Laurie’s point. On her side, in fact. I ignore ABL’s posts because I find her a terrible writer, a hectoring bully, and her ha-ha permanent- umbrage at-everything schtick that she stole from elsewhere gets tired very quickly. Oh, and adding “Electric Boogaloo” to a post title to mean “sequel” is as old as the fucking Internet. An extremely tired joke. That some people here apprarently thought hilarious and delightfully original.
Which leads me to ask ABL’s most vociferous and vocal supporters here: why is it that alone of all the FPers, she often tosses off some hastily-written thing, reposted from her own blog, whatever bit of ire caught her fancy that day with a laissez-faire take on things like punctuation, and without fail, at least thirty people here will lavishly praise her. “Well said, ABL!” “Amazing, I love you!” “You really nailed it there”. Either ABL is the most amazing blogger ever to post on BJ, insightful and trenchant, or perhaps her fans ought to realize they sound like parents praising their kid’s art project. And viciously biting back against any suggestion that it’s not really that amazing.
No other FPer gets that sort of constant, constant praise, even when she tosses of the most pedestrian stuff, or contemptuously just dumps/blockquotes stuff from another blog, like replies to replies of a post elsewhere you never read (“Ozone 2”), from someone you never heard of, about arcana that ABL can’t be bothered to explain why she’s dumping it. Just, look it up, do your homework, can’t be bothered to explain her point. And that’s why she’s a pretty poor blogger.
I’m sick of her nasty meanspiritedness, banhammering dissent, tired of her crap posts, and mostly of her loud supporters here who think she’s amazing, and love to act as if criticizing ABL’s writing is de facto trolling. While they wildly overpraise her. Makes me question the taste level around here when it comes to good writing/journalism/ blogging.
It gets very odd, but Anne Laurie is hugely within her rights of expression, to call ABL out for being a censorious bully, as ABL is to choose to be one. Proudly! It seems. That’s where it is- capricious banning by ABL, shutting down comments, we’ve been through this before. It’s a joke, it’s making this site a joke, except not funny.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Son of Prog: For the record, I hate Romans and the fucking Judean People’s Front. Splitters!
handy
@Norwonk:
/raises hand
Though I wouldn’t pretend to hate this stuff. That’s what separates this place from the brightly colored Satans and Talkleft.
Heliopause
@Jay:
Then somebody’s going to have to be grownup in the room, huh? How about you?
Godfuck, have any of you graduated from middle school yet?
TooManyJens
I think it might have something to do with offering her support against the unmitigated hate many of the commenters here have for her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chad N Freude:
I guess since my previous bloggy hang-out was Eschaton, this place still seems like a sherry party among the overtuffed leather chairs of the Faculty Lounge of the University of Imagination, where we’re chuckling good-naturedly about the foibles of undergrads and administration
boss bitch
And if that title isn’t the ultimate fucking EmoProg, I don’t know what is.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
Oh, yes! “If they catch you, they will kill you — but first, they must catch you.”
What did you think of the film version? Not as comprehensive as the book, of course, but I still love it, especially the Rabbit Creation Myth. And “Bright Eyes“.
LT
@TooManyJens:
You said this:
And when I ask “Who said it did?” you respond with:
You want us to know you’re drunk, don’t you?
Keith G
@TooManyJens: Semi rhetoical question (a repeat actually):
I am being serious…I would love to know where you draw the lines.
boss bitch
I used to like it but I’ve seen too much and its just so predictable. I know the characters and I know exactly what they are going to say. Nothing new really, but Anne Laurie went to new heights tonight.
AxelFoley
@boss bitch:
Hell, if it wasn’t attributed to a real person, I would swear it could pass for a quote from Andrew Ryan from Bioshock.
aisce
@ anne laurie
are you serious with this? are you fucking serious with this?
i’m sorry, if anything people are clearly being too light on you in this thread. what a joke.
FlipYrWhig
@Arundel: Um, the guy who got quasi-banned had just said, apropos of nothing that had come up in any discussion, that a commenter using the name “Darnell” had a different view — _of a pollution regulation_, mind you — because he hated white people. Anne Laurie wrote this whole thing because she found _that_ out of bounds. All the other stuff that’s creeping in is distracting from that rather basic picture of events.
dead existentialist
@Chris: Oh my! That one wins the thread.
SIA
@wasabi gasp: Hoohoo! Hahahaha!
FlipYrWhig
@boss bitch:
Ooh, ooh, I know this one! I knew a person who worked for a college who had a kind of slambook website in the days before we knew to call it “blogging,” and when this person was asked to take it down, he or she put up a still from The Matrix and tagged it “Welcome to the Desert of the Real.” _That’s_ the ultimate.
Keith G
I do have to imagine that Corner Stone is enjoying the delicious irony on how a thread about his “time out” for uncivil behavior is so heavily saturated with name calling, profanity, personal abuse, veiled threats and much dick swinging (was that sexist?).
Sweet.
Y’all kill me.
TooManyJens
@LT:
::pats you on the head::
Nobody, but NOBODY, is drunk enough for this thread.
soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie: I just re-watched the movie last week. Bought it on DVD from eBay. Trying to get my 12-year-old daughter to watch something that doesn’t include sparkly emo vampires or Justin Bieber videos.
I love the movie, especially John Hurt’s wonderful voice acting as Hazel-rah, and I always cry a bit during the Bright Eyes sequence, but like just about EVERY other story made into a movie, it’s much better as a book.
cxs
@Spaghetti Lee: Seconded
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Arundel:
Go through the record and see how many times John has posted something and then either had to add an update or a new post correcting is previous statement after the commenters pointed out the problems with his post. No one here is free from guilt on that. I could come nowhere close to claiming it as a commenter.
Spaghetti Lee
@Keith G:
I can hear him tenting his fingers and saying “Let the hate flow through you” from here.
cbear
@Arundel: Too fucking right.
Genghis
What a mess. So much for a reasonable exchange of ideas. I’m going to put Balloon-Juice on “time out” for a week and see if cooler heads prevail. The personal insults have to go – ALL of them, starting with the front pagers. Seriously, John. Fix it or forget it. Best…H
TuiMel
@Neal:
I concur.
Son of Prog
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: A-HA, I AM ROMAN CATHOLIC, YOU HATER! BAN THAT HATER!!! er… GIVE THAT HATER A TIME-OUT!!!
Mnemosyne
I am once again grateful that CS was one of the first names I put in my pie filter.
TooManyJens
@Keith G:
Hoping I can get this in before my connection dies again…
I don’t have a dictionary definition I can give you, but why would CS assume that because Darnell was (presumed to be) black, that he hates white people? It’s not like Darnell was going around calling people “whitey” and “cracker”; they were having an argument about whether or not FDLers are being disingenuous about their criticisms of Obama. The “you hate white people” came completely out of nowhere, and when people are making up bullshit racially-based stuff about (presumed) black people, yeah, I smell racism.
Another Bob
Let’s all kneel and join hands and pray for a blog where no one uses the F-word, A “troll” is anyone expressing a minority viewpoint, nobody questions the president’s motives and all the comments are moderated. Just ask yourselves: what would Bill O’Reilly do?
Cain S. Latrans
I love you Anne. I hope you get well soon!
Shade Tail
@Arundel:
I’ve yet to see anyone seriously point out any flaws in the points ABL makes. Of course, folks like you *claim* that she’s wrong, but you never actually rebut her points.
And while I do have problems with how she deals with the comments section, the fellow who got not-really-banned this time earned that reaction by posting something that could only come out of the mind of a white supremacist. “Rebutting” someone’s point by declaring that it proves they hate white people is precisely the kind of thing Mr. Cole’s ban-policy was made for.
Bailey
@Storner Cone:
Thanks for making me spew tea across my keyboard.
Chad N Freude
@Keith G:
I don’t think so. Nothing CS ever posted suggested he understood irony.
Yes, it was. The politically correct term is “swinging of genitalia.”
Odie Hugh Manatee
@aisce:
But AL is trying to keep the conversation lighthearted!
Though there is the possibility that I could be wrong and she could just be drunk.
clayton
I have quietly done my jihad on you.
That’s Anne Laurie.
Grow your fucking tomatoes while we just survive.
Where is Hillary to deal with my drought?
