Monday, July 13, 2009

Clarification On Comments Here


SATURDAY, I did a piece on Sarah Palin and in no time flat I and my liberal commenters were off to the races. I appreciate fellow blogger mRed at Invincible Armor jumping in with me because it got heated very fast. There were several comments with personal attacks that I didn't post and several more I erased. One intrepid commenter declared herself outta here for good. I certainly respect anyone's decision not to come back for good reason or no reason at all.

However, I want to take this time to outline what's acceptable and what's not in the comments section here. If I haven't made it crystal clear before, I am now:

First I've noticed three trends over the past three years of blogging:

1. Observation: Liberal readers/commenters often tend to take everything personally even when it's said in general and not personally at all.

Take for example the statement Saturday I made to the effect, "Believe me, vienna, I do indeed think there are liberal elements in this country who would like to take down every one of the principles on which this country was founded."

Fairly general and a true statement on my part. I said what I meant and meant what I said. What I didn't say was who some of these radicals are (Saul Alinsky, Ward Churchill, Al Gore with his one world governance nonesense, Paul Krugman, George Clooney and Barbwa Streisand only to name a very few). I assumed most readers knew who and what I was referring to.

I was then met in my comments with a long detailed note from her saying she'd reached the end of her rope commenting here (Didn't she say that two years ago before leaving and then coming back?) She was personally insulted and now she just cann't possibly keep coming over here week after week to comment (or insult me) anymore.

How dare I make such a statement condemning her personal patriotism: Why, after all she's a Cub Scout leader and her husband is in the military! ( statements like this have gone on here for several years though they rarely get published.)

Again, I started Webutante because I'm a recovering liberal who loved my country also....and I even taught Sunday school back in those olden days of my liberalism and did all sorts of patriotic things, even winning awards and silly stuff like that. Still later I discovered that as a liberal, I had been complicit for years/ decades in accepting a liberal agenda that I never bothered to understand or comprehend the effects of. One day I---patriot I thought I was--woke up and realized I'd better start paying better attention to what's going on.

Let me repeat what I just said: I and others can be patriotic as hell and do all the right stuff and still participate in the downward slide of our country by complicitly accepting ridiculous notions we know little or nothing about the effects of---because it just sounds like a good idea. It's easy for us to get swept up in the emotion of man-made global warming etc. without really knowing what effects a government policy based on such a foregone conclusion will have on us for generations.

1) Suggestion: Don't take everything personally. But if the shoe fits, you're welcome to wear it, although it's none of my business; otherwise take what you want and leave the rest. And if all else fails, you're always free to leave.

2) Observation: Liberal commenters don't just take things uber-personally, they respond by attacking their opponents personally, and more often than not, it's very inappropriate and highly presumptuous.

When something I've said evokes personal attacks from others to me like: a) "You need psychiatric help IMMEDIATELY!" b) "You're lucky to have so many liberals in your family however it remains to be seen whether they're lucky to have you...." I'm left scratching my head and wondering what if I said these kinds of things to them? Not only are they off-topic and a distraction to the subject at hand, they're arrogant and highly presumptuous. These people take great liberties as guests on this blog. If I've allowed this in the past, then it's ending now.

Additionally, I can tell you one thing from this: I know in a very, very, very small way what Sarah Palin has had to endure on a monumentally greater basis from her detractors this past year. And much of it is viscous, mean and wildly uncalled for.

2) Suggestion: If you want to get personal here, get personal about yourself---like Stacie did on the post below. However, I don't need you to tell me what I need/don't need/how sick//unfortunate I am. Any further comments that take inappropriate liberties here will not be read and certainly not published. Comments are desirable when they further the conversation and inspire, otherwise they're a waste of time to read and write.

Manners are't optional.

3) Observation: I notice a wide preponderance of globalizing simple statements people make thus making them into something totally different than what is said or meant (also, see #1).

Ellen, my liberal commenter reminded us, then globalized, generalized and insulted. Watch. Ellen commented:

Do you recall Palin saying 'real America' is not in the cities or suburbs, it is in the "small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America."

It's pretty clear who not a 'real American'... anyone with an education. The educated are the elite that the right disdain. The same right wingers that idolize football players and nascar drivers have no respect for education, intellectualism, science, or fine art.

Huh? We conservatives disdain education? Fine art? Science? Idolize football players----are you kidding me?---This is so silly as not even to merit a response.

All that may be pretty clear to you, Ellen, but it certainly isn't to me and many others.

As I pointed out earlier, Sarah Palin is applauding the values of small-town America. Nothing more or less was said by her. She said nothing about education, science, the arts, football or NASCAR.

This kind of mythical inference will no longer be published here. It's a rant that leaves the rails of reality quickly and never comes back. This is a typical tactic of the attack-left--ascribing to others things that are never said and deducing what was never meant---and it will no longer be tolerated here.

3) Suggestion: Stick with reality in commenting, and leave the wild flights-of-fancy to post on someone else's blog. They won't get published here.

I hope I've made myself clear. I welcome comments here always that are on topic, courteous, humorous, personal in that they're about you or your principles and experience. Otherwise, the door is always at the delete button.

Best wishes and thank you for coming by.

