Freeman Hunt wrote: Someone will almost certainly chime in, "Althouse started it!" Even if one thought that were true, and I don't, what difference would that make? Taking advantage of an event to manipulate people into hating each other, into bringing out the worst in themselves is wrong.
I'm one of those who does believe Althouse started it, and I can even quote her in the specific blogpost. It didn't help that Amba concurred with her. But that was just the beginning and it escalated over a period of about a week during which Althouse specifically targeted specific commenters. Personally, I always wondered, if she were going to stoop to that, why didn't she go after others? That she made a mockery of her neutrality is almost an empirical fact with evidentiary basis.
I hope we can all be reconciled, one to another, in the end. Our conversations on that blog sometimes brought out the very best in each of us.
Yes, that is my hope as well. But none of us can make that happen.
I feel bad about Trayvon Martin. I do not relish his death and I feel bad for his parents. But convicting Zimmerman would have been very wrong given what happened. This remains a tragedy, but a conviction would have been a travesty.
Freeman Hunt is loyal to her friend Ann Althouse. I get that. I respect it. She is entitled to her opinion. But I also know Meade was stirring the pot and causing all sort of trouble and without provocation or evidence. I respect Meade defending his wife, but I do not respect the way he does it. He is a person of low character (in my opinion).
And Ann shut down her comments. She has the right to do it, but she should not complain when traffic drops off and Amazon sale commissions go down. If her commentators are her customers, she might consider the Mr. Selfridge motto: "The customer is always right." If her blog was a salon for commentary, then it is a salon for commentary. Yes there was abuse by some commentators, J was especially vile (and I suspect that psychopath is still out there lurking) but ultimately this was Ann's decision. She should own that.
"Freeman Hunt, Meade is a big instigator. He went after Fred4Pres with no basis and when it was pointed out to him refused to acknowledge it. I have not commented at Althouse, since I started blogging (with a few minor exceptions)."
Your lack of self-awareness is interesting. You didn't post at Althouse because you were banned due to your name and avatar being a direct insult to her.
Meade is a man of high character, but I question his judgement in entering the fray. What's the point arguing with people so self-absorbed they can't see their own contributions to this mess?
Freeman: We'll have to agree to disagree. Any host who heads gleefully into "splooge stooge," "LOSER!," you-don't-deserve-any-woman-to-have-sex-with-you territory is being vicious.
Perhaps we should take a poll.
(2) She didn't turn off the comments because of the disagreement.
The writing was on the wall July 4th that Althouse had melted down. Mary was just the rationalization a couple days later. I know you like the rationalizations, but it was inevitable, like a bad break-up with a fucked-up lover.
Shit happens. This has been snowballing for years. She was not acting in a vaccuum. She and her arch-nemesis here are cut from the same cloth.
Disagree. Again, Althouse is a professional. She wouldn't spit in the university's president's face just because he was an ass.
Althouse has control. If she chooses not to bother, it's still a choice.
If she was tired of the commenter community, she could have told us she had to hang it up for a while, and I'll bet there would have been a huge outpouring of support -- "We get it, take care and god bless."
Instead she went vicious and I had the impression she enjoyed it.
"Freeman Hunt is loyal to her friend Ann Althouse. I get that. I respect it. She is entitled to her opinion."
Don't brush off my opinion as a necessary offshoot of some special relationship I have with Althouse. Althouse and I have never met. We do not carry on regular correspondence outside of her now defunct blog comments.
She's being unfairly and often cruelly attacked. It's wrong.
Bloggers and commenters look like letters on a screen, but they aren't. They are real human beings with their own lives, their own thoughts, and their own feelings. We should treat each other better than we do. It's not just text.
Freeman, The tone of a business is set by the CEO. The tone of a ball team, by the coach. The tone of a school, by the principal. The tone of a blog, by the blogger. Pretty basic shit. "We reap what we sow."
It's weird if you don't watch television to see the popular reaction to things on Facebook. TV must have been pushing a "Zimmerman is obviously guilty" narrative.
Being other than totally not dumb, it would be easy to ruin a blog comments section; the easiest way is to have comments like they are set up on this blog instead of comments, YES it can be confusing, but nonetheless comments VIA TIME POSTED and no other way is the only workable means to this end.