LesGS
@Anne Laurie: Uh, what? The only folks who are going to take the bait and call someone posting as “Darnell” as a white-hating black person (which Corner Stone did, with absolutely no reason other than that first name (and y’know, there ARE white men named Darnell)), are racist.
Sorry, but it’s true. And he deserves his time-out for his openly racist posts. Now, I wish he hadn’t crossed this line, because I enjoy him as one of the many, many performance artists on this blog. But, as amusing as a commenter as he can be, we should be able, as a community, to stare aghast at one of our members (and CS is one of the BJ community), when they cross over the line and can’t step into the shoes of one of our fellow commenters. Which racist or sexist or hetero-normative folks have a hard time doing.
TooManyJens
Also, too, I’m not exactly an authority on racism, being a white girl and all. When black people are saying that they found something racist — I don’t have to agree, but I should sure as shit at least give it some thought. Because they have a hell of a lot more experience with that subject than I do.
rikyrah
being a blogger myself, this is a punk move.
you should have taken it to email with ABL, if you had problems with her banning this poster.
you could have discussed and debated it between yourselves in email.
I’ve had serious disagreements with my fellow bloggers sometimes, and never hesitated to tell them – PRIVATELY IN EMAIL.
but THIS?
punk. move.
srv
@Chad N Freude: Thank you Chad for seeing the big picture.
Chad N Freude
@Another Bob:
Fuckin’-A, Dude.
LT
You’re equating ABL’s posting skills to John’s.
Game over.
Jay
@FlipYrWhig:
“Who spends the tail end of every thread, even when there are discussions actively going on, calling people…bitches.”
Yeah, about that:
perhaps I have a blind spot, seeing as how I called conservative critics of the Hoffa speech “bitches” on this very blog today. This blind spot would not, of course, reflect well on me, but I do think alot of otherwise coarse language has become situational. Because of what someone like Dave Chappelle has done to the word, “bitch,” it’s lost at least some of its sting. I mean, a grown man calls another a “little bitch?” In a non-violent situation, that’s an eye-rolling frat-boy insult. “Corner Stone” calls someone on a blog a “little bitch” because he’s losing the argument? That’s frat boy-ism, too. But some angry bully with a mean right cross levels the same insult at a gay teen already hearing it from all corners of his school? That’s a problem.
Chad N Freude
@LesGS: CS did not cross the line. He’s always been on the other side of it.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I think this is the thread where we separate Those Who Have Black Friends from everyone else.
eclecticbrotha
@Anne Laurie: The fuck?
Interesting insinuation you got there, ma’am. Sounds to me you suspect there’s some black guy on the net pretending to be white just to fuck with your head. Or something.
Just for clarification: I really am a black guy. If you’ve seen me on Twitter under this handle you’ll know that from my avatar. I’m sure that negates my ability to think rationally as it relates to any other black person, but I just thought I’d point that out. May as well throw this humorous supposition into the fray, since we’re casting aspersions on everyone’s true identity and what not: how do we really know that Anne Laurie and Corner Stone aren’t the same person? This being the internet and all that.
Humbly submitted in the wormiest, wordiest, least coherent words I could muster on such short notice,
EB
Evolved Deep Southerner
C’mon, 450, c’mon … Anne Laurie’s been posting here long enough to deserve it … we can do it, y’all …
JGabriel
@Another Bob:
Bill O’Reilly would do it fucking live.
.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@LT: Actually, I was going after the broad “No one posts hastily like ABL” statement. Because she started with way too broad of a statement and went from there. Also something I have been corrected on many times.
clayton
Anne Laurie should go.
At least ABL brings some good stuff.
i’m with little books or whoever it was that said wow,
Anne Laurie she gets a gig? Propping up an s&m type over ABL?
Anne Lautie should go.
YellowJournalism
* waits patiently for hilarious, dad-like “THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS” post from John…hears nothing *
Holy shit. I think you all chased John away from his own blog!
YellowJournalism
And right after I posted, the rotating tag came up as “The revolution will be supervised”. That thing is a frakking magic 8-ball.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@YellowJournalism: He’s gonna sell the blog to Jane Hamsher. FDBL
soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie: I just watched the movie again last week on DVD. Can’t seem to get my 12-year-old daughter to watch anything other than sparkly vampire movies or Justin Bieber concerts. Shame that.
It’s a great movie, and I love John Hurt’s voice acting as Hazel-rah and I always shed a couple of tears during the Bright Eyes sequence. I love the book so much, too, and like most such things, it is not only better than the movie, but adds to the enjoyment of the movie.
Having said all that, I must tell you, since you engaged me directly, that I think your post here is wrong, both as a matter of form and on the facts of the situation.
Alex S.
@YellowJournalism:
I’ve been trying to guess the topic of John’s next thread and I’m leaning towards the bread/barbecue/booze kind of thread. Maybe he’ll take up knitting.
clayton
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Fuck you.
It’s her PUMA shit and dumping on ever gardener that is her ruin. That and her being all Jeff let’s get someone fired nonsense.
Comrade Kevin
@JGabriel:
WIN.
LT
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): But John has a long history of legendary posts. He gets to do quick ones in bettween. He deserves that. Alll ABL EVER does is…
Well, enough said, alright? I know it’s just my opinion, and anyone else can have theirs. But I do think Arundel has some very relevant points about the devotion aspect of those threads.
Another Bob
@Chad N Freude:
God just told me to STFU and stop bothering Him.
@JGabriel:
Jerry-fucking-Springer would do it fucking live, with fucking chairs flying through the air ‘n shit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
am I 450?
Woo hoo! knew I shoulda bought that lottery ticket. I could’ve used the money to get out of the country for the Great Wallow next week.
G
is it at all possible that more than one, or two people can be wrong? can more than one or two have character flaws?
Damn I picked the wrong weekend to show my dad this place as somewhere that’s usually rational politics wise.
and as a skimmer of this stuff, because skimming it is entertaining, and shows for the two kids have filled the DVR’s tuners and I can’t watch TV. Can anyone clarify did LA mean Los Angeles, or the state abbreviation for Louisiana? I haven’t read close enough to figure it out.
Anne Laurie
@eclecticbrotha:
To quote Miss Manners: How nice for you!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Another Bob: Do you know how much better the world would be if God would just actually tell people no.
soonergrunt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You certainly are. And I was the first on to predict 450 earlier. What do I win?
Jay
@Heliopause:
“Godfuck, have any of you graduated from middle school yet?”
Sure, pal. WE are all fools. Whatever you say. I do not know how TBogg can take it over there.
Keith G
@TooManyJens: This is just a blog, so I have scant investment, but if this where to play out on a larger stage, I would want something more concrete, valid and reliable before muzzling someone. Being offensive and being racist are not the same thing.
NR
All of you hippie-punchers here, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that all those people you’re yelling at to shut up, suddenly shut up. Let’s say that Krugman stopped criticizing the administration’s economic policy. Let’s say that Greenwald stopped criticizing the administration on civil liberties. Let’s say that environmentalists said absolutely nothing about the administration’s decision to scuttle smog regulations.
You do realize that that would accomplish absolutely nothing except to make you feel better, right?
It wouldn’t make the problems that they’re writing about suddenly go away. And it wouldn’t make the administration suddenly take the right approach with respect to those problems.
salacious crumb
Anne Laurie,
YOU ARE A RACIST. YOU criticized a black person, ABL. That can’t happen..and only starry eyed adulation of Obama will save you from being branded racist. remember, Obama isnt all of America’s president. No criticism of him is allowed by anyone. Repent and redeem yourself!!
Mnemosyne
@NR:
What does CS accusing a commenter of hating white people while arguing over ozone regulations have to do with Obama?
That’s the question that none of CS’s defenders seem to be able to answer.
Plantsmantx
@magurakurin:
Umm, I don’t know. “Darnell” revealed a bit of his own hard-wired racism by calling “Tryell” a “traditional black name”.
“Brilliant”? Nah, I don’t think so.
Andre
It was widely acknowledged in 1930s Germany that comparing blog moderation practices to McCarthyite oppression was a Dick Move.
AxelFoley
Let’s at least hit 500, ya’ll.
Anne Laurie
@soonergrunt:
Well, from you, I will take the criticism in the spirit it was meant.
This post has been… steeping… for some time. Discovering, by accident, that yet another voice I enjoy had apparently been ‘disappeared’ was a trigger, and perhaps I should’ve waited twelve hours before hitting the submit key.
