dagblog - Comments for "Skin"

Hey Everybody, It seems to me

Michael Maiello — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:44:07 +0000

In reply to Skin

Hey Everybody,

It seems to me like we've well exhausted this topic and that everybody has had their say. Certainly, some good things happened in this thread. If you'll consider something, I hope it would be this: that you post and write here to make the shindig a better place (funnier, more creative, inspiring, intelligently critical, whatever that means to you) and that you'll encourage others to do the same, whether that means helping some one out or mercifully letting some offense against taste or reason slide the first time.

We should move the discussion back to other topics of life and how we live it, though. I'm going to go ahead and close up this thread now. I don't want Barack Obama to surf by the site and think we've given up the crucial argument of whether or not he and the Democrats deserve our support in a few weeks.

If I've cut off anybody's saber-like retort to anyone else, I apologize. Write it down and use it in a short story, blog post, poem or letter to the editor to somebody. Nothing ever has to go to waste.

Genghis, I'm sorry that "we"

Anonymous Peter Schwartz — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:20:18 +0000

In reply to Skin

Genghis,

I'm sorry that "we" were rude to people you'd invited or to anyone who wandered by and wanted to post something with a basic amount of integrity.

I've been on both sides of this--not here so much, but elsewhere-- as the basher and bashed.

Sometimes, when people continue to hold what feel like very irrational views, and especially when those views strike me as hateful or dangerous or whatever, it is hard to control my temper.

However, I find that emotionally draining and non-productive.

Better to walk away, "block" them on FB, or just not respond if they are too far out to reel in.

One of the things the Internet has done is bring us into close contact with people whom we'd never meet otherwise (probably) and whose views can be pretty bizarre. There they are on our very own computer! This can be a serious stressor.

For those who won't Google it

DF — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:02:43 +0000

In reply to I have read the post and the

For those who won't Google it for whatever reason, the reference is to this Penny Arcade comic:

No, I certainly didn't mean

DF — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:55:59 +0000

In reply to It's funny that you remember

No, I certainly didn't mean to imply even that you were coming at me hard. I agree with you that's it about finding the balance between being combative in the sense of being challenging in argument versus being combative in a needlessly personal way.

My experience over the past

Dan Kervick — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:28:40 +0000

In reply to Dan, I think you're a

My experience over the past few years has been that I often have to be a bit of a jerk and a squeaky wheel to accomplish anything, and that being courteous and ingratiating are not always effective. If you don't fight and irritate and offend people, you are probably losing the battle and getting walked over. My experience is also that a lot of modern liberals are giant babies who have lost the will or ability to fight for the future, who cave in at the slightest opposition, and who need to have their tender egos stroked all the time. Sometimes they hang out on blogs where all their friends will tell them how awesome and wonderful they are.

But they are standing by and letting their children and grandchildren get steamrolled by history - or at least other people's children and grandchildren. I don't respect that, and so really don't have a lot of compassion for their delicate feelings. If some people are thinking, "That Kervick - what an asshole!" then good. That means they are angry and out of their comfort zone. And their comfort zone is a place of co-dependent weakness. I don't care if people detest me.

Maybe I'll try writing some more evocative and heart-tugging things about the people I do care about and what I see happening to them, and that will elicit the requisite sense of compassion. But my experience in the past has been that people don't really want to hear that stuff if it comes packaged with any explicit or implicit indictment of the present administration, and they will just ignore it, and will come up with a million excuses for why it couldn't be anything but thus - especially if the President says so. Every time I write about someting on that score - no matter how measured and objective I try to make my comments - I take an aggressive hit from several Dagblog readers. My own compassion is limited these days. There are the people I feel it for, and the other people I want to hit. And the difference doesn't line up along the usual Team Blue and Team Red divide.

The idea seems to be that we shouldn't talk about the failures and the bad stuff during the election season, because it will lower morale. But you know what? Dagblog jumped full-on into "election season" somewhere around the middle of last year! And after this election is over, we will be in a new "election season" by January 2014. Seems like its enforced happy-talk all the time these days.

I have read the post and the

nothere — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:55:29 +0000

In reply to Skin

I have read the post and the comments; and what Genghis is trying to say is:

Before you post, think about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (GIFT) and don't be the guy in the cartoon.

Those not familiar with GIFT may find enlightenment at Google images.

Dan, I think you're a

AmericanDreamer — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:29:19 +0000

In reply to The authors of the recent

Dan, I think you're a talented writer, often eloquent and passionate on issues that concern many here. But with you there is *never*, AFAIK, a f'king benefit of the doubt granted to the site moderators, and often not to others, either. Is it conceivable to you that the moderators might have known who the person was who posted marketing their product, and had, if not reasons you would in the end agree with, reasons worth your listening to on why they did this before going off on them? Is it a crime against humanity--yet another intolerable reminder of this intolerable economic system--if it can pass without it leading to vitriol? Aunt Sam, whether she needed to or not, apologized for being a bit quick on the draw and sought to move on from this. Why can't you move on from it? Why do you have to be so gratuitously nasty to individuals? There's a business world phrase--you've probably heard it--that goes something like "be tough on the problem, not on the people". Personally I think there is wisdom in that.

