Examiner columnist blasts "FreeRepugnant.com"

sf examiner ^ | Feb 15, 02 | Debby Morse

[churchillbuff]

FreeRepugnant.com

By Debby Morse Of The Examiner Staff

AFTER MY COLUMN last Friday about President Bush's decision to classify fetuses as children, I received a spate of angry mail. One kind soul e-mailed me an alert that the column had been posted on FreeRepublic.com, "The Premier Conservative News Forum," and predicted that I'd be getting "an onslaught of hate mail from rabid right-wing freaks."

(Quick glimpse at some of the messages I got: "Is that the way you spend all your time? Hating people?" "Would you look down from Heaven and defend your mother if she had aborted you?" "Your panic and fear is obvious by the way you write.")

So I thought I ought to pay a visit to the Web site. On the FreeRepublic home page, I was welcomed thus: "We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!" No objections there from me. Freedom of speech; gotta love it. And who's in favor of political fraud and corruption? Not I. Still ... I don't know why, but that "Hoo-yah!" unsettled me. (Maybe because it's like "yahoo" backwards?)

Anyway, the site is a collection of forums and postings on various umbrella topics such as foreign affairs, activism and philosophy, with links to sites like the Cato Institute (a libertarian forum on public policy), the Drudge Report, the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank), the Rush Limbaugh show and the Linda Tripp Defense Fund (with a post-make-over photo -- hey, why not?).

And here's the best part: It's a great opportunity to "eavesdrop" on the conversations of people who chat there, seemingly secure in the belief that they are among friends and can say whatever they want. They can! First Amendment! But, boy, a lot of what they said there about my column is even nastier than what they e-mailed to me. * * *

LET'S LISTEN IN. Breakem writes: "Come out with your legs up and let the baby go and nobody gets hurt." Clintonh8r says: "Debby's a little crampy today, huh?" MissAmericanPie wishes me this fortune: "May her uterus be as barren as her soul. I pity the unlucky man that finds his way there, or the baby that tries to find warmth, love, or life in that cold, void, steel locker she calls her uterus."

Some of the postings were so bizarre that saner heads felt obliged to butt in and warn them to cool it. Following a useless exchange of comments that fetuses are "respiring" beings, Hank Kerchief pleads: "These continued ignorant arguments are playing right into the hands of the pro-choice movement. Please think before helping to increase the number of abortions being performed every day."

One of the shoddier bits of logic came in an e-mail: "You hate President Bush because he is a conservative and a Republican. I despise you because you are a traitor to this country. You tear down a president during wartime with false charges. You may be a citizen of this country, but you are not an American. You are also a pretty lousy feminist; you promote an outdated, divisive political agenda that does not serve women. You want to deal in reality? Here is the scoop. Most of my friends and I have concluded that being home is a fabulous choice. We choose our families. You liberals choose an outdated, dangerous political agenda which certainly contributed to the 9-11 horror. Liberals elected President Clinton who 'fiddled' while bin Laden plotted. You mock the victims of 9-11 with your despicable column."

Honey, I'm going to have to revoke your license to argue.

I also received an e-mail with a photo of a very mature fetus' arm protruding through -- what? -- a hole in a pregnant belly? A bloody image meant to shock. Turns out the same photo is posted on the FreeRepublic thread about my column, but the contributor, calling himself Revelation 911, confides that it's actually a picture of in-utero surgery and that the gestation went full-term. * * *

THESE PEOPLE SEEM to hate women. Even MissAmericanPie says, "No doubt her kind are very odd, the Jane Fonda militant female type. I've always kind of pictured Eve as being like that, more feline than female, resentful and rebellious against everything she was meant to be, finding no satisfaction in anything else either."

There are a couple of ugly remarks regarding anatomy and even rape, and a bunch of digs at San Francisco. A few people suggested it was time for another earthquake here. It was supposed to be funny, but it amounts to a wish for my death. There's a lot of that among pro-lifers, I guess. Someone suggested advocates for choice should commit suicide!

After reading "arguments" like that, I'm more dedicated than ever to wanting to keep my body private.

E-mail Debby Morse at dmorse@sfexaminer.com

Read the postings at : www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/624590/posts

[RonDog]

These libs are so clever with their plays on words. FreeRepugnant?!!!?!! ROFTLMAO! Tremendous! They all use the same terms too. Julia Roberts, the Democratic Undergrounders, this writer. So creative.

