San Francisco Says "No" To Marines

[AuntieEmma[$]]

emeleel said

No, Kathy did not say that the city prohibited the Blue Angels, but that they had *tried* to.

That was a typo/brain fart in my last post, which I corrected (apparently not before you read it though).

But in the many earlier posts on this topic, I said exactly what you are saying -- that Kathy claimed that the city *tried* to prohibit the Blue Angels. And that is what I was objecting to because it was factually false. The city did not try to prohibit the Blue Angels. The city government, as a whole, slapped down -- hard! -- the individual who tried to do so.

If you know the more proper facts (that it was just one council member), then share with the rest of the class, don't shoot her down with snark and by naming names that mean nothing to any of the rest of us.

Just say something like, I don't know the facts on the Marine commercial, but I can speak to the Blue Angels allegation, and the facts are thus. Don't throw out a bunch of gobbledygook that means nothing to the rest of us, and certainly doesn't help move along reasoned debate.

Ok, point taken. But if it is my responsiblity to lay things out in such a way that the people reading the thread don't have to do independent research (i.e. so that you wouldn't have to google "Chris Daly" to find out who he was ), then shouldn't Kathy also have to fact-check her stories so that other people don't have to google the topic to fact-check them for her? I guess I took shortcuts, but I felt that the thread itself was based on shortcuts. Also, I think in the back of my mind I was trying to make the point that the truth of the situation rested on things -- in this case, Chris Daly's role -- that the people who were circulating the story weren't aware of. In other words, that they didn't know much about the story that they were posting as true.

[drmomentum[$]]

I want to respond to the idea that the liberals drove all the conservatives off the board because they shout them down. I have a slightly different perspective on this phenomenon.

When Bush's popularity was huge, especially very early on, there were minority "liberal" (rough, but for lack of a better descriptor) opinions here that met with a lot of resistance, criticism, and snark. I can't say for sure why liberals didn't leave the board, but I can tell you that I almost left the board numerous times, and stayed away for short periods quietly because I'm not a fan of the dramatic "I'm leaving" announcement. In any case, I didn't leave, because even though I was frustrated, I was drawn back to the people who disagreed with me here. Not because I was getting reasoned arguments all the time, but I did get them enough of the time. Both snark and facts were there, and it was up to me where I placed my focus of attention.

As time passed, Bush's actions became less comfortable to defend, and the snark is on the other foot. This played out in public, which makes it even more uncomfortable. A motivation to stay goes away when Bush's failures loom large.

Is there more snark now? I don't have a snark-o-meter, but I'm pretty sure you feel it more when it's other-side snark. As I said, I think the weight has shifted because of world events. This thread actually has more snark than usual (IMHO), but even here, AuntieEmma did come back to facts (about the Blue Angels and Chris Daly, for example). There were facts to argue.

But back to the point I am addressing. It boils down pretty easily: it's not as much fun to defend Bush and the Republican party nowadays. Thus the exodus.

-JP

[jgibson2[$]]

AuntieEmma,
I don't look at many of Erik's links because he doesn't give them credence by making any kind of statement about them - one sentence would do it.

I don't expect you to fact-check Kathy's stories. I don't usually do that myself. I frequently disagree with her myself, but unless I care a lot about the issue, I just ignore it.

I don't live in SF, so sharing what you know is helpful. I'm glad Deb made an issue of this, because I just looked at the snark and until I saw Deb's name come up in the posts I was just going to walk away from the thread.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

One other thing which I may not have been clear enough about: The story about the Marines film actually looks like a fairly complicated one, and as I said, unlike the Chris Daly story with which I am very familiar, the Marines film story is mostly new to me.

I figured it would take at least a few hours for me to research it, to find out what really happened.

I didn't want to invest that kind of time in it, just for the sake of discussing it on this thread.

If I had reason to believe that Kathy was being careful to be accurate, then I could rely on her judgment and go ahead and discuss the story she presented without doing my own research. But I didn't have reason to believe that.

