"If you don't like it, don't read 'em."

December 19, 2003 7:50 AM

I have refrained from participating in the recent political thread wars. I agree the political threads are hopeless, but I can't disagree with the folks who say, "If you don't like it, don't read 'em." Fair enough. Surely MeFi is big enough for all of us?

But please, please, PLEASE: if you are a political thread brawler, at least have the decency to keep your snark and bile out of the non-political threads. It really pisses in my oatmeal to be reading an interesting article about a little-known scientific finding, hit the discussion, and run smack into this.

And troutfishing, you're just as out of line: Osama, conspiracy theory—WTF, man?

The political threads are tolerable because, as people keep pointing out, however bad they are, they're a small part of MeFi. But if the crap in them, and the cranks who dominate them start spilling over into every other MeFi thread—we're doomed.
posted by Slithy_Tove to etiquette/policy at 7:50 AM (96 comments total)

It's hard to imagine that a thread about environmental pollution would not have a political component. Mayor Curley's comment was a parody of the very common libertarian reaction to suggestions that pollution is a real problem. Parodies of other people's beliefs are generally insensitive and short-sighted, but if that's out of place, then so are, e.g., all the "plants are people too" comments in the PETA thread.
posted by mdn at 8:02 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy_Tove - I think you might want to take a deep breathe, hold it for a count of three, and then exhale slowly.
posted by troutfishing at 8:02 AM on December 19, 2003

I was just pre-empting the inevitable "Shut up! Everything's swell!" comment that we all know was coming.

The part about the biblical justification was out of line. I earnestly apologize for including it. But I don't apologize for the overall sentiment.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:06 AM on December 19, 2003

mdn, I understand what Mayor Curley was doing. There's nothing wrong with pissing either, but there are places to do it and places not to do it. He was pissing in the wrong place.

troutfishing, I took several deep breaths and counted far past three before I posted. I don't post to MeTa often. I don't start threads on MeTa often. I have kept out the recent MeTa political thread wars for a reason. I'm perfectly willing to let the gonzo left dominate the political threads.

But if the political thread posse starts to poison other threads, if MeFi becomes just another Democratic Underground or alt.politics.*, something worthwhile will have been lost.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 8:20 AM on December 19, 2003

Political threads without the snark and bile? <boggles>

Can we ban trolling first?
posted by bshort at 8:24 AM on December 19, 2003

bshort, re-read what I wrote. I'm not asking for political threads without snark and bile. I'm asking for political snark and bile to be kept to the political threads.

And MeFi's problem is not trolls, it's cranks.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 8:34 AM on December 19, 2003

I was under the impression that trolling is cranking. If have the right understanding of cranking, that is.
posted by angry modem at 8:48 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy_Tove - "Osama, conspiracy theory—WTF, man?" - I think you are reading a bit much into this comment. Conspiracy? Umm.......And who might this "the gonzo left", " the political thread posse" which "poison(s) other threads" be?

I don't think either Mayor Curley or I resort to Ad Hominem attacks very much. But if Ad Hominem attacks are - as many on Metafilter have said - one of the hallmarks of the political thread posses then you, my friend, are leading your own thread posse at the moment.

"...if the crap in them [political threads], and the cranks who dominate them start spilling over...." Come on now.

Do you have anything to say about the facts of the "Global Dimming" story itself? If you want to prove that I'm a "crank" on any particular issue, do it honestly through participation in the thread discussion using logic and reference to accepted facts - and not by way of slander.
posted by troutfishing at 8:52 AM on December 19, 2003

As you can see Slithy_Tove, people just don't get it. And if they don't get it there's little point in asking them to keep things separate. Most do, but enough don't to make things smell.

The solution is to ban political posts, whether there is a place for them or not. It's politicical views that fuel the worst behavior here. But we just had that discussion and it went nowhere as usual.

I tend to agree with Matt that we can learn a lot from the political threads even though they are mostly rock throwing. I know I've been exposed to lots of ideas that I wouldn't have encountered otherwise.

You're right, the rock throwing tends to bleed over into places it doesn't belong. But asking people who have already abandoned polite, considerate, appropriate conversation to please be more considerate and appropriate is hopeless.

MetaFilter isn't dead, it's just inconsiderate.
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:58 AM on December 19, 2003

But - Slithy - Thank You for helping me to keep my "fending off the language of political attack" chops up. I was starting to lose my edge since the Metatalk "Seth Wars" of two days ago.
posted by troutfishing at 8:59 AM on December 19, 2003

So, Slithy, are you for or against free speech?

As far as I can tell, the reference to Osama could easily have been 'Matt Groening' (heh), or 'Otis Redding', or 'Elizabeth Barrett-Browning'. It was not, to me, a political point in the sense that you seem to be seeing.

Having said that, environmental concerns are political in nature anyway (last deliberate pun of this post).

UN-clench!
posted by dash_slot- at 9:01 AM on December 19, 2003

Right or wrong, climate change has become a hobbyhorse of the increasingly disoriented left, since if you take the trouble to read the Kyoto Protocol it's obvious that those draconian GHG emissions are never going to be accepted.

So, instead of offering a flexible alternative, leftists and useful idiots simply ramble on about how the rich are irresponsible , how the evidence against climate change is fabricated etc etc. It's yet another attempt to make the left the one patron of good intentions, even though reality is the exact opposite.

That was not a science/ environment thread, it was a transparent leftist political thread. There are some interesting comments there, but the wild-eyed, barely coherent rants against "the campaign to discredit global climate modelling" shouldn't really surprise anyone.
posted by 111 at 9:01 AM on December 19, 2003

y6y6y6 - I think I get Ad-Hominem attack quite well. Do you? Or do you merely condone it when it supports your cause?

You undercut your own argument.
posted by troutfishing at 9:02 AM on December 19, 2003

unfuckingclench
posted by eyeballkid at 9:09 AM on December 19, 2003

troutfishing - I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about mdn's comment about how the snark was valid because it's common in political threads.

I think you are reading a bit much into my comment. You might want to take a deep breathe, hold it for a count of three, and then exhale slowly.

See how it works? We're at each others throats. I blame the political threads.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:15 AM on December 19, 2003

angry modem: OT, but here's my concept of trolls and cranks:

A troll is a poster in search of conflict. He says things intended to stir people up, to make them angry, to get them to argue with him. Doesn't matter what, he doesn't have to believe a word he says, he may deliberately lie, he just wants to start a fight. His game is to keep you in an argument as long as possible, to pull your chain and watch you dance.

There are a ton of trolls on Usenet. There are almost none on MeFi. I think the main reason is that there are no threaded newsreaders for MeFi (as there are for Usenet), and threads tend to lose readership rapidly after a day or so. It's hard to keep people arguing under those conditions. If I had to name one MeFi troll, I'd probably say paleocon. But there aren't many.

A crank, on the other hand, may start arguments, but that's not his intent. A crank is a someone completely, obsessively, insanely committed to some idea. He can't stop thinking about it, talking about it, defending it if anyone challenges it. He is irrationally committed to the validity of his idée fixe. No facts to the contrary will change his mind. It is impossible to talk to him about it except to agree with him. A crank has been described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

This does not pass judgement on the crank's idea. A crank may be right or wrong. I agree with some of the cranks here, and disagree with others. What distinguishes the crank is the obsessiveness with which he holds his idea, his inability to think objectively about it or to consider even the possibility he might be in error, and his aggressiveness in defending his idea if it is challenged.

MeFi has lots of cranks. Arguments start not because of disingenuous individuals deliberately starting them (i.e. trolls), but because cranks cannot bear to have their beloved cranky idea disagreed with even a little, even by someone who almost agrees with them.

And that's my take on trolls and cranks. But I'm not cranky about it. I could be wrong!
posted by Slithy_Tove at 9:22 AM on December 19, 2003

"You undercut your own argument."

Agreed. In fact the original draft of my comment pointed that out. I considered admitting that my posting history included some very nasty trolling and personal attacks. But then I decided it undercut my own argument and I cut it.

Guilty as charged.

The fact is that I don't go into the political threads anywhere near as much as I used to. And even if I do I rarely post there anymore. And the main reason is that I feel it poisons my posts everywhere else. I develop nasty preconceptions about others, and others develop nasty preconceptions about me.

That's my point. Without the political threads we'd react to each other very differently.
posted by y6y6y6 at 9:26 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy, thank you for takeing your rant outside to MeTa. Perhaps we need a political room/board to take political discussions off somewhere else like the kitchen so the rest of us can party on in peace.
posted by stbalbach at 9:30 AM on December 19, 2003

slithy, I think this MeTa post was unnecessary, but I take my hat off to your excellent exposition of the difference between trolls and cranks. I'll link to it next time the subject comes up.

y6: You're being a mensch. Much appreciated. I hope others learn how to turn their critical gaze on themselves and admit it when they're justly accused.
posted by languagehat at 9:33 AM on December 19, 2003

I'm asking for political snark and bile to be kept to the political threads.

again, a thread about pollution & the environment is naturally political.

snark is part of the fun around here. It's annoying at times, it's especially irritating if the snarky people are responding to things you take to be deeply important, with no respect for your perspective, but it also breaks up the dry debating. I agree it's become too pervasive, but I don't think every example of it deserves a meta call-out.

on preview: interesting re: cranks & trolls; that makes sense. I think their increased presence is due, as others have said, to the fact that it's just a very politically charged time. My sister and I have been email debating politics for weeks at least. Much less snark, but that's 'cause we're sisters, I think, or maybe because we're in a more personal conversation.
posted by mdn at 9:38 AM on December 19, 2003

or maybe because it's only been "weeks"...
posted by mdn at 9:40 AM on December 19, 2003

"climate change has become a hobbyhorse of the increasingly disoriented left".....

"That was not a science/ environment thread, it was a transparent leftist political thread."

Hmmm. There seems to be an awful lot of politics going on in that thread. You may just have a point there. For example :

(Bonehead) "Clouds are a major component of the planet's reflectivity. See here for a discussion of the role clouds play in the the earth's radiation budget. Clouds can have a warming or cooling effect depending on their altitude and the surface they cover" - Obviously, the word "clouds" here codes for "capitalist running dogs", while "warming or cooling" stands in for "Tax the rich until they are penniless and then eat them".