And yet, for the record: ABL has the nastiest, least-coherent camp followers on this blog. But if they didn’t keep getting her to shut down other people, I’d go right on ignoring them like the worthless little turds they insist on demonstrating themselves to be.
dogwood
There are plenty of smart, thoughtful and entertaining posters on this blog, some supporters of the president and some critics. Unfortunately they have become the side show around here. This FP post along with many by ABL is designed to make that the rule rather than the exception. What ever happened to Martin? He was a great supporter of the President, smart, rational, never fawning? Bruce offers a lot of good critical analysis of the President’s weaknesses and missteps without comparing him to Charles Manson. How long is he going to stick around? This used to be a great neighborhood. A few cranks and eccentrics, but what the hell. If the reasonable people move out, it might be good for page hits in the short run, but in the long run it could be trouble.
NR
@Mnemosyne: I don’t really care one way or the other about what happened to CS. I’m talking about the general tone of the commentariat here.
TooManyJens
@Keith G: Well, it is just a blog, and moderating comments is often necessary when a blog gets to a certain traffic level. I don’t consider not allowing someone to shit on one’s comment threads — temporarily, btw — to be muzzling them.
@NR: I don’t want anyone (on the left) to shut up, but I do want people not to make fucking stupid arguments, and not to shoot their own side in the goddamned foot every five minutes.
dogwood: I thought I saw Martin around here the other day.
Cowbelle
@salacious crumb: No, Anne Laurie is a racist because she says racist things repeatedly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@soonergrunt: I’ll give you half of the winnings I get with that lottery ticket I didn’t buy.
Alex S.
@AxelFoley:
All this reminds me of Jane Hamsher’s coalition with Grover Norquist.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Ah, changing the subject. Gotcha.
ETA: The “shutting up” I would like lefties to do is their parroting of right-wing talking points that came out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh, like calling the president “Barry.” If you don’t understand why echoing right-wing talking points from the left is counterproductive to reaching the goals that the left wants to reach, I can’t help you.
LesGS
@TooManyJens: Thank you, thank you, for that affirmation!
Cowbelle
@Anne Laurie: You’re really going to double-down on “camp-followers” and call all of ABL’s supporters “worthless little turds?” Really?
Honestly, listen to all the people — some of whom support you, and some of whom do not — who have suggested that you step away from the computer for a while.
(Also, put down the bottle.)
Corey
Late in the thread, but you (Anne Laurie) and ABL are both really awful posters. You both should probably post less (and DougJ should post more)
gocart mozart
O.T., that Terry Schiavo really got a bum deal didn’t she.
Chad N Freude
@Another Bob:
FTFY
gocart mozart
David Brooks is very underrated as a intellectual. Discuss.
LT
@eclecticbrotha: The dude said he was white.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay: Yeah, I don’t really care about the particular offensiveness or inoffensiveness of the insults. But rather my main point was that you’ll find the tail of many, many threads to involve Corner Stone no longer even attempting to discuss the topic at hand but instead just firing off random threats and noises. He saves up information about posters so that he can fling it back at them if he gets sick of them. In this post, and again in the comments, Anne Laurie reads the riot act to other people who she thinks pick fights, talk trash, and otherwise stir up trouble. But Corner Stone, the classic case of exactly that, he’s special and deserves protection and must not be “silenced.” Come the fuck on.
soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie: And it was certainly meant as a polite notice to a person whose voice I respect. At least as polite as I’m capable of, anyway.
As for Corner Stone, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I find him to be more annoyingly self centered and emotionally stunted than my aforementioned daughter’s friends. Like them, when he does say something insightful, it’s more likely by accident or coincidence than design. Also like those junior-high girls, he doesn’t seem to be comfortable unless he’s attacking someone
As for ABL and her followers, I don’t know what to tell you there. I usually like her posts for their content if not always their tone, and I find that she is attacked quite frequently and a lot of the attacks are, it seems to me, much more personal than necessary. That she deals with this a LOT more than the other fp’ers says something of note.
Comrade Kevin
@Anne Laurie:
Good lord, you’re a fucking asshole. The most charitable thing I can think about you is that you’ll wake up tomorrow thinking “Wow, what was I doing?”. Unfortunately, I suspect the truth is far worse.
Uriel
@Anne Laurie:
Good lord- all this from his having used the name ‘Darnell?’
Please tell me this is a joke.
Cowbelle
@LT: And Anne Laurie said she didn’t believe him that he is white.
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie:
Corner Stone’s whole presence is deliberately nasty and incoherent. On every thread. But he’s a “voice you enjoy.” I don’t get that.
Cowbelle
@FlipYrWhig:
He’s white and racist. Crackers stick together.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I have to admit, that’s what’s blowing my mind — really, we’re going through all of this over Corner Stone? Really? He’s such a universally beloved figure on this blog that he rates a front-page defense?
I mean, I admit I’m out of touch with the mainstream because I just don’t get the whole Lady Gaga thing, but I didn’t think I was so far out of touch with the B-J mainstream as to not realize how many people loved the guy.
ETA: asiangrrlmn has been essentially driven away by the nastiness but fucking Corner Stone gets a front-page defense. What’s wrong with this picture?
soonergrunt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s about right.
MattR
@Cowbelle:
Nothing racist there, though.
boss bitch
@FlipYrWhig:
exactly.
The Spy Who Loved Me
@ABL:
Does this mean you’ll stalk off in anger again? God, I hope so.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: Not exactly. My reading of this incoherent mess is that Anne Laurie likes what CS writes and objects to ABL’s time-outing him, in a rather personal way. Everything seems to have escalated from that to the badly-decayed-food fight.
scarshapedstar
I’m so old, I remember when only wingnut blogs banned commenters.
(also, too, when BJ was a wingnut blog!)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
You can take the “devotion” shit and stuff it up your ass. Sideways. With a rusty farm implement. Repeatedly. So what if people like ABL? So what if people like John? So what if people like any other Fp’er here? People agree with John all the time and don’t get the “devotion” bullshit. Nor DougJ. For some reason, it’s just the people who like ABL who get this shit.
Oh, and Obama supporters. They get the exact same “devotion” treatment. Gee, I wonder if there’s some common connection there for their detractors? Something ABL and Obama might have in common that infuriates these assholes into being raging assholes?
Fuck you and your “devotion” bullshit. You’re devoted to one thing, your emo bullshit.
@Anne Laurie:
Fuck I am so over reading your shit. You really suck AL.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: It’s getting all mixed up, I think. I guess I don’t read the ABL posts that get some people all het up, so I have nothing invested in that part of the conversation. She has a style, she works it, it’s not everyone’s thing, she fires back when challenged, whatever. I never noticed that she had legions of followers distracting everyone from their very important work, but, again, whatever. But it seems like because ABL is _also_ more pro-Obama than many regulars, the whole episode becomes a proxy war between pro-Obama and Obama-critics, and since Corner Stone is an Obama critic, the Obama-critics are rallying to his defense. Well, that wasn’t how it happened.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@boss bitch: Fourthed.
@Chad N Freude: the bad blood goes back a few months, so the food had indeed had a lot of time to decay.
Mnemosyne
@Chad N Freude:
Yes, but then you get back to the point where it’s all about CS. It’s like getting into a bar fight over Don Knotts, fer chrissakes.
LT
@Anne Laurie:
Can we be done now?
Chad N Freude
Anybody here up for a civil discussion?
[waits]
Is that crickets that I hear?
boss bitch
@Chad N Freude:
It is way more than that. Way more.
MattR
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but I can’t think of a single commenter who can be counted on to come to John’s defense regardless of what he just wrote. Same for DougJ, mistermix and all the other FP posters with the exception of ABL.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
Not until we hit 500. Then I can go to sleep happy.
ETA: I swear I did not plan that.
LT
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Awww, you’re trying to turn me on again.
Uriel
@Uriel: On further reflection, I take it back- I clearly now how using the name ‘Darnel’ would tempt someone- nay, leave them no other alternative but to say, “you just hate all white people.” Christ in all his glory save me, I can hardly restrain myself now, just typing these words. It’s likes an otherworldly force compelling me, co-opting the ever last fabric of my free will, seizing the very sinews of my feverishly resisting fingers! How can mere mortals resist such a hideous strength?
