I'm block-quoting his entire post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, just in case he decides to proofread later and make corrections in a belated attempt to appear less an asshole than he is. See, "Phony Political Scientist Sees Morons at Fake Indepedence Hall and is Impressed":
With all apologies to J.D. Salinger, I can't resist reading Donald Douglas's account of a Michele Bachmann event at Knott's Berry Farm in Holden Caulfield's terms. This is contemporary conservatism boiled to the bone: some morons convince of a phony of their patriotism by speaking before a replica of an actual American institution. Douglas's photo-essay captures what history signifies when you subscribe to Tea Party logic even more starkly than those fake patriots who demonstrate their solidarity with the Founding Fathers by showing up at rallies with tea-bags.I guess quite a few folks have a problem with historical replicas, but you might notice that when SEK quotes and ridicules he omits the hyperlinks. For example, with reference to Philadelphia's Independence Hall, the link (and thus context) is at my original passage: "Both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed there." That's "signed there," as in Pennsylvania, yo!
Did I say rallies? I meant "sparsely-attended speeches by purported conservative celebrities in the most conservative county in the country," because as Douglas's own photos attest, David Horowitz and Michele Bachmann have little drawing power within spitting distance of the birth place of Richard Nixon. Not that Douglas would care, mind you, because he can't tear his authentic eyes away from all the ersatz history. Even his grammar becomes ambiguous in the presence of all this fakery:As you can see, the park's Independence Hall is an exact replica of the original historic landmark in Philadelphia, PA. Both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed there.The Decleration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed in Knott's Berry Farm's Independence Hall? According to Knott's Berry Farm, they most certainly were:Douglas then produces:
[a] shot of the [Knott's Berry Farm's replica of the] bell's famous crack.The faked crack on the fake Liberty Bell is famous? All morons hate it when their grammar reveals that they're morons.
Not that it's just the grammar, as his caption to this picture demonstrates: "[t]he sweeties at the gift counter, in 18th century dress." If you press your ear against the monitor, you can almost hear him declaiming: "That is too an authentic 18th century windbreaker!" But perhaps the best part of Douglas's account is the definitive evidence that Tea Party patriots don't know from English. He notes that Michele Bachmanncame to California straight from Washington and the last night's SOTU. She reminded the crowd that this time last year the big talk was Joe Wilson's "you lie," while this week it's Samuel Alito's "not true," and she turned that into a little chant to fire up the patriots in attendence.If that chant sounds like Douglas suggests it does—"You lie! Not true! You lie! Not true!"—then those patriots sure told Joe Wilson a thing or two.
Besides that, how's this for a piece of F**KED UP writing? "This is contemporary conservatism boiled to the bone: some morons convince of a phony of their patriotism by speaking before a replica of an actual American institution."
If "convince" is being used as a verb, it needs to precede an object. For example, "This is contemporary conservatism boiled to the bone: some morons convince OTHERS of a phony ... patriotism by speaking before a replica of an actual American institution."
(And from Aaron Baker's comment at the post, "Could you please unjumble 'some morons convince of a phony of their patriotism' for us?")
And while I don't normally stress typos and misspelled words, if someone's going to smear me with dishonest distortions of my grammar, they might as well at least use a spell-checker: "The Decleration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed in Knott's Berry Farm's Independence Hall?"
Never said that, Scott. But your "Decleration of Independence" is priceless.
You're in good company, in any case. See "The Moral Abomination of Robert Farley."
P.S. I personally think Charli Carpenter has demeaned herself by joining LGM as a co-blogger.
13 comments:
Blah blah blah Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation applies to me too. A mortal wound! Actually, no it's not: I made a point about your grammatical ambiguity being indicative of your larger stupidity, whereas you merely demonstrated that I'm capable of making typos. That doesn't count as a win, you know. But you don't, do you?
I'm block-quoting his entire post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, just in case he decides to proofread later and make corrections in a belated attempt to appear less an asshole than he is.
Making typos doesn't make me an asshole. Being an asshole does, but that's different from making typos. Really, though, if you can add any meat to your refutation, you'd probably come off a little better.
Yo, Kaufmann! If you're gonna dis' Donald like a street thug, cut back on the Hennessy before you start typing, dog. Fight judges unanimous: that bout went to Dr. Donald Douglas.
SEK: Really? Even your own commenter suggests: "Could you please unjumble 'some morons convince of a phony of their patriotism' for us?"
Not a typo, obviously, just your own mendacity and hypocrisy. Cruise around the blogsophere looking to call out folks for their stupidity makes you look pretty stupid. Own it brother ... it's all yours.
Or perhaps it's all strategery on my part. ;)
What an asshat this jerk is, I'm surprised he managed to spell his 3names correctly.
BCF: The guy's added an update, to which I responded in the comments:
'Scott: Keep updating buddy. You're pwned already, so you're just scratchin' bottom. Your Ph.D. can be abbreviated to "piled high and deep," which is just more of your f**ked up shit. Run around the web calling people stupid, and then smearing people based on stuff they hadn't actually written. Brilliant. And you want to compare academic bonafides? Who f**king cares? Naturally, if you're all about "philosophy" rather than "praxis" -- i.e., the actually ability to write a coherent sentence -- then you deserve to post all day long at the communist stinkhole of a page. I actually teach students to know stuff like that. So F**k you, you ignorant prick.'
