The "Is CNN Biased" post, Poll edition..

[ehtheist]

I usually don't bother with that guy because he's kind of creepy and not really worth it. Funny how he interprets it, though.

I go at it with you, Pan, KK, and others who are clearly smarter than he is, and don't really engage with people like him, LI, second sight, glennrod, etc. None of the lower-level guys seem to grasp that. It's fun hashing it out with intelligent posters whom I disagree with. Not so much with lesser guys.

Oh Jack, you're making me feel all warm and fuzzy... Though, I think I'll leave it up to you two to decide who's the smarter of the two. I just found his bluster a bit amusing.

Anyways, I still am intending on responding to your PM, but serious responses are about a month turnaround at the moment. For a bit of information on how to deal with your very serious questions though, are you familiar with the work of people like Judith Butler or Gayatri Spivak? Particularly papers like Judith Butler's "Restaging the Universal," and the broader movement it represents? And more specific on that, the development of enlightenment ideals becoming a bit like a serpent eating its own tail, with the reasonable conclusion a lot of theorists are reaching is that enlightenment values are themselves culturally specific, and they are undermining their own claims to being "universal"? It's been a long evolution since Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but Western values have been through a bumpy ride in the last 150 or so years and a lot of what I see you presenting as Western values are somewhat dated.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Oh Jack, you're making me feel all warm and fuzzy... Though, I think I'll leave it up to you two to decide who's the smarter of the two. I just found his bluster a bit amusing.

I mean, don't get me wrong--I don't think highly of your ethics, and I think you're wrong on most issues. But if I were avoiding smart disagreement, I'd ignore people like you, Pan, and Rex rather than people like second sight, EG, and LI.

Anyways, I still am intending on responding to your PM, but serious responses are about a month turnaround at the moment.

No rush. You started it.

For a bit of information on how to deal with your very serious questions though, are you familiar with the work of people like Judith Butler or Gayatri Spivak? Particularly papers like Judith Butler's "Restaging the Universal," and the broader movement it represents? And more specific on that, the development of enlightenment ideals becoming a bit like a serpent eating its own tail, with the reasonable conclusion a lot of theorists are reaching is that enlightenment values are themselves culturally specific, and they are undermining their own claims to being "universal"? It's been a long evolution since Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but Western values have been through a bumpy ride in the last 150 or so years and a lot of what I see you presenting as Western values are somewhat dated.

Without getting too much into this, as it's completely off topic, criticisms of the West from within have been around from the beginning (though I guess J.J. Rouseau really kicks it off). The political history of it (the Confederacy, Facism, etc.) is not a proud one.

 

[EGarrett]

I usually don't bother with that guy because he's kind of creepy and not really worth it. Funny how he interprets it, though.

I go at it with you, Pan, KK, and others who are clearly smarter than he is, and don't really engage with people like him, LI, second sight, glennrod, etc. None of the lower-level guys seem to grasp that. It's fun hashing it out with intelligent posters whom I disagree with. Not so much with lesser guys.

I can embarrass you any time I want to, on any topic that's of the slightest interest to me. You will never have a chance. There's a gap in cognitive ability between you and me and I can tell it's outside of your experience and you don't know what to do about it. You're used to being able to cite some obscure BS and feel smart and get no reply, but I cut through it easily and you then don't know what to do.

I thought you'd started to learn your lesson when you tried that "ad hominem must be an argument" nonsense the first time and I immediately schooled you on what an ad hominem is in reality and you had to admit that you were wrong.

I also pushed you around twice in the Climate Change thread just because I felt like it. I told you directly that you had no idea what you were talking about and that what you said had nothing to do with the topic. Daring you to try to argue your point of view with me. But knowing of course that if you did try you would get schooled.

You knew it too. That's why you backed down and ran away.

Your actions speak louder than any posturing or signaling you try to do to cover for them. Those are just mental glitches going on where you try to save face in light of the awkwardness of having me ruining your attempted ego trips by repeatedly making you look foolish and scared of me.

 

[EGarrett]

Damn, you must be a generous guy, having chosen not to run such a buffoonish poster off the board in the ten years you've shared it with him...