"leftists and useful idiots simply ramble on about how the rich are irresponsible" - Ummm - what are these "rich" ? I'm confused - Are they a type of aerosol or atmospheric particulate?

"the wild-eyed, barely coherent rants against "the campaign to discredit global climate modelling" " - 111, I guess you need a little Reading material

111 - You provided us with a cute little menagerie of styles of political attack all of which (save the last one) have nothing at all to do with the thread in question. So you must be trying to make me get so mad that accidentally spit out my secret plans for wealth redistribution via cannibalism. Ha! Fat chance. Try again, buddy.

OK - Here's a paragraph from my last thread comment : "The rich should be cooked and eaten. The smoke from the cooking fires will tend to increase the anthropogenic particulate effect which has been shown to cool the planet. Thus, the suffering of the 3 or 4 billion developing poor will be alleviated, in small part, by the cooler temperatures."

Wait a minute. What just happeed there? That was really weird. I don't think I said that....OK, here it is:

"bonehead - I agree that there are lots of levers on climate besides "Greenhouse" gasses. But the article doesn't actually say anything about humans increasing the planet's albedo. I don't think that's the mechanism at all. Most clouds are translucent, to an extent. So what happens if they are "seeded" by darker particulates which make them a little less translucent? - Well, those particulates absorb the solar radiation and warm up, and then release it. Since that radiation is being released higher up in the atmosphere, more of it can escape into space. In the Earth's overall "heat budget" - the ratio of incoming solar radiation to the rate at which that radiation is released back into space - an increase in cloud particulates "

y6y6y6 - Hey! You're no fun - you're not supposed to apologize! Alright. If that's the way you're gonna be, well - I'll have to admit, my leering "Osama in the Sky" wasn't absolutely apolitical, but it was mainly absurdist. If I didn't hear about Iraq, Afghanistan, and the "War on Terror" every day, the thought probably wouldn't have occured to me. The actual idea itself is a riff off a Donald Barthelme short story about a mysterious giant balloon which appears one night, inexplicably, to cover a city.
posted by troutfishing at 9:52 AM on December 19, 2003

OK now - Mayor Curley, me, and y6y6y6 have 'fessed up. Next.......
posted by troutfishing at 9:55 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy:
A crank is a someone completely, obsessively, insanely committed to some idea. He can't stop thinking about it, talking about it, defending it if anyone challenges it.

Then how does my comment make me a crank? I made one comment, and I don't think that I've ever made another comment elsewhere about environmental issues.

If you're going to call me a crank, prove that I fit your definition. Or apologize.

(And don't stage a syntactic rodeo to say that you weren't labeling me.)
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:03 AM on December 19, 2003

troutfishing: Conspiracy? Umm.......And who might this "the gonzo left", " the political thread posse" which "poison(s) other threads" be?

See my post on 'trolls and cranks'. There's no conspiracy. No one is meeting in alt.syntax.tactical to plan assaults on MeFi. There's just a bunch of highly political posters of similar political views who dominate the political threads. So be it. I can avoid the political threads. But their views often seem nuts to me ('gonzo'), and it's discouraging to find I'm unable to keep away from them, no matter where on MeFi I go.

Try a thought experiment. Suppose we had some rabid flat-earth/geocentric cosmos people here, who jumped into every thread with snarky comments about how astronomers were conspiring to keep people ignorant, and the government was in the pay of corrupt cartographers. No matter what thread you were reading, there they were, yelling their usual stuff, day after day, without let up. And all you wanted to do is read that interesting discussion of Bush being caught with the Argentine stripper at the Tidal Basin, but here's two guys yelling that tides don't really happen, they're all faked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose centuries-long ties to secret societies within the Vatican are well documented.

Wouldn't you be irritated? Wouldn't your cereal be pissed in? Well, that's how I feel.

A couple of people have said that any environmental thread is automatically political. I disagree. This article is a prime example of an interesting new idea (at least to me) that has no specific political meaning. It's new stuff, that's interesting to talk about and think about and try to integrate into what we already know and theorize about climate change.

It doesn't have anything to do with Osama bin Laden, or Mayor Curley's libertarian bête noires, except to people who think that everything has something to do with their political obsessions.

BTW, though, troutfishing, as positive reinforcement: your second post is more readable, and more interesting, than your first. It rambles less, and the politics are kept to a minimum. See?
posted by Slithy_Tove at 10:05 AM on December 19, 2003

as positive reinforcement:...

And you're condescending. That's charming!
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:34 AM on December 19, 2003

Mayor Curley: I have tangled with you only once, but that convinced me that you are a crank on the subject of politics, someone who is unable to change his views, even on trivial matters, when presented with evidence to the contrary. Your comments elsewhere that I have read since have confirmed this, as did your comment in today's global dimming thread: it was entirely political and unrelated to the content of the link or the thread. No one had brought up the issues you were snarking about. There was nothing about them in the article. You were shadow boxing with imaginary foes.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 10:41 AM on December 19, 2003

Let us fish
posted by clavdivs at 10:45 AM on December 19, 2003

So basically it's "if I say you're a crank, then you're a crank." Seems to fit in with the general theme of this discussion nicely.

As for my "shadow boxing," my foe wasn't imaginary-- you're sure acting like I hit you.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:51 AM on December 19, 2003

You know what really annoys me though? When people say unclench. I hear that in my head in the most officious, smugly superior tone imaginable, loaded with implications that the above-it-all, Zen-calm dispenser of that ever-so-helpful bit of advice is far superior to the clenched up cretin trying to express a (sometimes legitimate, sometimes not legitimate) opinion on something. Or that whatever comment the person is making, no matter how well-formed or reasonable sounding, is accompanied by a tight sphincter, and is thus nothing more than the easily dismissed anal-retentive ramblings of some uptight ninny. It makes me angrier than people who dismiss global warming as some left-wing conspiracy to Communize the US, starting with industrial manufacturing plants, even.

Just thought I'd bring it up.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Unclench.
posted by jennyb at 11:05 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy, I think your definition of political is a little narrow. I'm not supporting political slanging matches or the posts in that particular thread, just saying that most things tend to have a political aspect.
posted by johnny novak at 11:09 AM on December 19, 2003

I hesitated before using the word 'crank', because I knew it would tick people off. Cranks, in general, don't realize they're cranks.

But not to state the obvious is to dance around the problem without really addressing it. Folks with political obsessions, little tolerance for any views but their own, and lots of time to post set the tone of the political threads.

I'm not objecting to that. All I'm asking is for them not to turn every thread into a political thread. No, the thread in question isn't 'every thread'. But it's a straw in the wind, a canary in a coal mine, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.

I'm trying to identify a problem before it gets any worse.

johnny novak: in the broadest view, yes, a great many things have a political aspect. But not everything needs to be a partisan snarkfest, and every new scientific finding does not benefit from immediately being crammed into the procrustean categories of us-vs-them, right-vs-left, treehuggers-vs-treechoppers, hippies-vs-soulless-capitalists.

I've used up my day on this. Wisely I hope, but I'm not sure. And now, to bed.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 11:24 AM on December 19, 2003

Slithy_Tove - You still think your own use of slander and Ad-Hominem attack on this thread are not germane to the subject, do you? Do you have special dispensation which you are unwilling to extend to anyone else?

As I said before - you are part of the problem. What has your posse/post today accomplished? A lot of personal, ad-hominem bile has been slung around. For what? An absurdist comment and some snark. I didn't have a grudge against you previously - now I'm a bit pissed off for the personal attacks, and for the waste of time.

Have you ever heard the one about glass houses?

The personal attacks here - as far as I'm concerned - greatly outweigh any sins Mayor Curley or I might have committed in the blue.

"[1]Cranks, in general, don't realize they're cranks......[2]Folks with political obsessions, [3]little tolerance for any views but their own, [4]and lots of time to post set the tone of the political threads. OK, Slithy - you and I have both wasted a lot of time on this (criteria #4). #1 could apply to either of us, potentially. Except that - in regards to Global Warming, I reference mainstream scientific authority - what do authorities do you reference? . #3 - You've launched a bunch of Ad-Hominem broadsides against me. I've been polite.

So - on your own self-determined criteria, you have a higher "crank index" than I do, it would seem.

Your thought experiment, further, isn't appropriate for the simple fact that I've spent a couple of years on Metafilter, in regards to Global Warming, posting and re-posting the work and positions of the most mainstream and respected scientific authorites on the matter - such as the US National Academy of Science.

So, to apply your "thought experiment" to my behavior vis-a-vis Global Warming would be - to extend the logical sequence - to insinuate that The US National Academy of Science is full of cranks. You might be right, I guess, exept for the awkward question - if prominent scientists tend to be cranks, how does science keep producing all of the cool technology?

You know, you are right that some people see politics everywhere. My comment in question - in reference to the fact that the scientific community had missed a major development, "Global Dimming" - apparently for decades - outlined a curious fact of human perception, the fact that humans respond to even very small sudden changes but tend to miss sometimes fairly large changes which are incremental.

You chose to view my example ("Leering Osama in the Sky") as inherently political. I saw it as mostly absurdist. But the fact that you saw that as inherently political suggests to me that you - very much - have politics on your mind. You know, if you bottle it all up inside and never vent your poltical concerns, anger, whatever - well, you probably will see politics eveywhere....