/rolleyes
notreally
@Mnemosyne
Don Knotts is a SAINT! Do you hear me?! Don Knotts. IS A SAINT.
brendanm98
I like to lurk here. I’ve told a few people this is an interesting blog to read. I sure hope none of them noticed this ridiculous post, and I hope Anne Laurie rethinks this approach.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: That’s good. I actually snorted/chuckled out loud.
Keith G
@TooManyJens: On the whole, I do not disagree, yet:
If that were the simple and universal standard, there would have been a lot more “timeouts” from a lot more FPers.
If the action seems to be capricious or inconsistent, I am more likely to wonder about its motivations and effectiveness.
To this instance, it seems to me that the complaint was that CS was saying things that were racist (or was a racist)not that he was shitting on a comment thread. Since that is a serious and loaded charge, I hope for a bit more definition.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cowbelle:
Especially when things get hot and humid!
@MattR:
You aren’t paying attention.
Chad N Freude
@boss bitch: Could you provide a synopsis?
Thanks in advance.
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: hahahahahahahaha!
@Chad N Freude: How about my Sooners and my Broncos? My Sooners whupped on Tulsa (admittedly like using a shotgun to mug a midget with cerebral palsy, but a win is a win) and my Broncos lost to the Cardinals, of all teams.
Cowbelle
@MattR:
See, the problem is that you think ABL’s defenders are doing it “regardless of what [she] just wrote,” but really, ABL’s defenders do it because of what she writes.
Just like John and the rest get defended because of what they write, so also does ABL get defended because of what she writes.
Do you think it doesn’t work that way for ABL? You’re claiming it doesn’t — why do you think that? Do you really think ABL’s defenders disagree with her but are pretending to agree for some reason? If so, why?
dogwood
@MacKenna: @Cowbelle:
Exactly. And that’s the problem with Annie Laurie’s FP post. It’s intellectually dishonest. CS was removed from the situation because of his personal interaction with another poster. The fact that AL claims he was given a time out because he criticized the president is blatantly false. There’s no excuse for that type of mendacity from a FP poster. There’s plenty of it in the comments. If you take a FP gig you need to adhere to some standards of honest criticism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: Don Knotts was a fucking brilliant comedian, and fuking carried Andy Griffith, Frances fucking Bavier and that smarmy little prick Opie for five years. Have you ever even fucking seen the “Citizens Arrest” episode? or the one where they get held prisoner in the fishing cabin by the women outlaws? Maybe you didn’t fucking noticed that that fucking show
when he left? you liked Warren? Gomer fucking Pyle? Or maybe your such a hopeless DesiLuBot that your going to fucking tell me you liked Mayberry RFD? Jesus fucking christ. “Ken Berry was funnier than Don Knotts!” What the fuck. You people make me sick.
TooManyJens
@Keith G:
DougJ says he does it all the time. And I don’t think there are a lot of universal standards among FPers here, in general. Levenson didn’t even know he could give time-outs.
LT
@MattR:
Doesn’t General Stuck do that?
But I think your’e right. Because John and DougJ write mostly thoughtful posts, and ABL screams “firebagger!” in most of her posts. (Most, a lot, whatever.) it is not thoughtful, does not invite discussion. It invites extreme followers and extreme critics. (I’m neither, here. I rarely enter her threads or read what she writes anymore. We interact on Twitter now and then.)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
Oh… Hi Corner Stone!
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Interestingly, DougJ’s post above seems to indicate that the kind of “greylisting” that ABL did (leaving CS’s comments in moderation rather than an actual ban) is very commonly done by the front-pagers. It looks like ABL’s mistake was saying what she’d done rather than just keeping his stuff in moderation as is usually done.
A real ban as done by John is comprehensive enough that any post that contains the offending person’s name gets auto-deleted. (Try posting something with Samara’s original nym in it sometime.) Clearly that’s not what happened here and yet you have people acting like this is the Worstest Offense EVAH! by ABL that’s never been committed by anyone ever in the history of B-J.
LesGS
@dogwood: Oh, geez, I hope Martin doesn’t stop posting here. I would subscribe to his newsletter if he had one.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: Right. Football rivalries are always discussed civilly. BTW, shouldn’t “midget” be “height-challenged person”?
ETA: You own the Sooners and the Broncos? I’m impressed.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
Oh, so reasonable is fine and John and DougJ get rated reasonable and ABL is unreasonable, thus her supporters are unreasonable too?
Do you shovel shit for a living? You’re pretty good at it.
General Stuck
@LT:
No, he doesn’t
FlipYrWhig
Balloon Juice timeout : Corner Stone :: Quantico brig : Bradley Manning.
And God I hope he’s wearing underpants.
LT
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Now you’re not even making sense.
ABL is always always always going after fellow Dems, in the most unthoughtful, un-substantive ways. Anyone who supports that is being unreasonable, and/or just a dick.
I’ll say the same thing about Cole doing it, and he does it sometimes, too.
aisce
@ lt
as opposed to your act, which is merely constructive criticism…
Chad N Freude
@No one of importance: Thanks for the clarification. So this started six months ago and has been composting ever since until the Tree of
KnowledgeRighteous Indignation emerged.Larkspur
@Alex S.:
Yup. I agree. None of this “I’m leaving the country” stuff for me.
Also? Fucking pie filters: they help a lot. I pie-filtered CS a while back.
Omnes Omnibus: I am reading What It Is Like To Go To War by Karl Marlantes. He wants to do something impossible. He knows it’s impossible, but he wants to do it anyway, because you have to try.
LT
@Cowbelle:
She writes “FIREBAGGER! EMOPROG!” And people with that level of seriousness think it’s awesome.
So, yes, you’re right.
Chad N Freude
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bringing the BJ ethos to discussion of the arts. Excellent.
soonergrunt
@Chad N Freude: “Little people” is, I believe the socially acceptable term if one worries about such things.
Yeah, I own them. You want to buy them? Cash purchase will get you a %10 discount, and I’ll throw in a bridge in New York I don’t really need at the moment.
No one of importance
@Chad N Freude:
Yes, and the composting has been aided with liberal additions of piss from time to time.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
You mean like in her post below AL’s titled “Caught in Another Lie: Fox News Doctors Hoffa Speech To Fabricate Call For Violence”?
Yep, she sure was mean to her fellow Dems in that one when she complained about Fox News making up lies about Democrats. How dare she!?
Cowbelle
@LT:
I really hope ABL makes a post that simply consists of “FIREBAGGER! EMOPROG!” and nothing else, because that truly would be awesome.
(And boy it would piss you off too.)
LT
@aisce:
I think ending the pre-existing conditions crap was an incredible accomplishment, and I am deeply and sincerely thankful to Obama for that.
I dont’ know why I bother with people like you.
LT
@Mnemosyne:
Exceptions prove the rule. Yes, she does other stuff, mostly like that: stuff that’s already all over the fucking place and with no original thought added. Often it’s just the story of some dick being a dick. Woo hoo! This is BJ worthy?
FlipYrWhig
@Chad N Freude:
A POISON TREE
William Blake
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole.
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.
(1794)
aisce
@ lt
and i’ll leave it to you to explain why posting 73 times in a two hour period on why abl sucks isn’t “going after a fellow dem” and therefore wrongheaded on your part.
but she’s probably “the wrong sort” of democrat, i’m sure. that must be it.
Chad N Freude
@Larkspur: Well, this is interesting. Amazon has one negative review of the book out of 28, and that review has 11 comments that sound a lot like this BJ thread in miniature.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: Thank you, no. I just like being impressed.
lethargytartare
@Anne Laurie:
this, combined with your original post and most of your comments is some of the most cowardly bullshit I’ve ever read here.
I mostly lurk here, but you are just straight-up lying about the comment content of most of ABL’s posts, which largely consist of the same “camp followers” (presumably yours, based on this post) immediately shitting all over her threads telling her she’s a shitty blogger, a shitty writer, and being a silly black woman seeing racism and sexism where it doesn’t really exist.
That some people are willing to call out those jackals for the assholes they are may be deemed unseemly by your oh-so delicate standards, but it’s not really your fucking place to tell them how to react to the attacks on ABL anymore than it’s ABL’s detractors’ place to tell her how to react to the world she lives in.
Chad N Freude
@FlipYrWhig: Excuse me, are people who know about old poetry and literature and stuff permitted here?
LT
@aisce:
So fucking Republican. “WAAAH! Someone noticed I was being an asshole and now they’re pointing it out! I’m a victim! This proves I’m right.”