The reason why I don't push him around more is because I haven't spent much time in the War Room since I've been here. Mainly around elections. And when I am here, I'm not a bully at heart. I'd rather help people understand things then make them feel bad about themselves. But Jack does try to bully other posters here, and needed to get the message that he isn't the biggest fish in the pond. He didn't get the message the first few times I nicely schooled him on something (like what an "ad hominem" is in reality, something which he thought he was clever about, and after which he started avoiding me).

Remember, actions speak louder than words. He'll say everything under the sun to try and protect his ego, but he's in an awkward situation where he can't actually argue anything substantively with me and he repeatedly backs down.

 

[dontsnitch]

This thread was so much fun it should be stickied.

 

[EGarrett]

I usually don't bother with that guy because he's kind of creepy and not really worth it. Funny how he interprets it, though.

I go at it with you, Pan, KK, and others who are clearly smarter than he is, and don't really engage with people like him, LI, second sight, glennrod, etc. None of the lower-level guys seem to grasp that. It's fun hashing it out with intelligent posters whom I disagree with. Not so much with lesser guys.

What you're doing now, by the way, is a fallback when someone loses confidence and status. Since you can't regain it by outarguing me, you instead try to get it by currying favor with bystanders. That's why you've gone from insulting the entire thread to trying to be a lovey-dovey guy who lists all the people you like. It's actually your only recourse, and it's how, despite how you try to puff yourself up, I know that you're actually taking quite a hit to your little ego.

 

[EGarrett]

No I don't, thats a fair point. I more dismiss Jack based on his posts though, so having the results isn't defenetive proof hes wrong, but it is evidence that almost everyone here thinks he is and there is little to no incentive for people to be dishonest voting here.

It's a proper dismissal. CNN's bias was demonstrated very clearly by wikileaks and in this thread.

 

[HereticBD]

I can embarrass you any time I want to, on any topic that's of the slightest interest to me. You will never have a chance. There's a gap in cognitive ability between you and me and I can tell it's outside of your experience and you don't know what to do about it. You're used to being able to cite some obscure BS and feel smart and get no reply, but I cut through it easily and you then don't know what to do.

I thought you'd started to learn your lesson when you tried that "ad hominem must be an argument" nonsense the first time and I immediately schooled you on what an ad hominem is in reality and you had to admit that you were wrong.

I also pushed you around twice in the Climate Change thread just because I felt like it. I told you directly that you had no idea what you were talking about and that what you said had nothing to do with the topic. Daring you to try to argue your point of view with me. But knowing of course that if you did try you would get schooled.

You knew it too. That's why you backed down and ran away.

Your actions speak louder than any posturing or signaling you try to do to cover for them. Those are just mental glitches going on where you try to save face in light of the awkwardness of having me ruining your attempted ego trips by repeatedly making you look foolish and scared of me.

 

[IGIT]

No I don't, thats a fair point. I more dismiss Jack based on his posts though, so having the results isn't defenetive proof hes wrong, but it is evidence that almost everyone here thinks he is and there is little to no incentive for people to be dishonest voting here.

hi CrazyN8,

i think its too bad this thread has devolved the way it has, though i guess Jack's pov is central to the question posed in the OP.

you know how i feel, of course - i feel that the nature of CNN's bias was pro-Trump (though not by design and not related to any policy positions he did or did not take). to put it simply and in newspaper terms, Trump was good copy and Zucker recognized this to be so.

as to folks having an incentive to vote Jack down, i think there's plenty of it. he's one of the better debaters here and besting him is seen as bagging a big game trophy. many of the folks who have demeaned his positions haven't had anything of substance to say on the actual topic but seem gleeful for an opportunity to take a swipe at him.

this is all coming from a person (me) who has, in the past, had some very spirited exchanges with him on other threads. i just never took any of it personally and consider everything that goes on here to be occasionally interesting and all in good fun.

- IGIT

ps - as a side note, i'm really kind of surprised how many posters watch so much CNN. i think almost all major network coverage is absolute garbage. not biased, but just garbage.