“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into”

Jonathan Swift
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"The Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital." - Bill Maher
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"The city is crowded my friends are away and I'm on my own
It's too hot to handle so I gotta get up and go

It's a cruel ... cruel summer"

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

ag-r sponsors hate speech

Over at TalkAmarillo, the official Amarillo Globe-Republican-sponsored bulletin board, "unkown" continues to call Cindy Sheehan a "bitch" over and over and over. Sometimes he softens his language to "bit*ch" (seriously) when, I guess, his mother is reading over his shoulder as he posts.

Personally, I'm offended more by his utter lack of creativity than by his potty mouth:

UNKOWN: "Cindy Sheehan, the bit*ch is back."
SANE PERSON: Uh, can you dial that back a bit? She lost her son. Also, you're using demeaning, sexist language.
UNKOWN: "To [sic] strong a word? Then use the following: A mallicious [sic], selfish, difficult, unpleasant, complaining woman."
SANE PERSON: Can we talk about the issues?
UNKOWN: bitchbitchbitchbitchbitch

Until yesterday, almost every other thread on TalkAmarillo had been started by "Unkown" and condemned Sheehan as a "bitch". Most of these threads have been removed, but not all (lesson learned: start screen-shooting TalkAmarillo). I did not notice a significant difference in the content of the removed posts from the posts that the administrator left. This suggests two things to me:

  1. The Amarillo Globe-Republican is taking responsbility for the content of TalkAmarillo, but:
  2. The AG-R does not have a problem with Cindy Sheehan being referred to as a "bitch"; they just would rather not see that word too often. In other words the problem, for the AG-R is quantitative, not qualitative.
But of course the local paper approves of such language, as long as it's directed toward anti-war citizens. And if it offends you that "Unkown" uses such language, just remember: he's not the only one.

SPACEDARK