Meanwhile, the fact that you allege that I was alluding to some "conspiracy" there tells me that you have your own axe to grind -

What you call a "conspiracy" is to me simply a point of fact. I think you should know better or, at least, have a clue by now that I don't say such things unless I have a lot of evidence with which to back up my words.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------As a lead in to the issue, check out "Americans For Balanced Energy Choices", a project of CEED [ about CEED in it's own words] CEED aknowledges Global Warming - sort of. ABEC's campaign is actually run by a PR firm in Louisville, Kentucky, Executive Communications, which has a website that'll burn your eyeballs right out of your head. The campaign has won a major PR award for the PR firm hired to conduct the campaign which - it seems - has an awful lot of money to sling around, given the fact that, according to the Annenburg Center For Public Policy, ABEC was the top spender on TV and Print ads in the DC aerea in 2002. ABEC also runs ads on the radio - they were running a lot last year on Boston Public radio stations. ABEC has a really nice website. What the group neglects to mention in it's ads - of course - is that nearly all of the "citizens" in the group work the coal and oil intrests. There's also the Alliance for energy and economic growth. Their website has cute little spinning gears as well as tons of fact sheets, charts and stuff. They spent a lot of time and money on the latest energy bill.

Bruce Sterling has a great bit of collaborative research on CEED/ABEC at his Viridian site

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a partial list of prominent Global Warming skeptic's organizations. Guess who funds them?

One of my favorite outfits runs out of the Heartland Institute, ClimateSearch. They have an amazingly extensive database of articles - all written by the same half dozen or so people. As far as I can tell, they generate extremely tailored talking points. The website is like something dreamed up by P.K.Dick, a self-referential universe. Science? - you won't find it here. This is PR, pure and simple. But that is true of a lot of Think Tank political screed.

As this newspaper reports Foes of Global warming have energy ties.

This Congressional report, "Environmental Science Under Siege", from 1996, sums things up well .

Stifling science continues though - "alarmism'' on trial


This article, "The PR Plot to Overheat the Earth", by Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton (of PR Watch) is excellent.

Here's a nice story on the EPA's gutting of a recent report on Climate Change

The Anti-Kyoto network in the USA

Here's the Wikipedia on Junk Science and they have a lot of links to the Global Warming "Skeptics" Organization at the end of the Global Warming
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, the links I posted in reply to 111 also link to a wealth of material on this, courtesy of Ross Gelbspan;'s Heatisonline.org site. I haven't revisted this territory in a while - but the effort of the petrochemical industry to 1) first attack the validity of research into Global Warming and 2) when that approach became untenable criticize proposed solutions or even just stifle science altogether - are well documented enough.
posted by troutfishing at 12:34 PM on December 19, 2003

Slithy - Further, if you like, I can do some text searches through my computer archives for you - to pull up the appropriate NYT and other mainline news sources covers of that "Conspiracy" (attacks on the authority/integrity of the IPCC and it's members by petrochemical industry interests and affiliated parties). It was news, but it seems you missed the coverage. Do you want to read about it?
posted by troutfishing at 12:41 PM on December 19, 2003

Oh and - on your "crank index" - I neglected to cover #2 (political obsession). As a result of this post, I'd say we're running neck and neck on that one, so it balances out. Also - do cranks employ a lot of personal attacks? If they do, that would push up your "crank" index as well. But you'll have to let me know on that question.
posted by troutfishing at 12:45 PM on December 19, 2003

"The political threads are tolerable because, as people keep pointing out, however bad they are, they're a small part of MeFi. "

The problem is that political threads (in particular "Bush is evil" threads, even as much as I may agree with the sentiment) are quickly becoming intolerable because they're constituting a larger and larger part of Mefi, and it reflects badly on the community as a whole, IMO. I think the last thing we want to see is Mefi becoming the lefty doppelganger of LGF, but it seems like every day we head further and further down that path.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:56 PM on December 19, 2003

Goddam it!

Sun's going down. Right. Now I look at the clock. What a fucking waste of time. I could have done something productive today, but I got suckered into this. For what?



That was one hell of a troll.
posted by troutfishing at 12:58 PM on December 19, 2003

crash - Are you sure you're not commenting in the wrong thread discussion? Or was that a canned, cut-and-paste comment? It doesn't seem to refer to this thread at all, except in very broad terms.
posted by troutfishing at 1:02 PM on December 19, 2003

Crash - By the way, I do actually agree about the stupidity (or uselessness) of the daily "Bush is evil" litany (or just read my comments in the "Seth" Metatalk thread)

I don't think that is what is properly at issue here though.

Slithy_Tove blew up at Mayor Curley for some well written snark and at me for an absurdist comment - and then proceeded to lead a personal attack posse, through Ad-hominem attack - that was joined by y6y6y6 (who later apologized, to his credit) and 111.

The thread was like an excuse for muslinging, almost, though I hardly think that was Slithy's original intention.

The funny thing was that the personal attacks made the thread discussion almost a mirror image of what the "those political post snarkers/bashers are ruining metafilter" crowd has been complaining is occuring in the "BushIsBad™" threads.
posted by troutfishing at 1:15 PM on December 19, 2003

Metafilter is not a lefty doppelganger of LGF, IMHO. We would have to go a very long way (off course) to reach such a situation. Here, reference links, intelligent comment and discussion are the norm.
I don't see political threads as increasing in number, nor do I see an decrease in the quality of debate. What I do see is less parroting of buzz lines and memes that serve to muddy the water. Often people here genuinely seem to care about the issues, and try to get their points across cogently, I don't see that as a problem.
There are not many subjects that I am aware of that do not involve some political or religious element, it's all part of life's rich tapestry.
posted by asok at 1:16 PM on December 19, 2003

But it sure was a big waste of time.


And I'm really more pissed at that than anything.
posted by troutfishing at 1:17 PM on December 19, 2003

Here's a feature request for Matt: when a thread (such as this) turns into a personal pissing contest with 2-4 competitors, it should be closed to all but the active participants, thus constructing a kind of MetaBlastChamber where the combatants can fight it out using whatever rhetorical thermonuclear devices they want without contaminating the neighborhood.
posted by wendell at 1:23 PM on December 19, 2003

Clarification: Slithy I think you are a troll looking for a fight and you picked on some otherwise fine posters to get all riled up about nothing. This kinda says it all "Mayor Curley: I have tangled with you only once". This is not Pro Wrastlen. But I do thank you for not crapping on my thread with this stuff and taking it to MeTa.
posted by stbalbach at 1:39 PM on December 19, 2003

MetaBlastChamber where the combatants can fight it out using whatever rhetorical thermonuclear devices they want without contaminating the neighborhood.: e-mail:P
posted by thomcatspike at 1:40 PM on December 19, 2003

And troutfishing, you're just as out of line:


nope. you just don't fuck with troutfishing -- unless you're fishfucker

troutfishing is a good man. or fish. or whatever.
do not fuck with him
posted by matteo at 1:45 PM on December 19, 2003

wendell - that sounds really cool. No holds barred?

One additional thought. Maybe it should start as a challenge, like in Medieval times, or in grand dueling tradition. This would give opponents a time to prepare and gird for battle. But, like tag-team wrestling, one could choose a partner and - at the agreed hour......

"One two! One two! and through and through! (the vorpal sword went snicker-snack)"

I'll vanquish you with words, be you frumious bandersnatch or jabberwock!
posted by troutfishing at 1:53 PM on December 19, 2003

"that was joined by y6y6y6 (who later apologized, to his credit)"

I didn't apologize for anything. And I don't think I have anything to apologize for here.

Maybe I'm missing the original point of this thread. It seemed to me that the point was something about lousy behavior spilling over from political threads and causing a bad smell in places we wouldn't otherwise see it. Banning political posts would change the character of the site for the better.

The fact that I'm a jackass sometimes doesn't invalidate that argument, it just makes me a hypocrite. Which I'll cop to, but I won't apologize for.
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:21 PM on December 19, 2003

y6y6y6 - Yeah, you're right! In the heat of battle, I blasted away at Slithy_Tove - or was it 111? - and hit you instead. I'm sorry. You don't have anything to apologize for in this thread - and I wasn't trying to bash you over your head with your past behavior. So wipe that sentence "...that was joined by y6y6y6 (who later apologized, to his credit)"


Ambitious fish ascend
posted by troutfishing at 2:41 PM on December 19, 2003

"I wasn't trying to bash you over your head with your past behavior."

Disingenuous, pompous, passive-aggressive jackass.

There. All is better. Traditional, expected rolls have been reestablished. Balance is restored.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:24 PM on December 19, 2003

y6y6y6 - That seems a bit uncalled for or at least unwise - I know you were trying to be funny - probably in light of the fact that I said to you (in the "Seth/BushHateFilter" Thread, I believe) "Damn good point [ flat out compliment, by the way ] - you bastard" ...I may be slow to anger (less slow than I used to be) but once mad, I don't quickly back down. I know you wanted that last comment to defuse things - bear in my that I don't tend to hang onto grudges unless continually provoked....But I wrote this in reaction to your prior comment - after I'd gone back and reread the text I got annoyed again

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[start apocalyptic retort]

As for the point of the thread - that's subjective. I perceived it as political retribution - or some form of counting coup - masquerading as an impassioned point of etiquette.

After making that last comment - because I thought I had been unfair - I went back to the text (again! - this is like a closely reasoned legal battle almost....) of the discussion - you didn't make an ad-hominem attacks against Mayor Curley or I, exactly - you just condoned the ones made by other people!

I backed off a little because I thought I was being unfair. But now I see that you are just spoiling for more conflict, in your fashion.

Really now - do I have to repeat this stupid timeline again? : Slithy_Tove immediately hauled off and accused me of being a conspiracy nut and both Mayor Curley and I of being cranks and political provocateurs - and then proceeded to bash away at the "crank" point throughout the discussion. [The mainstream media's recognition of the petroleum, coal and auto industry funded campaign to discredit Global Warming science in the 90's was not initially well covered by mainstream media. But by 1999 or 2000, even mainline news sources were remarking on it.] This seems so ridiculous to me that I'm amazed to be even going over it again. So no - you didn't exactly make any ad-hominem attacks, unless this counts:

"As you can see Slithy_Tove, people just don't get it. And if they don't get it there's little point in asking them to keep things separate. Most do, but enough don't to make things smell......The solution is to ban political posts"

You know, this reminds me now VERY MUCH of what I was writing at one point on the Seth thread. I feel like this thread amounted to personal bullying to try and achieve political objectives. Planned? Unplanned? I don't think it really matters. "functional analysis" says - What matters is the aggregate effect.