"For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them. — Orson Welles, to Kenneth Tynan (1967)"
She's being unfairly and often cruelly attacked. It's wrong.
First, I agree. I followed the very last comment thread by gmail which showed the (now deleted) staccato posts by "Mary" which were a stated reason why Althouse shut things down. But Mary wasn't a new problem, just a worsening one. Further, Althouse has her IP address & rcommal even knows who she is. Why is one person allowed to bring things to a screeching halt? Or are we not on the same page?
Second, I think there is a pride issue at stake here for Althouse. involving a complex mixture of: (i) chronic aggravation by opposite minded thinkers using puerile humor which is hard to counter; (ii) actual thought-out opposition, often using reasoning; (ii) someone's odd notion that all opinions must at all times be counterbalanced lest some sort of echo chamber resonate; (iv) professional rivalry; and (v) utterly human (and thus forgivable) emotion.
Having the IP doesn't help if you can't ban. You still have to manually delete. I think between having to do that and dealing with the repetitive puerile stuff, it just became an onerous chore.
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girl friends. And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys. — Orson Welles
I'm one of those who does believe Althouse started it, and I can even quote her in the specific blogpost. It didn't help that Amba concurred with her.
Amba was involved in this? Our Amba? I missed that. Can you site the post where that took place, Chickelit? I'm just curious as I didn't think Annie had commented over there in years, now.
Paddy O, there is an element of truth in what you are saying, but you pretend you are above it all. Of course there was a lot to like about the Althouse blog and community, hence the reason people went there. But it has gotten increasingly dysfunctional and there is little debate and interaction going on. Well at least back when the last big dust off happened. I did not participate in the site over the last year (other than an occasional visit).
But when Meade decided to attack Fred4Pres (falsely) and attacked my other friends I fought back. And I make no apologies for that.
Beyond that, if Ann decides to open up comments tomorrow, good for her. I suspect she will have less commentators than she did before she closed them. Frankly the smart move would be to do that. Her current strategy is a disaster. While it will gall her to admit she was wrong, she is going to be facing some harsh reality soon--her blog is far less without commentators.
Hey Spinelli, If you remember I bought my mother your wife's new book on kindle. She was visiting Italy as her 80th birthday present and read it while traveling. She said she absolutely loved it, and couldn't put it down. Please tell your wife thanks for helping me giver her that. I try to make every day as enjoyable as possible for her, and your wife's book seemed to deliver some of that.
She didn't tell anybody until she got back that her doctors had found substantial cancer invading her spleen and bowel before she left, and that when she got back she was having surgery. She had that surgery last week and they removed her spleen and part of her intestine. This is her third cancer surgery including losing one kidney a few years ago. She called me the day after the surgery in pretty good spirits, and that's when she told me how much she loved the book. If the surgery had gone bad, it would have been the last thing she read.
The surgery went very well, and the doctors said they got it all for now. My mom is quite an irrepressible lady, and she was telling me how much she enjoyed her self-controlled morphine drip. She asked me if she could hold off pushing the button for a while and save them up for a party night. That's my mom alright. She's been up walking the halls since the day after the surgery at 80 freaking years old. I'm blown away by her.
Anyway, one very good review from my mom on that fine book.
Your lack of self-awareness is interesting. You didn't post at Althouse because you were banned due to your name and avatar being a direct insult to her.
Actually Meade wanted me to have some sort of private email exchange with him, but I got a feeling that he was grooming me or something. I could have engaged in some sort of Mary thing there, but I did not.
And I can't help it if Ann is jealous about my hair being more fabulous than her's.
Of course Zimmerman is innocent. That was obvious, and you would understand that if you watched Fox News or listened to right wing radio, or paid attention to the evidence and understood the very simple legal concepts involved.
But if you watched MSNBC, or listened to left wing talk radio, you would have little choice but to see this as some kind of inevitability of White power and racism or something. You would believe that people like Rush Limbaugh are to blame for brainwashing virtually everyone necessary to get Zimmerman off unjustly.
I listened to both side's media, and it was like watching two different trials, and both of them were a travesty of justice.
