That, in a word, is "pathetic."
So very sad.
Posted on 05/26/2007 1:49:34 PM PDT by Eurotwit
A few weeks ago – in between Hillary Clinton’s official entry into the presidential race and the first Republican primary debate of the cycle – the fiery online conservative forum Free Republic marked a decade in operation as one of the premier online forums for right-wing political discussion.
It also experienced one of the biggest internal battles to rock the site since the 2000 election of George W. Bush -- a tumultuous campaign year that nearly tore the site apart, as its founder and chief administrator first cleansed commenting ranks of Bush supporters, then, later, rallied to his support.
At the heart of the latest controversy: the fight over the conservative bona fides of Rudy Giuliani.
Over the past few weeks, chaos has reigned in the “Freeper” community as members sympathetic to the former mayor's candidacy claim to have suffered banishment from the site. They were victimized, they say, by a wave of purges designed to weed out any remaining support for the Giuliani campaign on the popular conservative web forum. Another significant chunk of commenters have migrated away from the controversial site over the action, according to a number of former site members and conservative bloggers who have been tracking the situation.
In a plaintive post on the blog “Sweetness & Light,” exiled commenter Steve Gilbert, who says he does not support the former mayor’s campaign, blasted the site’s new “anti-Giuliani, anti-abortion jihad.” Since George W. Bush was elected president, he wrote, “there haven’t been any large scale [Free Republic] purges to speak of – until now.”
The fight began one month ago, when site founder Jim Robinson posted an anti-Giuliani manifesto titled: “Giuliani as the GOP presidential nominee would be a dagger in the heart of the conservative movement.” Then the virtual ax started to swing. Longtime posters to the freewheeling discussion threads, used to serious no-holds-barred web etiquette, were still stunned by the intensity of the anti-Rudy activity; conservative blogs buzzed with the development.
“Jim Robinson has been going on a tear demonizing Rudy Giuliani, because Rudy (agreeing with the vast majority of Americans), is personally opposed to abortions on a moral level…” complained a user on the GOPUSA Web site. “Anyone who posts any support for Giuliani at the site, if it's at all forceful, will be banned.”
(“Normally, we don't allow complaints about other conservative forums,” chided the moderator, but “…because it is being discussed all over the Internet, I'll make an exception.”)
Just a few months ago, Rudy Giuliani placed second in an early Free Republic straw poll; now, his support on the site has been virtually eliminated. “After the ‘April Purge,’ I don't think there are any Rudybots left around here,” noted Free Republic commenter “upchuck” in one recent post. “And if there are, they're not posting pro-Rudy stuff :).”
The forums weren’t the only venue for the Free Republic’s new antagonism toward Mr. Giuliani, which coincided with a wave of comments expressing similar sentiments from other corners of the conservative movement. A few days after Mr. Giuliani’s equivocal Roe v. Wade comments at the Republican presidential debate on May 3, a new “STOP RUDY NOW News & Information Thread” was featured on the site, and a newly-created stand-alone category debuted via a link from the homepage: “The Giuliani Truth File.” (So far this campaign season, Mr. Giuliani is the only candidate – Republican or Democratic – to be singled out for that level of scrutiny from the Free Republic.)
Why Rudy? Why now? Some conservative bloggers and former commenters contacted for their view of the continuing controversy say they believe that site founder Jim Robinson holds ideologically middling Republicans like Mr. Giuliani responsible for the GOP’s congressional loss and current woes. (They asked that their names be kept out of this story for fear of antagonizing the famously frisky site regulars.)
Others claim that the former mayor’s top-tier status is spurring frantic site administrators into action. Finally, one popular theory holds that the Free Republic is secretly hoping for another Clinton presidency that would send its Alexa ratings soaring back to levels it hasn’t experienced since its halcyon days of the Clinton impeachment, when a since-soured relationship with blog pioneer Matt Drudge and overwhelming anti-Clinton sentiment in Republican ranks helped make Free Republic one of the hottest Web sites in the nation. It hasn't recovered that luster since the Bush administration took over.
“It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s an observation,” said one blogger, who describes himself as a half-hearted Mitt Romney supporter. “They’ve still got a brand name that means something, but they’re not what they were in terms of real-world impact. A Hillary presidency would get them there.”
Robinson himself could not be reached for comment, but his original post laid out his case against Mr. Giuliani – a graphics-heavy presentation of some of the former mayor’s most damning moderate quotes in mainstream media venues, along with a color-coded report card tracking his less-than-doctrinaire positions on abortion, immigration, gays and guns.