[emeleel]

Ok, point taken. But if it is my responsiblity to lay things out in such a way that the people reading the thread don't have to do independent research (i.e. so that you wouldn't have to google "Chris Daly" to find out who he was )

Not even asking for that much. Just a simple or two sentences would have explained your viewpoint, and given those of us from outside the area enough information to go look up exactly what we need to know. There are probably a lot of hits for "Chris Daly", and not everyone has fabulous searching skills to narrow down "Chris Daly, San Francisco, Blue Angels", etc. Your post was, I'm sorry to say, very confusing.

[jgibson2[$]]

I read Kathy's link. If I had the time and energy, I'd rip that story apart. It's very badly written. I'd like to discuss the story if someone has a story that's more news and less opinion, but I don't expect anyone to do what I'm not willing to do myself. Bad timing - I have to work tonight.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

jgibson2 said

I don't expect you to fact-check Kathy's stories. I don't usually do that myself. I frequently disagree with her myself, but unless I care a lot about the issue, I just ignore it.

Which is what I did, on the Marines film issue (I addressed only the issue that I knew something about, which was Chris Daly and the Blue Angels). But Deb was criticiizing me above for not taking the time to research the Marines film issue. Also, IIRC, both Kathy and Deb said that it was a straw man for me to talk about the Blue Angels but ignore the Marines film. Thus, my post directly above.

[jgibson2[$]]

AuntieEmma said

Which is what I did, on the marines film issue. But Deb was criticiizing me above for not taking the time to research the issue. Thus, my post directly above.

I think you've read more into Deb's post than was there. This is the only statement of hers I found on that:

If you don't want to debate an item that you won't take the time to check out, fine. Don't post.

It's how I handle things, so I tend to agree with her. I don't post on a lot of threads.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

jgibson2 said

I read Kathy's link. If I had the time and energy, I'd rip that story apart. It's very badly written.

That's what I was saying -- Channel 7/ABC local news sucks!

[erik_kosberg]

A bit of fact-checking on the Marines story: scroll down to Update at 5:59 p.m. ET

Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for the mayor of San Francisco, says he takes issue with the KGO-TV story.

"You're running a story that is not accurate. We actually provided the Marines with a permit," he says in a voicemail message. In another message, Ballard demanded a retraction. When we finally spoke, Ballard repeated his claims that the story was inaccurate and said: "We welcome the Marines to San Francisco. They were terrific guests and we welcome them back any time."

[jgibson2[$]]

Thanks, Erik. That was helpful.

The more important quote, IMHO, in explaining the issue is this one:

"We were locked into that Tuesday," Block says, adding that he's sure the police could have handled the traffic problems caused by the production crew. But that's only part of the equation. Because the director didn't choose the locations until a few days before they were scheduled to film, Block says the company didn't have time to get the required approvals from local residents who would have been inconvenienced during the filming.

The Drill team schedules way ahead of time. It sounds like the actual problem was with the timing of the commercial shoot. Not my line of work, but I don't understand why that couldn't have been handled in a more timely manner. Which makes it not a First Amendment issue as it would have appeared from the first link.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

erik_kosberg said

A bit of fact-checking on the Marines story: scroll down to Update at 5:59 p.m. ET

Looks like it didn't take hours of research to debunk the story after all! I guess I vastly overestimated the complexity of the task.

[brian_igo]

conradd said

Yep. And when the debate is one-sided, it becomes even easier to gang up on unpopular viewpoints. I can't tell you how many times I've had a post ready to go, then thought "Why bother" and deleted it. I have always welcomed thoughtful debate. It just doesn't happen here anymore.

I'm sorry. Deb knows I love her, and my support for the troops shouldn't be questioned by anyone. But this is chickenshit. Don't blame us because your arguments can't stand up to scrutiny.

If you took offense that people actually challenged links to people like Mark Steyn, or you considered that thoughtful debate, I don't even know what to say.