Again, why do I bother?
TooManyJens
@LT:
For a while there, every goddamned word that issued forth from the keyboards of Andrew Sullivan, Megan McArdle, or David Brooks was considered BJ worthy. So I’m going to go with “yes.”
Chad N Freude
@LT:
Ah, the scientific method in action.
AxelFoley
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I’m trying to figure that out myself. It’s something…on the tip of my tongue…GAAAH! What is it? What could it be?
Mnemosyne
@LT:
Well, no, that’s not what that phrase means, but anyway …
So she doesn’t “always always always” do posts that bash on her fellow Democrats?
If you don’t like her writing style, just say “I don’t like her writing style” and move on. I don’t get the point of feeling compelled to then declare that anyone who does like her writing style has no taste. You sound like the guy who got pissed at me because his favorite writer was Joseph Conrad and mine was PG Wodehouse.
FlipYrWhig
@LT:
You ask this after 500 comments about Corner Stone?
Comrade Kevin
@lethargytartare: THIS, THIS, THIS.
LT
@Chad N Freude: You don’t actually understand that saying, do you?
Chad N Freude
@LT: I guess not. I’d appreciate it if you would explain it to me.
aisce
@ lt
i’m beginning to think you shouldn’t bother. really.
and if you can’t realize that abl is clearly the victim in all of this, that says quite a lot about you. she got publicly smacked in the face for no apparent reason by a petty and vindictive person.
and i don’t even particularly care for abl’s work much. always leads to such a circus. i believe she said she pied me when i made fun of her 36 hour adam green fetish that went nowhere.
LT
@Mnemosyne:
I dont’ read her posts and I don’t read or post in her threads. I DO go out of my way to not do this, but this whole thing today is a bit different, you have to admit. And I retweet her good tweets sometimes, for god’s sake. I don’t have it out for her or anything. I am a big not-fan of the “professional Left” crap. I think it’s horrible, immature, reptile brain fuckery.
And some fuck upthread just accused me of being a racist. All fucking rules go out the window when that shit happens. Although I should just get some work done…
Chad N Freude
@LT: I have to quit for the night. I’ll check back in the morning for your response.
Mrs. Polly
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: Seconded with as much force as your co-citizen can muster. And Ben Shahn’s doing some RPMs of his own, I have no doubt. From Sacco and Vanzetti to Corner Stone. But of course.
LT
@Mnemosyne:
It’s exactly what the phrase means. Or, to put it in a more proper fashion, that was an exactly proper use of the phrase.
LT
@Chad N Freude: You do that!
handy
@smintheus:
BTW, best comment on this thread.
Arundel
@ShadeTail- “Of course, folks like you claim that she’s wrong, but you never actually rebut her points.”
Uh, when she just blockquote dumps shit from another blog, and can’t be bothered to actually you know, write and provide context- well that’s part of the problem. And the mark of a rather crap writer, her “points” are pretty fucking opaque. She wants you to figure it out, and I don’t have the time.
@Belafon: It’s John’s site, he can do what he wants. ABL thinks it’s her site, acts like she’s doing us a favor reposting crap from her own blog, and exercising the banhammer/closing comments/ calling anyone who criticizes a troll. this is teenage girl stuff, it’s embarrassing.
@FlipYrWhig: i missed this raging “Darnell” controversy, I have tried to figure it out, why oh hoo-why I should care who this person might have been. All I know is that Corner Stone was apparently tried, executed and banhammered for offenses that he was “Darnell” saying..I don’t know? You seem to smugly know the real deal I guess, you know who “Darnell” was and find the name vaguesly race-y or something, so you approve of ABL banning/timeouting CS. Give me a break. Talk about hearsay, and yeah, ABL brings it all down to a petty teenaged girl level here.
Mnemosyne
@LT:
Afraid not. It’s kind of like “bully pulpit” — it’s an idiom that’s been misused so often that more people are familiar with the misuse than with the correct use.
Mnemosyne
@Arundel:
Yep, that’s why any English professor will tell you that James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy are the worst writers in the English language — because nothing says “crap writer” like opaque writing.
LT
It means that the rare exception reinforces the rule. That’s how I used it.
I’ll go to your link now.
Edit: had already gone to Wiiki just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind. Are you talking about the original Latin meaning, with the only difference being that it applies to actual *rules*? (As if that’s the only way it could be sued today?)
handy
@Mnemosyne:
Are you…you’re not…okay just checking.
dead existentialist
@Chad N Freude: Cicadas.
aisce
@ mnemosyne
because when one thinks abl, one thinks james joyce and cormac mccarthy?
NR
@Mnemosyne:
You should take this criticism up with Obama. He echoes more right-wing talking points than any of his critics.
Mnemosyne
@handy:
No, I’m not. It just bugs me when people make dumb blanket statements.
handy
@Chad N Freude:
Piss off wanker!
RMWilliams
You do all realize there are Sullivan readers out there who are reading this thread laughing?
dogwood
@LesGS:
Yeah, someone earlier said they’d seen him around, but I haven’t. Like Martin, I live out West so I’d quite often read later at night when most of the action was over. He was often around at the same time. Great guy.
TooManyJens
@Arundel: I don’t understand. If you don’t know what happened, why are you passing judgment on it?
If by “tried, executed and banhammered” you mean, “made to sit in the corner for a little while” …
Corner Stone was having an argument about FDL-types and the EPA smog regulations with Darnell from L.A. It was going about as well as you’d imagine. At some point, Corner Stone got fed up and, totally 100% out of the blue, went off on Darnell about how he (Darnell) hates white people. Yeah, nothing racially motivated about that.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: I wish you hadn’t done that. I was going to pass him that link after he explained to me what it means. There’s also a good summary on Snopes.com. But then there’s this Sherlock Holmes quote from “The Sign of the Four”:
Spoiler. I’m going to go off and sulk.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Ah, my psychic powers work again, because I knew that was exactly what you were going to say. Then, of course, I could point out that Obama uses right-wing phrases but changes the meaning, but I always end up getting a blank stare before one of you starts barking about how “Barry” is a “closet Republican” again.
Have you figured out yet why Obama talks about Reagan with admiration or do you actually still think it’s because he wants to emulate Reagan’s policies?
YellowJournalism
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, where’s the post on the brilliance that was Don Knotts? I demand a McArdle-takedown-sized post on The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and/or the Three’s Company Years: Downfall or Comeback of a Genius?
Mnemosyne
@Chad N Freude:
Sorry. I’m just hoping we can get to 600 before I really do have to run off to bed. Stupid work.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LT:
Bloggers post about stuff that is “all over the fucking place” all of the time but for some reason ABL doing this is lame? Then be sure to go after everyone else here when they do it, I’ll be sure to watch for it.
TooManyJens
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yeah, the number of things that are only a problem when ABL does them is really remarkable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: If you add in DougJ’s thread, there may well be a thousand comments by sun-up tomorrow.
About Corner Stone.
Think of that.
FlipYrWhig
@Arundel:
What the fuck are you on about now? What happened was that someone using the name “Darnell in LA” got into an argument with Corner Stone in one of the EPA/ozone threads. (Darnell said that no one cared about this issue until suddenly it had become the biggest betrayal ever.) Eventually Corner Stone said that Darnell probably hated all white people. Whereupon Darnell said that he wasn’t actually black but used a black name to bait racists into revealing their racism. And ABL came in later to put Corner Stone into some kind of “time out” for his remark about how Darnell hated white people. And Anne Laurie thinks this is a highly improper use of the ban/suspension/timeout power that frontpagers have, because in her view the real issue wasn’t one racially charged remark, it was that Corner Stone is a persistent Obama critic and ABL a tenacious Obama defender, and ABL seized her chance to “silence” him. In the course of justifying why she wanted to take this dispute onto the front page, Anne Laurie has called Corner Stone a voice she enjoys — even though he consistently derails discussions, dredges up old fights, and bullies other posters — and the biggest irony is that most of Anne Laurie’s criticisms of ABL and her “followers” are that they aren’t constructive and bully other posters. That’s the recap. Happy?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@TooManyJens:
Yeah, it really is “remarkable” that it’s only ABL who has these ‘problems’. I think it’s something that starts with an “r” that they also have a problem with.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: Same here. Do you think we should try to explain the illogic/fallacy/whatev in applying the the maxim to ABL’s posting history to “prove” his point?