THIS liberal, in particular, seems to like sophomoric word play.

Her column at the San Francisco Examiner is called:

"No ReMorse" - Get it? HER name is "Morse!"

And, the name of her PREVIOUS column, that was posted here was:

"U.S. out of my uterus now!" - Yuk, yuk!! U.S. and uterus!

So here is my suggestion to her employers:

"It is time to ReExamine your employment contract with this dolt!" - Get it? S.F. Examiner?

Seriously, it is not a crime to be left-wing, pro-abortion, and anti-American. But there is no reason for the Examiner to subsidize someone with these questionable attributes who cannot think clearly, analyze effectively or write well. IMHO.

[kezekiel]

That does not dismiss my point unless you are saying it is okay becuase everyone else is doing it.

I wasn't trying to be dismissive, but reassuring. Free Republic has no unique problem with hyperbolic posts. Only strict enforcement by the moderators would cut it down, and I'm sure that they don't want to run around deleting posts all the time.

[CnsrvatvLdy]

This is my e-mail to "dear Debbie."

"The Premier Conservative News Forum," and predicted that I'd be getting "an onslaught of hate mail from rabid right-wing freaks."

Your generalization of conservatives is narrow-minded. Tell me, have you ever written anything about rabid left-wing freaks? Or is it only conservative activists that you are concerned about? The members of Free Republic make the "wheels" of this country work. We are people in every walk of life, in every state of the union. You give no credibility to yourself when you write such trash. Remember, we also purchase the newspapers of this country. To generalize in such a despicable way about one group of people is like "biting the hand that feeds you."

[Old Professer]

"Would you look down from Heaven and defend your mother if she had aborted you?"

I see a bumpersticker in the making here.

[RonDog]

I didn't see the original column..

You didn't MISS much.

For the record, here are some links to the REST of her (recent) online drivel, from www.Examiner.com/NoReMorse:

02/15/2002
FreeRepugnant.com
AFTER MY COLUMN last Friday about President Bush's decision to classify fetuses as children, I received a spate of angry mail. One kind soul e-mailed me an alert that the column had been posted on FreeRepublic.com, 'The Premier Conservative News Forum,' and predicted that I'd be getting 'an onslaught of hate mail from rabid right-wing freaks.'
Posted 2002.02.15 10:56:21

02/13/2002
Have a heart
OH, I SUPPOSE now we have to go all sensitive, PC and touchy-feely about Valentine's Day. I mean, not all of us are in relationships or even have any prospects for a date Thursday, so the rest of us who cavort happily, selfishly and fulfillingly in marital bliss should just keep our fat mouths shut and commiserate with the unattached, right?
Posted 2002.02.13 10:36:10

02/11/2002
Long may she wave
HAVE YOU HAD your fill of flag waving? The Olympics are only in their fourth day, and already it feels like 'Stars and Stripes Forever' and ever and ever, amen.
Posted 2002.02.11 11:44:29

02/08/2002
U.S. out of my uterus now!
IF I RECALL correctly, President Bush claimed to have received 'gentleman's Cs' at Yale, where he majored in history. A look at his transcript shows the nearest thing to science he studied: one semester of astronomy and one of geology, in his freshman year.
Posted 2002.02.08 10:37:50

02/06/2002
Just playing games
The Winter Olympics are set to begin Friday, and apparently there are still thousands of would-be viewers who can't receive the NBC signal from San Jose. And even if you can pick up KNTV, the Games are going to be taped, butchered and aired late.
Posted 2002.02.06 10:53:10

02/04/2002
This really bites
DOGS ARE IN THE NEWS. The Golden Gate Kennel Club just concluded its show at the Cow Palace this weekend (where there were no presa canarios competing for Best in Show, and where dogs who were not show entrants were prohibited from the premises).
Posted 2002.02.04 11:53:07

02/01/2002
Those who think young
HEY, KIDS, let's get involved! Let's be informed. Let's start up our own cultural and public-affairs forum for the concerned folks of Generation X.
Posted 2002.02.01 10:38:52

01/30/2002
Super party pooper
YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH the Super Bowl, aren't you? It's not two teams you're particularly thrilled about, but, hey, bless the Patriots' hearts for getting into the big game, and the Rams -- weren't they a California team once?
Posted 2002.01.30 11:07:44

