Letters to the Editor
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Censorship
Why, YES! Salon IS private! Wow, that law school education is sure paying off!! Salon, as a private, subscriber-based entity, has the right --say it with me, the RIGHT -- to decide what it does and doesn't want on its site.
Thanks for the law primer, jerk. Of course Salon has the right. I never said it doesn't. Calm down.
You seem to think that Salon should beproud to host the ravings of a bigot with obvious mental issues. I think it should prune the obvious crazies with an axe to grind against an entire gender. You side with the turd, I side with the swimmers.
Oh geez. Let's say Salon decides to ban Brightstar (although technologically, he could just keep posting under another name, but whatever) because of his misogynist comments. Okay, who next? Where's the line between criticizing feminism and misogyny? You, for example, are full of ad hominem, should you be banned too? Be careful what you wish for, because if salon bans brightstar, they better ban you too.
Where you utterly lose any semblance of an argument is where you KEEP conflating Constitutional rights with the absence of any moderation on this site. "Oh, but it's still the same spirit!" You want to have neo-Nazis marching through here? Really? Why not go seek them out on their own damn sites? (Of course, actual Nazis would be banned here but woman-hating is fine and good.)
I hope that actual neo-Nazis would not be banned here. You people keep saying that racists and neo-nazis would be banned, but that's just what you think. We don't have any evidence that they have been banned. Salon, it seems, has set up a system where there is no filtering for profanity and no required registration to post -- the most free system of comment.
I eagerly await your rebuttal of how Salon is still somehow equal to public discourse and actual moderation of a message board is equal to un-American Nazi repression. It'll probably be as full of holes as every other argument you've made in this thread.
Look at that. You're just as mean and venemous as brightstar yet you ask for him to be banned. At least he contributes some points on his experiences in gender relations -- you don't contribute anything but insults.
And you misrepresent everything I say, which is great for debating with you. Not. I didn't equate Salon moderating content with banning neo-Nazis from protesting, all i said is that a case like that exemplifies our views on freedom of expression and thought. Yet, you seem to think that, at least on Salon, we should be censored according to some subjective assessment of the quality of our arguments. Moreover, you're not a paying customer of Salon, so i don't know why you think Salon has any obligation to you to provide you with brightstar-free threads.
As for all my "full of holes arguments" here's one i wrote to Brightstar himself a few days ago:
brightstar,
you rant and rant about how these are your empirical observations so they must be held to be valid. can you extend the same courtesy to women like me and others who say that we are not evil manipulative golddiggers and that we have seen, in our many times around the block, gender relations vastly different from what you describe?
That seems like the only consistent thing to do. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? :)
Also, you talk about how women want good-looking men and how they don't like ugly or overweight (like yourself) men. But you, an overweight man, only want pretty women who are not overweight or ugly. How is that consistent? You want women to care less about looks than you do? Why?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? :)
-- LeCastor
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Skip the letter if you don't like the sentiment
I agree with Lecastor. Ignore the posts you don't like. Discuss the ones you want to engage. I personally do not want to see this section become a single politic/viewpoint area. I read the letters to get a broad range of views. There are a lot of people who think like Brightstar, A Single Man, etc. If you don't know what the people you oppose think and argue like, you can never be effective in opposing them, converting them, or neutralizing them. Know your enemy. One of the problems of the far left (not liberals, the far left) is that it is far too interested in ignoring or silencing dissentinging voices (boy, that sounds like the far right, too.
I hope Salon will continue to sponsor a letters section that is only moderated to stay on topic (which has happened in the near past) and does not censor opinions that are on topic. I'm black, and I have to put up with Confederate flags and other stupidity every day (don't even start the idiocity of rappers who use the n-word for shock commercial value, and try to defend it as "reclaiming" it. It just makes some young whites think "N****" is an appropriate greeting).
I have no sympathy for the Islamic rioters demanding "banning" of "offensive" speech. Nor will I support banning stuff based on "offensiveness" here. Nor will I support those who try to censor discussion of homosexuality, etc because it offends them. I'm willing to watch feminists, misogynists, and fundamentalists be offended at the same time.
There is no right to be protected from offense in our Constitution. There is a right to ignore people who clearly aren't listening (been there, done that). Ignoring trolls makes them go away.
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Not So Fair
Domini: one flaw in your logic system (maybe two), while Salon won't censor 'entertaining' hate speeches like those of Brightstar etc, I saw them delete enlihgtening letters written by articulated conservatives just because they were too obviously critical of the Left! I like to know what you think about their approach! They don't like to hear too many intelligent conservative view points! That's a fact!
LeCastor: as usual you are talking for talking! Proving peanuts! You can't even recognize a Master (Anonymous) from a Jerk (Brightstar). You surely treat everybody the same way! Always on the offense! Never wrong!! There are all your letters to prove my point! Your presence is surely very entertaining, I must add! But there is something masochistic about your attitude! You love to be hated! or you are just blind and deaf! Or both! A little vicious for sure! Not very sexy to me!! & I am not a man.