briankoontz said:
Therumancer said:
Of course this is something I'm bringing up in response to a very rare situation on The Escapist. As a general rule there aren't many cases where you see a feature contributor basically baiting people, followed by bans when people take the bait. Strictly speaking the insulting tone in the WGDF jokes in "Critical Miss" could even be interpreted as an outright group attack.
It's constructive criticism, not an attack. The point in framing it as an attack is so that there can be a morally justified defense, kind of like how Rush Limbaugh views every criticism of white people as an attack and by God, thanks to him there is finally a defense of white wealthy people. The point is to maximize argumentation as a political weapon - for Rush Limbaugh to justify whatever he does from the standpoint of being permanently besieged. "White people are under threat", which means anything goes so that privilege is maintained.
If we begin with the understanding that none of us are perfect and therefore there's always room for constructive criticism we won't view every criticism with hostility.
I disagree that this was in any way constructive, especially given the issue that was being addressed, and the mention of Zimmerman. What's more Rush Limbaugh frequently goes too far, and is made to apologize for it. He's also been under fire from numerous sponsors and patrons, and has been bounced around, put in late night TV slots (not even sure if he has a show) and other things due to his particular style. Granted Rush doesn't go much further than a lot of liberals do, and is treated differently because of the side he represents, which is kind of the point he's making when he talks about whites and conservatives being under siege.
One important thing to consider though is that I am *NOT* saying that Critical Miss should not have done this. There is however a discussion forum attached to this feature specifically to invite discussion. When someone uses that forum to respond in kind, they have been getting moderated. That's not right. My point is that if your going to have a forum for something like this, let it go both ways and be equally intense. If you don't want that kind of warfare on your site, then don't let the feature contributors fire off these kinds of shots. What your seeing Critical Miss doing is attacking, having a forum to encourage discussion and rebuttal, and hiding behind mods who attack anyone who throws
the same thing right back at them. As I've said, they have the right to say what they want, but on a site like this
they should also have to reap what they sow, forums attached to features that want to make socio-political commentary should be free fire zones within that subject, and if the feature is an attack piece, it should expect a counter attack.
I find the whole situation kind of cowardly honestly, I drop my fair share of bombs (but do it in a fairly polite fashion) but don't get upset when people "dare" to speak back to me, or go crying to the mods or expecting some kind of administrative force field. As I've said if they had done this kind of thing, the way they did it, without being a feature contributor they would have been suspended at the very least, and to me it's just plain wrong to see a bunch of people moderated in their defense under those kinds of circumstances, and then see them do the entire thing again and get tons of "OMG, here it comes again" responses because of the mess they created before.
I'll also be blunt in saying again that Rush has been made to apologize in the past for stunts (which I'm not suggesting here), but at the same time Rush to my knowledge has never portrayed his opponents as engaging in casual murder either. I used to listen to him to an extent (my opinions are mixed) and I've heard him call people morons, corrupt, implied treason, and talked about extreme media bias, but he's never even really joked about how democrats
and liberals are going to go walking about and blow the heads off people for disagreeing with him.
To put it in another perspective, if someone here did a joke that had "blacks are brainless monkey people who rape white women" as the punchline, what kind of outcry and action do you think that would warrant? This is the same thing. Would the mods be defending that?
Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against extreme jokes, ideally, as I've said, I'd prefer free speech on both sides when something like this gets started, rather than moderation or censorship in either direction. If Critical Miss wants to try and start something, more power to them, but they shouldn't be protected from the response. The Escapist doesn't have to do that though, and whether I like it or not, can already practice censorship. As an alternative if they want to be reasonable about it and not host a bunch of socio-political free-fire zones, I've also suggested they might simply exercise editorial control and not host content that is making a socio-political statement, or piggybacking one onto something else. Of course I'd prefer the mods to simply be kept out of features that make social and political statements. In reality I however expect nothing to happen, and things to continue on as they have been, which is of course the right of The Escapist. I'm just sounding off (so to speak).
