If you read The Daily Kos and SwingStateVoter.com you will see a series of ad hominem attacks on Carol Darr in response to her testimony before the FEC regarding the campaign finance issue discussed below.
What strikes me about the "debate" being championed by Kos and SwingState is not that either they or Carol Darr is wrong or right. It is that bloggers arguing for the "media exemption" just like The New York Times enjoys have behaved in a manner unbecoming the "profession" if you are inclined to call it that. Can you imagine The New York Times calling Ms. Darr "clueless" and advocating that she be "shitcanned"? It was astounding to see grown men supposedly arguing for the right to be treated as members of the New Media, when they are behaving like cuckolded adolescents. So Ms. Darr disagrees with you on a couple of points (but if you actually read her full testimony you will see that she is largely on "your side"), and so your readers call her a b**ch, a c***, and various other expletives, both on your site and in messages to GW University's president.
Tell me--why the vitriol, gentlemen? I know Carol Darr. And she happens to rock. She is a cool, smart, funny, beyond-intelligent, savvy and tremendously decent woman. Her insight and advice and decency have saved my sorry ass on several occasions, and I simply do not have time for people who make HER the issue when they really disagree with her opinion. I've got Carol's back regardless of her opinions on the blogosphere, so back yourselves up y'all, or it's gonna be ON with The Haggis.
So--a word of grown-up advice in what is apparently the Blog High School Cafeteria: Negotiation Basics 101--Argue needs, not positions. Don't take a position and stick to it. Discuss what you need to get out of the negotiation and why, and then stick to THAT. You are taking POSITIONS without hearing the other side.
And grow the f up. Because there is nothing less convincing--and more laughable--than a guy who has to call a woman a stupid b**ch in order to win an argument.
5 comments:
Ahh, the words versus the cudgels. In "modern" debates, it seems to be a fad that if you can't win by knowledge, you can at least win by slander. Or maybe not win, just make yourself feel superior. And that's all that really matters, right? In the industry, it's all about image, and if you can make yourself seem big (while to the rest of us, seeming so petty), you have succeeded.
Yeah, and if slander doesn't work just bomb them. Who cares about listening, if you shout loud and long enough everyone else will "give up" or at least start copying the way you are working, which means you've won cause then idea's don't matter Right.
Yeah, I've read some of those comments. They seemed off-topic and harsh. I don't know Carol Darr, but surely she isn't Osama Bin Ladin, right?
I think I'd better line up with you on this one, E.
E-
I don't care if she is a nice, decent lady. She is wrong on all counts, and she ought to step down from her position. Sorry to piss you off, but that's how it is.
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