You keep hammering away at the point that political threads must be banned but - I'd be willing to bet that I generate as much relatively neutral and closely reasoned commentary on this site as anyone here and so the targeting mechanism is way off base. Why sling shit at me? I rarely sling it at other people. And Mayor Curley? He's mild too, unless pressed. But one way I can look at this thread is to view it as both "payback" - because I've posted contentious threads in the past - and also to provoke me into slinging around shit myself.

Then, the accusations could fly - "Look, he's slinging shit! Plus, he tried to disrupt stbalbach's nice, interesting thread!"

"Oh and - by the way - there are examples aplenty in which groups truly independent from states - both from the left and from the right - have "polluted the commons" and so provoked authoritarian responses : and there are probably more examples still of agent-provocateurs - acting as proxies for governments and inciting or committing violence - who act to insure a pretext for repression. It can occur in either fashion. The first is the game of terrorists and the second the game of anti-democratic regimes.....These sorts of games, strategies and dynamics apply, of course (in their own fashion), to political rhetoric and to online communities.....And then, of course, many commons can be polluted by mere idiots and assholes which - in our turn - most of us act as from time to time (some more often than others).....But what if - additionally - the "shouters" are simply waiting, itching for a political post to jump on, regardless of whether it has has merit or is incendiary or not, so they can derail it or shut it down by shouting and - this is my key point - so pollute the discourse that the entire category of political posts get banned to protect the 'commons' (Metafilter) ?

- A comment of mine, from The December 15 "Seth/BushHateFilter" post"

But I didn't take the bait and respond in kind. *puts on Sam Spade hat*

If etiquette was the original point, the personal attacks obliterated that immediately....

You know what? I fought very rarely as a kid. And because I tended to be quiet, bullies would -very occasionally- try to pick fights with me. They were always unhappy with the results. Yeah, I can brawl too. I prefer not to. But if necessary, I will. And I can do it for a long, long, long, long, long time.

"Because he doesn't like idiotic people falling all over themselves to insult him for anything he writes? Because it's a waste of his time to write thoughtful posts just to have the conversational equivalent of a high school detention hall (see above) riddle the post with insults and personal attacks? I don't know, ask him. " (December 15, Metatalk, Hama7 on why MidasMulligan stopped participating on Metrafilter very much)

I think Midas Mulligan may have been treated unfairly, regardless of my opinions on his positions. Those are irrelevant. Bullying is bullying, whether by the left, the right, authoritarians (and they take special zest in bullying) or libertarians (they tend to do it less) - It's all mere bullshit.

Anyway, here I am wandering - like Nillson's little Obleo - through the Pointless Forest.

Where's Arrow?

"Me and my arrow.......
straight up and narrow
me and my arrow......."
posted by troutfishing at 4:10 PM on December 19, 2003

troutfishing - don't feed the trolls.

I think you're just fine. I certainly don't have a real problem with you or anything you've said. Just participating in the conversation in my own way. Sorry if I got carried away. I was trying to make fun of myself rather than say anything about you.
posted by y6y6y6 at 5:09 PM on December 19, 2003

How about [brackets] instead of eye-screamingly miniscule text? You don't need to denigrate your points, troutfishing - I wanna read them if they're in print - and easily!!
posted by dash_slot- at 5:52 PM on December 19, 2003

dash_slot - I wasn't actually trying to denigrate my points, but I have a bad habit of posting large blocks of quoted text as if I'm writing a PhD thesis (even though I actually don't even have a real high school diploma) and so I was trying to avoid posting comments that were miles long by compressing some of the text and hoping that anyone who wanted to read those comments could kick up their browser text resolution to 120% or even 150%

But Here is a larger text version

y6y6y6 - Thanks. It's ironic - my gripe wasn't so much with you in the first place. You just jumped into the fray - for your love of Metafilter - and were the only one who was good enough to stick around, through the greater duration of the marathon, to see how relentless I can be.

You know, I was just about to post this and caught a typo there - "....love of Meatfilter". I almost let that one stand.
posted by troutfishing at 7:28 PM on December 19, 2003

It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it

That sentence made the post political.
Slithy: you're pissing in the wind.
posted by mischief at 8:12 PM on December 19, 2003

Wait, wait. Someone mind explaining to me what was wrong with trout's post? I don't get it.
posted by punishinglemur at 8:19 PM on December 19, 2003

What jennyb said.

Also, when I read 'syntactic rodeo' above I thought it was 'synaptic rodeo' and that's a phrase I'm in love with.

*kisses the phrase*

As far as all this brouhaha goes? Sound and fury...
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:31 PM on December 19, 2003

You still think your own use of slander and Ad-Hominem attack on this thread are not germane to the subject, do you? ... A lot of personal, ad-hominem bile has been slung around.

troutfishing: you don't know what 'ad hominem' means.

An ad hominem attack means that one is attacking an individual rather than his views. It is an illegitimate way of trying to win an argument.

The purpose of this thread was to address bad behavior (political bile spilling into non-political threads). It's impossible to address bad behavior without specifying that behavior. That's not an ad hominem attack.

Every MeTa thread about policy/etiquette is going to have to specify who the poster thinks the sinner is, and what they did wrong.

Why all the global warming links? I'm not discussing global warming. The thread in question isn't even about global warming, it's about another geophysical phenomenon. The stuff about the flat-earthers was provided as a humorous example. It doesn't reflect my views of global warming, which are not at issue. You don't have to convince me of anything.

If you think I'm a troll, please review my posting history.
If you think I'm a crank, please review my posting history.

asok: Metafilter is not a lefty doppelganger of LGF, IMHO. We would have to go a very long way (off course) to reach such a situation.

MeFi political threads are a lefty doppelganger of LGF. MeFi as a whole is not, and the point of this MeTa thread is a (possibly vain) attempt to head off that development.

BTW, although I appreciate y6y6y6's support, I don't agree that political threads should be banned. Crazed as they are, MeFi would be a duller place without them.

mischief: Slithy: you're pissing in the wind.

Yeah, maybe. I've slept on this, and I'm still not sure whether I should have posted this stuff. But I see bad things happening to the blue. The blue has been a lot of fun for me, I'd hate to see the entire thing engulfed with politics, and the least I could do was to speak up and name the problem.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 10:33 PM on December 19, 2003

Slithy_Tove - Well I guess the word crank - which you kept hammering at over and over and over in this discussion didn't reply to anything at all then....right?

" I'm asking for political snark and bile to be kept to the political threads.....And MeFi's problem is not trolls, it's
cranks." - So who might these cranks be?

This is getting really tiresome but - here me on this - I won't concede an inch on this - You launch a broadside od ad-hominem attack on Mayor Curley and I.

Your opening statement :

"...And troutfishing, you're just as out of line: Osama, conspiracy theory—WTF, man?

The political threads are tolerable because, as people keep pointing out, however bad they are, they're a small part of MeFi. Butif the crap in them, and the cranks who dominate them start spilling over into every other MeFi thread—we're doomed." [emphasis mine]

So what did "conspiracy theory" refer to anyway? I assumed that it meant that you thought I was making up some conspiracy about the rather well established effort - well established by many indexes including specific traces of the money trail in question, and given the imprimatur of major media coverage - by the petrochemical industry to discredit Global Warming science - specifically the work of the IPCC . Did you mean something else by that? If so, what?

I assumed - correct me if I am wrong - that you were simply unaware of this recently historical chapter in the "Science Wars" and so just made the snap assumption that I was making it up.....was something else going on? Let me know!

I posted a whole mass of substantiating evidence to back up my claim. If you are unwilling to look into it, there's really nothing I can do about that.

"Why all the global warming links? I'm not discussing global warming. The thread in question isn't even about global warming" - Moving right along - if you don't think stbalbach's post concerned Global Warming then you are embarrassing yourself. The study of Global Warming, and global computer modelling, concerns atmospheric dynamics, pure and simple. The "global dimming" phenomenon seems to be a major and overlooked component of atmospheric dynamics.

So what did "conspiracy theory" refer to anyway? I assumed that it meant that you thought I was making up some conspiracy about the rather well established effort - well established by many indexes including specific traces of the money trail in question, and given the imprimatur of major media coverage - by the petrochemical industry to discredit Global Warming science - specifically the work of the IPCC . Did you mean something else by that? If so, what?

Returning to the theme of ad-hominem attacks...."I'm perfectly willing to let the gonzo left dominate the political threads......But if the political thread posse starts to poison other threads" - So who might this "gonzo left" be anyway? Are those just random words which have no referents in the discussion - do you want me to believe that you just sometimes spew out random babble? I don't.

"If you think I'm a troll, please review my posting history. If you think I'm a crank, please review my posting history." - I'm not saying that you are a troll - this thread itself feels like one me. But I'm inclined to think that you had good intentions. That doesn't account for the personal invective though.

Still here is your own definition of a "Troll" :

"A troll is a poster in search of conflict. He says things intended to stir people up, to make them angry, to get them to argue with him. Doesn't matter what, he doesn't have to believe a word he says, he may deliberately lie, he just wants to start a fight. His game is to keep you in an argument as long as possible, to pull your chain and watch you dance." - If you didn't want conflict here, why all the personal invective, the ad-hominem attack?

If you don't concede that you employed these tactics, I simply have to keep posting and re-posting "your own words" to defend my reputation and so - by your very definition you, sir, would seem to be acting as a troll on this thread. Note that I said "acting as a troll on this thread. I'm not calling you one overall.

But personal attack which does not reference the actual facts at hand in the discussion - specifically your allegations of "crankiness" and "conspiratorial thinking" (which you were unwilling or unable to actually provide evidence of) - is one of the primary tactics used in trolling. Ad that to your definition. By the way, here's the Wikipedia definition of an 'Internet Troll'

"On the Internet, a troll is a person who posts messages that create controversy or an angry response without adding content to the discussion, often intentionally. Though technically different from flaming, which is an unmistakable direct personal attack, trolls often resort to innuendo or misdirection in the pursuit of their objective, which is to create controversy for its own sake, discredit those with whom they disagree, or sabotage discussion by creating an intimidating atmosphere...... " (partial definition)
posted by troutfishing at 6:55 AM on December 20, 2003

And look at that - your strategy is working. Not only did I have to waste more time on this silliness today, but I rushed the comment because I have other things to attend to : and so I made lots of typos in the comment and even double posted one paragraph!

