Mister Pterodactyl
Saturday, June 28, 2008
 
The right to be ill mannered
So says Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom. She's exercised over a WaPo article: "The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy unless it abolishes its daily lunchtime prayer, saying that some midshipmen have felt pressured to participate."

The article quotes one anonymous midshipman: "'It became very obvious that you aren’t participating.' [She] said she went along with the practice at first because she didn’t want to stand out. But she stopped in her third year and stood at parade rest instead of bowing her head and crossing her arms."

I think Darleen Click doesn't know what parade rest is. Her immediate reaction: "Correct, you obnoxious twit, you would be obvious for your 'in your face, you god-botherers' sitting up looking around, clanking your fork against your drinking cup and doing the sotto voce version of 'get on with it, ‘rev’. My food’s getting cold.'"

The comments(over 120 of them) run various ways, but the majority seem to agree with her: not only that the ACLU, and the midshipmen, are out of line, but also why can't she just bow her head for 30 seconds fer cryin' out loud?

There's more, but that'll do for now. I really wanted to leave a comment, but the post was over a day old (on a very active multi-user blog) and again, over 120 comments already. I figured it was pointless to leave a comment that approximately zero people would ever read. So I decided to repost my comment here, where it'll have twice that audience! Okay, almost.

My comment (after reading through all the other comments too): "So the consensus here is 'why can’t that stupid atheist just shut up and go along with it?' Is that about right? If you’re annoyed by the ACLU suit, fine. I agree they could find bigger fish to fry. But if you think that standing quietly at parade rest is disrespectful behavior, you need to get a grip. Does it really make you so uncomfortable to be around nonbelievers that you’d insist they pretend to be praying? That’s pretty weak."

UPDATE: Hey, I was wrong. Somebody did respond to my comment. And, well, lets just say you can only expect so much in terms of civility on a topic like that.
Comments:
Hey, Anesthetized Testicles! I agree with you on this one.

B. Moe, along with his brothers, B. Curly and B. Larry are a bit stoogey.
 
That's "Cold Cashews" to you, mister.
 
Todd, I thought your comment was dead on. The folks at PW are intensely political (Marx would be proud of them) and they will constantly claim to "not believe" or be "agnostics" whilst defending the right of Christian activists to have their way. They do this to avoid the cries of "theocon" they anticipate critics making.

The position of their "atheist" and "agnostic" posters is akin to their belief regarding racial issues, i.e. shut up and quit whining.

At Protein Wisdom the majority rules and the minorities need to make a best of it.

Nevertheless, you received your first ad hominem. They only ratchet it up from there. Believe as they do or have every comment attacked by certain angry, angry regulars the second it goes up.

It's a reflection of their leader.
 
Everybody say hi to the new guy.

"It's a reflection of their leader" doesn't really make sense to me. There are lots of blogs that have a small group of regulars who try to make the comments into an agree-fest. They're humorless and irony-challenged; even the parodic posts get attacked as if sincere. PW is no different than hundreds of others that way.

And "numbnuts" isn't an ad hominem, it's just a juvenile insult. Unless the user thought my nuts were literally numb, distracting me and making my opinion worthless. Could that be what he was saying? Deep.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

Powered by Blogger