The little right-wing Marcottes of FreeRepublic are keeping it classy: they're indulging in disgusting racist attacks against the Obama children.
From the Vancouver Sun report:
Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later."Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.
"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another.
(The first link is to a screen grab of the original thread).
John Payne at The American Conservative is rightly nauseated:
Granted Free Republic posters are the most troglodytic of the conservative clan, but they do seem to be pretty numerous, and I worry that these sentiments are far more common on the right than we'd like to admit.
What dirtbags. Racist attacks on the family of the U.S. president, by Americans. And on children! As with the demented-by-spite leftie Amanda Marcotte, you have to wonder what kind of inner life these people have, to stoop to that gutter level. Actually, you don't have to wonder it. It's plain to see.
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James Nicola
July 17, 2009 9:08 AM
PNWCC, most of your post is a total fabrication. I saw the DKos story when it first came out, and read through the Free Republic thread then. At the time I read them there were about 120 comments; only two or three expressed any concern at the tone of the thread. Most were vile.
Nor do you have to take my word for this. Yahoo's spider managed to cache the first 85 comments before the thread was pulled, and you can see them here - http://tinyurl.com/ladhmm and here - http://tinyurl.com/nfc2ps . And if you hover over the commenter's names, you can see how long they've been at FR, and if you click on their names, you can see their FR profile. 'manc', who is probably the most offensive, was registered in January 08, 'SigSauerP220' was registered in March 07, 'Tarpon' in March 1998, 'Patriot08' in May 08, 'AngryCapitalist' in March 04... It is I suppose possible that Parry has been plotting this for the last decade, registering usernames every six months or so and posting hundreds of comments; it seems unlikely though.
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James Nicola... It is not an accurate assumption that all the trollers get banned immediately, therefore all "aged" accounts are thereby endorsed by the management.
That a posting can have 80 replies? Well, all that means is that it was up for 20 minutes. Years ago, FR used to show the number of daily visits. I've seen posts garner 500 (!) responses in an hour.
But "total fabrication"? Really?
I "fabricated" that Parry actually coordinated people starting vile threads and then using them to bash FR? No, it's fact. I've seen the facts, and it's true. His alter ego postings on DK repeatedly asked, suggested, or even tried to badget people into it. People suspect Parry of actually starting some of them, but as I said, it cannot be proven, since accounts are mostly anonymous.
I "fabricated" that the moderators aren't around and don't ahve time to read all the threads? No, that's true as well.
I have also seen many of the kinds of threads that stirred this ruckus, that were removed very quickly, as well. I've seen that happen within the space of less than 3 minutes.
Are the ranting lib types and trollers removed quickly? No, not always, sometimes not ever. The moderation, the account control are not very effective at all at FR. I don't know the size of the staff, but the ones I have seen any real interaction with, have been decent people. Frankly, it would keep a sizeable team full time busy in order to read all the posts. Every hour during "normal" time, which would be starting about 6 AM eastern through about 10PM Pacific, FR has somewhere between 10 and 100 threads per HOUR started. Nighttime will see 20 to 100 new threads started overnight. Commonly, most posts garner somewhere around 10 to 200 responses. That's THOUSANDS of posts per day, possibly 10's of thousands, depending on daily events.
Anyone can register, and it's easy to get additional accounts if you want. I was somewhat active as a poster prior to 2000 on FR, but during a software change, I lost my old account and since the new account, back in 2000, I have posted very little and do very little there. I use it as a news resource, as the "new posts" link will provide you with at least 200 new news stories, blog entries, commentary, etc. It is the most comprehensive set of links for the stories of the day that I know of. I rarely read the commentary. I suspect that's true of most people. Either I agree, or I don't. But posting there is mostly pointless, each thread moves out of sight so fast off the front page, that no real communication or debate occurs.
I would certainly never state, as it woudl be stupid to do so, that no racists exist on FR. But then, racists are everywhere. There's no difference, in my opinion, between some nutcase calling Obama the "N" word on FR and some other nutcase on Daily Kos or Democratic Underground calling someone else an Oreo. I find both to be extremely offensive.
The only real point here, is that Parry pretends to be a journalist... and is not. He actively conspired to produce a story with a specific agenda and theme. That's not a journalist, that's a party or political hack.
Oh, and if you'd like to compare FR to DK and DU and other such "open" forums, feel free. You will be banned from DU if you do NOT post wild-eyed hate filled rants, or at least something close in approximation. As a test, I registered an account there, and limited my commentary to some technical discussions about networking - completely non political threads.
I was banned in approximately two weeks. My inquiry as to why was replied via form email. "Democratic Underground is a forum for the advancement of blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, and your pattern of posting does not demonstrate a strong commitment to our goals, therefore you are likely a troll or disruptive person..."
They have people who watch what you post, and it's not hate filled enough, you're outa there. I repeated the effort and the same result. Either you hate, or you're gone, as a new user. Funny, though. Some of the long time people at DU can carry on peaceful conversations on non-political issues, and they don't get banned.
Now, your effort here is to prove that all who post and read at FR are somehow morally defective. That's about the same level of closed mindedness as DU exhibits. Right in line with Marcotte's wildly caricatured rantings.
