We all agree with you Poobah...anyone of us want to start a new site of people who haven't lost their sanity?
If things don't start settling down over the next few weeks, I think I just might have to second that suggestion. It's too bad, too, since I just found FR. :(
Well...
Maybe not quite. I stayed off most of the Schiavo threads once they started getting completely crazy, so I guess they didn't hit me all that hard. I try not to get too personally invested in other people's stupidity. Being far from perfect myself, I have plenty of my own to go around. I have views that probably agree with some of the crazies, I simply chose to keep them to myself since there was no value to be added by expressing them.
That being said, I haven't seen a lot of difference between the Schiavo furor and the Bush-bot Blitzkriegs last fall. FR has always had her extremist factions. That's part of what makes her so much fun. I have friends and colleagues who think I'm a complete right-wing nut-case for just typing in the FR URL.
I have little more patience with cry-babies and quitters than I do flakes and nut-balls, so I can't say that these self-serving swan-songs stir up much sympathy in me. If you are fed up, then step away, do something else, go your own way, have a nice life. These dramatic "I've had it with you kooks and I'm leaving" posts serve no purpose. As you can see from the responses, they really change nothing and they make the poster look over-egotistical and more than a little bit silly. It's the stuff of which Jerry Springer is made.
I think the speed at which FR has devolved has actually made me rethink participating in forums at all.
At least offline if someone really ticks you off you can just never speak to them again.
On FR one is faced with words of the same vexing vermin repeatedly. And a virtual slap isn't as cathartic as a real one.
Kinda like a bad t.v. program you can never turn off.
I've come to know some very cool people on here, sadly that doesn't outweigh the ferocity of the more farout freepers.