You're degrading my style.

I'll keep at this though, as long as necessary.

When I get a chance - or to put it differently, when I make up ( in my meatspace life ) for the ridiculous amount of time I squandered defending myself in this discussion yesterday, I'll post a history of trolling in Metafilter posts about Global Warming.

It's not pretty.


relentless fish climb
posted by troutfishing at 7:15 AM on December 20, 2003

I'd be willing to guess that the campaign to discredit global climate modelling - in the decade from the early 1990's to the present and led by a handful scientists financed by petrochemical dollars ...

That's the conspiracy theory.

I'm not going to debate its validity with you. My point is that it had no place in that thread. You dragged it in to shore up an unprovable speculation about the unknowable motives of nameless climate change researchers. WTF?

You were not, however, the worst sinner. That would be Mayor Curley. My problem with you was two-fold: dragging into the thread two political hobbyhorses, and praising Mayor Curley for his irrelevant and self-indulgent us-vs-them tirade.

So who might this "gonzo left" be anyway?

You know who they are as well as I do. (You don't have to agree that they're 'gonzo'.) Unless they participated in the global dimming thread, there's no point in re-hashing who is doing what in the political threads. It's already been hashed to death in Seth's HateBushFilter MeTa thread that I carefully kept out of. I'm not bringing that up again, the issue is dead.

As for trolling: every troll seeks conflict, but everyone who seeks conflict is not a troll. Sometimes conflict is inevitable if you want to accomplish anything.

I hate conflict. I knew that if I posted this MeTa thread I would get conflict, and I would have to defend my views. I loathed the idea. But I knew that something bad was happening, and I felt I had to at least make a stab at pointing it out and offering a solution, even though I knew full well that that that would provoke conflict.

troutfishing, throughout all your replies in this thread, there is a mistake that you keep making, again, and again. Let me make one last attempt to clarify it for you.

You seem to think that I object to your views on global warming. That I disagree with you on whether energy companies have sponsored anti-global warming researchers.

My views on global warming ARE NOT THE POINT. Your views on global warming ARE NOT THE POINT.

They are irrelevant to this MeTa post. I am not interested in arguing with you about them. (If I wanted to do that, I'd do it in stbalbach's original MeFi post.)

I'm not trying to stop you from posting to stbalbach's or any other thread. (And in fact, after your first post, the rest of your posts to that thread were pretty good, and interesting.)

One last time: I am trying to keep the partisan, vitriol, sarcasm and bile-laden political mentality, that sees the whole world as a battle between Us and Them, that understands the world in terms of conspiracies, confined to the political threads. It is poisonous. It stinks up any thread it appears in. It will ruin MeFi for anyone except the cranks who hold those views, if we let it.

And that's my last word on the subject in this thread, and probably forever. I've said my piece about as well as I can. I've wasted most of a day, probably convinced no one, but in any event, I'm done.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:45 AM on December 20, 2003

Slithy - Through this whole discussion I've been asking that you do one simple thing - take responsibility for your words. You refuse to do that and - in refusing to do so - lose credibility, in my eyes at least.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt to guess that you are doing so for your love of Metafilter. And that's noble except insofar as your self-appointed mission to protect the forum doesn't become an ideology or mania onto itself. Your refusal to acknowledge the attacks you've been making here suggests to me that you've lost some perspective in the process of fighting your good fight.

And - whether at this fairly innocuous level or in more serious affairs, the dynamic - by which those who fight for religious beliefs or ideologies or any "good fight" at all slowly lose perspective and start to make tactical concessions which are convenient but amount to behavior which contradict the belief system one fights for - is the same.

In this forum, personal invective is usually as far as it goes. That's good. But there is a mile wide disconnect between your professed goal - to protect the discourse on Metafilter form "bile" and "vitriol" - and the bile and vitriol I felt subject to from your post here on Metatalk.

Think about it.

Meanwhile (re - the "conspiracy" which you refuse to discuss), what mystifies me is the question of why you won't do a simple Google search except......I guess I know all the appropriate keywords, but still, it shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to triangulate on this stuff.

"I'm not going to debate its validity with you" - So you accuse me of holding a "conspiracy theory" but refuse to engage in a discussion about the facts of the issue? That, my friend, is an incoherent position.

If you are going to launch potentially slanderous broadsides, it's a good idea to be able to back up one's assertions.

"My views on global warming ARE NOT THE POINT. Your views on global warming ARE NOT THE POINT.....They are irrelevant to this MeTa post. I am not interested in arguing with you about them." - Well that's too bad. I think they are very much part of the point given that you asserted that I was indulging in conspiratorial thinking. Your charges against me were about 1) an absurdist comment which you took offense at and 2) That I had brought up a "conspiracy theory"

"Sometimes conflict is inevitable if you want to accomplish anything......I hate conflict." Somehow, this doesn't ring true to me. Personal invective and ad-hominem attacks GUARANTEE conflict. You should know that. Methinks thou dost protest overmuch.

"One last time: I am trying to keep the partisan, vitriol, sarcasm and bile-laden political mentality that sees the whole world as a battle between Us and Them, that understands the world in terms of conspiracies, confined to the political threads." - Well if you consider the campaign to discredit Global Warming science to be a "conspiracy theory" then that reveals - in my mind anyway - that you hold a very pointed political agenda on the matter. (see substantiating material below)

The very fact that you continue to use the word "conspiracy"
to refer to this - and more importantly - as a pejorative term - makes your agenda quite apparent to me.

The PR Watch article below, which I posted almost in it's entirety to emphasize that your "conspiracy" charge is slanderous - is the best material here. I have lots more material tucked away but I'm kind of busy now and so I hope this will suffice (though - somehow - I doubt it will)

"Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming" (may 29, 2003)

Here is a blow by blow of the smear campaign to discredit one leading IPCC scientist

"The Global Climate Coalition, a powerful coalition of oil, power, and auto companies has followed the lead of tobacco companies by denying the harm they cause. They have spent millions of dollars trying to discredit the scientific consensus of the IPCC and slow steps to combat global warming. The public has not fallen for their deception, but the Global Climate Coalition appears to have had some impact on members of Congress.

Among the members of the Global Climate Coalition are: American Electric Power Service Corporation, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Chemical Manufacturers Association, Chrysler Corporation, Dow Chemical Company, Duke Power Company, Edison Electric Institute, Exxon, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Illinois Power Company, Mobil Corporation, National Association of Manufacturers, National Mining Association, Texaco, Union Carbide, Union Electric Company, and Western Fuels Association." From US PIRG (People's Interest research group) website

PR Watch (article below) takes great pains to get it's facts right

PR Watch "The GCC has been the most outspoken and confrontational industry group in the United States battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that included industry trade associations, "property rights" groups affiliated with the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, and fringe groups such as Sovereignty International, which believes that global warming is a plot to enslave the world under a United Nations-led "world government..... 
Global Climate Coalition

The GCC has been the most outspoken and confrontational industry group in the United States battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that included industry trade associations, "property rights" groups affiliated with the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, and fringe groups such as Sovereignty International, which believes that global warming is a plot to enslave the world under a United Nations-led "world government."


Personnel

* Glenn Kelly, Executive Director
* Gail McDonald, President
* William O'Keefe, Chairman, is an executive for the American Petroleum Institute
* Frank Maisano, Media Contact, is a member of the Potomac Communications Group, Inc., whose other clients include Con Edison, the Edison Electric Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency


History

In 1989, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of some 2,500 climatologists from throughout the world, to evaluate the evidence linking industrial greenhouse gas emissions to global warming. The Global Climate Coalition was created in 1989, shortly after the IPCC's first meeting.

The GCC operated until 1997 out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers. Its early members included Amoco, the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Chrysler, Cyprus AMAX Minerals, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, Shell Oil, Texaco, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

For PR and lobbying, the GCC has employed "Junkman" Steven Milloy's former employer, the EOP Group, as well as the E. Bruce Harrison Company, a subsidiary of the giant Ruder Finn PR firm. Within the public relations industry, Harrison is an almost legendary figure who is ironically considered "the founder of green PR" because of his work for the pesticide industry in the 1960s, when he helped lead the attack on author Rachel Carson and her environmental classic Silent Spring.

GCC activities have included publication of glossy reports, aggressive lobbying at international climate negotiation meetings, and raising concern about unemployment that it claims would result from emissions regulations. It distributed a video to hundreds of journalists claiming that increased levels of carbon dioxide will increase crop production and help feed the hungry people of the world. In the lead up to the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the GCC and other industry interests successfully lobbied the US government to avoid mandatory emissions controls.

In 1997, the GCC responded to international global warming treaty negotiations in Kyoto, Japan by launching an advertising campaign in the US against any agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions internationally. This was run through an organization called the Global Climate Information Project (GCIP), which was sponsored by the GCC and the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among others. The GCIP was represented by Richard Pollock, a former director of Ralph Nader's group, Critical Mass, who switched sides to become a senior vice president for Shandwick Public Affairs, the second-largest PR firm in the United States. (Recent Shandwick clients include Browning-Ferris Industries, Central Maine Power, Georgia-Pacific Corp., Monsanto Chemical Co., New York State Electric and Gas Co., Ciba-Geigy, Ford Motor Company, Hydro-Quebec, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble.)

GCIP's ads were produced by Goddard*Claussen/First Tuesday, a California-based PR firm whose clients include the Chlorine Chemistry Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and the Vinyl Siding Institute. Goddard*Claussen is notorious for its "Harry and Louise" advertisement that helped derail President Clinton's 1993 health reform proposal. Its anti-Kyoto advertisements falsely claimed, "It's Not Global and It Won't Work." They also claimed that "Americans will pay the price. . . 50 cents more for every gallon of gasoline." Ironically, there was no treaty at that point, and no government proposals, then or now, have suggested a "50 cent" gallon gas tax.

