Replies

I just sent this epic (had a lot to say) e-mail to BOR Factor show. Will be surprised if I ever get a reply. Here is my lengthy tome:

Mr. O, it is obvious to me that you do not visit nor read the comments on the Free Republic web site, and you probably don’t even know it’s not a blog, it is a news bulletin board, where articles from all over the world are posted. Then Freepers make comments on those articles and exchange ideas and debate with other Freepers regarding what they read.

The site is primarily self-monitored, and also policed by a group of “Admin Monitors” who delete offensive comments when they find them. If a given Freeper makes too many offensive remarks, he/she is banned from the FR web site.

The reason you are seeing negative comments about yourself on some threads is because you smeared Free Republic as if it was on the same plane as The Daily Kos. That is so far from the truth that you managed to irritate most of us. Nice going. I have been a Freeper since 1998. I have yet to see any blatantly racist comments on the threads I have visited. It is absolutely not the norm. If one slips through, the comment is removed as soon as it is spotted. Sometimes leftists visit our site and post comments in order to try to sabotage our site. We call them “trolls”. We usually can pick a troll out in but a few moments, and then heckle said troll off a thread in short order.

This is a conservative web site, not a liberal one. Most Freepers voted for Bush twice. That is not the definition of an extreme right wing web site, is it? No, it is very mainstream, however very conservative. If your definition of a hateful right winger is a conservative person, then I guess we would fit your stereotype, even though a false one. In comparison, on The Daily Kos web site, do you find, as you do on FR, prayer threads for fellow Freepers who are ill, dying, or for their relatives who are sick? Do you find an everyday thread called the “Canteen” devoted to military folks and supporting our troops everywhere they are stationed? How about recipe threads, music threads, history threads, archeology threads, fine art threads, threads on wine, those devoted to cartoons, or religious philosophy threads? Sounds ever so hatefully right wing, yes? Hardly. Please have your staffers or better yet, yourself, do some homework before spouting off about a web site you so obviously know little about and then maybe you’ll see less hostility towards you based on your very obvious lack of knowledge about the contents of the site.

Now, knowing your ego, which does not appear small, I suspect you will dismiss this e-mail (if you ever even read it) out of hand, and will continue to, without any basis, make a moral equivalence between the web sites Free Republic and Daily Kos because it suits the TV persona you have established as being fair to both sides of an argument, even if you base your comments on faulty knowledge in order to make your point. There IS no moral equivalence between FR and Kos. One, frankly, with the exception of the occasional whacko, is a moral and good web site, the other is vile, demeaning, and vulgar. It’s unfortunate you can’t seem to, nor want to, find the differences between the two sites.

It is a leftist tactic, as expressed by Lanny Davis on your show last night, to put forth the moral equivalence argument as a debating point to take the onus off of the topic at hand if negative about “progressives”. You fell for it because you don’t know a thing about our web site, as evidenced by your not knowing how to reply to Lanny’s smear about FR. Instead, you had your “researcher” go to our site shortly thereafter, I’m sure, to try to find a few negative comments to defend a moral equivalence stance on your next night’s program. I’m sure this was in reaction to a flood of e-mails from angry Freepers to your show shortly after Lanny Davis made his comments about FR, and your lack of a cogent reply to his attack on it. This occurred because you knew nothing about the Free Republic web site beforehand, and thus had nothing to say other than you would attack “right wing” hate web sites also. It then became necessary, it appears, for you to justify what you said by making Free Republic into the right wing hate web site du jour, whether we are or not, in order for you to appear “fair” in going after web sites on both political sides.

As to your comment about hiring a full-time moderator of the site, that would cost a lot of money, and we have volunteer moderators to do the same. They are all very intelligent people, as are most Freepers, and can discern when someone is going over the edge in their commentary. The comment is then removed from a thread if an improper one, and if the commentator persists, that person is banned. Also, the owner of the web site often monitors threads himself. He has banned many a Freeper who got out of line. The web site’s existence is based on free-will donations by those that visit the site. We have donor drives at various times, soliciting contributions. It is expensive for a private web site as large as Free Republic to be maintained, with no corporate backing such as your web site has.

This web site is one of the top conservative web sites for “hits”. (At one time we were number 2; maybe we still are, but we are definitely in the top few.) We are heavily trafficked. You cannot get to all unwanted comments immediately, as I am sure you know from those monitoring your own web site. When you do find them, then you delete them ASAP, as does Free Republic. Daily Kos does not remove the majority of inappropriate comments made, and the constant and literal vulgarity of so many of their posters is amazing to behold.

I hope you will find it in your heart, in spite of some of the nasty comments from some Freepers about you on our site (they are very angry about what they perceive are blatant misstatements as to what this site is all about), and just look at the Free Republic web site objectively. Actually read FR to find out what the site’s mission is, rather than make uninformed statements without researching it for a period of time before discussing it. Thank you, and I hope at least one honest, unbiased person on your staff, or preferably yourself, reads my e-mail so that all of this typing isn’t going for naught. A non-canned reply would be appreciated.

Pithily yours,long-time (and therefore knowledgeable) proud Freeper.

(I might add I am a long-time BOR Factor watcher also. Please do not disappoint. Do not be a Popinjay.)