And a big thank you to the ladies on that jury. I'm very glad they proved me wrong for expecting them to find a way to screw it up. They seemed to act very conscientiously, seriously, and efficiently.
It can be very satisfying to be wrong about things sometimes. I was prepared to pretty much give up on the legal system. Thanks again ladies. Now could you prove me wrong in the next election, please.
Lem, you could end that by telling the anonymous folks to get pseudonyms.
I will do than in an upcoming post. Thanks for suggesting ways to improve the blog. I'm astonished by the privilege you guys have granted me trough no big effort on my part.
Very much agree. They fulfilled their duty scrupulously, thank god.
I feel for them now, though. They're likely to receive much vilification (e.g. accusations of racism, being turned into symbols of racism) in the days to come.
Meade caught that pompous and condescending thang a while ago. Interesting how Meadey likes to give out personal details of others. And why would anyone want to communicate directly with him?
I agree the jury did a good job. I did not watch a lot of television on Zimmerman. I ddi read a lot of blogs about it. And when the trial happened, I watched as much of it as I could. Zimmerman was definitely not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Glad to see so many commenters, whose insights and comments I enjoyed, have migrated over here. I stopped commenting when the personal slurs and vituperation got a bit over the top for me. I like to restrict my comments to things I know about: mainly military issues and national security issues. Don't know if Lem plans to include those topics--if so, I will post, if not I will just read what my former colleagues from the other blog have to say.
The jury verdict was correct. The acquittal was correct. The very charge, as brought, was a miscarriage of the legal system and an indictment of the political one. Reasonable doubt is a sacred cornerstone, and so should it be.
Zimmerman, however, was not and is not innocent. This is one of the dirty little secrets. While not actionable in a court of law, he was a wannabe and a loose cannon, and no community in its right mind should ever have wanted him policing their neighborhood to start with, and nor should they now. I mean that. He's pretty close to as far from a poster child for responsible Local Watch, much less Stand Your Ground (both in which I believe, rather strongly) as I can imagine.
So, now that the verdict is in, can we at last start talking about some of the silly-ass decisions that Zimmerman made? (And, also, stop vilifying, in a knee-jerk way, Trayvon Marton as some sort of uber-gangsta-criminal-murderous-piece-a-shit-bastard?)
Seriously. Is this sort of conversation even possible?
Today in haste I posted a list of links on the wrong f'n blog. One of them was "insect food." Hours elapsed, visits but no comments, because it's the wrong blog. Oi. So I removed them in haste too because I had to leave. It's senseless for me to keep posting links back without fruitful discussion, so I think I'll stop it.
Maybe keep it alive limply, for items that would flat piss off a Wisconsin troll, and duplicate that in full and meanly cut off comments. Just to have it out there twice. As paybacks. But that's all. And I can go back to the quiet pace of my own little faintly visited sites.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
Man, did I ever have a good time tonight.
I made salads for 10 people that is so simple, so magical, so unexpected that it blew them away and made them not care for the rest of dinner. We all could have stopped right there.
Wanna hear it? Wanna hear it? Okay, iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing made at home and packed with blue cheese so that it is lumpy, none of this 'one tiny lump of blue cheese nonsense, no Siree, : Cream, mayonnaise, blue cheese.
It is a landscape. A mountain with detritus at the bottom and a snow avalanche. The mountain detritus is avocado cubes, cucumber cubes, watermelon cubes, grape halves, slightly burnt pecans, toasted sourdough croutons. The avalanche does not touch these things, but combined on the plate, the combination of no-nonsense blue cheese with watermelon and grapes was the thing that got them right off, and I didn't mix them, they did, they created those combinations themselves and discovered for themselves how fantastic that is.
Now, it wouldn't do to go pouring blue cheese over watermelon and grapes, that must occur by accident on their plate, like peanut butter and chocolate accidentally touched.
And now you have the means to become neighborhood Salad King. Please use your power wisely and always for the side of good.
On flame wars, and why anybody could ignore them, Levinas ends a preface :
"The word by way of preface which seeks to break through the screen stretched between the author and the reader by the book itself does not give itself out as a word of honor. But it belongs to the very essence of language, which consists in continually undoing its phrase by the foreword or exegesis, in unsaying the said, in attempting to restate without ceremonies what has already been ill understood in the inevitable ceremonial in which the said delights."