I really have to quit now. I have an unpleasant work schedule tomorrow.
Chad N Freude
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Narcissism wins in the end!
handy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, it’s about a lot more than Corner Stone. But you knew that.
Gozer
Can’t we all just get along?
No really…do we need a beer summit? I got some Amstels in the fridge…
LT
@Chad N Freude:
It always helps to have a friend when you’re deluding yourself.
Comrade Kevin
@FlipYrWhig: In a nutshell.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@handy: yeah, sure, just remarkable that the ultimate contrari-troll could spark all this. He is the Franz Ferdinand of Blog Warz ’11: The Primary Returns
DaBomb
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I remember reading that EPA post and thinking to myself that Corner Stone was being the petty ass that he always is and something crazy was going to come out of his actions.
Lo and behold we have a front pager who decides to pick him as the hill to die on.
How crazy?!
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Great, now I’m going to have nightmares about the ultimate triumph of
pettinessCS. Thanks a lot, pal.dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
Your reply to Arundel is pretty rational, but but it misses the point of how completely irrational the incident was. When it come to race there still are words you can’t use, but political correctness is pretty well dead. What you can’t do nowadays is call anyone a racist even if they appear through words and deeds to be one. In a discussion about smog, out of nowhere CS accuses the guy of hating white people. WTF? It was surreal. You have to harbor quite a bit of racial animus to even have that thought cross your mind in such a discussion. The fact that a FP poster is OK with that is very disappointing.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@DaBomb: “Lo and behold we have a front pager who decides to pick him as the hill to die on.”
After all AL has said tonight, I’m cheering for death. In the metaphoric sense, of course.
Chris
@dogwood:
Spot on description of where race relations in the U.S. are at today.
To be fair, though, it’s perfectly legit to call black people racist. In fact, in some quarters, it’s assumed as the default.
Mnemosyne
@dogwood:
It’s possible that Anya may be right and it was a very poor attempt at a joke by CS, but it’s still a “joke” that only makes sense if you’re working from the assumption that the person you’re arguing with is black and therefore blindly supports everything the administration does.
Of course, that assumption is — say it with me, kids! — racist.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
I
That’s very nice of Anya but totally unbelievable. Who would even think about joking about race in a discussion about smog?
Mnemosyne
@dogwood:
If anyone did try to make a totally inappropriate and tone-deaf joke like that, it would be the Don Knotts of Balloon-Juice, so I do find it somewhat plausible in this particular case.
ETA: And now I’m starting to feel like I’m bashing poor Don Knotts too much. Maybe he’s the Carrot Top or Dane Cook of B-J?
AxelFoley
C’mon, folks, 10 more posts ’til 600.
dogwood
@Chris:
Absolutely. That was the essence of CS’s comment. And there’s no real downside to employing that tactic. He gets put in moderation for a few hours and Anne Laurie turns him into a victim of a McCarthyite witch hunt. A complete racist asshole is now a hero/martyr to many here. Very weird to see on a liberal blog, but I guess the enemy of my enemy and all that is what’s at play here.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Except Obama doesn’t change the meaning. He uses right-wing talking points verbatim. Public employees need to make more sacrifice. Cutting spending will lead to job creation. This is policy-based right-wing rhetoric that Obama embraces.
Comrade Kevin
@Allan: Actually, meditate on the words “Geraldine Ferraro” and you will get the real source of AL’s animosity.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Allan:
Yup. That part comes through loud and clear in this piece of crap AL posted. It’s the same kind of motivation.
AL really lost it tonight. Totally. For no good reason either. Over Corner Stone? Really? She bitches about people slagging on the far left and CS shits in every thread he can just for the hell of it and it’s just fine with her, even when he pulls some racist shit? He’s one of many trolls who slag on everything Obama/ABL here and yet the people who like ABL are the problem?
That’s fucked up. Royally.
ruemara
@Anne Laurie: Wow. Well, I happen to both enjoy ABL’s posts and her blog. I am happy to understand that I am a camp-follower, a worthless turd, that being black is “nice for me”. I am sure this will make me part of the that select group of thin-skinned, incoherent racists who all seem to be black in a delightful but completely unremarkable coincidence. I do enjoy the garden threads, I am always sure there’s more politically you could be posting and I find Corner Stone to be about as enjoyable as hemorrhoids whilst sliding on a razor wire. I really hope you read not the responses to you, but your own, because they are quite breathtaking. In a not good way.
I do hope all of you had a much better day than was to be found on this site. Because this really is silly.
fuckwit
Oh jeesus fuxing christ.
That’s it. This place has gone down the toilet too.
I just had to leave dKos earlier this year because it got too PC for me with regard to feminism, and found BJ an oasis of sanity, but now BJ has got what looks to be a race war going, of all things.
I think it was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said “all politics is local”. Well, almost. All politics ES LOCO.
Cowbelle
What happened to Allan’s comment? I want to hear about what he said that was so accurate … that someone had to delete it.
Comrade Kevin
@Allan: Good question. If I could see it, and reply to it, it wasn’t caught in the spam filter. Someone had to actively delete it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Allan:
I think AL stopped polishing her Ferraro button for a few there…lol!
PUMA Power!
licensed to kill time
♪♫ Who put the Benzedrine in Balloon Juice’s Ovaltine? ♪♫
Odie Hugh Manatee
@fuckwit:
I left DK six years ago for this oasis of insanity. ;)
Seriously, I hate the PC stuff as much as anyone else but what Corner Stone said was bullshit and clearly racist. In an argument about SMOG? CS ran out of bs to once again try and shut up someone he disagreed with, so he dug to the bottom of his grab bag of ‘goodies’ and came up with race baiting.
That isn’t acceptable arguing, PC or not. Dragging race into a discussion that had nothing to do with it was a stupid move by CS.
B W Smith
The middle of the night and I can’t sleep. I click on BJ and find some serious shit has gone down. FWIW, I read but did not comment on the ozone thread. CS was even more out of line than usual, admittedly drunk, and truly being obnoxious. I tend to steer clear of threads like that. Apparently he has now been released from his time out. If he actually understood the concept of shame, he’d stay away for a while. Anne, I read most of your threads and truly enjoy many of them. I also read many of ABL’s threads and enjoy them until I get to the comments. I hate to tell you, Anne. This has not been your finest hour. CS ain’t worth the fight.
AxelFoley
600+!!!
MADE IT, MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!!!
priscianus jr
I missed this whole thing, but if CS is outta here for whatever reason, I will not miss that troll.
AxelFoley
Damn, does anyone–besides Anne–like CS? LOL
Maybe Just Some Fuckhead, but I always thought they were tag-team partners.
John Weiss
@Marginalized for stating documented facts: @cleek: This is not the reason I come here either.
If I feel like wallowing in shit there are many other venues. I think I’ll take a rest for a bit.
John Weiss
@fuckwit: It wasn’t DPM. It was Tip O’Neal.
Nash
There’s no professionalism here.
No communication. No handling of things in-house. No co-ordination. Public attacks. Bickering.
Long-time reader, and heartily disappointed.
Arclite
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Heh, Little did YOU know it would exceed 600…
I say we shoot for 1000…
Yutsano
@Arclite: :: looks around, surveys damage ::
I’m in for 615. I’ve been slacking all day on here anyway.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
Eating lots of popcorn will do that to ya.
Yutsano
@Odie Hugh Manatee: That and a four hour drive. Tell me again why the fuck I’m not using the damn sick day tomorrow? Fucking work ethic.
Admiral_Komack
@FlipYrWhig:
Good recap.
Arclite
@Yutsano: Er, uh…
You KNEW I was gonna respond to that, you could have easily predicted 616, and yet you held steady at 615. There’s some deeper meaning here I’m failing to comprehend…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
I would guess that it’s that fucking work ethic. :D
Yutsano
@Arclite: Well I meant I was gonna BE 615 (and I was). Nothing more, nothing less. I’m too fucking exhausted to find deeper meaning in anything right now.
@Odie Hugh Manatee: You would think being an ebil gubmint worker would have beaten that out of me by now.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Yutsano:
You’re failing your stereotype. Good for you! :)
Arclite
You know, why can’t we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
I like Anne Laurie’s posts, she’s one of the most improved bloggers on the site. When she first started, I would just skip her posts, they didn’t connect with me at all. But over time, either she changed or I did, and now I really appreciate the stories she digs up and posts, and I admire her consistency. She posts day in and day out, several times a day almost without fail. And the story posts are almost always important and relevant.