By 1997, however, the growing scientific and public consensus regarding global warming forced a number of GCC supporters to reconsider the negative PR implications of their involvement in a group that was increasingly recognized as a self-serving anti-environmental front group. BP/Amoco withdrew from GCC after BP's chairman admitted that "the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point." Other prominent companies that have publicly abandoned GCC include American Electric Power, Dow, Dupont, Royal Dutch Shell, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Southern Company, Texaco and General Motors.

In March 2000, GCC announced a "strategic restructuring" designed to "bring the focus of the climate debate back to the real issues." Under the restructuring, individual companies were no longer asked to join the GCC. Instead, membership would be limited to "only trade associations" and "other like-minded organizations." By seeking support from trade associations instead of individual companies, GCC hoped to create a layer of deniability so that affected industries could continue to support its campaign of global warming denial while avoiding boycotts and other public campaigns against individual companies.

The GCC disbanded in early 2002, explaining that it "has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming. The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC." After years spent denying that greenhouse emissions were a serious environmental problem, the organization's parting shot at history combined a tacit admission that it had been wrong all along, along with an endorsement of the Bush admistration's proposal for ineffective "voluntary" industry measures to address the problem.

Funding

The GCC website was decorated with numerous photos of happy children playing in idyllic farm fields, but was not been able to find space to provide any information about its budget or where its money comes from. GCC was not registered as a nonprofit organization and was not required to make public disclosures of its IRS tax filings, so it is difficult to obtain even basic information about its finances. However, the information that is publicly available shows that the GCC has spent tens of millions of dollars on the global warming issue.

According to the Los Angeles Times (December 7, 1997) the GCC spent $13 million on its 1997 anti-Kyoto ad campaign, an amount roughly equivalent to Greenpeace’s entire annual budget.



Common Cause has documented more than $63 million in contributions to politicians from members of the Global Climate Coalition from 1989-1999.

GCC's efforts were coordinated with separate campaigns by many of its members, such as the National Coal Association, which spent more than $700,000 on the global climate issue in 1992 and 1993, and the American Petroleum Institute, which paid the Burson-Marsteller PR firm $1.8 million in 1993 for a successful computer-driven "grassroots" letter and phone-in campaign to stop a proposed tax on fossil fuels.

GCC's members and supporters included the following companies and trade associations:


* Air Transport Association
* Allegheny Power
* Aluminum Association, Inc.
* American Automobile Manufacturers Association
* American Commercial Barge Line Co.
* American Farm Bureau Federation
* American Forest & Paper Association
* American Highway Users Alliance
* American Iron and Steel Institute
* American Petroleum Institute
* American Portland Cement Alliance
* Amoco
* Association of American Railroads
* Association of International Automobile Manufacturers
* Atlantic Richfield Coal Company
* Baker Refineries
* Bethlehem Steel
* BHP Minerals
* Chamber of Shipping of America
* Chemical Manufacturers Association
* Chevron
* Chrysler Corporation
* Cinergy
* CONRAIL
* Consumers Energy
* Council of Industrial Boiler Owners
* CSX Transportation, Inc.
* Cyprus-Amax
* Dow Chemical Company
* Drummond Company
* Duke Power Company
* DuPont
* Eastman Chemical
* Edison Electric Institute
* ELCON
* ExxonMobil
* Fertilizer Institute
* Ford Motor Company
* General Motors
* Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
* Greencool
* Hoechst Celanese Chemical Group
* Illinois Power Company
* Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp.
* McDonnell-Douglas
* Mobil Corporation
* National Association of Manufacturers
* National Lime Association
* National Mining Association
* National Ocean Industries Association
* National Petrochemical and Refiners Association
* Natural Rural Electric Cooperative Association
* Norfolk Southern
* Northern Indiana Public Serv. Co.
* Ohio Edison
* Parker Drilling Company
* Process Gas Consumers
* Shell
* Society of the Plastic Industry
* Southern Company
* Steel Manufacturers Association
* TECO Energy Inc.
* Texaco
* U.S. Chamber of Commerce
* USX Corporation
* Union Carbide
* Union Pacific
* Virginia Power
* Western Fuels Association


Case Study: Accu-Weather's Science for Hire



The GCC claimed that "science must serve as the foundation for overall global climate policy decisions and enhanced scientific research must be the first priority. A bedrock principle addressing global climate change issues is that science -- not emotional or political reactions -- must serve as the foundation for global climate policy decisions." In direct contradiction to these lofty goals, the GCC and individual members provided public platforms for the handful of scientists who are skeptical of the consensus that there is a human influence on the global climate. These scientists generally do not participate in the accepted process of publishing research in refereed journals in order to test hypotheses and conclusions. The also generally do not have expertise in the topic. Moreover, the GCC has gone even further than just providing public relations services for these skeptic scientists. They have also attacked credible and preeminent scientists who are experts in the field.

An example of GCC's own sloppy approach to science occurred in early 1995........"

This PR watch article continues in this vein and provides extensive documentation.

Shall I provide you with more links, or is this sufficient.
posted by troutfishing at 9:24 AM on December 20, 2003

stubborn fish persist
posted by troutfishing at 9:28 AM on December 20, 2003

MeFi political threads are a lefty doppelganger of LGF. MeFi as a whole is not, and the point of this MeTa thread is a (possibly vain) attempt to head off that development.
Lest we forget, asok is the guy who joined on 9/12/01 to gloat, and then complained about being called a troll. It is, thus, unsurprising that he belongs to the MeFi Ostrich Contingent. You know, the guys who continue to shout 'Nothing is wrong!' every time one of these discussions comes up.
posted by darukaru at 6:59 PM on December 20, 2003

what is that thing, trout?
posted by amberglow at 7:22 PM on December 20, 2003

Amberglow - It's a mudskipper. Mudskippers have auxiliary lungs which allow them to breathe air. They're an amphibious fish which are known to crawl around on land and even climb up bushes and trees - a very versatile fish.

Loren Eiseley wrote about them. They make interesting pets, I hear.

darakaru - that has what, specifically, to do with this current thread conversation?....and regarding your "MeFi Ostrich Contingent" - are they avian? What Family or Genus do they belong to?
posted by troutfishing at 8:33 PM on December 20, 2003

Pardon me, I misspelled your name. So - "darukaru - that has what......"
posted by troutfishing at 8:37 PM on December 20, 2003

ahhhh...thanks : >
posted by amberglow at 8:58 PM on December 20, 2003

Ambergolw - You're welcome. I'm actually a business representative for those ambitous fish - we have a binding contract for '04, the mudskippers and I.

They're on the move.
posted by troutfishing at 9:15 PM on December 20, 2003

they are multi-talented--i'll give you that (but maybe look into plastic surgery or a makeover for them)
posted by amberglow at 9:35 PM on December 20, 2003

But if the political thread posse starts to poison other threads, if MeFi becomes just another Democratic Underground or alt.politics.*, something worthwhile will have been lost.

It is poisonous. It stinks up any thread it appears in. It will ruin MeFi for anyone except the cranks who hold those views, if we let it.

metafilter: too democratic for some people?

All the new posts with the suggestion to segregate or ban threads based on the preferences of some individual are creeping me out. Rather than debate posts on which they might be considered to have a weak position, some people are instead seeking to eliminate the debate itself.

And why is any sequence of events that you don't happen to believe labelled a conspiracy? There have certainly been plenty of events in the recent past which would seemed like standard "conspiracy theory" until they were proven true.

Personally, I'm against flash site posts, so I just skip to the next one, I don't try to shut down the whole darned idea.
posted by milovoo at 10:53 PM on December 20, 2003

Amberglow - I prefer to think of them as "charmingly grotesque" and besides, they have their own criteria for attractiveness - fin to tail ration, whatever.

milovoo - Thanks for the support.

The most extreme example of "conspiracy baiting" is the "Tinfoil hat attack". Whenever you want to insinuate, in shorthand, that someone you are arguing with is crazy, just pull out that old Deus-Ex-Machina, the "Tinfoil Hat", as in - "Yeah Trout. Right. Why don't you just go and put on your tinfoil hat."

But there actually was a reason the Romans coined their word for "conspiracy" (literally "to breathe together") - conspiratorial behavior is just one of the things humans, as a species, do. We find shortcut ways to achieve money, power, whatever.

"Rather than debate posts on which they might be considered to have a weak position, some people are instead seeking to eliminate the debate itself." - That's exactly what I've been sensing and thinking.

I've been trying to convey it to Slithy_Tove that to accuse me of believing in (crazy, tinfoil hat) conspiracies while at the same time refusing to discuss the "conspiracy" itself is an illogical position which I could express in shorthand as :

"You talked about X, and that's bad because X is a crazy belief" - "Why is X a crazy belief? Let's discuss the issue" - "I don't want to discuss the issue - this is not about X!"

In a similarly tautological fashion, the mudslinging on this thread discussion seems to have been one sided (I hope, I've tried to be polite), coming mostly from those who are campaigning to shut down political discussion on Metafilter because of mudslinging!

A classic time tested political tactic, which I mentioned earlier on this thread (in one of my tiny-text quotes), is the "Meta-debate strategy" of shutting down debate altogether. Or, to put it differently - cause a ruckus (or make one worse) and then shout "there's a ruckus here. It's a riot. Call the cops! Something needs to be done! Things are out of hand! It's chaos, anarchy!...."

And I'm not saying that's what has been going on in this thread, or even an accurate charactorization of the specific dynamics. That's my subjective sense of what the "Seth" thread and now this one add up to - that's how it feels to me.
posted by troutfishing at 7:24 AM on December 21, 2003

Yes, heaven forbid we actually have a Meta-debate in Metatalk; let's just have arguments about nasty corporations and the evil presidents who support them here too. Sounds like a great idea.
posted by boaz at 7:50 AM on December 21, 2003

boaz - would you be willing to rephrase that statement by wringing out the sarcasm and putting it out on a clothesline to dry for a bit? - I don't find sarcasm to be an an honest debating tactic.

