Comments on: Rough trade

By: Crooked Timber » » Our finest hour

Crooked Timber » » Our finest hour — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 18:53:50 +0000

[...] I’m going to assume that Ms. Malkin would have heard about the attacks around breakfast time. By lunch, she had worked through sorrow, anger, grief, and gotten to the healthy point of dumpster-diving. She had taken the time to troll the comments at Democratic Underground and Daily Kos to collect the most appalling, indefensible comments by such pillars of the left as “plcdude”, “talex”, “pyewacket1”, and “TheSnorp”. (Et tu, TheSnorp?) This post was helpfully titled “THE 7/7 ATTACKS: REACTIONS FROM THE AMERICAN LEFT”, and earned her 36 trackbacks. [...]

By: ronyon

ronyon — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 12:42:52 +0000

My dad(a preachers son with a philosophy)degree schooled me against the straw man style of debate,which has not kept me from resorting to it… It seems to be the favorite style of many talk shows,which seem to only invite poorly spoken opponents,or even keep them on staff!

By: novalis

novalis — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 02:35:27 +0000

Gary, I never claimed to be anyone special—I’m just a guy who doesn’t like to see people kicked while they’re down (or, really, at all). The closest I come to fur is that I read Ozy and Millie. John, I’m ashamed to say that I don’t read Ampersand regularly (although it seems to have an RSS feed, so I’ll try syndicating it into my reading list). At any rate, I’ve long lost the original chatroom conversation [1] (and never got permission to post it). I’m not very conversant with furry culture, so I don’t know if this is a common view. To my knowlege, I’ve only ever met one fur in person, and I don’t think I asked his opinion. In short, I don’t have any data. But if you know Ampersand, perhaps you could pitch it to him. If you want interview victims, Everything2 has a bunch of furry members (and more than that list—they’re just not all active). [1] But, of course, I saved the conversation with a famous programmer having hot dragon sex with someone in a public chat room. Naturally.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 21:07:39 +0000

Will one of you well-trafficked souls please start compiling the Fair-minded Blogger’s Credo? (which includes “I shall not engage in dumpster diving”…)

By: Grand Moff Texan

Grand Moff Texan — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 19:21:07 +0000

sample size of … oh, hell, why do I bother? Shorter dumpster-diver: RUN AWAY RUN AWAY [it’s only a model] Waitaminute. “Dumpster-diver.” Is that English English? Skip-spelunker is harder to say while(st) drunk.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 14:04:30 +0000

Well, I once saw a furry episode on ER. Ampersand has written a fair bit on transgendered/transsexual people, novalis, if this matters to you you could pitch your analogy to him and he might well post on it. There is a talking dog in blogtopia (y! sctp!), and I am sometimes a penguin.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 06:07:31 +0000

Except that, really, one-uping on obscure topics doesn’t always work out. Heh. Pitch me another softball, please. I didn’t even take one hand out of my pocket. No, I’m not embarassed I know this, without in the least being a furry. I’ve all sorts of weird sub-cultural crap in my background. It’s why my blog is so darn fascinating, and, yet, I never need to self-promote.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 05:50:26 +0000

I’m willing to put down money to bet that I’m the only one here who typeset a Steve Gallacci furry comic in the year 1981, who drove across country for three days to get to the World Science Fiction Convention with a major “furry” artist in 1981, who has any knowledge of the orign of the furries in the comics, funny animals, and apas of the time, and more. (Can you say “Ken Fletcher, Reed Waller, or Dan Steffan”; I didn’t think so.) But will I get credit? No! That’s not very nice! Er. Or something. I just thought I’d mention that one-uping on obscure topics doesn’t always work out. Of course, none of that has anything to do with anything.

By: novalis

novalis — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 05:05:07 +0000

God damn it, why does everyone always make fun of furries?! They’re not hurting anyone, they’re just acting as they truly believe they are. Do you make fun of transgendered people too (I once asked a furry, and he found this a good analogy)? Furries are fucking brave, to go on the ‘net and say, “hi, I’m a chipmunk”. That takes guts! And yet, even supposedly liberal, high-mindded people like you, Ted, make fun of them. That’s not very nice!

By: Pete Guither

Pete Guither — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 04:15:48 +0000

Thanks for this post. I particularly appreciated: “The world is full to the gills with stupid people who say awful things on the Internet. Pointing this out doesn’t constitute a political argument.” That statement should be distributed widely through the blogging community.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 03:24:53 +0000

This week’s US News & World Report has an op-ed by the unique John Leo whose thesis consists almost entirely of dredgings from sites like Democratic Underground. Perhaps he should be told about dumpster diving.

By: fyreflye

fyreflye — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 01:49:03 +0000

I should point out that in my previous comments I was referring to bloggers like Atrios and Pandagon just as much as I was to those like Instapundit or Kim duToit.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:54:49 +0000

I added a response to Roy Edroso. (I also changed two words for the sake of clarity; alas, they are in the section you quoted—“both sides” to “each side.”)

By: roy edroso

roy edroso — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:15:31 +0000

Well, Ted, I guess I’ll miss my bi-monthly Freeper raid, but it’s a small price to pay for an untragic commons.

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:04:49 +0000

Oh, I dunno, Roy; it doesn’t seem so hard to draw a line. The line is “don’t drudge up garbage from comment sections and display it like it proves anything.” The Corner and Andrew Sullivan are obviously fair targets- those folks actually make their living doing this. (Meditate upon this for a moment.) Wacked-out blogs, like Kim du Toit or Emperor Misha, seem like fair targets too. It never occurred to me that bashing them was in poor taste. They went through the trouble of starting a web page; they exposed themselves to ridicule. Besides, when you’re making fun of Emperor Misha, it’s understood that you’re making fun of Emperor Misha, not every conservative everywhere. But look at a forum like, say, FreeRepublic. It produces outrageous posts as predictably as yeast produces carbon dioxide. What possible point is there in dredging them up, especially as proof that “this is how the other side thinks”? You might as well be making fun of furries.