The comment section really began going downhill when Inga, in her many incarnations, decided to infect it with constant thread jacking and insults that only egged on the other commenters to retaliate. Any threads that she inhabited would soon degenerate into chaos.
Then when Althouse decided to enter the mosh pit and start slinging mud at her commentators in general and even worse started picking on certain commenters, that just set the tone to further incivility and chaos.
A professional should stay above the fray or moderate the discussions either through actual moderation or by setting an example. Unfortunately the example that was set by Althouse was not a good one.
DBQ The comment section really began going downhill when Inga, in her many incarnations, decided to infect it with constant thread jacking and insults that only egged on the other commenters to retaliate. Any threads that she inhabited would soon degenerate into chaos.
Then when Althouse decided to enter the mosh pit and start slinging mud at her commentators in general and even worse started picking on certain commenters, that just set the tone to further incivility and chaos.
Yes, but remember when she did try to tidy things up and deleted some Inga, Ritmo, Trooper, and AllenS.? You would have thought she smashed the Ten Commandments. From that, all of this has fallen. Her entering the mosh pit was just being sick and tired of dealing with some hostile conservatives. Yes, definitely unprofessional.
bagoh, Firstly, please call me Nick, or shithead, or dago. I can't tell you how well this comment was timed. Our 14 year old Britanny Spaniel had a stroke. My son and I just finished burying her. This brought the first smile to my wife's face today, so thanks very much, kind sir.
My prayers for your mom and all the docs who treat her. Folks like your mom, w/ a positive outlook, are the people who do well fighting disease. It's been proven scientifically. Tell your mom thanks and that there will be a sequel out this Fall.
bagoh, Firstly, call me Nick, shit, dago, etc. Your kind words were so well timed. My son and I just finished burying our 14 year old Britanny Spaniel who had a stroke last night. Your comment brought the first smile to my bride's face today.
I'm sure you realize folks w/ your mom's positive attitude are the ones who beat cancer, it's been proven scientifically. My prayers for your mom, family and all the docs treating her. Tell your mom she'll be reading the sequel this Fall. Thanks very much. Where in Italy did your mom visit?
261 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 261 of 261Normally, normal as far as my life is concerned, I wouldn't let Paddy or you all know how I feel, but we live not in normal times.
Fuck Chinese curses in a unique and pleasant sounding quip.
All of these Issues Can Be Tied Together to the Tree With Roots. I Simply Would Like Ann to Post a Poll asking:
"Now that Betamax3000 Comments Will No Longer be Found on the Althouse Blog are You
A) More Likely to Follow The Althouse Blog?
or
B) Less Likely to Follow The Althouse Blog?
or
C) I Thought Betamax3000 WAS Althouse, as an Alter-Ego. I mean: Naked Bob Dylan Robot -- You Couldn't See Through THAT?
This Same Poll Can be Done By Lem Regarding His Blog. I am The Sibilant Minority. The Vote Might Reach the Single Digits.
God Bless freeman Hunt and God Bless America.
Ann Has Not Posted the Poll Yet.
Freeman Hunt wrote: Someone will almost certainly chime in, "Althouse started it!" Even if one thought that were true, and I don't, what difference would that make? Taking advantage of an event to manipulate people into hating each other, into bringing out the worst in themselves is wrong.
I'm one of those who does believe Althouse started it, and I can even quote her in the specific blogpost. It didn't help that Amba concurred with her. But that was just the beginning and it escalated over a period of about a week during which Althouse specifically targeted specific commenters. Personally, I always wondered, if she were going to stoop to that, why didn't she go after others? That she made a mockery of her neutrality is almost an empirical fact with evidentiary basis.
I hope we can all be reconciled, one to another, in the end. Our conversations on that blog sometimes brought out the very best in each of us.
Yes, that is my hope as well. But none of us can make that happen.
It Would Be the Perfect Opportunity for Her to Re-Open Comments on a Trial Basis. This Shall Be My Sacrifice for You: Lions Find Me Tasty.