11 comments:

vienna va said...

ya know, friend, if you're going to attribute quotes to me (which you do whem you put them "" things around a sentence), you might try gettin' it right. I NEVER said you're lucky to have liberals in your life. I said you're lucky to have friends and family who are Democrats who sit back and listen to you blame them for the downfall of America. Big difference. And it was supposed to be a COMPLIMENT to you and your friends, because you obviously have many great qualities that your friends and family appreciate enough to take the general nonsense about leftists. It obviously went over your head, and I apologize for that; I shouldn't have been so obtuse.

Off to contribute to the downfall of America! Best to you.

Webutante said...

Thank you for an obtuse compliment....I knew there was something there in all that by-gone rhetoric.

Just so your imagination won't run too far and wildly asunder, I almost never talk politics with my family and children. I'll just let Obama hand them their new tax bill. That's why I'm here.

There is also a great contingency of true conservatives in my family. And we have such a good time together.

vienna va said...

See, that's funny because my pay check went up under Obama. I'll bet only America hating libtards get that benefit. Yeah for us!! :)

I'm sorry to have to disagree about patriotism again. My experience as a military spouse (damn, why do I keep bringing that up? it's like it has meaning in my life or something...sorry to bring it up again) has enabled us to live all over the country and the world, and I gotta tell you: patriots come in all shapes, sizes, colors, religions - and yes, political parties, too. One of my best friends is a HUGE Sarah Palin backer - we had dinner with her and her husband (also military) about 3 days after she was nominated, and boy was she pysched! She was so excited and it was hard not to catch her entusiasm. After the election, he said something very wise to me: we all love America, we just differ on how to get her in the right direction. And, trust me, she'd give you a run for your money when it comes to conservatism.

And I grew up in a small town, too (population: 9,400). I think you and I probably share some small town values: hard work, honesty, doing the right thing. I try to pass those on to my kids and my community, mostly through scouting and sports (sorry to mention those again). My experience is people on all sides share those values, not just conservatives.

That's my $.02, for what it's worth, which doesn't seem to be much 'round these parts.

Webutante said...

Yes patriots do come in every possible description---we can finally agree. And my point is that often we can be both patriotic and complicit in supporting something that can have a very long term harmful effect on our country and we're not even aware of it until one day we wake up and realize certain things may be gone.

Most people, as I once did, automatically support raising the minimum wage, world without end---sounds like such a noble idea---but when we learn raising it has the side effect of shutting many people out entering the job force, then we need to be aware of that too. A company, especially in hard times, that is forced to pay a higher minimum wage will cut jobs and do whatever it must to stay in business...often putting a freeze on new hiring. Just one such example that stikes me as salient.

vienna va said...

Wow, the irony of this comment is strking: "we can be both patriotic and complicit in supporting something that can have a very long term harmful effect on our country and we're not even aware of it until one day we wake up and realize certain things may be gone", given the very recent revelations of rampant domestic spying during the Bush years. "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Hmm. I don't know anyone on the left who supports raising the minimun wage "world without end." I do know people who support a living wage. My father in law started his union job making $3.14 an hour when he worked for Henry Ford's company - a guy who took a lot of pride in paying his workers a salary they could raise a family on.

"Henry Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism" designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.

Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914. The revolutionary program called for a raise in minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,[15] while in 1926 they described it as five 8-hour days, giving a 40-hour week.[16] (Apparently the program started with Saturdays as workdays and sometime later made them days off.) Ford says that with this voluntary change, labor turnover in his plants went from huge to so small that he stopped bothering to measure it.[17]

When Ford started the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage he was criticized by other industrialists and by Wall Street. He proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy."

Companies can find a way to pay a living wage to their employees if they think there's value in doing that. Most companies don't value it, unfortunately, which I understand that people view as a positive. I view it as a negative.

Webutante said...

Yes, Henry Ford was exemplery, as my father who had over 200 people in his small town business workforce. Yet it was never unions or government mandates that kept his men there. They were always treated fairly and better than any public or private mandates and if for any reason they weren't, they could always leave and find a better employer....it's the American way.

Rita Loca said...

Interesting...

Webutante said...

Ah, Rita...haven't we been here before?

Webutante said...

Ellen, This site is not a place where you can come anymore to spew your conservative hate on any subject---no matter how inappropriate or off topic---any time. This post is not about Tennessee Tea Parties, cuts in funding for the arts and the percentage of federal moneies go to Tennessee (I wish it were NONE).

The prior post that inspired this one was about Sarah Palin and how her enemies and the MSM hounded her out of office. If you want to EVER get a comment published again, then stay on topic or else you'll be wasting your time.

Your current comment was rejected.

Webutante said...

No more off-topic, wide ranging, unprofessional, hateful rants here to put down conservatives anyway possible.

Nothing you will write here right now, Ellen, will be read or published. Try again when you've adjusted your attitude.

Good day.

Webutante said...

To the Chinese commenter(s) that are attempting to post here:

I DO NOT POST COMMENTS UNLESS I UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY SAY!! YOU WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED HERE UNLESS YOU POST IN ENGLISH AND THEN HAVE THE COMMENT OK'ED BY ME. IF YOU CONTINUE THIS NONSENSE, I'LL CONTACT BLOGGER...