01/28/2002
We ARE having fun yet
WE GOT YOUR ZIPPY right here. We've had him all along. Since The Examiner changed ownership just over a year ago, we have continued to run the 'Zippy the Pinhead' comic strip, first introduced to Examiner pages in 1985, without interruption.
Posted 2002.01.28 11:14:23

01/25/2002
Radical like me
IT WAS APRIL 3, 1974, and I was driving up the coast to begin graduate school at Stanford. The radio was on, and some woman was droning endlessly in an annoying monotone -- no commercial breaks, even. I listened more closely, and realized that I was hearing a tape of kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst announcing her decision to join her captors, the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Posted 2002.01.25 10:39:10

[RonDog]

"I think it's important that liberals be encouraged to engage in debates (in civilized fashion of course). After all, the goal is to win over fence-sitting liberals, and that's far more likely to happen if FR has a welcoming atmosphere than if it becomes a conservative self-aggrandizing society.

About a decade ago, I was in a bowling alley when an episode of Donahue came on which featured Rush Limbaugh as a guest speaker. I was a liberal at the time, and while I had not previously watched Donahue, I thought it would be interesting to see Rush in front of a hostile crowd. I was right.

Rush's performance there was far better than anything I'd ever seen the few times I caught his show. On his own show, Rush would be inclined to make unsupported statements which conservatives would accept is true but liberals would not. While that may be fine if his goal were to preach to the choir, it's not a good way of winning converts. On the Donahue program, however, the liberals were inclined to challenge almost everything he said; since Rush proceeded to back up the challenged statements, however, the program was probably far more effective at winning over those who would have disbelieved Rush's statements had he not done so." - supercat

EXCELLENT point, supercat!

Nationally syndicated conservative talk show host Dennis Prager has said that the reason liberals do so WELL in the "mainstream" media - TV news, newspapers, magazines - is that they are not directly CHALLENGED there.

Conversely, the reason that liberals do so POORLY on talk radio (and the Internet) is that they must constantly DEFEND their positions, most of which are emotionally FELT, but not logically REASONED. Makes sense to me. ;)

[Kevin Curry]

Hank Kerchief was singled out for praise by this loony SF leftist.

Can't say I'm surprised.

[TwakeIDFins]

Liberal and, I'm guessing, fat. I bet she doesn't have any problem keeping her body "private".

Nice. A woman disagrees with you, and you "guess" that she's fat and ugly.

I hope women don't toss out that kind of mean-spirited, nasty non-sequiturs at you when they disagree with your political point of view.

[Dan Day]

She is right about one thing, though; any thread that touches on anything even slightly related to abortion - as her column did - is guaranteed to bring out of the woodwork the worst psychopaths FR has to offer. I don't doubt for a minute that she got some truly vicious, ultrawacko emails from some of them.

And yet...

If this is so, why did she only post relatively mild examples in her column?

Read her examples again -- despite her "oh my god!" reaction to them, they're *awfully* tame compared to the sort of stuff you'll find on *any* spirited internet discussion on *any* forum. I've personally received countless examples of *far* worse attacks -- *from liberals*. Hell, I have a long file of posts I've collected which consists of nothing but liberals wanting to discuss the penises of gun owners (that seems to happen an awful lot on gun-control discussions -- if anyone's fixated on penises, I can tell you it's not the *Pro*-gun people...)

If she got any "really" bad stuff, why is she only quoting the "nyah nyah" posts to "prove" her belief that FreeRepublic is full of nasty "hating" conservatives? (Furthermore, how does she know which emails came from *FreeRepublic* regulars, versus people who came across her column in other ways?)

Her examples of "hate" don't rise above "we don't like you very much".

I doubt she got any really abysmal emails at all. She's trying to inflate derision and disgust into "hate mail", in order to soothe her desire to believe that she's somehow noteworthy enough to inspire genuine outrage. Instead, she's just a third-rate writer for a fourth-rate publication who has mistaken a tiny slice of the daily FreeRepublic media discussion as some sort of validation of her crusade.

It's pitiful.

I'd love to see her drop in and make a few actual posts, instead of hiding behind her column and flinging one-way mud balls. But in my long experience, the sort of person who likes writing columns is psychologically unable to do so -- they choose that method of discourse precisely *because* it enables them to issue Proclamations From On High to the ignorant masses, *without* having to face any of them and listen to their responses (letters to the editor are so easy to skim and round-file, or even just never quite get around to reading...). The few times columnists (or TV talking heads) do dig into their feedback, it's just so that they can self-aggrandizingly cluck "what idiots" before discarding them -- you know, just as Ms. Morse has done with her FreeRepublic critiques.