Zimmerman not guilty. MSNBC blames the prosecution, says the evidence was there for a conviction.
Betamax poll
Now that Betamax3000 Comments Will No Longer be Found on the Althouse Blog are You
I'm honored to have gotten a mention. I bow to EBL and whoever else made it. :D
George Zimmerman Not Guilty!
I feel bad about Trayvon Martin. I do not relish his death and I feel bad for his parents. But convicting Zimmerman would have been very wrong given what happened. This remains a tragedy, but a conviction would have been a travesty.
Freeman Hunt is loyal to her friend Ann Althouse. I get that. I respect it. She is entitled to her opinion. But I also know Meade was stirring the pot and causing all sort of trouble and without provocation or evidence. I respect Meade defending his wife, but I do not respect the way he does it. He is a person of low character (in my opinion).
And Ann shut down her comments. She has the right to do it, but she should not complain when traffic drops off and Amazon sale commissions go down. If her commentators are her customers, she might consider the Mr. Selfridge motto: "The customer is always right." If her blog was a salon for commentary, then it is a salon for commentary. Yes there was abuse by some commentators, J was especially vile (and I suspect that psychopath is still out there lurking) but ultimately this was Ann's decision. She should own that.
"Freeman Hunt, Meade is a big instigator. He went after Fred4Pres with no basis and when it was pointed out to him refused to acknowledge it. I have not commented at Althouse, since I started blogging (with a few minor exceptions)."
Your lack of self-awareness is interesting. You didn't post at Althouse because you were banned due to your name and avatar being a direct insult to her.
Meade is a man of high character, but I question his judgement in entering the fray. What's the point arguing with people so self-absorbed they can't see their own contributions to this mess?
I'm wondering if some of these anonymous posters aren't trying to sound like other, specific people.
Seems like a big opening for manipulation. Lem, you could end that by telling the anonymous folks to get pseudonyms.
(1) She wasn't vicious.
Freeman: We'll have to agree to disagree. Any host who heads gleefully into "splooge stooge," "LOSER!," you-don't-deserve-any-woman-to-have-sex-with-you territory is being vicious.
Perhaps we should take a poll.
(2) She didn't turn off the comments because of the disagreement.
The writing was on the wall July 4th that Althouse had melted down. Mary was just the rationalization a couple days later. I know you like the rationalizations, but it was inevitable, like a bad break-up with a fucked-up lover.
The question wasn't why or how but when.
Shit happens. This has been snowballing for years. She was not acting in a vaccuum. She and her arch-nemesis here are cut from the same cloth.
Disagree. Again, Althouse is a professional. She wouldn't spit in the university's president's face just because he was an ass.
Althouse has control. If she chooses not to bother, it's still a choice.
If she was tired of the commenter community, she could have told us she had to hang it up for a while, and I'll bet there would have been a huge outpouring of support -- "We get it, take care and god bless."
Instead she went vicious and I had the impression she enjoyed it.
Completely different scenarios.
"Freeman Hunt is loyal to her friend Ann Althouse. I get that. I respect it. She is entitled to her opinion."
Don't brush off my opinion as a necessary offshoot of some special relationship I have with Althouse. Althouse and I have never met. We do not carry on regular correspondence outside of her now defunct blog comments.
She's being unfairly and often cruelly attacked. It's wrong.
Bloggers and commenters look like letters on a screen, but they aren't. They are real human beings with their own lives, their own thoughts, and their own feelings. We should treat each other better than we do. It's not just text.
Freeman, The tone of a business is set by the CEO. The tone of a ball team, by the coach. The tone of a school, by the principal. The tone of a blog, by the blogger. Pretty basic shit. "We reap what we sow."
It's weird if you don't watch television to see the popular reaction to things on Facebook. TV must have been pushing a "Zimmerman is obviously guilty" narrative.
Being other than totally not dumb, it would be easy to ruin a blog comments section; the easiest way is to have comments like they are set up on this blog instead of comments, YES it can be confusing, but nonetheless comments VIA TIME POSTED and no other way is the only workable means to this end.
"For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.
— Orson Welles, to Kenneth Tynan (1967)"
She's being unfairly and often cruelly attacked. It's wrong.
