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[Cthulhu]

Beware, Demetrious, you've pained a Starbucks Cup-shaped target on your back.  Watch out for Volvos.  You've angered the forum's Liberal Elite.

[korora]

Demetrious, this thread was flamebait from the outset.  OSC is essentially trolling real life, and I'm trying not to feed the troll. (Cthulhu's not exactly making it easy, though.)

For analysis of the one point he makes in the entire editorial, see the FactCheck.org article I linked near the start of the thread or Bromor Neckbeard's post. 

This editorial was addressed to all local daily newspapers, not just his own, and I definitely read it as assigning all the blame to the Democrats. You are, of course, free to interpret it as you see fit, but his status as homophobic, right-wing, or a hack does not hinge on this article.

[lumin]

I think there's a lot of blame to go around with the housing crisis, but I think Card is spot on about the media not being objective about it.  There have been polls showing a majority of people believe this, and that it is biased for the left.

Is he a troll?  No.  If he is a troll, then so is any blogger who has a bone to pick with any problem in society.

It's only flame-bait, if you feel the need to flame someone over it.  Nobody is pointing a gun to your head saying you have to yell and scream because you disagree.

[mainiac]

I think there's a lot of blame to go around with the housing crisis, but I think Card is spot on about the media not being objective about it.  There have been polls showing a majority of people believe this, and that it is biased for the left.

Maybe people blame the right more because the right's platform ever since Regan has been "regulation bad, deregulation good."  On everything from industrial regulation to labor regulation to trade barrier to, yes, finance they have always pursued deregulation.  While it's a bad idea to put a single cause to this collapse, if you had to name a single government action most to blame, it would be the politics of deregulation.  So it's not unreasonable to blame the right more since both sides are guilty of failure of vision (neither Clinton or Bush acted to avert this) but it was only the GOP that created the political and legal environment that makes this possible.  If the right is more to blame (and they are!) then why shouldn't the media say so?

[korora]

Card is free to state his opinions and make his case clear.  However, my opinion is that this article is written in an intentionally inflammatory and divisive manner, which makes it trollish.  Whether or not he's right is not related to whether he's a troll.  Similarly, whether or not his editorial is flamebait is unrelated to whether I've flamed it (I have not).

I'm interested to see the polls you mention.  I don't really watch TV news or read newspapers, so I guess I might be missing the bias, but certainly the FactCheck article blames pretty much everybody and specifically debunks the exact evidence Card refers to.

[lumin]

I believe there is more blame toward the Democrats, particularly during the Clinton years, when they pushed for giving loans to more people even when they lacked the ability to pay for it.  But that is besides my point.

I don't believe it is really the media's job to blame one side more than the other regardless of who's fault it is.  They ought to report the facts and let the public decide.

Most people, according to polls, believe the media has not done this.  If it were just this one issue, I believe we could give the media a pass, but people polled on media biased were asked if the media had a bias in general (not just the housing problem).

[lumin]

My opinion is that Card is not a troll at all.  I think that word is inflammatory, and derogatory in itself, and I believe those that use it to label others are trolling themselves.

Like I said, anybody can blog or print anything.  Because you disagree with it, does not make it "trollish".  For example, I don't agree with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, which I would consider pretty divisive, but I don't think he's a "troll".  I disagree with Obama's pastor, when he says, "God Damn America", but he's not a "troll".  I disagree when Obama says that the the Constitution is the fundamental flaw with our country, but I don't call him a "troll".

Here's the poll:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/voters_give_media_failing_grades_in_objectivity_for_election_2008

[korora]

OK, Rasmussen is pretty reputable.  That's an old poll though, so Hillary skews the numbers a bit.  Still, I'm inclined to believe it.

Obviously I disagree with you on the troll front.  However, I'm not interested in getting into an argument with you for the second day running, and I likely won't be on for the rest of the evening.

[Servant Corps]

While I do not want to discuss anymore about this topic, I do want to talk about trolls.

A troll is a fishing techinque that is use to catch fish by "baiting" them. It has since been adapted to online use to mean someone who makes a post in order to receive a desired response, negative or postive. It can be people stating, "GO DIE IN A FIRE YOU TROLL! DIE DIE DIE!" or, in the case of 'fluff trolls' (who pose as women in forums where nerds frequent) "Woo-hoo, Ms. Troll, can I marry you?" The point is, you made a post to receive a response. You are manlipuating your readers.

