Neener neener.
Posted on 03/08/2007 11:40:55 PM PST by conservative in nyc
The Dixie Chicks have a movie, Shut Up & Sing, coming out today, and, to keep things lively, they're staging a grudge match with the worst site on the Internet, political-rhetoric division.
"The fat chick will only drive traffic to this site," writes one poster to the site.
"The Frenchy Chix can't get a gig in a gay bar in Ithaca," writes another.
Others chime in with more corruptions: Chubby Chicks, Ditsy Twits, Vichy Chicks.
"Yep typical liberals," says someone else. "No character."
This is Free Republic, an exercise in political extremism that, despite being and something of an anthropological train wreck, keeps popping up square in the mainstream.
Most recently, it has resurfaced as a villain in the Dixie Chicks movie, which traces the fallout from lead singer Natalie Maines's infamous 2003 London declaration that she was embarrassed that George W. Bush was, like her, from Texas.
It was a bad time to be anti-war, and Americans are touchy about being criticized on foreign soil at the best of times. The "grassroots" backlash that followed -- orchestrated, in part, by the people at Free Republic, who mobilized their large and largely disgruntled membership -- saw the band savaged in the press and at the box office.
The site is a venerable and storied Web forum for American arch-conservatives. Funded by member donations, it was founded in 1996 as an anti-Clinton grandstand, and soon became a place where members could post news stories and discuss them -- though "discussion" might be the wrong word. More often, it's a kind of pantomime, where the name of the game is to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy every time he creeps on stage.
Freepers, as the sites denizens are known, are the good guys. The bad guys, according to site founder Jim Robinson, are practitioners of "liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism," and "wacko environmentalism."
So it is that, day in and day out, Freepers attempt to outdo each other in posting the most pungent, juvenile reactions to stories. Articles containing an opposing viewpoint have the words "BARF ALERT" appended to their titles. Slurs are encouraged. When the first same-sex Canadian soldiers were married last year, the story garnered 73 angry responses, ranging from "Disgusting and despicable" to "I'd resign my commission before performing a ceremony to marry a couple of bone-smugglers" to "Let's see what happens when the Canadian military has an AIDS epidemic on its hands."
It's a hateful place that, if the world was working as it should, would be relegated to the Internet's endless fringes, where conspiracy theorists and pyramid-power believers roam the wasteland. But what's interesting about Free Republic is that, despite having attracted a crowd of the most paranoid, xenophobic and reactionary characters the political landscape has to offer, it continues to find itself in the news.
For instance, during the 2004 U.S. presidential election, it was central to the network of websites that uncovered the forged memos about Bush's Vietnam service that appeared on CBS News and ultimately cost Dan Rather his job. (Paranoia, in this instance, paid off.) Later, and less admirably, Jerome Corsi, the co-author of Unfit for Command -- the hatchet job about John Kerry's military service that crippled his campaign -- was found to be posting racist, sexist diatribes on the site.
And then there was the flap about the Dixie Chicks, spurred on by zealous Freepers. Thanks to their movie, Free Republic is getting another moment in the sun. Not helping things was the band's manager publicly calling Robinson "a coward" for refusing to be interviewed for the film. ("I am jealous of you Mr. Robinson," declared one Freeper in response. "You have been singled out and attacked by America's premier Entertraitors.") These, ladies and gentlemen, are grassroots at work. There are a lot of organizations out there that are in the business of whipping their members into a lather and unleashing them on corporations and politicians alike.
But if Free Republic has a virtue, it's that, unlike other pressure groups, it's transparent: You can see the cogs turning, the anger mounting, the members joining the half-baked me-too condemnations that will surface on tomorrow's news agenda. It's like a glass ant farm for zealots. It's a little stomach-turning, but man, they're diligent little things. It's hard not to stare sometimes.
Don't go and get too excited n00b. We haven't exactly given you keys to the executive washroom yet.:)
Free Republic kickin ass ping!
Mark
>>"..It's a hateful place that, if the world was working as it should, would be relegated to the Internet's endless fringes, where conspiracy theorists and pyramid-power believers roam the wasteland."
Hey...my mother comes here every day
Mark
I don't personally give a noodle how we're percieved by our opponents. It's not like they're going to start agreeing with us, or liking us, or even treating us fairly in their media outlets if we try to be nice to them.
See tagline.
Think about what? Please be specific.
You owe me a new keyboard! (Rule #1: swallow before scrolling down)
Given the approximate 90,000 daily members and/or lurkers to FR and figure an average of 100 posts per subject article, it represents a mere approximate 1/90th of 1 percent. How one can draw conclusions from this sample needs to be a M.I.T. math graduate, not an English major.
Neener neener.
Hey Osama, your days are numbered.....
It's hard to care about the opinion of someone who seems a little miffed that we call fascists, anarchists, totalitarians, and governments that enforce atheism "bad guys." If he's more offended by us than by those four, especially, well.... what's there to be said?
Compared to the Huffington Post, this place is a paragon of good manners.
LMAO! Like a trainwreck - it's hard not to look...might not like the outcome - but it's reality....;-)
Jim - didya see this?!?
Place mark
Only 73?
Must have been a slow day.
"Sometimes, we need to remember that anything we post anywhere on the Internet can be read by anyone anywhere in the world - even those in the MSM who want to tarnish this website's name."
I didn't know they could read. LOL. Amen.
It's a hateful place that, if the world was working as it should, would be relegated to the Internet's endless fringes...
But the liberal anti-American web sites aren’t “hateful”? Why is it that only conservatives are deemed “hateful”?
But what's interesting about Free Republic is that, despite having attracted a crowd of the most paranoid, xenophobic and reactionary characters...
This isn’t “hateful”?
Hey, Ivor, you wanna to see hate? Try the Demoncrat Underground, or the Huffington-Puffington Post, or the Daily Kook.
Hey Ivor. Why don't you come up with an ORIGINAL metaphor? I've been talking about analyzing the Left via my DUmmie ANT FARM for years.
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