Robinson, it should be noted, famously blasted George W. Bush’s presidential candidacy back in 2000, before a dramatic late-campaign about-face that saw him emerge as one of the GOP ticket’s biggest supporters. But whether or not Free Republic experiences a similar election-year shift this cycle, the site’s current campaign is spreading a dangerous primary-season meme of Rudy Giuliani as big-city liberal – and turning one of the most influential web forums in conservatism into an exclusive gathering place for those who share that view.
Thank you very much for that link! Very informative.
As a Christian, I did forgive him (not that that is anyone's business but mine). I did more than that. RA wrote one last note to me, saying he knew I was trying to get him banned. That was false, but I thought I heard sadness or regret in his note. I pondered it and posted a reply offering to intercede with Jim Robinson if he were willing to rededicate himself to FR. RA did not respond -- which is not much of a surprise, especially given all we've heard since. But I had to try.
Membership in Free Republic is a privilege. I have no sympathy for those who come here for any purpose other than supporting the conservative cause as Jim Robinson defines it. RA neither supports it nor is willing to follow its simple rules of courtesy and good manners. He does not belong here.
Looks like RadioAstronomer was looking to get banned as further justification of his/their own paranoia. Stamping out Christianity really does seem to be the mission of academia.
Perhaps the Cho massacre hit too close to home. I say Cho was only actng on what he had been taught to do. I remember getting some of the same garbage taught in college. Notice how Cho's manifesto remains unpublished.
Insanely funny comedy crops up in the most unexpected places. While everyone in the land will certainly appreciate your enormous contribution to our great nation by “supporting the conservative cause as Jim Robinson defines it,” to use T’wit’s stirring phrase, some of us wonder if you’ve done as much as the now-banned poster you’re so cavalierly trashing.To: Diplomat>> T'wit, if you're a Christian/Jew/other, he should be forgiven and you should ask the Admin to reinstate his account.As a Christian, I did forgive him (not that that is anyone's business but mine). I did more than that. RA wrote one last note to me, saying he knew I was trying to get him banned. That was false, but I thought I heard sadness or regret in his note. I pondered it and posted a reply offering to intercede with Jim Robinson if he were willing to rededicate himself to FR. RA did not respond -- which is not much of a surprise, especially given all we've heard since. But I had to try.
Membership in Free Republic is a privilege. I have no sympathy for those who come here for any purpose other than supporting the conservative cause as Jim Robinson defines it. RA neither supports it nor is willing to follow its simple rules of courtesy and good manners. He does not belong here.
1,408 posted on 06/03/2007 5:42:54 AM EDT by T'wit (Visitors: you come here expecting a turkey shoot, and then you find out that you are the turkey.)To: T'witYea, did a little more reading and I’ll have to agree with you.Looks like RadioAstronomer was looking to get banned as further justification of his/their own paranoia. Stamping out Christianity really does seem to be the mission of academia.
Perhaps the Cho massacre hit too close to home. I say Cho was only actng on what he had been taught to do. I remember getting some of the same garbage taught in college. Notice how Cho's manifesto remains unpublished.
Did you know Radio Astronomer came to this country as an orphaned child? Did you know he has repaid his adopted country by spending his life in its defense? In addition to stints on active military service in the USAF, he has also worked for NASA and presently puts in 16-hour days for the DOD.
What have you blow hards ever done? Just curious. [JR exempted from this question; he was in the Navy].
Now, I realize that the USAF, NASA, and DOD don’t count for all that much here in the land of Super Mucho Macho Internet Warriors who valiantly rail on and on and on for post after post after post after post having no effect whatever on anything except each others’ egos, but, it’s great that we can all be so tough when it’s all beer and pixels, isn’t it? Did Rades slip a bit in the estimation of The Animals Who Are More Equal Than Others here in not frothing at the mouth quite enough whenever Terri Schiavo’s name came up? Did he commit the unforgivable sin of posting actual science? Yipes! He'll never fit in! Damn to hell a life spent defending your right to trash him and everything about him! He failed to bow before Your Personal Interpretation of the Enormous Issue Du Jour. The horror! The horror!