I don't see any evidence OSC wanted people to send him death threats, call him a right-wing hack, or give him hugs and kisses. Therefore, he is not a troll.

[Jude]

Osama bin Laden is the biggest IRL troll ever

All he did was sit in a cave for years and then he heard the twin towers blew up and everyone was blaming him, so he started coming out with a movie every couple years trolling the shit out of America

[Bromor Neckbeard]

I disagree when Obama says that the the Constitution is the fundamental flaw with our country

He didn't actually say that.  He said that the Constitution "reflected the fundamental flaw of our country that continues to this day", and that's fairly accurate.  I mean, blacks weren't even considered human beings when the Constitution was drafted.  Later, it was written in the Constitution itself that blacks counted as 3/5 of a person (for determining how many seats a state got in Congress).  That IS a fundamental flaw, and racism DOES continue to this day.  When a reprehensible piece of shit like Greg Howard can tell a joke that he got forwarded from the A. Wyatt Mann newsletter in front of black students, and not even lose his job for it, I would have to agree with Obama (despite my dislike for his record on FISA and the 2nd Amendment) that our country DOES still have that flaw.

Also, I must admit that I couldn't find proof today that Orson Scott Card is, in my own words, "a repulsive lunatic", my public library no longer has a copy of Maps in a Mirror.  Can any of my fellow fans of Card's novels post his introduction to the short story "Lost Boys" out of Maps in a Mirror?  If you've read it (and my memory isn't completely incorrect), you no doubt know precisely what I'm talking about.

Does anybody defending Card seriously doubt he's a homophobe?  I haven't managed to prove that he's a lunatic yet, but I thought we might all be able to agree on the "homophobe" part.  I mean, even if you're a self-proclaimed homophobe and see nothing wrong with that, can't you agree that Card is one too?

Okay, even if I don't agree that "the media" (as if they're some huge monolithic group with one collective viewpoint, and don't include every jackass with a webcam and a YouTube account) is giving the Democrats a free pass on their share of responsibility for the current economic mess, Lumin, you seem to be giving Card a free pass on "hating America".  You've personally tried and convicted Obama on hating America because, well, I guess because of his failure to repudiate Wright's "God DAMN America" speech enough times.  But, as Mainiac already said, Orson Scott Card (not some guy whose church he attended) basically said that he'd support war with his own country because we don't do enough to persecute the homos.  This puts him in the ranks with such luminaries as Fred Phelps or Timothy McVeigh.

I've only read the Constitution a couple of times (not thousands of times like Obama, who taught a class on Constitutional Law at freakin' Harvard), but I don't remember EVER seeing the phrase "unless you're queer".  It looks to me like Card, not Obama, is the guy who hates the Constitution and America. And this is a gun-owning conservative redneck with only a high-school education saying this, not some arugula-eating latte-sipping ivory-tower liberal elitist.

[mainiac]

I believe there is more blame toward the Democrats, particularly during the Clinton years, when they pushed for giving loans to more people even when they lacked the ability to pay for it.  But that is besides my point.

When the bloody hell did Clinton ever push for loans to people who couldn't pay them?  Hell, when has a bank ever given a loan to anyone who couldn't pay it?  The problem wasn't we were loaning to bad people, it's that people were taking on loans that were too big and the banks were treating those loans as more secure then they were and the interest rates went up and blah, blah, blah we're all over levered.  But when the bloody hell did Clinton ever force a bank to make a single freaking loan to someone with no ability to pay it?

And you're the one bitching about ad homnium attacks...

[neo1096]

IMO the real troll here is Lumin because he posted it on a public forum, basically asking people to respond. You can't help but see it and he's basically trying to get a rise out of the forum. OSC is less of a troll because a newspaper doesn't have to print a letter or even read it, etc.

[penguinofhonor]

Lumin's the kind of conservative that's decided that since most of the internet has a slight liberal bias, he has to personally counter all of it by having a huge conservative bias. Like most conservative radio stations and news programs: they have to openly admit that they're hugely biased because they feel that there's some sort of fight going on over which side can get more bias.

[rickvoid]

Osama bin Laden is the biggest IRL troll ever

All he did was sit in a cave for years and then he heard the twin towers blew up and everyone was blaming him, so he started coming out with a movie every couple years trolling the shit out of America

I was going to refrain from posting in this thread again, but then I saw this.

W. T. F?