I like ABL’s posts too: She brings a unique perspective, and an in-your-face style that no one else has. Her MLK post recently was some of the best writing on the subject I have ever read in my 42 years. I am not always in the mood for her style, but when I am, it really hits home.
Just one thing, please, please, please, let’s handle these kinds of disputes behind the scenes. As you can see from all the sturm und drang that this kind of thing only stirs the pot to ill effect for all involved.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Arclite: Fucking amazing, still going on!
Arclite
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Yeah, I was camping all weekend and just got back. My main point is don’t air this shit in public, no matter which side you fall on. I think you’ll agree.
Admiral_Komack
@Alex S.:
Target that explosion and fire!
Keith G
@Mnemosyne:
Good morning. That is an interesting hypothesis.
If correct, I wonder if this is but piece of the larger issue: A clash of cultures (or in this case modus operandi) This happens in my work place. It starts as an operational issue, but the grating morphs it into something a bit personal.
Operationally, ABL is quite different than the other FPers here. Further, for a few months, I have been mulling over if/how/to what degree a change in commenting occurred once ABL came on board.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Arclite:
I have no problem agreeing with that. This never should have happened, there’s no reason for it to have been dragged out in public like this. If AL had a problem with ABL giving Corner Stone a timeout then she should have taken it up with ABL and John. That this happened should be a source of embarrassment to AL for having dragged it out on John’s blog. ABL took the high road and AL took the low one. ABL was a hell of a lot more restrained than I would have been (which is why it’s a good thing I don’t have a blog), that’s for sure.
If the situation was reversed, I would be backing AL as having been wronged. It isn’t blind faith in ABL that leads me to think that AL screwed up, AL stepped up on her own and stepped in it. Loudly and proudly. I don’t know what went wrong, but AL herself even said that something had been stewing for some time (or that’s the way it came across).
AL went off about CS’s time out but I think that was cover for an all out attack on ABL in general. It was sad to see, that’s for sure. I never saw it coming, which makes it all the more jarring.
dogwood
@Arclite:
Anne Laurie might be an improved blogger, but tonight she really stepped in it. The post itself was so emotionally hyperbolic it was cringeworthy, but the real problem lies in the fact it was a complete fabrication of the situation with CS. In other words, she lied in order to make ABL look bad. Crap like that doesn’t belong on the FP.
harlana
This post was well done, although I missed 95% of the drama, I certainly have seen these things play out.
If I could add one thing, it would be this: “Alla you former republicans (you know, the ones that voted for Bush, you know who you are and there’s a lotta youse here) – DON’T TELL ME HOW TO BE A FUCKING DEM, I’VE BEEN ONE SINCE I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO VOTE and I sure as fuck never did something as stoopid as voting for Bush, so I’m not going to trust your “superior” insights on anything! Criticizing true progressives who dare to express an opinion contrary to yours is NOT going to absolve you from that horrible error in judgment. Sorreh.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@harlana:
Starting the drinking early?
harlana
goodness, the pearl-clutching
it’s a BLOG, people
sheesh
harlana
@Odie Hugh Manatee:I comment about 2% of the time so you too may consider getting over yourself if you don’t like what I have to say since I don’t jump on every soul here that says something I don’t like / I feel free to express myself at 6:00 am in the morning (when, apparently nobody is here but YOU) and if you don’t like it, sorry, you have the rest of the day to be without my offensive presence here
Are you a former republican, feeling a bit sensitive or something, cuz otherwise, seems like you wouldn’t care
Admiral_Komack
@Cowbelle:
Well, at least it’s not THIS:
“You gotta feel sorry for the guy. His most ardent supporters are the dumbest motherfuckers in the world, and they don’t realize he thinks they are digging his political grave.”
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/07/14/jane-hamsher-calls-obama-supporters-dumb-motherfuckers/
harlana
my God some of you think you’re so tuff but you’re really a bunch of thin-skinned little babies making sweeping assumptions about people you know nothing about for your
jollies
M-Pop
I love this blog. That is all.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@harlana:
Hey, say what you want and I’ll do the same, right? All I was ‘commenting’ on is that you state that AL’s post is “well done” when it contains at least one outright lie, and that lie is what her whole post is premised on. Then you follow that with some unrelated stuff about how Republicans who voted for Bush and hang out here and blah blah blah, which has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
Say what you want though, that’s what this place is for. If I think drinking early might be the cause of a comment by someone, I’ll say so. After all, I can say what I want too, right?
@Admiral_Komack:
I guess that’s a step up. :)
AxelFoley
@harlana:
(puts a mirror in harlana’s grill)
Admiral_Komack
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
:-)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Only 639 comments? Is that all we can do?
harlana
no I’m not drinking, I have adjusted my meds and which indicates I must being lurking again (b/c former republicans must maintain their dominance and superiority on this blog) – my spirit is not yet dead, it has only been sleeping for 5 years
It’s fun to make fun of people with a mental illness, really! And I’m a really good sport about it! Cuz there’s nothing you can do or say to me now that can be worse than anything I have experienced in the last 5 years.
Except, don’t tell me I’m old and ugly. I still want people to lie to me about that.
Anyway, I know my ravings are unwelcome so back to lurking I go!
Have fun, all you intellectually superior people, tearing each other apart.
Alex S.
@Admiral_Komack:
Wrath of Khan?
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Well, in France they call an orgasm ‘the little death’.
Also, this is a fascinating display of intra-democratic fractures, old-school liberal vs. Obama democrat.
cleek
@Arclite:
i liked it too, but ABL didn’t write it.
harlana
Once you begin to “feel” they ridicule you, oh so familiar, / but I love you, I love you all.
Admiral_Komack
@Alex S.:
“Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”
Captain Sulu’s order to fire on the cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey after the Enterprise hit her with the torpedo.
Surely you didn’t think I’d let you have all the fun?
:-)
Odie Hugh Manatee
@harlana:
Who was making fun of someone with a mental illness?! WTF? You are welcome to say anything you wish and nobody is oppressing you.
I don’t know if you are old and ugly and if I did I wouldn’t care. Also. :)
@Alex S.: “Also, this is a fascinating display of intra-democratic fractures, old-school liberal vs. Obama democrat.”
I agree that may have a part in this brouhaha though I think this is one ugly many-headed beast. I hope it’s slain and soon.
Keith G
@Odie Hugh Manatee: For that to happen, many on all sides need to lose the “I’m right and you are wrong” mentality
Alex S.
@Admiral_Komack:
You can’t imagine how ashamed I am for getting that wrong.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Keith G:
I can hope but reality tells me that hope would be wasted, yet I hope. Unfortunately, standing aside while being attacked is not something I like to do and lately I have decided to stop doing it. Right and wrong exist for a reason and ignoring those distinctions will not lead to the solution of anything.
gn
Why do the people complaining about being bullied politically almost always sound like huge bullies to me? This essay is a case in point. Round of applause for hurling a bunch of unsolicited, passive aggressive insults at a large group of people under the guise of defending yourself against…something.
And by the way, an out of the blue accusation that a presumed black commenter “hates white people” during the course of a discussion about smog is racist as hell. Nice to see people defending said accuser from the mildest of sanctions (a time out on a freaking blog) with the wildest of hyperbole (accusations of McCarthyism). Fail.
Great comments section though!
Arclite
@cleek: Heh, that’s right, she was quoting another story. Still, kudos to her for bringing it to my attention.
Admiral_Komack
@Chris:
I saw what you did there.
:-)
Admiral_Komack
@Alex S.:
Don’t sweat it.
I almost typed “Star Trek VII” in my reply to you (fortunately I checked my VCR-tape box).
Samara Morgan
Julian predicted your behavior.
Balloon-juice is a just a lefthand mirror of HotAir or Redstate.
You have taboos, social mores, protocols.
You deal in social capital, just like the rightside blogs.
And John’s House has many mansions, but none for me.
/wicked grin
Samara Morgan
@Keith G: i dont think Kain or freddie could do that though, because they both pled for me to be IP banned.
Some frontpagers are more powerful than others, i guess.
the gods are jealous.
:)
Samara Morgan
And interestingly one blog Obama did read, was Sully during the Sea of Green protests.