Maybe the real problem is that there are no more thoughtful positions for this goddamn war. We've run through WMD's, connections to OBL and 9/11, establishing a representative democracy in the middle east, deposing one dictator while ignoring three others on his border because we like the leaders in Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

There is also a credibility problem, frankly. People who have latched on to these countless fairy tales about how success is just around the corner are kinda hard to take seriously. I would have a lot more respect for the opinions of people who cheered this fiasco if they had the honesty to examine all of the times they've been misled by the people they held up as examples over the past three years, instead of once again blaming us bad liberals for being so rude.

The one thoughtful argument remaining is that if we leave thousands of Iraqis will die in a full-on civil war. So the thoughtful debate is down to this: Do we continue with the slow slaughter of thousands of Iraqis every month indefinitely, or do we pull out and consign many more to die quickly?

So, what is it?

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Well, not ALL symposium debates are about the war

[erik_kosberg]

brian_igo said

The one thoughtful argument remaining is that if we leave thousands of Iraqis will die in a full-on civil war. So the thoughtful debate is down to this: Do we continue with the slow slaughter of thousands of Iraqis every month indefinitely, or do we pull out and consign many more to die quickly

It's even worse than that. Kevin Drum nails it: "Conservatives are making a persuasive and spine-chilling prediction of disaster if we leave. Liberals are just saying our presence isn't accomplishing anything. That's not enough. Instead of merely claiming that we're not doing any good in Iraq, we need to make persuasive arguments that we're actively doing harm."

FWIW, I'm even less optimistic than Drum that ANY persuasive argument will have any real effect. All but the intentionally blind can see that this war is a complete total clusterfark. Bush is simply being pigheaded. It all comes down to the votes of a few dozen blowhards in Congress who have painted themselves into a corner. Bush will do nothing but fiddle while Baghdad burns. He will leave the mess to his successor. And then, count on it, war supporters will try to shift blame for the failure to Democrats.

Speaking of blowhards in Congress...

[AuntieEmma[$]]

hadassahchana said

If you had talked about the Marines and the SF film board instead of Superman () and had given your own opinnion about the incident, that would have been really interesting. instead, I now have even less reason to expect anything interesting from you than I do from Kathy.

Another thought on this: I think what's most important in these discussions is not to be interesting, but to try to find out what is true.

It can be interesting to debate opinions, and I imagine it would have been interesting had I offered opinions defending the city's right to ban the Marines from filming due to the city's anti-military bias. Then Kathy could have given her opinion on the First Amendment right for the Marines to film, and I could have offered my opinion on the First Amendment right of the city to promolgate it's anti-American views, etc.

That would have been pretty entertaining. But it would have been based on something, that I had a strong hunch, and that Erik's research has now confirmed, was false. The City did not ban the Marines because of any anti-Marine bias, so debating the righteousness of that, no matter how interesting, would be debating something based on a false premise.

And it would also be reinforcing the false premise. For me to accept, at face value based on Kathy's word, that the city had banned the Marine's due to its anti-military bias, and then for me to offer an opinion on that, would have been to reinforce the idea that Kathy's premise was true, no matter what opinion I gave, whether I agreed with Kathy's opinion or not. Either way, it would be accepting, and promoting, the false premise.

Erik said

A bit of fact-checking on the Marines story

I understand that a lot of people on this thread are telling me they don't like my snark. But I wonder if some of them can now better understand my frustration. What just happened in this thread, where Kathy's story was debunked, happens all the time. So when I saw a post that referred to two stories, one that I KNEW already was false, and the other that I didn't know about, but which sounded iffy, and the point of the post was to generate outrage, I thought here we go again. It happens so often that these stories that are circulating and generating outrage are false.

And what makes me most frustrated is that after the stories are debunked, we almost never hear an apology or even an acknowledgment that the story teller had been mistaken. I feel like I got beat up a bit in this thread for not taking the Blue Angels and the Marines stories seriously, but yet after the stories are debunked, will anyone come forward to say that they are sorry for posting a story which was wrong, or that they were sorry for giving me a hard time for not believing the stories?

