Is it OK to be disappointed in Obama/Democrats, but not Keith Olbermann?

[LoZoccolo]

I'm disappointed in Keith for doing what he did, knowing what could have happened. The "selective enforcement" thing doesn't exonerate him for sticking his head in the lion's mouth to begin with. Disappointed as in, I'd like to have seen his show continue because I liked his special comments and his role as a foil to Bill O'Reilly.

If people claim to be on Obama's side and yet criticize him like every day, why can't I be disappointed in him for doing something I don't think was a good idea and/or good for MSNBC? Why do I or anybody else who feels that way have to be assumed to have ill motives?

[dchill]

1. Well, in answer to your title/question, yes.

Quite OK. OK?

[Ken Burch]

2. Uh...because you USUALLY have ill motives?

:eyes:

...just sayin'...

[LoZoccolo]

4. As I said before, you imagine me to have all these motives and beliefs that I have shown

little reason to suspect that I hold.

[Ken Burch]

6. Also, there is no moral equivalency between criticizing Keith over this ONE thing

And questioning the prez over REPEATED policy and tactical missteps.

Keith did nothing that could possibly compare to Obama single-handedly pissing away his mandate in only two years.

And fine, you have the right to disagree with what Keith did, but you had no reason to turn it into an excuse to attack everyone who disagrees with you about the admin. Those are two entirely different things. Tying them together and taking this "oh, everyone's going to attack me, aren't they" tone is just passive-aggressive. You're not entitled to feel THAT victimized.

[LoZoccolo]

9. Is there a formula for determining how victimized I'm entitled to feel?

If not, should I send you a private message as an authority to get your approval next time?

[Ken Burch]

11. No formula, just the simple fact

That on this forum, almost nobody is actually ever unfair to you. It's just that some don't agree with the assumption that you possess inherently superior political instincts, OR that you are the only "grown-up" and thus entitled to not treat anyone else with respect or to respond to their posts on the merits.

You'd lose nothing from either making it clear what you actually DO support, or from debating others on the merits of their positions.
You gain nothing by using the tactics you do use.

[treestar]

14. They're not exactly in the same job.

Keith's job is immensely easier and all he had to do was inform his employers of what he was doing or just obey a contract.

[Ken Burch]

21. You're assuming that they enforced this rule on EVERYBODY ELSE at MSNBC

And really...why should it matter? Everybody KNEW where Keith is on the spectrum. He wasn't claiming to be Cronkite.

[waiting for hope]

49. Seriously, what Olbermann job has been is to

host an internet cable news show, while Obama has the ability to move the direction of the country. Comparing apples to oranges.

[TomClash]

8. Yeah, he wants you to stick your finger in him

so you get electrocuted.

[gateley]

3. Don't let 'em get you down. Too many times people here are intolerant of opinions

that differ from theirs, that's all - you know that. :pals:

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Is this a new you that you are trying out?

Or are you just messing with heads?

Because I agree with you on Keith Olbermann, although I seldom agree with you on other things.

[LoZoccolo]

7. If you look closely, you'll find the biggest thing I disagree with people about is

strategy rather than policy, and a large part of the troll tactics I employ (and I do accept some definitions of the label of troll - Socrates was an epic troll in my opinion - but I am not a conservative troll) are designed to do an end-run around the well-worn manipulative tactics of my opponents, rather than discourage liberalism in general.

[Ken Burch]

10. It's "manipulation" for people simply to refuse to accept YOUR ideas as infallible?

Have you ever tried just arguing the case for whatever you're arguing for in a straightforward way and on the merits?

Why do you feel you have no choice but to bait people and to try to turn all your OWN threads into flamefests?

Just treat people here with respect and make your points directly...you might actually make some headway.

[LoZoccolo]

12. Where did I say anything about my ideas being "infallible"? n/t

[Ken Burch]

20. That's the insinuation behind your entire posting style.

You act as if you're above having to actually explain and defend your own positions.

Your whole tone is based on the assumption that everybody knows perfectly well what you're talking about and that everybody knows you're right.

Why don't you just try being straightforward and egalitarian with the rest of the posters for once?

And how about, for example, doing a thread where you actually lay out your whole set of ideas?

It doesn't help when you keep making people try to guess about you and then keep saying "you got it wrong, you got it wrong, you got it wrong".

If your ideas have merit, you don't NEED "troll tactics". Just be real and direct. And respectful of the rest of us.

[LoZoccolo]

22. I don't make people try to guess about me.

I don't recall you asking me a question without first accusing me of something. Don't you think that that is presumptuous? Why don't you try asking me without trying to paint me as something despicable first? I don't make you do that.

