|
Post by gillianren on Aug 21, 2007 2:54:10 GMT -4
Certainly she can be quantifiably shown to rave. "Lunatic"? That's a matter for psychiatry, not my personal opinion. However, she has not shown herself, by her actions, to be the queen of emotional stability. (Not, Gods know, that I'm claiming I am!)
|
|
|
Post by echnaton on Aug 21, 2007 11:30:26 GMT -4
I’ll admit that the term raving lunatic is somewhat emotionally loaded. But as has been pointed out, Coulter can fairly be characterized as raving, or talking irrationally. Among the definitions of lunatic is the meaning of wild, giddy, foolish or characterized by eccentricity. Which certainly applies to her. My use of lunatic was clearly not meant to imply any diagnosis of mental disease. In my experience of reading her columns and seeing Coulter on TV is that she uses emotionally charged language as a primarily means of communication and plays loose with the facts, much like hoax proponents. And she does it to a mass public audience without any possibility of discussion. Because of this I long ago dismissed her as having any substance to add to my knowledge of public affairs. She also talks in public as an one who is knowledgeable on current issues, which hardly applies off topic discussion on Apollo Hoax, where no one would take anything I say about politics as more than a personal opinion. In summary, she really is by at least at least some definitions of the term, a raving lunatic. Second she is holding herself out in public as an expert and trying to sway national opinion on politics, while here on this forum, I am engaged in a ongoing discussion among a relatively small group of people, stating what is clearly reflecting my personal, emotional reaction and dismissive opinion of Coulter. If you want to argue that my view of her is outdated by her current actions that’s fine, and I’ll listen. But based on my observations of her behavior she undermines public civility and responsible publishers and producers should not give her a forum.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Aug 21, 2007 12:06:40 GMT -4
I don't read or watch her very often, not because she ignores the facts or I disagre with her, but because she is just too outrageous and mean-spirited to take seriously. Anyone who has to scream and lower themselves to name-calling tends to lose my attention, regardless of how valid the facts of their arguments might be.
So you could make a case that she's a raving lunatic, but I feel such a case lowers the quality of any debate of her views. It would be better to point out actual factual mistakes she has made and submit counter arguments rather than label her a lunatic and leave her arguments unaddressed.
|
|
|
Post by echnaton on Aug 21, 2007 13:44:20 GMT -4
So you could make a case that she's a raving lunatic, but I feel such a case lowers the quality of any debate of her views.
Ginnie, the OP asked for American's personal opinions on O'Rielly and whether we agreed with what they said. Coulter got thrown into the mix. The topic wasn't a request for a debate on their positions. I ignore Coulter these days so I couldn't say much about her current stance on any topic.
|
|
|
Post by Ginnie on Aug 21, 2007 18:13:55 GMT -4
I don't think we need to be as diplomatic about this as Jason suggests. I've seen HB called worse than raving lunatics (and no, I'm not going to search all the posts to find the examples) in the sense that their intelligence, integrity, honesty and education has been questioned many times without anybody even blinking. Seeing that Ann Coulter and her ilk has a much greater influence on American politics and the public than any HB, then maybe their sanity should be questioned, and their views harshly criticized if you strongly disagree with them. What seems dangerous about Ann is her influence, at least as seen from my neck of the woods.
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Aug 21, 2007 18:37:04 GMT -4
Well perhaps the list should blink when someone questions a hoax believer's intelligence, intergrity, honesty, education, etc. What purpose does it serve to label a hoax believer as uneducated that pointing out the actual flaws in his argument wouldn't serve better?
|
|
|
Post by Ginnie on Aug 21, 2007 19:14:06 GMT -4
Well perhaps the list should blink when someone questions a hoax believer's intelligence, intergrity, honesty, education, etc. What purpose does it serve to label a hoax believer as uneducated that pointing out the actual flaws in his argument wouldn't serve better?
To me, it seems that when an HB is treated politely when spoken to, but is commented upon disparingly when not. And I've done it too, but maybe it should stop? We all learn and change do we not?
|
|
|
Post by 67champ on Sept 18, 2007 0:26:06 GMT -4
Bill is great.
|
|
|
Post by JayUtah on Sept 18, 2007 10:01:30 GMT -4
What purpose does it serve to label a hoax believer as uneducated that pointing out the actual flaws in his argument wouldn't serve better?
Because sometimes you have only a sentence or two in which to offer your view. Not everyone wants the contents of Clavius unloaded on them when they ask a simple question about Sibrel or Kaysing or Percy. I can summarize them as uneducated and manipulative. And coming from someone else that might seem mean-spirited. But coming from me, it's the product of many years of interaction and observation.
And because sometimes your audience may not be appropriately equipped to hear the arguments. An expert photographer might have dozens of technical reasons why some argument fails, but his audience isn't necessarily going to understand the technical presentation.
Similarly a computer expert might be able to give a dozen reasons why an embedded computer shouldn't be measured by a conspiracist's standards. But the actual explanation might come out sounding like, "The heisenfranz combobulator doesn't need gigafleem somnambulation in order to franch the blobbet." It might be an entirely correct answer, but mean absolutely nothing to the listener.
When the root problem of the argument is that it is propounded upon ignorance, then the best and most correct argument is still, "That guy doesn't know what he's talking about." To many audiences that is a comprehensible statement.
Now of course you should always be ready with the detailed reasons where needed, but effective argumentation hits a faulty argument where it lives, not where it wants to be. Conspiracy theorists love nothing more than to mire down in details that the reader doesn't understand and about which he can often plausibly bluff. That's why our rover dust argument languished in page after page of tedious examination of dust trajectories when the real answer to the argument is that Rocky was just ignorantly begging the question.
|
|
|
Post by Jason Thompson on Sept 18, 2007 10:08:50 GMT -4
"The heisenfranz combobulator doesn't need gigafleem somnambulation in order to franch the blobbet."The campaign to get this into a science paper starts here...! 'My spoo has too much fleem.'
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 11:25:44 GMT -4
I generally agree with you, Jay, that brevity is the best reason for not going into a long explanation of why a particular person is wrong, but I maintain that it's nearly always better to also explain why a person is wrong. Then the person who first asked the question learns something more than just your opinion.
|
|
|
Post by JayUtah on Sept 18, 2007 13:22:56 GMT -4
Not everyone is interested in learning why. That's one of the common frustrations among laymen when talking with experts: "You can't get a straight answer out of them." Sometimes the question is whether an idea is wrong, not why. Now my position is that you should never answer the whether without first having studied the why, but people often ask you the whether so that they don't have to delve themselves into the why. People who want to learn should be able to learn from you. People who don't shouldn't have to endure it.
|
|
|
Post by Tanalia on Sept 18, 2007 17:52:37 GMT -4
It's common sense that megafleem somnabulation is sufficient, but too many people conflate the required heisenfranz combobulator with the more expensive eigenfark model.
|
|
|
Post by Ginnie on Sept 18, 2007 22:24:06 GMT -4
Yeah, I think he is very underrated. People make fun of his speech patterns but it comes from his classical training. He even performed Shakespeare before he did TV. Remember the classic Twilight Zone episode with that creature on the wing of the airplane? And did you know he was Canadian? From Montreal no less. Of course he will always be remembered for his role as Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise. Don't rent the Kingdom of the Spiders he was in...
|
|
Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
|
Post by Jason on Sept 18, 2007 22:28:41 GMT -4
Mr. TamberIIIIIIIne MAAAAAAAAN!!!!!
|
|