What is really pathetic, though, is a post like 1409 in this thread. The Cho remarks, while ambiguous enough to escape an instant abuse report, are grotesquely nasty. It’s lots of fun hurling gratuitous insults at colleges, the college-educated, and people who must be virulent atheists because they don’t instantly accept your personal interpretation of your religion (especially after they've been banned), comparing a decent, selfless patriot to a homicidal maniac ought to be beneath even the most twisted little snot in the third grade.
That it exists here speaks volumes.
I’ll post this much and then leave the thread: Radio Astronomer, has devoted his life to defending your right to expose your idiocy on the internet. Please continue to exercise it to the fullest.
And now, as Madame Arcati said, you may stew in your own juice.
Diplomat put his foot in it big time there!
In other words, no one wanted to state otherwise or cared to argue otherwise. Until we actually get to read Cho’s insane writings for ourselves, none of us will get the opportunity to know what he felt motivated him to commit the massacre. On the other hand, I witnessed and sat through enough b.s. courses in college to know you are not even going to attempt to defend academia and that which classifies as higher learning these days.
As to the need to defend RA, he by his own words (presuming his alias at Darwin Central is the same), does not care to be defended nor return to FR. He was victimized just like I asserted in the earlier post. Furthermore, if you’d bother to read any of my prior posts on this thread, I defended RA and had nothing for praise for him. My recent remarks were made based off the assumption that RadioAstronomer on Darwin Central is the same person as the Freeper who got banned.
The difference between RA and most of the other active DC posters, is that I did not expect him to fizzle out in such manner. He easily could have constrained himself as he likewise must have during 100s of prior thread arguments. IMO, he chose to be banned as a show of support to PH who he felt was wronged. I do not remember his banning or why, so RA may well have a very valid point here. One thing was clear, he was upset by it and he considers PH a close friend.
Since you know nothing of my families military/NASA (now that I know this counts) service and ultimate sacrifice, nor have I ever posted anything about it, except for the obituary of an uncle who served on a Liberty ship, I’ll ignore your wholly ignorant assertions on such matters. I honor RA's military service, in fact, I didn't know of it until your post. But this again goes to the character of RA, as he does not need to, nor did he see the need to brag about such things. He liked arguing science, he knew his physics, etc. But his military service is not a surprise to me, his profanity laced "to get banned" tirad was.
With regard to Cho, until we get his manifesto, speculation as to his motivation is a very valid topic of discussion. One that would seem highly important, but one in which all debate and inquiry seem to be universally shutdown. I find no current discussion in the MSM about the subject. Suppose his manifesto says he believed he was doing the work of XXXX, who told him who the world’s great evil truly was? I know one thing, if Cho was a regular attendee of the Crystal Cathedral, you could bet the farm his name would still be in the news and would used as a regular foil against Republicans.
There's a term for when one insinuates evil things of a person or group of people in spite of a complete lack of evidence: malicious gossip.
"“Thanks to you I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people,” Cho said, adding that, “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”"
"“Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats? Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs? Your trust fund wasn’t enough? ... Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs? You had everything.”"
Gee, I wonder where one learns class warfare? I wonder how prevalent class warfare teachings are in English/History classes. I wonder how often Christians are vilified in what passes for history these days.
I have more evidence in the minimal amount of quotes from his own video, than any of you have in refuting my hypothesis.
You assume it is taught? From my observation it's inherent in kiddies from a young age.
And what in the world does that have to do with RA anyway?
From my observation it's inherent in kiddies from a young age.
I think a strong case could be made to support this hypothesis too. Just like one could be made to say the influence of pop culture was a major contributor to his insanity.
Unfortunately, unless we get his manifesto, a study on his brain chemistry and his autopsy, it is going to be hard to come to any conclusion as to what caused this.
Yea, it is logical to assume that his failure to have appropriate relationships with the opposite sex was the motivation to kill the girl he stalked and the hero who tried to save her. However, this doesn't explain why he had a manifesto ready to send to NBC before his massacre. Clearly he had done a fair amount of planning for the massacre. That said, I'd like his classwork made publicly available too. What is wrong with academia and NBC that they both believe this type of evidence needs to be kept from the public? I'd think making all this available would be the appropriate academic response so that we could learn what his motivation was and possibly prevent a future like tragedy. What are they hiding and why do they not trust the public with this information?
Well, you have my reasoning as to the why they won't make this information publicly available. Have a nice week.
Significant? lol....not even close.
ANd half are already back. LOL
Under different handles?
God, they both look soooooooo gay! And I ain’t kiddin’!
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