And I explained why I use unusual ways of making a point; people are already ready with manipulative responses to the conventional ways.

[Ken Burch]

23. What do you mean by "manipulative ways"?

n/t.

[LoZoccolo]

25. Like labeling someone a conservative or barraging them with strawmen arguments.

Or trying to move the debate into some nonfalsifiable territory, or simply stating something they don't really believe (which contradicts other beliefs and values of theirs - which is what I'm attacking in the OP) in order to get somebody to react. Stating that Obama and/or the Democrats are just like the Republicans is a manipulative ploy to get them to try to do more. I also don't think it's a harmless ploy, which is why I try to combat it with wacky tactics such as looking up the voting records.

[Ken Burch]

26. Is there something WRONG with trying to get Democrats to be more progressive?

What harm does it do? What, by contrast, is a "nonmanipulative" method of getting Democrats to "do more"?

And did you really mean to say you object to "trying to move the debate into some NONFALSIFIABLE territory"?

I'd prefer to think that was a typo on your part.

[LoZoccolo]

28. Not inherently.

I've always said, work on the electorate first; pressuring the elected officials without consensus will leave your changes vulnerable to being "repealed and replaced". And don't destroy the progress that other Democrats have been making in red districts, even if it's not as much progress as you'd like. Don't try to get more by destroying what's already been accomplished.

Yes, I really do mean to say I object to "trying to move the debate into some nonfalsifiable territory". I would really suggest that you at least use Google to find out why that's looked down upon in the sphere of debate before you go any further in criticizing me for it.

[Ken Burch]

29. "nonfalsifiable territory" would be territory in which NOTHING was falsified

No lies and no misrepresentations. Shouldn't we all WANT the debates we discuss to be moved into the territory of truth?

[LoZoccolo]

31. No, you didn't use Google. Use Google. n/t

[Ken Burch]

41. I've now used it. "nonfalsifiable" appears to mean arguments that

are unfairly difficult, in the eyes of those who oppose them, to refute.

I'm not sure we have that here, or that "nonfalsifiability" can actually be proved to exist. And isn't anybody who has trouble winning a debate going to fall back on the "nonfalsifiable" thing to say that it didn't count that they didn't win?

[LoZoccolo]

43. Let me start with one that I hear a lot.

"If we nominated a progressive, then all these people who don't vote would vote for him."

[Ken Burch]

47. If you modified it to

"I strongly suspect that if we nominated a progressive, it's likely that at least most of those people who don't vote would vote for her or him"?

Would THAT be acceptable as an argument?

And I think the term "False Absolute" would be a better term for the type of argument you described.

BTW, wouldn't your prediction in another thread that NONE of the seats lost by Blue Dogs this year could be won by non-Blue Dogs in 2012 ALSO be in the category of "nonfalsiability" or "False Absolutes"?

[LoZoccolo]

48. I don't think it's nonfalsifiable.

We'll see in two years whether or not I was right or wrong; my prediction is testable, and I admit that we do not yet know whether or not it was right. The prediction about non-voters emerging when we nominate a progressive requires nominating a progressive first; we don't know if that will ever happen.

[Ken Burch]

50. Which is another reason we need to try.

It requires two fights:

1)winning the primaries(in whatever races we're talking about)

2)holding grassroots enthusiasm together in the fall, often without party support, to prove the defeatists in the party high command wrong.

[Ken Burch]

39. A lot of us DO "work on the electorate" and do so day after day.

I don't know why you seem to assume that we don't.

In fact, as much as candidate recruitment, progressives should spend their money(the little we have)on political education in "Red State" areas. People in those states are as capable of grasping reality and giving up delusions as anybody else. We don't have to assume that their views are carved in stone, which is the assumption that advocates of "Blue Dogs" often seem to make.

[LoZoccolo]

40. "I don't know why you seem to assume that we don't."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9472808

[Ken Burch]

45. All that link to a link proved was that people didn't respond to that particular thread.

In and of itself, that proves nothing.

They may simply have chosen not to respond to YOU.

I'm used to a certain segment of Du'ers refusing to respond to my threads, simply because some people dislike me for various reasons, which, after all, is just part of life. I'm fallible, I'm capable of being wrong, and I rub some people the wrong way. So be it. I try to learn from that and improve my game.

What I'm saying, using my experience, is that you can't use the lack of response to that particular thread of yours, as absolute proof that nobody on DU "works on the electorate".

I'm fairly certain that most people here canvass and phonebank and politically educate just as much as you do. And in posting that link to a link, you were letting your apparent belief in your inherent superiority pop through again.