Heaven forbid they should actually engage their "public" in a dialog, in which anyone could possibly knock them down a notch or two by pointing out weaknesses in their argument, and then expect a response.

No, it's far easier to laugh off any criticism and then run back to the safety of the one-way publishing citadel.

Ms. Morse wouldn't last a day in an actual open debate, and deep down she knows it.

[bloodmeridian]

I do care, however, that some of the "loose cannons" around here may have given us ALL a bad name by sending her some poorly-considered inflammatory attacks

If she'd have received 1 nasty email from a "loose cannon" and 99 others from sane, reflective, intelligent Freepers, she would have focused on the one as representative of what goes on here. That's just the way it is, and we all know it. Freep on, folks!

[Captain America]

Yes, Ms. Morse...keep doing the devil's work.
Keep fighting for the 'Constitutional right' to kill babies, because damn it, the Founding Fathers would have wanted it that way, wouldn't they?

When the college co-ed gets drunk at the bar and goes home with some dude who's name she can't remember...
When the businesswoman has an after-hours rendezvous at the office with a co-worker...
When the 40ish mother of two who decides she's just too old and has better things to spend the money on...
When these women realize they are carrying a life within them, and their own lives would be so much more convenient if it would just go away, why don't we LET THEM kill it off? Convenience trumps a human life any day doesn't it, Ms. Morse? Ms. Morse? Hello?

[pray4liberty]

I have to think, deep inside this woman somewhere, is a gnawing sense of guilt and shame. No one can possibly think mutilating a little growing baby is right.

She must have had an abortion herself. No wonder MissAmericanPie's comments rattled her cage. She is demonstrating post-abortive traumatic syndrome!

Hey Deb, go over to Planned Parenthood from some counseling...oops, they don't do post-abortive counseling, only the pro-lifers do that...what was I thinking?

[alcuin]

those who would hold you in the chains of tyrrany

Are you tring to mak FR stooped?

ItS TIrenny. MorronFOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!

AlsoRUSH is a fat/.

[concerned about politics]

those who would hold you in the chains of tyrrany Are you tring to mak FR stooped? ItS TIrenny. MorronFOOOOL!!!!!!!!!! AlsoRUSH is a fat/.

Sigh....
What?
English, please.

[alcuin]

Sigh, indeed.

And sigh, again.

Oh well.

[DoughtyOne]

Excellent comment Willie. That's just about exactly what I was going to say. Glad I saw your post first.

[mrfixit514]

Hey San Fran Examiner, if you're listening, take your liberal, American hating, baby killing, queer loving, God hating opinions and stick em in your ear.

[RonDog]

"Morse's attack on the site actually says much more about her than it does about FR posters. She came as close as she possibly could to saying pro-lifers want to kill her. She has no actual quotes that contain that threat..." - beckett

You got THAT right.

From Morse, in THIS thread:

There are a couple of ugly remarks regarding anatomy and even rape, and a bunch of digs at San Francisco. A few people suggested it was time for another earthquake here. It was supposed to be funny, but it amounts to a wish for my death. There's a lot of that among pro-lifers, I guess. Someone suggested advocates for choice should commit suicide!

From the previous FR thread:
U.S. out of my uterus now!
Posted on 2/8/02 6:20 PM Pacific by madprof98

It's good to see they're still questioning Bush's intelligence out in San Fransicko. They obviously have nothing new to add to the culture-war discussion. I haven't studied geology myself, but it seems to me more than time for another one of those earthquakes . . .

1 posted on 2/8/02 6:20 PM Pacific by madprof98

.

As far as I can tell, that's it. Read the thread for yourself. (There are only 68 replies.)
Lots of passionate pro-life posts, but VERY FEW personal attacks, considering the powerfully emotional subject matter.

THAT is the limit of the "threat" against her - if you can call it that - actually posted on this forum.

As posted previously, I do not doubt that she received MUCH WORSE invective by e-mail, but what was posted here is pretty thin gruel upon which to build a substantive attack piece against FR.

[TLBSHOW]

LOL PR IS PR!