"You talked about X, and that's bad because X is a crazy belief" - "Why is X a crazy belief? Let's discuss the issue" - "I don't want to discuss the issue - this is not about X!"

You can call this debate if you wish. I don't. I call it tautology.

I don't believe that George W Bush played any sort of significant role in this discussion. I did bring up an historical record of corporate behavior in response to Slithy_Tove's "conspiracy" allegation - so that was appropriate to the discussion at hand.
posted by troutfishing at 9:56 AM on December 21, 2003

boaz - would you be willing to rephrase that statement by wringing out the sarcasm and putting it out on a clothesline to dry for a bit? I don't find sarcasm to be an an honest debating tactic.

OIC, so you were actually straightforwardly predicting the public reaction to the visage of Osama appearing in the sky, and Mayor Curley's original comment, which you wrote quite approvingly of, was merely expressing his honest opinion too? Well, with these shining examples of healthy, honest debate, how could anybody dare complain?[/sarcasm]

Oh yeah, to dry it out a touch, you're now complaining about someone making a sarcastic retort to a straightforward comment, in a Meta thread complaining about people (you, for one) making sarcastic responses to a straightforward, interesting Mefi post. What's your angle here exactly?
posted by boaz at 12:20 PM on December 21, 2003

boaz - "you're now complaining about someone making a sarcastic retort to a straightforward comment" Well it's more that your sarcastic statement just didn't have a lot to do with the actual discussion in this thread, specifically for the statement "let's just have arguments about nasty corporations and the evil presidents who support them here too."

No one on this thread has actually challenged my case on corporate spending to discredit Global Warming research. So no argument there. Furthermore, as I said, G W Bush hadn't made much of an appearance until you brought him up.

So I'm not sure what your statement actually referred to in the discussion. That's why I called you on it. It seemed to rely on stock sorts of political attack language not relevant to this specific discussion.

I liked Mayor Curley's remark. So I said so. If that makes me a partisan, so be it - but I've spent about two years fending off the very sort of comments Mayor Curley was parodying, and all sorts of permutations of the "Global Warming is" - baloney, a liberal plot, a tree-hugger plot, etc. by posting and reposting stuff from the US National Academy of science and various other mainstream sources.

I hope I have time to go through all the Global Warming threads and collect this stuff to post it here. We'll see. If I do, I'll post it as an adjunct link.

I thought Curley's statement was funny exactly for the fact of the "Not-a-conspiracy" (which I provided a considerable amount of information on in this thread to support my case) to smear and discredit Global Warming research and to cast the issue as the agenda of extremist luddistic, irrational groups on the political fringe.

I make a distinction, really, between positions which express legitimate differences of political opinion and positions which amount to at least a partial rejection of science.

An example of the first would be the invasion of Iraq - good? bad? That's a question of opinion, I'd say.

Now for an example of the second, take a case even more extreme than the Global Warming debate - Evolution vs. Creation. So - "Evolution: real or hoax?" I don't find the "hoax" opinion legitimate in the same sense as in the first case due to the fact that I believe in science.

So I think Curley's parody was on better ground than had he written about, say, Iraq for the reason that many of the less practiced Global Warming skeptics and self appointed "anti-environmentalists" do tend to make incoherent arguments and are often dismissive of mainstream science.

So I find the fact that I've sometimes been cast as an environmentalist partisan funny - for the fact that, as my main argumentative modus operandi I just reference mainstream, peer reviewed research and then post links to it. Radical, I guess.

Meanwhile - of the "Osama in the Sky" - read into it what you will. There's no objective fact of the matter and, further, you could cast many images I could have otherwise used as political - George Bush's face, or Barbara Streisand's, Howard Dean's head.....

Was that imagery of mine "left" ? I could make a case that it could be "right" as well. It's rather subjective and, as such, a great Rorschach test.

I guess Osama Bin laden must be a really sore point for you and Slithy_Tove, to the point that you think it's illegitimate to say his name in any other context but that of a an overt political discussion.

Do you propose language police who woul roam Metafilter, scanning for inappropriate and potentially politically loaded words and imagery?
posted by troutfishing at 2:40 PM on December 21, 2003

I think Slithy Tove choose the wrong post. It's sad, but climate science is wrapped up in politics. If this happened in the thread about the new space telescope, I'd see his point. But rather than find a fitting post he clearly wants to point out a couple people and stick some labels on them while claiming he is trying to save Metafilter from some horrible fate.


troutfishing,

Thanks for all the fish...I mean, links.
posted by john at 3:21 PM on December 21, 2003

john - you're welcome. I should slap together a page on that subject. I have much more material than that. And the subject broadens out to the overall issue of science, objectivity, truth, and society - so it's almost endless.

Fuzz, at the end of the "Global Dimming" thread, has some interesting observations in that subject.
posted by troutfishing at 3:35 PM on December 21, 2003

It seemed to rely on stock sorts of political attack language not relevant to this specific discussion.

Oh the sickening irony it all. Well, then let's make it simple; here's you going on about Bush in Meta. Was it a different post? Yes, but one you yourself referred to in the comment immediately preceding mine. If your comment was relevant, then it's clear mine is too.

I guess Osama Bin laden must be a really sore point for you and Slithy_Tove, to the point that you think it's illegitimate to say his name in any other context but that of a an overt political discussion.

Illegitimate, or just "sarcastic" and "not relevant"? You decide. Since you're now in the 20th paragraph of you complaing about how I'm being sarcastic and not relevant, you'd best make up your mind already. You've pretty much proved with your own responses here how damaging sarcasm and dragging in stuff that "didn't have a lot to do with the actual discussion in this thread" can be to a conversation, which, surprise, was the point of Slithy_Tove's Meta post. Earnestly prattling on (and on and on and on) about how bad it is now that it's your ox getting gored just makes you sound foolish.
posted by boaz at 5:23 PM on December 21, 2003

boaz - first of all, this is not the "Seth" thread. Are we going to play the game of digging into our respective comment histories? And - if so - why not go back to grade school? Why not consult our mothers? "He was such a nice child, but he always........" I can play that game - but I don't think it's an especially productive game at all. It's a "blame game", one which tends to provoke conflict rather than defuse it......and, since you seem to be saying that you want to defuse conflict on Metafilter, I would imagine that you wouldn't want to go that route.

Otherwise, your stated intent and your behavior are at cross purposes.

America, as a notion, concerns the land of eternal forgiveness, the new leaf, the fresh start. Do you think those are good values?

Beyond that - in any sort of conflict resolution - it's necessary to focus on establishing a neutral style of discourse before invoking the spectre of the past.

What you didn't mention about my "Bush Administration rant" on the "Seth" thread is that I carefully refrained there from making any personal attacks against anyone on Metafilter - or indeed anyone at all save for the collective "Bush Administration", but that would amount quite a crowd.

For that, there is a fundamental distinction between this discussion and the "Seth" post : Seth, to his credit, did not single out one or two individuals as somehow representative of the decline in the tone of discussion on Metafilter. This post did single out individuals. In that, I think that it was wildly off base, given that mayor Curley and I are - in terms of making personal attacks - two of the milder individuals on Metafilter. Given your opening statement here, I'd guess that you haven't read the entirety of this thread. If you have, I suggest you might profit from re-reading it, for my comment on bullies and bullying.

Once again, my earlier take on Slithy_Tove's posts applies here also : you entered this thread with a statement which mischaracterized the previous discussion : "Yes, heaven forbid we actually have a Meta-debate in Metatalk; let's just have arguments about nasty corporations and the evil presidents who support them here too. Sounds like a great idea." - I didn't say anything about corporations in general, and I didn't say anything specific at all about G W Bush. Were you referring to another president, Bill Clinton perhaps, or George Bush Sr. ? I didn't mention either of those two in this discussion - and I mentioned G W Bush once, in this statement, to Mr_Crash_Davis - "Crash - By the way, I do actually agree about the stupidity (or uselessness) of the daily "Bush is evil" litany"

So why would you write that? If it was simply a mistake, just tell me and I'll accept your word. But If you don't do so, I'll have to suggest that you might want to try to characterize the words of others accurately, since distortion is one of the tactics common to the language of political attack. It is fundamentally dishonest. You wouldn't want to be guilty of that - for such is the behavior of bullies and trolls :

"On the Internet, a troll is a person who posts messages that create controversy or an angry response without adding content to the discussion, often intentionally...." - boaz, that's the current wikipedia definition of an internet "troll". You can change the definition if you like, you know, but someone else will probably change it right back. So - do you really want to act as a troll?
posted by troutfishing at 8:33 PM on December 21, 2003

THIS IS ALL THE RESULT OF NORDIC ADVENTURISM AT ITS MOST UNCTIOUS.
posted by quonsar at 11:11 PM on December 21, 2003

boaz - first of all, this is not the "Seth" thread. Are we going to play the game of digging into our respective comment histories?

What part of "you yourself referred to [the "Seth" thread] in the comment immediately preceding mine" did you fail to understand here, trout? Do you need a link?

Now then, I fail to see how pointing out how flagrantly you are violating the same mores that you are claiming are my weaknesses (sarcasm and bringing up things "not relevant to this specific discussion") qualifies as bullying or trolling. After all, if you had been able to resist making a (follow me here) 1) sarcastic comment that 2) brought up something "not relevant to this specific discussion", then you never would have gotten called out in this Meta thread and you wouldn't have had to waste thousands of words defending yourself against a charge you're so plainly guilty of. You can only keep on playing your little 'when you do it, it's "sarcastic" and "not relevant"; when I do it, it's legitimate' game so long.
posted by boaz at 11:16 PM on December 21, 2003

you can literally smell the nordicity in this room.
posted by quonsar at 12:04 AM on December 22, 2003

I blame Persian dualism.
posted by languagehat at 7:55 AM on December 22, 2003

Languagehat - Uh oh. Is that a new meme? What have I done.....and for that matter, where was Persia anyway? If Persia's ancient boundaries are at question, how do we even know that Persian Dualism is really Persian ? ! (hee hee )

Meanwhile (back to the current slugfest between boaz and I) "I fail to see how pointing out how flagrantly you are violating the same mores that you are claiming are my weaknesses....qualifies as bullying or trolling." (boaz) I'm not really sure of which mores I've so flagrantly violated.