Again, this happens over and over and over. Someone posts a story that is making the rounds, then chastizes people for not accepting it as true, then makes a lot of gleeful noise about how the story PROVES how awful (San Franciscans/university students/liberals/the hate object of the day) are. But when the stories are debunked, the threads come to a grinding halt. I would feel a lot better about these threads, and feel much less need to resort to humor to deal with the absurdity, if I had any reason to expect that the people who start the threads, or who chastize the doubters, would own up to their mistakes.

[conradd]

brian_igo said

I'm sorry. Deb knows I love her, and my support for the troops shouldn't be questioned by anyone. But this is chickenshit. Don't blame us because your arguments can't stand up to scrutiny.

If you took offense that people actually challenged links to people like Mark Steyn, or you considered that thoughtful debate, I don't even know what to say.

Love you too, Brian. But it's not chickenshit to conclude that I'm tired of arguing. Sure, I've linked to Mark Steyn in the past, but I don't do that as a rule. If I think someone has an interesting opinion piece, I might post it with a disclaimer, but I don't state it as fact. Sometimes, opinions can spur on thoughtful debate. Here, unless it's antiwar, anti-Bush, it's dismissed out of hand. I wouldn't post an argument that I didn't think would stand up when scrutinized. But your scrutiny is filtered through your own biases. And my optimism about what is happening in Iraq isn't going to be shared by many on this board, so it's my choice whether to spend my free time here or doing something more productive.

When Erik can make a statement like "All but the intentionally blind can see that this war is a complete total clusterfark" and everyone just nods in agreement, then why even try to engage a thoughtful debate? It's pretty obvious that no one is going to change their mind about Bush or the war, and I'm tired of trying to defend a position that I think is defensible and you don't. There are other things I'd rather spend my time doing.

[conradd]

AuntieEmma said

But it would have been based on something, that I had a strong hunch, and that Erik's research has now confirmed, was false. The City did not ban the Marines because of any anti-Marine bias, so debating the righteousness of that, no matter how interesting, would be debating something based on a false premise.

And it would also be reinforcing the false premise. For me to accept, at face value based on Kathy's word, that the city had banned the Marine's due to its anti-military bias, and then for me to offer an opinion on that, would have been to reinforce the idea that Kathy's premise was true, no matter what opinion I gave, whether I agreed with Kathy's opinion or not. Either way, it would be accepting, and promoting, the false premise.

Maybe and maybe not. What we know is there is a difference of opinion on what is the real story and to take Erik's factoid as the truthful side of the story isn't any more responsible than to slam Kathy's take on it as distortion. No one is asking you to take anything at face value. But if you're going to dismiss it, then it would be nice if you did so with civility.

And what makes me most frustrated is that after the stories are debunked, we almost never hear an apology or even an acknowledgment that the story teller had been mistaken. I feel like I got beat up a bit in this thread for not taking the Blue Angels and the Marines stories seriously, but yet after the stories are debunked, will anyone come forward to say that they are sorry for posting a story which was wrong, or that they were sorry for giving me a hard time for not believing the stories?

It happens on both sides, Emma. Like it or not, Chris Daly is an elected supervisor and obviously does represent the viewpoint of many San Francisco residents. He's been re-elected twice.

Again, this happens over and over and over. Someone posts a story that is making the rounds, then chastizes people for not accepting it as true, then makes a lot of gleeful noise about how the story PROVES how awful (San Franciscans/university students/liberals/the hate object of the day) are. But when the stories are debunked, the threads come to a grinding halt. I would feel a lot better about these threads, and feel much less need to resort to humor to deal with the absurdity, if I had any reason to expect that the people who start the threads, or who chastize the doubters, would own up to their mistakes.

Okay, whatever. But I still hold that it happens on both sides and each of us tend to focus on those viewpoints that do not support our own biases.