It’s official
Published by punkass marc February 8th, 2007 in PoliticsI think the post by John Edwards struck the right tone — he’s not a fan of the aggro verbiage, which no presidential politician could admit to being, but he’s also supportive of his staff and acknowledges no bigotry occurred.
As one of the commenters on Edwards’s post noted, one can be quite intolerant of ideas while still being perfectly tolerant of people. That sums up the approach of a great many ranting liberals to a tee.
Wow. I was too pessimistic that this was going to end badly. Sometimes, it is good to be totally wrong.
“As one of the commenters on Edwards’s post noted, one can be quite intolerant of ideas while still being perfectly tolerant of people.”
Ew. I’m sorry, but that reminds me far too insistently of all the times I’ve heard “Can’t we hate the sin and love the sinner?” generally in reference to the Evils of Homosexuality. No, actually, I don’t think you can, not when you consider the idea/sin to be harmful to others. Can we try a different justification, please…
I am very glad. I still haven’t decided whether Edwards is my guy or not, but good people like Amanda and Melissa deserve proper treatment.
Marc, I don’t know your situation in all this (and it’s not my business), but the uncertainty can’t have made you feel great either. That’s rotten…
Hey, us university IT guys have to stick together…
I posted on Pandagon about how sick Edwards made me, but I’m glad Amanda gets to keep her job.
Here’s the thing: a friend said to me recently that you write press releases for the very dumb and the very bright. For the slower folk you offer the plain old platitudes in big broad strokes, and you hope that the smart folk read between the lines via the details of your comments.
I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but if it is, then I see some lines to read between and I like what they say.
I guess that makes me S-M-R-T. I mean S-M-A-R-T.
I think Marc’s right, junk science–a lot of Amanda and Shakes supporters picked up on “can’t let it be hijacked” as a coded shout-out, and an indication of Edwards’ willingness to stand up to the intimidation, while the, ah, less intelligent readers were focusing on “personally offended.”
“Personally offended” is the bone you throw to people who really don’t want to hear about the hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit. “Can’t let it be hijacked” is the acknowledgement that 99% of this outrage is completely fake, manufactured by political opponents for their own gain, and having nothing to do with honestly taking offense.
Obviously, for Amanda’s sake I’m hoping Marc’s right and you’re wrong, but we’ll see. It’s a long time ’til November 2008.
Yeah, I’m feeling a lot better about the whole thing now.
Yeah, and this line in Amanda’s rather terse and perfunctory apology, “I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politic,” sounds to me like, “I apology if anyone completely missed the point of my posts and was personally offended.”
But it is a pretty sharp turn-around from rumors that they were fired to grudging and ironic apologies.
Well, I’m glad it had a happy ending after all.
Anyway, I think this is why I’d never be any good at politics; when I hear Christians complaining about “religious hate speech” I have a near irresistable desire to point out that the freaking BIBLE refers to pagans as vermin, demon worshipers, idiots, pretty much as bad as murderes and just generally worthy of death.
Oh, and also being pissed on.
This kind of crap isn’t confined to the bible; most of the horrors of, say, the conquest of Mexico came from the same mindset. the encomienda system that made slaves of the Mexicans was based on the fact that as pagans, the Aztecs were essentially children and needed somebodty strong to watch over them. The whole pattern is just generally repeated throughout America.
I dunno, it just chafes my ass to hear people who worship a book full of passages like that carp about “religious hate speech”. And all us Pagan scumbags are just expected to lie back and take it, and not be mean to the poor widdle Christians.
Bah.