Reply #17: Please offer me your opinion. Help! [View All]

[Bertha Venation]

Borrowed from another thread, to which I will NOT link (suffice to say: GD2004).

"Regrets that you have to be subjected to those so myopic in their partisanship that they fail to - or just psychologically cannot - recognize either the clearly superior candidate for the GLBT community - or even, for that matter, a good piece of journalism.

"Instead, they rush to playing Board Nanny and screaming Violation of Rule This and Rule That to protect a candidacy that has abjectly and misreably failed. One that deserved to fail from the beginning since had it prevailed, it would have eclipsed any politically mature and reasonable hope of taking back the White House from the Squatter."

What do you all think? Flame bait? I called it so (and since it praised the original post while most others didn't, I said "smells like sock puppet"), and got this reply:

"For me, I smell sniffs of arrogance. Projection. Frustration. And, desperation over a doomed and misreable candidacy.

"Flame Bait? To the contrary, one might confidently suggest that the numerous responses in this thread challenging the right of this member to post this article as this member did - and not debating, at all, the points of the article or of the member's thesis - were the flame bait.

"Indeed, it is a frequently employed tactic of the petulant to set up such challenges in a thread to have that thread then declared "flame bait" and closed by the moderators; hence, achieving the objectives of those wishing to have the thread destroyed since their own inability to intellectually debate the thread's issues precludes dealing with the thread in any other manner. Read: setting up straw men.

"It will be interesting to see just how long it takes to have this thread locked and just how many alerts have been issued. Tragic. Pitiful.

"Sock Puppetry? Yeah, right. The last resort of those without effective debating skills: attack the poster or member with patently absurd characterizations. (Read: Karl Rove)

"A respectful suggestion: try, for once, to find an effective argument. It will be unique in this thread."

My instant reaction was to say "POT TO KETTLE, POT TO KETTLE:" but I refrained.

Now help me: is it just me, or are both of these posts flame bait? I'm here to learn.