I'm heading to the actual Independence Hall tomorrow, Donald.
I'll post photos of the building and let us see if SEK has the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction.
After reading the posts, and comments from both LG&M and American Power I have to say that nearly everything that you (Douglas) have typed reminds me of nearly every one of these listed techniques:
http://www.cracked.com/funny-3809-internet-argument-techniques/
For clarification, I do not have a PHD, nor do I claim to have spectacular grammar, but I can tell when someone (Douglas) is being an asshat about something that barely mattered to begin with.
To quote SEK, "I made a point about your grammatical ambiguity being indicative of your larger stupidity, whereas you merely demonstrated that I'm capable of making typos"-exactly!
Not only have you zealously remained fastened on SEK's typo, you (Douglas) swear an awful lot, to such an extent that it diminishes any point you try to make. Like a child who learned his first swear and now has to use it every sentence in order to show JUST HOW SERIOUS HE IS.
Hint: it just ends up sounding whiny and boorish.
You could always change my mind if you actually responded to anything SEK has said though, there is still that chance.
ShiftyWeasel: I looked at your link, and at most two of those descriptions could possible describe the debate were having, and you obviously don't know what a sock puppet is. SEK writes a post to call me stupid, and you're telling me that's insignificant. Do you think that's smart, or conservatives should just lie down when communist filth like SEK smear and libel them around the web? As for my language, fuck you, you ignorant prick. If you've got to cite some stupid ass Internet guide to argumentation, I suspect these exchanges are over your head to begin with.
"SEK writes a post to call me stupid, and you're telling me that's insignificant."
Not at all! Nowhere did I say that SEK was completely in the right to write what he did, in fact I did make sure to say that you could always change my mind, providing you actually responded to any of SEK's criticisms with anything other than raging insults.
"Do you think that's smart, or conservatives should just lie down when communist filth like SEK smear and libel them around the web?"
You are completely and totally justified in responding to that post. He made various claims about you (though to be fair, a lot of what he said was applicable to conservatives and Tea Partiers across the board, and were not ENTIRELY pointed at you.) You had every right to respond to him, to call him out in your own blog or to have a friend do the same at their blog.
Except there was a little problem with what you did. Rather than respond with something of substance, with a posting of your own showing just why what he said was wrong, with an attempted deconstruction of anything he said (thereby showing just how foolish/wrong/biased he was) you decided to start it all off with:
"You're an ass, Scott, a genuine one."
That was all there was to it. You didn't go about any deconstructing, nor had you created (at that time) a blog post. All you did was call SEK an ass (without any clarification, either). Which to some extent is excuseable, I know that I'd likely be fuming after reading a sudden attack on myself such as that, and I would very likely respond with insults rather than any sort of rational answer. I really wish you had tried to prove him wrong, I would have enjoyed reading a discourse between you two, providing it stayed on topic. Instead it almost immediately became you attacking him, your every word vitriolic.
My point in referencing that comedy article (and that was what it was Douglas, comedy) was that both parties (yes, to some extent I would say SEK as well) in my non-PHD'd estimation, had acted childish. Or maybe childish isn't the best word, maybe trollish, or immature, irrational, etc. I don't really know which describes it best, but I do think that most of your reactions to SEK's post were completely over-the-top, incredibly vicious and incredibly aggressive. That's not to say he stayed perfectly mild-mannered, but I don't expect him to when reading what you kept saying. Say what you will about him, his original post was NOT nearly as laden with swear words and whatnot.
When the discussion reached the point of discussing what exactly a Doctor of Philosopy is/the definition of PHD is, is where I thought it got further derailed into the cracked.com article's list of stupid arguments. I didn't mean to say that you had literally fulfilled all of those, only that from what I had seen so far, it was definitely in that style.
Yet all of this is entirely besides the point! What SEK asked for, both in the comment section of his post, and the comment section here, was for an ACTUAL REFUTATION OF ANY OF HIS ORIGINAL CLAIMS. Which you still haven't done! I even said that I'd look at it with an open mind (I'll admit that I have a certain liking for SEK, which comes from reading many more posts of his for a much longer time, but I'm still willing to agree with you that in this instance he was wrong)! You haven't done that! Even this post, in which you claimed to have utterly refuted SEK, all you did was pick on HIS typographical errors, you didn't go back to his original claims about this style of conservative movements and so forth.
I feel like this got long-winded, if there's any ambiguity in what I've written, please ask for more explanation, I'd be completely willing to try to explain myself better. As it stands right now, you quite simply have never refuted SEK in the meat of his initial argument.
Jeff: SEK doesn't make an argument -- he doesn't have any "orignal claims", except to allege my stupidity -- and thus there's nothing to refute. You're just recyling SEK's response at LGM. You've added nothing original of your own.
As for SEK's smear, being ambiguous, which is not even the case, since SEK omits the key link to the Philly Independence Hall (proving his dishonesty), is not evidence of stupidity. Don't fall for people like this. SEK's truly an ass, as this post demonstrates. The fact that he's written another post shows that he's smarting from the original go 'round ...
That's pretty big talk from someone whose profile says that they "abhor irrationalism in argumentation". Irrationalism isn't even a real word.
Reckoner, wrong. See irrationalism.
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