Maybe you've seen the movie "Reds"--it's one of my favorites. There's a scene where the co-lead character, Jack Reed, played by Warren Beatty, is meeting with 3 or 4 fellow comrades/activists in his home. They are plotting strategy. One of the fellows, I'll call him "Joe" here, shows up late. Worse, because his kid was sick or something legit like that, Joe was unable to get an important message to another one of their activist friends. Reed dresses down his comrade, telling him not to fuck up, to be reliable. Afterwards, his wife Louise, played by Diane Keaton (she was the character in the film who showed remarkable personal intellectual and emotional growth and insight) says to him privately "You were a little rough on Joe, don't you think?" He pops a few more pills for his high blood pressure.

You're so anxious to kickstart the revolution that you've forgotten how to practice the values it is ostensibly based on.

You espouse views that are on their face grounded in treating other human beings with a certain degree of compassion, respect, and humanity. I hope you'll try harder at practicing that here. Unless you want to chase away people who agree with you on many things but will not go anywhere you are going because you give them easy excuses to think you're a jerk and that your espoused public values bear little or no relationship to your personal ones.

They let you come in here and you still crap in their home. On a regular basis. Say whatever you want about anyone's views but please stop being a dick to so many other people in this forum on an interpersonal level. Oh, and please stay every bit as tough on the problems as you are. Just not so hard on the people. Please.

If the moderators now wish to kick me off the site for awhile for a harsh personal attack, I accept that consequence, and will not sulk or whine or do passive aggressive or any of the other horseshit ways some folks here concoct to dump on one another.

You're madder than I am. Rare

Quinnonymous — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:27:15 +0000

In reply to I'm going to work to tone

You're madder than I am. Rare enough, that I should just walk.

Hope things get better, peace out.

That's not the crazy I'm

Dan Kervick — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:23:56 +0000

In reply to Interesting how you managed

That's not the crazy I'm talking about. I haven't told anyone not to vote for Obama. I just think you should all demand more for him.

But for the life of me, I can't even tell what most of the people at dagblog want him to accomplish in the next term. Obama seems to have become a cause-in-itself that is unmoored from any kind of larger program or agenda. The only thing I see you guys talking about is whether his daily poll numbers went from 48.3% to 48.7%. That's the crazy stuff - pure formalistic politics devoid of policy debate.

And it's not like the politics is just one part of the picture. There is a whole world of events happening out there that most of you never even talk about.

Truth be told, I'm angrier at you people than I am at Obama. He requested that people "make him" do the right thing. But you haven't. You have cut him slack for every failure, and manufactured endless excuses and rationalizations for everything he does. If Barack Obama said next week, "Maybe Social Security wasn't such a good idea after all" or "Workers are spoiled and have too much power in America" I would fully expect the majority of you to fall in line with the new message.

We now live in a much more conservative and brutal country than we did when Obama took office. That's shocking. Obama's weakness is a big part of the reason why. And the weakness of Obama is just a symptom of the weakness of modern liberalism.

The authors of the recent

Dan Kervick — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:24:04 +0000

In reply to Skin

The authors of the recent post in question posted a book advertisement, a spiel, a pitch, a piece of marketing copy. I am not using these terms just for rhetorical effect. I think I'm describing the post 100% accurately. That's all it was - a marketing pitch. I ask people to read the text of the post which I re-posted above to form their own judgments.

It wasn't a piece of substantive content with a marketing pitch subtly worked in at the end. It wasn't an excerpt from the book It wasn't a post aimed at engaging with the readers and provoking discussion. It wasn't clever satire on the nature of marketing and commerce. It was pure, fly-by marketing copy.

So is the standard now that people can't use the reader post privileges to post marketing pitches for flowers, tobacco or legal services, but they can use them to market books? Because book writers are creators whose unique service to humanity earns them a special license to hawk their wares in whatever forum they want? That's good to know. I work in the book industry and know many struggling publishers who are always happy to find more venues for disseminating their marketing materials. And I can personally vouch for several of them as very nice people.

I wish I didn't have to say these things since they are probably embarrassing now to the author of the post, who probably wishes she had written something different. It could have been dropped. But it's the host who is not dropping it. My understanding is that dagblog expects readers to do a certain amount of self-policing of the site, and some of those readers now are being charged with responding inappropriately to a guest in a way that embarrassed the site host, when it seems to me they responded appropriately to a kind of content that thankfully does not now clog the site. It's no different than when you see someone drop some litter in your neighborhood and you say, "Hey, pick that up. We don't do that around here."