That's close to pushing the line in the sand we all agreed to...
The problem here, with all due respect, is that you dwell on one word to base your argument on, whether it be "preacher" "laughter" "applause". You mangle your world of words so only those you wish exist. All others are ignored. That's a fine thing to do in the big world of politicial discussions, hell; it's done all the time, but in our little world of political discussions it doesn't work.
This all started, not with ekg or me, but within your back and forths (if that's what you want to call them) with Kazzy on the muche: The two of you participated in a level of nit-pickery never before seen and in the process lost track of the issue. Your mind got so tangled up in Kazz-bot mode you, and she, both ended up focusing on the wrong stuff.
Unable to shake yourself out of this mode, you continued the myopic arguments with ekg to the point where she couldn't, or wouldn't reply. Issues? Don't kid yourself...you haven't discussed issues in ages. You've discussed insignificant details.
This thread turned into one of those myopic arguments. By the time all was said and done, the original intent of this thread was lost in a sea of cross-eyed jabberwocky.
The point of this thread wasn't specifically about Barton, Huckabee, children, preachers, indoctrination, or guns. You should have realized that when I changed the title. It was about the irony of the right wing's obsession with Wright and Ayers two and a half years ago. A furor that grew into a sideshow of right wing indignation. A furor that gave birth to today's ridiculous claims of birthers, socialism, mildly disguised racism, and a level of rhetoric never seen before. A furor that had more to do with discrediting a man than the issues he represented.
Lost within all that is the issues. You've lost track of these issues, Mike, and concentrate on picking the peas out of the rice instead of enjoying the whole meal.
Was this issue with Barton convered by the mainstream media? Yes. Just not your mainstream media. Was it pounded into the ground with a hatchet and stake like your mainstream media did the issue with Wright and Myers? No. In my opinion, that's not because it's not a story - everything a politician says, does, or speaks is a story - it's because the somewhere, somehow the minds that power our mainstream media decided to concentrate on the issues rather than take a myopic view of a potential candidate's interactions with one person.
The comparison with Kazzy is ridiculous on many levels but primarily because ultimately, Kazzy wouldn't give up, but she wouldn't argue a point either. So she would just repeat one statement over and over, sometimes for days. I have a point. Sometimes mulitple points. Now you may not like them or agree with them, but by me having them, I'm giving you something to hang either a reply or counter attack on. In this thread, I took up every point and had a reply. I even agreed with all of you on what probably should have been the main point of this thread, that this guy Barton was a kook. However to ask any of you a month from now (hell, now!) if I agreed with any points you were making or if I was just robotically supporting "R's", what you would recall?
Forget mainstream media, how about MSNBC? I watch that network more than most of you guys I bet. So I have a good idea of what the liberal zeitgeist is. Chris Matthews spent over a week on Huckabee's radio interview from a few weeks ago. A week. So if this story isn't getting that kind of coverage, I have to ask myself, if this story is really so damning? The first page if this thread was about this guy being Huckabee's preacher and Huckabee wanting kids to be indoctrinated by Barton at gunpoint. Now it sounds so ridiculous at it's face, I would have thought just one person (other than me of course) would have said to themselves, "really?" But no, you guys ate it up. So this wasn't about me automatically supporting "R's." It was about a story that was so out there that even Chris Matthews wouldn't touch it. So sure enough, I investigate and find out that it's a nothing story. Believe me, if Huckabee had seriously proposed the gunpoint indoctrination of every child in America it would have been the leading story on all 3 major networks for a lot longer than a week.
The "insignificant details" weren't so insignifcant. They were the basis of your entire story.
I'm not trying to push across any line in the sand, but remember, you posted this story with the original title. When I questioned it (multiple times) it would have been so easy for you to say that it was just a metaphor for the right wing's obsession with Wright and Ayers. But you couldn't bring yourself to do that. So it's hard for me to accept now, at this late date, that was your original intent. If so, you blew multiple opportunities to address the Ayers comparison. I did ask for it, and you should have let me have it.
But you passed on that, the (now) alleged reason for the thread in the first place.
Do I think you didn't really care about the accuracy of this story? I don't think you did. But I don't think, based on your history, that ever read that deeply into a story like this. You probably came across it in your blogs, thought the headline and first few sentences were cool, and posted it, without thinking any more about it. It's confirmation bias. For you, the idea that Huckabee, or any Republican for that matter, would want to force the children of America to listen to his "preacher" at gunpoint is probably not very far removed from your prejudices of Republicans anyway. The person who should have really read this story critically was ekg. And I assume at some point she did and she decided to defend it anyway.
This isn't about me kneejerk defending R's. It's about all of you, but her in particular, kneejerk attacking someone even with all the damning "evidence" washed away. That's a mindless kneejerk response.
Listen, you might as well know, and you should have known anyway, that in a situation in which everyone on this board is left of center except for me, that means that I'm going to be on the opposite side of everyone on a lot of issues. Can I handle it? Sure. It's not that different from the old muche. The question is, can you, and everyone else handle it? Based on this thread, maybe not.