First, I agree. I followed the very last comment thread by gmail which showed the (now deleted) staccato posts by "Mary" which were a stated reason why Althouse shut things down. But Mary wasn't a new problem, just a worsening one. Further, Althouse has her IP address & rcommal even knows who she is. Why is one person allowed to bring things to a screeching halt? Or are we not on the same page?
Second, I think there is a pride issue at stake here for Althouse. involving a complex mixture of: (i) chronic aggravation by opposite minded thinkers using puerile humor which is hard to counter; (ii) actual thought-out opposition, often using reasoning; (ii) someone's odd notion that all opinions must at all times be counterbalanced lest some sort of echo chamber resonate; (iv) professional rivalry; and (v) utterly human (and thus forgivable) emotion.
Having the IP doesn't help if you can't ban. You still have to manually delete. I think between having to do that and dealing with the repetitive puerile stuff, it just became an onerous chore.
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girl friends. And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys.
— Orson Welles
The confusion, were it as, revolves around revolving; hence confusion not-other-than-mass.
It's "anonymi". Ex: When the lights came on, the pack of anonymi scattered.
Sure sure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGAHZ1wXVQk
That is the html code to The Beatles album "Revolver."
It is worthy and then some, despite Paul.
I'm one of those who does believe Althouse started it, and I can even quote her in the specific blogpost. It didn't help that Amba concurred with her.
Amba was involved in this? Our Amba? I missed that. Can you site the post where that took place, Chickelit? I'm just curious as I didn't think Annie had commented over there in years, now.
"Instead she went vicious and I had the impression she enjoyed it."
I'm afraid this IS accurate. It was what I found most embarrassing. I was proud to be associated with the blog until then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-JCMNbqFEY
Sure sure maybe The Beatles drove my car.
I don't mind.
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
— Orson Welles
Paddy O, there is an element of truth in what you are saying, but you pretend you are above it all. Of course there was a lot to like about the Althouse blog and community, hence the reason people went there. But it has gotten increasingly dysfunctional and there is little debate and interaction going on. Well at least back when the last big dust off happened. I did not participate in the site over the last year (other than an occasional visit).
But when Meade decided to attack Fred4Pres (falsely) and attacked my other friends I fought back. And I make no apologies for that.
Beyond that, if Ann decides to open up comments tomorrow, good for her. I suspect she will have less commentators than she did before she closed them. Frankly the smart move would be to do that. Her current strategy is a disaster. While it will gall her to admit she was wrong, she is going to be facing some harsh reality soon--her blog is far less without commentators.
Hey Spinelli, If you remember I bought my mother your wife's new book on kindle. She was visiting Italy as her 80th birthday present and read it while traveling. She said she absolutely loved it, and couldn't put it down. Please tell your wife thanks for helping me giver her that. I try to make every day as enjoyable as possible for her, and your wife's book seemed to deliver some of that.
She didn't tell anybody until she got back that her doctors had found substantial cancer invading her spleen and bowel before she left, and that when she got back she was having surgery. She had that surgery last week and they removed her spleen and part of her intestine. This is her third cancer surgery including losing one kidney a few years ago. She called me the day after the surgery in pretty good spirits, and that's when she told me how much she loved the book. If the surgery had gone bad, it would have been the last thing she read.
The surgery went very well, and the doctors said they got it all for now. My mom is quite an irrepressible lady, and she was telling me how much she enjoyed her self-controlled morphine drip. She asked me if she could hold off pushing the button for a while and save them up for a party night. That's my mom alright. She's been up walking the halls since the day after the surgery at 80 freaking years old. I'm blown away by her.
Anyway, one very good review from my mom on that fine book.
Your lack of self-awareness is interesting. You didn't post at Althouse because you were banned due to your name and avatar being a direct insult to her.
Actually Meade wanted me to have some sort of private email exchange with him, but I got a feeling that he was grooming me or something. I could have engaged in some sort of Mary thing there, but I did not.
And I can't help it if Ann is jealous about my hair being more fabulous than her's.
I hope she is feeling better. I am glad she got to go on that trip to Italy.
Why, if it isn't Ayman Ibrahim. AKA Methadras.
