Michael moore is popular and puts out a movie every three years or so. Daily R’s congress slime make accusations of treason or thinly veiled threats at Libs.

As far as I know, over the past few years, the Teabaggers organized some protests. International Answer organized others. I am not all that sure that one of these efforts was a whole lot less successful than the other. People showed up to both. Lots of people. If the fact that Teabaggers gather on the mall is an indictment of the right, why does the Left get to disown those ridiculous and counter-productive war protests?

And… I guess… I guess Michael Moore counts as marginalized in some fashion. But I’ll have to look into it. I was assuming that he was an immesely popular figure. One who is on TV all the time, gets nominated for academy awards, and makes a ton of money doing what he does. One who says capitalizm is evil and that he wants to replace it.

But again, maybe he is just a marginal character with some minor quibbles regarding the excesses of capitalism. I just don’t see how that squares with reality.

Freshman Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) tells us what he learned from his mentors Haley Barbour and Trent Lott — and what exactly happens in the Sportsmen’s Caucus.

“We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition. ”

but to be fair Michael Moore is fat and said mean things about capitalism. Do we expect this douchebags voters to punish for this statement? What groups in America are most likely to applaud this joke?

The credibility question makes sense. You’ll noticed the comments, weren’t directed at your comment #10, but (unstated) instead the thread off comments 6 and 8.

As a question for understanding, conceptually I understand why differentiating levels of offensiveness matter, in this case, I don’t see how it’s particularly applicable.

For example, I found both the global gag rule and the NEA conference call to be somewhat offensive but I would say and think it matters that the global gag rule was political meddling that affected lives and public health in a way that the slight inappropriateness of part of the NEA conference call wasn’t.

On the issue of caricaturing ones opponents, I’m not sure a degrees are a.) particularly discernible, particularly to partisans and b.) particularly additive to discussions about how bad they are.

“I’m with Bob. Even the elected conservatives caricature themselves. I don’t think most liberals have any problem with engaging with intelligent conservatives. It’s just that there’s not very many, and none whatsoever in the Republican mainstream.”

also,

“Liberals just point and say, “look there.””

Both of these quotes are situational mischaracterizations that dodged the points raised in the post. An accurate reading of my comments is that I categorized them and then questioned their additive value.

When I wrote, “It’s that I fail to see a point beyond, “they’re worse therefore I’m justified” or, “they’re worse therefore I don’t have to do squat until they do.” I meant that I don’t see what the POINT is of bringing up false equivalence, if not those things.

I am open to learning of some benefit to recognizing false equivalence here, I just doubt there is one.

Yesterday I accused, picked a nit, E.D. of of possibly equating left and right name-calling. I asked him if he thought one was more “credible” than the other. I did not seek justification for either sides actions. I did not suggest that one party had a right to retaliate because of some slight or perceived slight. I made my comment entirely within the confines of E.D.’s post. Again, I only asked E.D. which side was more credible.

Now with regard to your comment this evening. I’m going to standby my original comment in response. Degree of offense does matter. But let me say for the third time that was *not* the issue I raised last night.

People like to compare the ideal of things they like to the ugly reality of things they don’t. For example, Righties like to compare the ideal of the free-market to the historical reality of government controlled economies while lefties like to compare the ideal of government control to the historical reality of so-called “Free-market” system.

Or to put it another way, I’ll start to take Michael Moore seriously when a Democratic officeholder feels it necessary to apologize to him.