"....if you had been able to resist making a (follow me here) 1) sarcastic comment that 2) brought up something "not relevant to this specific discussion, then you never would have gotten called out in this Meta thread"

As far as I can tell, the single thing I said in the thread which was not relevant to the subject was to use the name "Osama Bin Laden", in the context of a larger comment which was in fact highly relevant to the discussion at hand.

So : Osama Bin Laden! Bin Laden! Jehovah! Jehovah!.....

But seriously now - If you want to accuse me of something more than my choice of personality for my "floating head in the sky" device ", for not choosing some other personality which you or Slithy wouldn't take offense at, we'll have to establish a "Metafilter absurdist comment clearance committee" so that in the future I can choose innocuous persons to grace my examples....(Mel Torme' perhaps, unless you've got a problem with him) - well then, I guess I'll have to spend a few thousand more words spelling out in excruciating detail the specific relevance of each comment you see fit to challenge. I don't have time right now, so I'll post this link as a placeholder for my "relevancy footnote". It won't work immediately - It will take me a day or three to do the work - it's Christmas, see, and I really want to see "Lord of The Rings 3" .....But be forewarned - I don't usually make statements which I can't support with good evidence, even seemingly offhand comments. Ask chemgirl, re Miguel Cardoso's wonderful recent Love/ lust post. She thought I was making it up. Not.

...and you wouldn't have had to waste thousands of words defending yourself against a charge you're so plainly guilty of." Actually I consider the time spent to be a highly valuable educational experience. Thank You (and Slithy) for the opportunity. However, I believe you are now in the position of defending yourself - as was Slithy_Tove earlier in the discussion Am I wrong?

boaz, Slithy_Tove started the post with ad-hominem attacks against Mayor Curley and I - through accusations of "conspiracy" mongering and "crankiness" and then you entered this discussion midway by mischaracterizing the discourse by - apparently - making false statements about what I had said in the discussion - a distortion of the discourse. (I'll go into detail on that further along in this comment)

As I said in my last thread comment, it would undercut your position - as someone who professes to be deeply concerned with civil discourse and the overall tone of discussion on metafilter - to use rhetorical tricks rather than logic to advance your case against me.

It would be incoherent to use those tactics here to advance your case. You would risk the charge of hypocrisy.

I think my case against you - and Slithy_Tove - is by far the more significant one here due to the fact that the alleged "crimes" occurred right here in this thread and amounted to personal attacks and distortion rather than argumentative points of order (more on that later, too) : and Slithy's Ad Hominem attacks and your unsupportable distortion of the discourse are made far more significant for the fact that both you and Slithy_Tove profess to be deeply concerned about the tone of discussion on Metafilter, of the degradation in the quality of discourse and the increase in ad-hominem attacks.

Why use those sorts of tactics here if they are part of the overall problem?

Let's revisit your opening statement :

"Yes, heaven forbid we actually have a Meta-debate in Metatalk; let's just have arguments about nasty corporations and the evil presidents who support them here too. Sounds like a great idea." - I neither said anything here about corporations in general or about any "evil presidents", though I did mention the word "Bush" once, to say that I thought BushHateFilter posts tended to be stupid or counterproductive, and then I mentioned G W Bush several times, in response to your "discussing evil presidents" , to note that I hadn't mentioned G W Bush prior to your "evil presidents" comment.....

OK, that's one touchstone.

Now - on your specific charge, that I made reference to a thread discussion other than this one in the discussion - you can try to bust my ass for referring to the Seth thread (where I made a political rant at one point) but my reference to it was extremely circumspect ("That's my subjective sense of what the "Seth" thread and now this one add up to - that's how it feels to me.") and - crucially - I referred to the Seth thread as such - as, explicitly, a reference to an outside thread. So my meaning was quite clear.

Now - to go back to your opening statement, for contrast, you may have have meant or intended to say that I have criticized G W Bush - or corporate behavior in America - in past Metafilter discussions. But how would I, or the larger audience reading this, know that unless you made it explicit? And since you did not make it explicit, your statements amounts to a false description of the preceding discourse on this thread - whether you intended it as such or not.

Now - on your "Seth thread reference" charge - as I said, I'd be more than happy to play the game of going into all of your comment history - and you in turn can go into mine - to look for "crimes" - but I consider that a recrimination game one which doesn't defuse conflict but, rather, makes it worse.

And defusing conflict on Metafilter is your mission, isn't it?

Further, there's a temporal qualification to be made here.

Allow me an example to demonstrate my point. Imagine : my neighbor comes up to me and - out of the blue - hauls off and punches me in the nose, knocking me on my ass. "What the hell'd you do that for", I ask. "Well", he says, "You let your dog take a crap on my sidewalk last week, and my wife stepped in it just as we were going out to dinner. She was so disgusted, it ruined her night." "You know", I say "If you or she had told me at the time. I would have apologized until I was blue in the face and then tried to make it up to you both in some way...but it was wrong to just punch me in the nose like that!"

Meaning - it can be, and often is, much less justified to attempt to exact revenge - justified or not - for past crimes. Sometimes of course, past crimes are so egregious, such as in mass murder or genocide, that the statute of limitations extends almost indefinitely.

To call someone on a present alleged crime is by far the most productive course of action, for it allows them either to argue in their own defense or to apologize and make retribution.

Here in our Metafilter fishbowl world, how long does the statute of limitations on past "crimes" extend?

Further, I backed up my "Seth" thread reference with a great deal of fairly closely reasoned argumentation, with logic, and with a mountain of supporting evidence to buttress my claim that Slithy_Tove had started this post with ad-hominem attacks on me and Mayor Curley.

And - for all that - I still did not haul off and slug any of my argumentative opponents with direct characterizations (which would have been slanderous). Instead I said "this feels to me like..." and "this seems like...." . That's a very important difference. And, in this vein, I also tried quite hard to refrain (successfully, I hope) from mischaracterizing the statements of others in this discussion - hence all the quotes.

Anyway, boaz (and Slithy_Tove, if you are reading this) - I hope both of you have a nice Christmas/religious observance period/secular holiday, one which lets you forget nuisances such as this debate.

111 - Well you were just rude, flat out. Merry Christmas, nonetheless.
posted by troutfishing at 10:09 AM on December 22, 2003

Ho ho ho.
posted by troutfishing at 10:15 AM on December 22, 2003

pectoral fin workout
posted by troutfishing at 10:21 AM on December 22, 2003

Metafilter: lets you forget nuisances such as this debate
(and that little guy's growing on me, trout)
posted by amberglow at 11:21 AM on December 22, 2003

troutfishing, Merry Christmas. Be sure the dates you eat are yellow!
posted by 111 at 12:53 PM on December 22, 2003

So : Osama Bin Laden! Bin Laden! Jehovah! Jehovah!.....

*cough*troll*cough* .... and Happy Holidays
posted by boaz at 1:20 PM on December 22, 2003

And if you really need a committee to tell you when you're making sarcastic, irrelevant comments, then I guess pity is a better response than ire. I apologize for any of the latter that may have seeped out.
posted by boaz at 1:46 PM on December 22, 2003

Well - so I guess we agree to disagree. Gee, why didn't I think of that before?

*note to self : "maintain hard line negotiating position, but say nice things on a personal basis" - hmm*

boaz - That WAS a troll. A good natured one though. Maybe a Troll-let? a troll-lite? Minitroll?..... A mean spirited troll would have been......a picture of G W Bush accidentally dropping a little dog on it's head in front of aghast children, or quonsar's famous elephant with diarrhea - yick. I can think of worse, but you get the picture I'm sure.

Happy holidays. You can always return to press your case later. What's the statute of limitations for comments before the thread is archived? Another two or three weeks?

111- How do you know those are dates? They could be many, many things, my friend. Like aliens, say. But I like the idea that someone in the Bush Adm. colored them yellow in Photoshop to screw with the heads of people on the US left, to get them to propose weird conspiracy theories. Given my political leanings, I find that strangely funny. Merry Christmas.

amberglow - the smaller fish looks a bit like an alien and - I wonder - how do they stick to that plant they are climbing? Do they have special little grappling hooks in their pectoral fins or something? And why are they driven to do that? I haven't yet run across the explanation, so I think the behavior is a little sinister, although cute too. I'm keeping an eye on them. Merry X-mas to you too.
posted by troutfishing at 1:48 PM on December 22, 2003

Happy holidays. You can always return to press your case later. What's the statute of limitations for comments before the thread is archived? Another two or three weeks?

Well, if you are to be believed, the six days since your comments in The "Seth" Thread™ is actually longer than the statute of limitations, so I'll promise to be done by the 27th.
posted by boaz at 2:03 PM on December 22, 2003

Ahh, back for more.....I am certainly not to be believed, nor are you.

So, is this a theological discussion? Because I have not studied theology.....

It seems now, to my addled brain, that the Seth thread is the scripture from whence all flows.....I may need a few days also.

Maybe we can request of matt that the thread be kept permanently open !

But so much tense back and forth...maybe this is love!
posted by troutfishing at 10:41 PM on December 22, 2003

Well, I did figure that some sort of religious conversion in the last 5 days was only logical explanation for your claims of irrelevance. Turned over a new fish, did you?
posted by boaz at 11:11 PM on December 22, 2003

Anyway, boaz (and Slithy_Tove, if you are reading this) - I hope both of you have a nice Christmas/religious observance period/secular holiday, one which lets you forget nuisances such as this debate.

There is no Santa, and Rudolph is his reindeer.

Merry Christmas (or other appropriate seasonal holiday) to you, too, troutfishing!
posted by Slithy_Tove at 12:08 AM on December 23, 2003

Merry Christmas, Slithy.

Boaz - You're as stubborn as I am.
posted by troutfishing at 7:34 AM on December 23, 2003