Of course Zimmerman is innocent. That was obvious, and you would understand that if you watched Fox News or listened to right wing radio, or paid attention to the evidence and understood the very simple legal concepts involved.
But if you watched MSNBC, or listened to left wing talk radio, you would have little choice but to see this as some kind of inevitability of White power and racism or something. You would believe that people like Rush Limbaugh are to blame for brainwashing virtually everyone necessary to get Zimmerman off unjustly.
I listened to both side's media, and it was like watching two different trials, and both of them were a travesty of justice.
Thanks sdspinelli.
Who else is named Ayman? Ayman Al-Zawahiri!
And a big thank you to the ladies on that jury. I'm very glad they proved me wrong for expecting them to find a way to screw it up. They seemed to act very conscientiously, seriously, and efficiently.
It can be very satisfying to be wrong about things sometimes. I was prepared to pretty much give up on the legal system. Thanks again ladies. Now could you prove me wrong in the next election, please.
Thanks Paddy O.
Lem, you could end that by telling the anonymous folks to get pseudonyms.
I will do than in an upcoming post. Thanks for suggesting ways to improve the blog. I'm astonished by the privilege you guys have granted me trough no big effort on my part.
Thanks.
Very much agree. They fulfilled their duty scrupulously, thank god.
I feel for them now, though. They're likely to receive much vilification (e.g. accusations of racism, being turned into symbols of racism) in the days to come.
Meade caught that pompous and condescending thang a while ago. Interesting how Meadey likes to give out personal details of others. And why would anyone want to communicate directly with him?
I agree the jury did a good job. I did not watch a lot of television on Zimmerman. I ddi read a lot of blogs about it. And when the trial happened, I watched as much of it as I could. Zimmerman was definitely not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Glad to see so many commenters, whose insights and comments I enjoyed, have migrated over here. I stopped commenting when the personal slurs and vituperation got a bit over the top for me. I like to restrict my comments to things I know about: mainly military issues and national security issues. Don't know if Lem plans to include those topics--if so, I will post, if not I will just read what my former colleagues from the other blog have to say.
LOL, y'all.
Anyone wanna take back any of that scurrilous assuming about that damned womyn jury down in Florida?
My bet is either 1)No, or 2) Yeah, but... .
Just sayin'.
Of course Zimmerman is innocent.
Oh, bullshit.
The jury verdict was correct. The acquittal was correct. The very charge, as brought, was a miscarriage of the legal system and an indictment of the political one. Reasonable doubt is a sacred cornerstone, and so should it be.
Zimmerman, however, was not and is not innocent. This is one of the dirty little secrets. While not actionable in a court of law, he was a wannabe and a loose cannon, and no community in its right mind should ever have wanted him policing their neighborhood to start with, and nor should they now. I mean that. He's pretty close to as far from a poster child for responsible Local Watch, much less Stand Your Ground (both in which I believe, rather strongly) as I can imagine.
So, now that the verdict is in, can we at last start talking about some of the silly-ass decisions that Zimmerman made? (And, also, stop vilifying, in a knee-jerk way, Trayvon Marton as some sort of uber-gangsta-criminal-murderous-piece-a-shit-bastard?)
Seriously. Is this sort of conversation even possible?
Even now? Just wondering.
Today in haste I posted a list of links on the wrong f'n blog. One of them was "insect food." Hours elapsed, visits but no comments, because it's the wrong blog. Oi. So I removed them in haste too because I had to leave. It's senseless for me to keep posting links back without fruitful discussion, so I think I'll stop it.
Maybe keep it alive limply, for items that would flat piss off a Wisconsin troll, and duplicate that in full and meanly cut off comments. Just to have it out there twice. As paybacks. But that's all. And I can go back to the quiet pace of my own little faintly visited sites.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
Man, did I ever have a good time tonight.
I made salads for 10 people that is so simple, so magical, so unexpected that it blew them away and made them not care for the rest of dinner. We all could have stopped right there.
Wanna hear it? Wanna hear it? Okay, iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing made at home and packed with blue cheese so that it is lumpy, none of this 'one tiny lump of blue cheese nonsense, no Siree, : Cream, mayonnaise, blue cheese.
