re: #285 reine.de.tout

I don’t have that much of a problem with it, actually. Well, nazi whore is obviously horrible. But with the name calling in general, and the vitriol/actual hate for individual politicians, I mean.
I think that politics is not some “gentleman’s game”. It is about actual important things that influence the lives of everybody, and it is about people who are not saints, and we (most of us) can only stay interested by being part of a group, and that means a certain amount of group behavior.
So when thinking about whether I approve of the way politicians are talked about I think several things are important: do they have good reasons to hate this person? If the politician was just being partisan, or if people get their information only from sources that have been proven unreliable again and again, or if it’s based on race, butthurt, etc, than I don_’t think they have a good reason.
And then I ask myself, is this an expression of reasonable political vitriol that I find ok, in general or for this venue? And I find name calling ok for pub or blog conversation, but I would never call it critique or find it interesting (unless it’s very funny, or really drives a valid point home). I don’t think lies are ok ever. I don’t think using existing systematic discrimination is ever ok (and I think the constant whore/slut, haha she has an adams apple thing does that, as does the “Obama is so narcissist/elitist”).
Also, I think of this as a bipartisan blog, so to me, too much name-calling makes the whole point of this blog to me, namely conversation beyond partisanship exponentially more difficult or even impossible.
That said, some liberals avoid the threads about Obama’s speeches, and then they come back afterward. that seems a sensible approach to me. When you share space, you compromise.