I do cringe at some of my fellow FReepers comments, though. They make us all look bad in the public eye, and if we want to take this country back, we do need to be the good guys.
Yep. Unfortunately I have been finding myself more and more distant with some of the commenter’s here. I am not racist, I do not want my name to be associated with racism. I want it to be associated with conservatism and the retaking of this country from marxists. We are better than the left and we should act that way.
If you see a cringe-inducing comment, you can always hit the Report Abuse button and ask the moderators to review it for possible racism or whatever it is that's making you cringe. They respond reasonably, in my experience, and will remove clearly bad comments. Responding to the person who made the comment telling them that their comments make you cringe and why also helps. Part of the problem here is that I think the moderators simply don't catch everything they might pull if they did read it.
I agree, but I tried making that point last year and was called a troll.
If being the good guy means standing still while someone punches your lights out..NO THANKS. While it’s not right to attack the children of politicians........the left places no limitations on their speach no matter how hate filled.
The libs only get OUTRAGED at others when they dare say something offensive.........Don’t start censoring FR to please the libs! It will just encourage the left. Next time it will be an comment on Obama then it will be any comment against the Left’s policies......
Free Speach is either completely free or it’s not free at all! Kind of like Free Will...If you have one limitation on Free Will it’s not COMPLETLY FREE!
Don’t allow the LEFT to dictate the “RULES” of FREE SPEACH. Because they will NEVER follow the rules they set up for others....They only set them up to limit others FREEDOMS.
No... we the bad guys.... the good guys are the ones who make rape jokes about Sarah Palins minor daughter. what a disgusting post.
At the very least, the children should be off limits - on both sides. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Yada yada.
“...and if we want to take this country back, we do need to be the good guys.”
I’m not sure, I’m not sure. I think remarks like the ones quoted are over-the-line, and those posts probably should have been pulled. (I didn’t see this thread, so that’s all I’m going to say) David Letterman is a despicable person, and I’ve thought that for at least 25 years. He deserved whatever vitriol came his way over his “joke” about Piper Palin. (Of course it was about her, not Bristol, although I’d be willing to concede the writers of his show were apathetically confused about which daughter was at the game).
But I’m not sure being the good guys has done our side any good at all.
This is mashed up in my mind with thoughts about my own life and has being good really gotten me anywhere. I feel like it’s gotten me screwed over a couple of times and I am not seeing an up side.
Of course, I’m a Catholic, I don’t long to be bad, and in fact I think I could never really be truly bad (except for some blood revenge thing, which luckily I’ve never had to even consider). And of course I know the reward for being good does not come in this life time.
But politics is not about eternal salvation, so while I don’t think there is any profit in making jokes about Obama’s daughters or even Michele My Belle (who is certainly not going some Hillary Two-for-One route, at least not yet), I’m not sure that the moral high ground is really the most strategic place from which to fight.
Not, at least, while we have the likes of Peggy Noonan sniping at our ankles.
Utter nadless twaddle.
I will guarantee you that the vast vast majority of FR posts have no basis in racism. You are falling prey to a common liberal trick. And that is, if you harshly criticize minorities and criticize them enough using much the same language as you would criticize any other, then there has to be a racist element to your criticism. I mean if you are criticizing a minority so severely, it has to be because the person is a minority, right ? Because you wouldn't dare openly make the person's race an issue.
When liberals attack conservatives, DO NOT accept their premise -- which is almost always false. When you accept their premise, it's a tantamount admission that that their accusation is basically correct, but wrong only in some of the specifics.
...we do need to be the good guys...
WHY? No matter what we do or say, we will be painted as “The bad guys”. Even if some of those things were not said, the MSM will just make the story up or twist the words.
I agree. We should all be quicker to hit the Abuse button on posts that are offensive and which reflect badly on FR. FR is no longer just some obscure internet forum where a little gaggle of cyber-acquaintances chatter with each other while being totally ignored by the MSM and influential people. Threads that are littered with rude and mindless comments not only make FR look bad to the outside world, but also tend to drive away newcomers who happen to bump into a lot of this crap on their initial visit, and discourage respectable and influential people from recommending FR to their friends and co-workers.
I've been happy to see the near-complete demise of the old FR fad of labelling thread headings with "Barf Alert" and variations on that theme (and would like to see it 100% eliminated). A few years back, I showed the site to a friend who had never heard of it before, and she was clearly unimpressed when she scanned the index of threads and saw at least a quarter of them labelled with "Barf Alert!", "Mega Barf Alert!", "Double Bagger Barf Alert!", etc. First impressions matter and that sort of thing doesn't convey the impression that FR is a serious forum for discussion of our nation's political system and future. There was so much of the "Barf Alert" nonsense that nobody bothered complaining about it, because it was obviously being accepted by the management. I finally complained to JimRob when, during a sluggish FReepathon, the main forum index sported a thread labelled "Projectile vomit all over yourself and your date alert!" -- I pointed out that this sort of thing was getting out of hand, and was hardly likely to inspire thinking people to help subsidize FR (and the inane label was promptly removed).
When I click on a thread and see that it's dominated by stupid, rude comments, I've tended to just deal with it by hitting the Back button and going to another thread, unless I see something that is in very explicit violation of FR posting rules (advocating violence, explicit racial attacks, etc). But I think perhaps it's time to start being more proactive about posts that are just mindlessly rude, vaguely racist while being devoid of any substantive thought, etc. This forum has become really huge while still being run on a shoestring budget, and the little crew of volunteer moderators can't be the first line of defense against the heavy volume of trash-posting that damages FR's reputation.
I agree. I'm not easily offended but on rare occaision and by a tiny few the remarks here can be racist. A racist 'joke' was removed just a few days ago. Many, like you and I realize FR is no place for such garbage. But there were a few who thought it was just fine. They've apparently never considered two things; the opinions and feelings of FReepers who, like myself are black and/or they don't realize or care what negative impact such comments can have on the reputation of this site. FR is full of wonderful people. Unfortunately, the riff-raff come here too.
I agree with you...racists and antisemites have no place on FR. There are other sites (Stormfront, etc.). Besides, minor children are OFF LIMITS period. It doesn't matter whom they belong to: Dems or Republicans!
And there’s always the chance that the worst actors are working in tandem with FR “personas” and seminar posters.