I'm not exactly sure why it would threaten someone to acknowledge that normal people frequent internet forums, and sometimes bad people do too. But you seem threatened by the notion that FR is NOT just a bunch of racists and vile ranters. I can't imagine why, and so had to go on a tirade accusing me of gross dishonesty for threatening your preconceived notion. Is it necessary for your emotional stability to prove I'm a bad and dishonest person, or are you somehow emotionally invested in your opinion of anyone who has an account at FR?
I can't begin to list, or even remember all the internet forums of which I'm a member, or have been, at some time. But having registered at FR is a sin so hideous, as to call for banning?
That's just flat out amazing, people.
2. We have seen that this week with one of my right-wing commenters on this site saying that Mark Levin's ranting is not the same as your ranting, because Mark Levin is correct. Some on your side took exactly the same stance, from a left-wing point of view, saying that your vituperation was completely justified because hey, Amanda is correct. Like I said, you guys belong to each other.
==============================
Rod, that's just plain small minded. I offered no "defense" of Levin's choice of wording or demeanor... And those are what you're offended by, apparently. Certainly nothing he advocates, in terms of politics, nor the things he has spent his life doing, could possibly offend you. For many years, Levin, at Landmark Legal Foundation fought for accountability and transparency in government, completely unsparing of Republican administrations when he thought something was wrong. Levin has a long and distinguished history of doing what he thought was right, and removing and/or exposing corruption and wrong doing.
Levin has detailed vast amounts of corruption of our political system, detailing who and what, and how billions of taxpayer dollars are siphoned off to advocate liberal politics, and this is entirely one sided.
To then say that Levin, for his somewhat uncouth radio personality, is no different in SUBSTANCE than Marcotte, is to be just flat out dishonest.
Oh, and thanks for calling me "right wing". next time, call me, RADICAL RIGHT WING, please. If I've appeared to be so spineless as to be merely "right wing" I apologize for any deception. And I am totally radical. Heck, I read the Constitution regularly and even think it's being ignored by at least some modern politicians - mostly those in DC. Why, just the other day, I noticed that our federal government consumes what appears to be an entirely unjustified percentage of our nation's production of wealth.
Even worse? Why, I don't explode in rage when public figures refer to God or admit to believing in God. I mean, I tolerate such hideous misbehavior. I guess where the real radicalism comes from, is believing that the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" came to be by the intervention of the Divine, for purposes of having the study of Scripture and the expansion of learning about it be unhindered by the unholy alliances of church and state that existed in all other parts of the globe.
I guess where I probably go over the top, is that after having extensively read about American history, the various revolutions in Europe, and the conditions that existed in all aforementioned places prior to the American experiment in self government, that a non theocratic government cannot legislate morality, without itself becomeing a false god. That self government creates moral government when the people are, and does not when they are not, but it cannot and must not attempt to define morality and right and wrong, and encode them and enforce them upon the individual.
And, for the final damnation, the one thing I'm sure will get me to sent to the Biblical hell, the one at the last confrontation of good and evil detailed in Revelation, where the wicked and evil are finally consumed forever, by all the good liberals and "sensible moderates" is that I've noticed that humans tends to need discipline in order to be productive. That providing people with all their wants, and making all their "needs" a "right" results in lazy, unproductive, and totally hedonistic societies that collapse in on themselves.
For all those things, I certainly expect the lable of at least "radical right winger", if not "rabid, ranting, vile, satanistic right winger".
Please don't disappoint me :)
Rod, one last thought...
You accepted what was laid out for you, including the analysis, as if it were unvarnished and whole truth.
It wasn't. You were incredibly gullible. You fell for cheap penny ante political theater, performed by low-rent and totally dishonest hacks. I would suggest that in the future you abstain from jumping on what seems to be oh-so-conveniently perfectly in line with your political opponent's choice of savage stereotypes.
You should know by now that nothing that comes from these people is the whole truth. There's always something wrong, sometimes it's small stuff, and sometimes it's the whole thing, but you can bet your last dollar that it will not be the whole truth.
You got played.
Welcome to the conservative movement, 2009. (I was tempted to say 'welcome to the GOP base' but that is probably not entirely accurate). From a cultural viewpoint alone, this is what makes civilized people want to get out of the republican party stop self-identifying as conservative.
Rod, what's contemptible is that you are so gullible and eager to be PC that you jumped right on the Liberal smear bandwagon without putting in any mild thought or investigation.
I've been visiting FR for years to read news from many different spheres (not just political) and it's incredibly rare to see a racist post or one that wishes harm on another person. I have never, NEVER seen that kind of posting from a regular poster (and I do recognize the regulars).
99% of the regulars on FR are pretty boring, normal people. Not screaming cursing evil-wishing nutjobs like on DU.
It's well known that liberal trolls sign up and post nastiness specifically to cast aspersions on conservatives. They discuss this frequently on other sites.
Are you so naive as to not understand that this is the primary tactic of the left? They seek to isolate, polarize and discredit their opponents. FR is a popular site, so it's obviously high on their attack list.
I suggest you visit DU or Kos when a conservative or Republican gets sick or dies and check out the postings. You will need a shower afterward, by the way. Go to FR and do the same for a liberal/Dem.
Then come back and tell us all how contemptible conservatives are.
Until that time, I suggest you try very hard to stop being a useful tool for the left. Because YOU are doing more harm than they are.
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