It's not reasonable to deduce that, simply because of the way some people express themselves on DU, what they do on DU is ALL they do in their political lives, OR that it's the way they work on a person-to-person basis in real life.

Most people are more complex than that.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

16. I knew you reminded me of somebody!

Socrates! :*

[LoZoccolo]

24. That might have come out wrong.

I don't feel that I have the stature of Socrates; I'm just saying that asking questions a certain way or setting up a situation to make a point is not always disrespected by people.

[Ken Burch]

27. Why, though, should it not be considered "manipulative"?

If the "m-word" is such a bad thing when other people do it, why is it ok when YOU do it?

And what is the difference between "manipulation" and just plain not carrying on the discussion on YOUR terms?

[LoZoccolo]

37. Oh yeah, it's manipulative.

But a lot of what I do is meant to reveal rather than hide. People get pissed off when I ask certain questions.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

38. Just like Socrates!

Nobody ever beat Socrates in a conversation.
Ever!
That's why they were so pissed off.
Because he always won.
Go, Socrates, go.

[LoZoccolo]

42. Oh, you. Well I guess I should just come clean.

I am Lyndon LaRouche, and I think that I am Socrates.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

44. No way.

You're Socrates, but you're playing Lyndon LaRouche to throw DU off.

[LoZoccolo]

46. Oh, you. OK now I admit that too.

I wanted people to think that I was Lyndon LaRouche because he is the #1 candidate for president, the youth are rallying around LaRouche in the Democratic Party, he's taking the Democratic Party back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's tradition, he was in prison for five years because he wouldn't cut a deal with George H. W. Bush (that's why he's known and loved around the world), and he's building a train system*.


*These were actual things that a LaRouche supporter told me in May of 2003 in front of the Illinois state building in Chicago.

[Ken Burch]

52. Now that guy you SHOULD have said "dooga dooga dooga" to.

n/t.

[Ken Burch]

51. If you start thinking you're Teddy Roosevelt, old ladies will make you bury bodies in the basement

[treestar]

13. The KO worship at times seems over the top

Defending President Obama is supposed to mean we are fangirl cheerleaders. He does the least misstep and any defense is an "excuse."

But have it be KO and there are no holds barred in giving him every excuse in the book.

[Hissyspit]

19. Keith Olbermann is not President of the United States.

[treestar]

30. So he has a much easier job.

And he never will be President, either.

At most he'll be a pundit.

[Hissyspit]

32. Yes.

And your point is...?

[treestar]

33. That worship of a pundit is a bit sicker than support of a President?

That those who constantly carp against the POTUS while worshipping Keith are trivial, since Keith can say anything he wants and never has to back it up with action?

Keith speaks for me, boohoo. Except Keith can do nothing. He can't even follow his own contract. A simple assignment, compared to being President? Or even Senator, or U.S. Rep.?

[Hissyspit]

36. Exactly.

The power of the President compared to the power of Keith Olbermann is nowhere equivalent.

So it is more important to hold the President accountable because of the potential impact of his actions and decisions.

The actions against Olbermann are, however, about something larger than the arbitrary contractual policies of MSNBC. This in no way, of course, exculpates illegitimate or invalid criticism of the President.

[TheKentuckian]

15. You can do as you will.

[Hissyspit]

17. Because what Keith did is not that big a deal?

He, apparently, violated a contractual obligation of a policy which could be seen as arbitrarily designed to avoid something that could possibly maybe be perceived as a conflict of interest and not an actual lapse of ethics and could easily simply have been an over-sight on his part.

And because the larger issue is that this is not really about that policy?

[styersc]

18. Well said.

Keep high standards. Demand it of ourselves!

[derby378]

34. Unfortunately, you're right

Olbermann donated to partisan candidates, got caught, and has been suspended.

The injustice here, however, is that Hannity donated to partisan candidates and got caught, but as far as I know, he didn't even get a slap on the wrist.

[Bluenorthwest]

35. I never voted for Keith, did you?

Plus, everyone here, universally, is talking out of their collective and/or respective asses about this situation. You are not privy to the details, as yet no one is. Having a strong opinion about the right and wrong of a situation prior to having an actual clue as to what has happened or why is a pattern with you. You have announced the need to Primary Democrats for votes you thought they would cast in the future, which they did not in fact cast. This is just one example.
Have you ever worked under a contract that has provisions for actions outside of the work such as this one? I have. Do you think Keith looks like a man without a lawyer? I don't.
I thought you were one of the Pragmatists around these parts. What happened to that?

[jgraz]

53. .