On Feb 5, 2008, at 2:33 PM, Patrick Coskren wrote: > On Feb 5, 2008, at 2:08 PM, Charles Bennett wrote: >>> Considering the language that comes out of mainstream right-wing >>> pundits like Coulter and Limbaugh, I'd go further and say it's quite >>> considerably *within* bounds. I never understood all the wailing >>> and >>> gnashing of teeth. Petraeus is a big boy. He can handle being >>> called >>> a name. >> >> Agreed. He answers to the President so MoveOn and Co. have no >> relevance to him anyway. >> >> To hammer the point. It's how the name callers look that becomes >> the >> issue. If they are going to insist that they don't hate America, >> that kind of ad is not going to help convince folks. > > It's not going to convince the sort of folks that believe that > criticizing a general is tantamount to hating America, i.e. > authoritarians. The man is not the office. In a Democracy, > patriotism *demands* a citizenry that is comfortable criticizing its > politicians in any terms, no matter how harsh. And, as Chris points > out, Petraeus was serving a political purpose at the time, so he was > absolutely fair game. >>>
We actually agree that they are completely free to do what they did and accept the consequences. We agree that he was fair game. Look, I believe in assisted suicide. If I had known they were going to run the ad, I might have kicked in a few bucks. But for our discussion, I'm assuming that the goal was to convince people that were not already convinced and to do it without having them believe that you hate the country and/or the soldiers. To raise some sort of alarm that Petraeus' message was false, political or at least flawed to people that didn't already believe that. Otherwise what's the point beyond spending Soros's money? it would just be an expensive kiss to the choir. So how did it work out for them? How much 'good' publicity did it garner? IMO, If you want to win friends, influence people and convince them of the value of your ideas then you are not going to get very far that way. In fact, you loose the very half of America you need to convince, before they see the message. A lot of the US does not read the NYT (less every day) because they already know it's biased, so the only reason they even heard of the ad was the MSM jumping up and down about how outrageous it was. So they hear. Blah, blah, MoveON insults decorated vet, hates America, NYT complicit , blah blah.. Not only is the message lost, but anyone taking money from MoveOn (not too many Republicans there) now has to spend precious time, off message, denying that they agree with MoveOn without losing their funding. Politically, as far as I care., keep having at it. The more outrageous the better. It's just cannon fodder for November. Just don't claim to be surprised when the result isn't what you had hoped. =c= _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters Join us in #ramblingwaffles on irc.23x.net