It is a landscape. A mountain with detritus at the bottom and a snow avalanche. The mountain detritus is avocado cubes, cucumber cubes, watermelon cubes, grape halves, slightly burnt pecans, toasted sourdough croutons. The avalanche does not touch these things, but combined on the plate, the combination of no-nonsense blue cheese with watermelon and grapes was the thing that got them right off, and I didn't mix them, they did, they created those combinations themselves and discovered for themselves how fantastic that is.
Now, it wouldn't do to go pouring blue cheese over watermelon and grapes, that must occur by accident on their plate, like peanut butter and chocolate accidentally touched.
And now you have the means to become neighborhood Salad King. Please use your power wisely and always for the side of good.
I never did that.
On flame wars, and why anybody could ignore them, Levinas ends a preface :
"The word by way of preface which seeks to break through the screen stretched between the author and the reader by the book itself does not give itself out as a word of honor. But it belongs to the very essence of language, which consists in continually undoing its phrase by the foreword or exegesis, in unsaying the said, in attempting to restate without ceremonies what has already been ill understood in the inevitable ceremonial in which the said delights."
Just restate your argument. Guys can do it.
@Freeman: Knowing who the person is could allow Althouse to send a cease and a desist type letter. It need not be published.
@Icepick: the inflammatory remarks by Althouse are in this post (point #5). Amba made the very last comment in the thread which I read as concurrence.
That is a great observation, Evi, he is definitely a bad faith human being.
The comment section really began going downhill when Inga, in her many incarnations, decided to infect it with constant thread jacking and insults that only egged on the other commenters to retaliate. Any threads that she inhabited would soon degenerate into chaos.
Then when Althouse decided to enter the mosh pit and start slinging mud at her commentators in general and even worse started picking on certain commenters, that just set the tone to further incivility and chaos.
A professional should stay above the fray or moderate the discussions either through actual moderation or by setting an example. Unfortunately the example that was set by Althouse was not a good one.
Instead she went vicious and I had the impression she enjoyed it."
I'm afraid this IS accurate. It was what I found most embarrassing. I was proud to be associated with the blog until then.
Yes, she did, but let's put it down to post argument self-righteous indignation. Like when Evi made its account and others did what they did.
Ooops. You just participated. Back to the drawing board for you.
DBQ
The comment section really began going downhill when Inga, in her many incarnations, decided to infect it with constant thread jacking and insults that only egged on the other commenters to retaliate. Any threads that she inhabited would soon degenerate into chaos.
Then when Althouse decided to enter the mosh pit and start slinging mud at her commentators in general and even worse started picking on certain commenters, that just set the tone to further incivility and chaos.
Yes, but remember when she did try to tidy things up and deleted some Inga, Ritmo, Trooper, and AllenS.? You would have thought she smashed the Ten Commandments. From that, all of this has fallen. Her entering the mosh pit was just being sick and tired of dealing with some hostile conservatives. Yes, definitely unprofessional.
@Icepick: I replied to you earlier this AM but the comment seems to have disappeared. It had links in it which may have sent it to Lem's spam filter.
Lem?
I hope so!
bagoh, Firstly, please call me Nick, or shithead, or dago. I can't tell you how well this comment was timed. Our 14 year old Britanny Spaniel had a stroke. My son and I just finished burying her. This brought the first smile to my wife's face today, so thanks very much, kind sir.
My prayers for your mom and all the docs who treat her. Folks like your mom, w/ a positive outlook, are the people who do well fighting disease. It's been proven scientifically. Tell your mom thanks and that there will be a sequel out this Fall.
bagoh, Firstly, call me Nick, shit, dago, etc. Your kind words were so well timed. My son and I just finished burying our 14 year old Britanny Spaniel who had a stroke last night. Your comment brought the first smile to my bride's face today.
I'm sure you realize folks w/ your mom's positive attitude are the ones who beat cancer, it's been proven scientifically. My prayers for your mom, family and all the docs treating her. Tell your mom she'll be reading the sequel this Fall. Thanks very much. Where in Italy did your mom visit?
Lem, I've tried twice to respond to Bagoh but it wasn't published?
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