I know because he read this post.
that was my letter. :)
Dream On
Ten comment postings short of the Mark of the Beast. With my addition, now nine.
arguingwithsignposts
It wouldn’t be complete without the toker_chan.
Ben Cisco
Good night nurse, still with this crap? Enough already!
__
This is some Real Housewives/Bridezilla/Springer bullshit right here – put it to fucking bed already!
aisce
@ arclite
yeah, she didn’t write that. she never indicated she did. she reposted somebody else.
this is why people think she gets undue adoration. nobody would ever congratulate mistermix on his blockquoting a boing boing blog piece on a telecom merger or something.
gpleigh
@NR:
BLOCKQUOTE (FWYWP) All of you hippie-punchers here, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that all those people you’re yelling at to shut up, suddenly shut up. Let’s say that Krugman stopped criticizing the administration’s economic policy. Let’s say that Greenwald stopped criticizing the administration on civil liberties. Let’s say that environmentalists said absolutely nothing about the administration’s decision to scuttle smog regulations.
You do realize that that would accomplish absolutely nothing except to make you feel better, right?
It wouldn’t make the problems that they’re writing about suddenly go away. And it wouldn’t make the administration suddenly take the right approach with respect to those problems. BLOCKQUOTE (FYWP)
If you think Jim DeMint is reading Glen Greenwald, you’re crazy.
soonergrunt
@Chad N Freude: I’m here to serve.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris:
But can you at least open the pod doors?
Keith G
@Samara Morgan: With respects, what took you so long?
655 comments until you made it about you. Slowing down?
Cassidy
Well, CS is white and asiangrrlmn is…not. AL doesn’t care about those people. Maybe they don’t count to her?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
So, whose going to be 666?
notreally
Satan Get!
EDIT: DAMMIT!
Loviatar
Reasonable people could consider this a racist statement.
I await Cassidy’s
banningtime outCassidy
@Loviatar: Funny enough, my only time out came from ABL after me and CS got into a pssing match.
Loviatar
@669 – Cassidy:
Was it actually
bantime out worthy?soonergrunt
@Alex S.: As you should be!
soonergrunt
@Samara Morgan: You get a room when you either say something useful or you at least turn the age to drive.
It may take a long time for you.
Cassidy
@Loviatar: We were being assholes.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: In that case, I’d like coffee with skim milk and a bagel.
kindness
Jesus. I was gone all weekend, well, I wasn’t on the internet all weekend and I come over here and it looks like some folks have up and tried to burn down the house.
Man, take a little time off and look what happens. Just as long as President Perry doesn’t happen that way…..
Everyone make it through the weekend OK?
Loviatar
@673 – Cassidy:
Seems like a pretty low bar.
If that what it takes BJ is going to lose a lot of commenters.
soonergrunt
@Chad N Freude: You want the cream cheese with the little fruit bits mixed in, or the plain?
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: Plain’s good. Thanks. There’ll be a nice tip for you if this f-ing thread ever ends.
Amir Khalid
I really don’t want this thread to end. The food fights here are part of the entertainment.
Not saying if Anne Laurie is right or wrong, but (with the benefit of hindsight) I reckon it might have been better to communicate this privately to ABL than to put it up on the front page.
schrodinger's cat
Will this thread reach a 1000? Will check back after lunch.
Gotta go now.
Maura Cavaleri
@AxelFoley: I laughed out loud when I read this! I’m still laughing, when doves cry!
Chad N Freude
@Amir Khalid: It seems to me that the food in this food fight is post-digestion. And if you’re a Muslim, how come you’re so reasonable? Stereotypes are not to be broken on this thread.
Shinobi
Man, now I kindof want to sit here and sort through comments to try and figure out what I missed!
I will resist the urge, people are angry, someone is banned, Obama is either perfect or the antichrist, that is all I need to know.
Amir Khalid
@Chad N Freude:
It’s a flaw inherent in my character.
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat:
Probably not by then, but we all have to do our part.
I’m so old that I remember the first time I ever posted on this thread.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Went to bed with it, got up with it and now that my swim is over it’s still here. Reminds me off the bullhead clap.
Parrotlover77
I’m always a latecomer to the party. Just want to post my two cents to the intertoobs. Anne – love your posts and agree with the general sentiment of the post. I prefer speech to counter speech. Not silence. Still this post more than any comment leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I come here for good front page stories, not comments. A hate letter as a front page story is childish and annoying.
That said, carry on as i see this was resolved and moved on and i’m just late.
Also, too, unrelated, one of my birds is very sick (unidentified mass in his tail). Please send happy thoughts his way. It seemed to work when tunch was lost…
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): That’s both apt and comical.
A Humble Lurker
This has been a fun thread. And I mean that sincerely. It’s made all the masks come off and alerted me to who’s worth ignoring in the future. Going to save me a lot of time.
People don’t understand when they lament (either sincerely or insincerely) things like this crazy ass thread happening. They say ‘it’s all so ugly and vile’ but it comforts me. Because that ugliness was there the whole time, but now it’s come to the surface so that it can be seen and expunged. Like a boil getting lanced.
That’s my take on the sitch, anyway.
28 Percent
This is my favorite BJ post in months. Nice to see some fucking perspective on the O-Bot vs Flamebagger mud wrestling that goes on around here.
mike in dc
Well, that’s 50 minutes of my life I’m never getting back…”tactless” and “petty” are the two descriptors that come to mind here…
Samara Morgan
@Chad N Freude: why do you think hes a muslim?
he denied the First Pillar to me.
:)
that is like a christian saying they dont believe in Christ.
Samara Morgan
@Keith G: no..i was at a wedding reception.
they had a mechanical bull and and a bluegrass band.
but this is a very interesting thread.
Ogami Itto
Just helping it along….
Admiral_Komack
@Ben Cisco:
I, for one, am not going to argue with The Emissary.
JR in WV
@Omnes Omnibus: I tried to read that book twice, generally enjoying fiction set in Merrie Olde England, but let it go twice. Couldn’t keep going.
Dunno why.
Banning trolls; why, they just revisit with a new incarnation as Darrell – which like Darnell I think is just a rural name with no racial connotations either way. Pennsyltuckian indeed! I thought that was common only to my family in WV with in-laws originating in PA and KY a long time ago.
No one will ever read this, post 678 out of 701…
JR in WV
SectarianSofa
@Anne Laurie:
Whatever. That is pretty damn close to irrational. Maybe stick to talking about your IQ and overqualification for Mensa. If you think you usually ignore these the “supporters” and their comments, and yet you’re still able to accurately track and characterize these folks, you should switch to less potent hallucinogens.
Admiral_Komack
@JR in WV:
“No one will ever read this, post 678 out of 701…”
Wrong.
licensed to kill time
:::rattles d.ice furiously:::
C’mon 700! Gimme 700!
:::throws:::
edit: shoot. busted.
licensed to kill time
:::rattles d.ice again:::
Oh sweet holy moses, gimme 700!
:::throws:::
edit: WOOHOO!
Admiral_Komack
I got nuthin’.
Samara Morgan
@Anne Laurie: jaysus mary and joseph.
enough kangaroo slapfighting already.
you’re the lead heifer…lead by example….like Young Brigham said.
didnt you say to me once that its Cole’s blog?
well, deconstruct her posts that you disagree with then..on-thread, don’t hiss at her from your frontpage perch.
Robert
I don’t even put people who rob me blind of my content from my own site and sell it to other sites for profit on blast like this. This is absurd. The only issue here is a blogger who decides something that should be handled by an e-mail is worthy of the front page of a multi-user blog.
Miranda
Wow….Miss Anne be maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!!
Rome Again
Wow, I was just reminded why I only come by here and read about every other one or two months now. Thanks for that. I’ll try back in around November and see if there’s any improvement.
munsell10yr
“Compulsively befouling every single thread with the millionth iteration of how you hate emoprog firebaggers soooo bad will not impress us with your winning ardor.”
I come to this website because the majority of bloggers on the site have something to say that I’m interested in hearing. Not because I’m concerned with how you feel about me. I’ve never woken up and fired up the computer thinking, gee, what’s Anne Laurie ranting about today?” Seriously? Take a vacation.
JS
@Arundel:
I’m thinking you totally want us to say “affirmative action”.
AmIright, or AmIright?
BattleCat
Now that nobody’s reading this thread anymore: