Some regulars of Democratic Underground have been kind enough to post links to my work (and snippets thereof) on that site's discussion forums. I appreciate the gesture. However, it seems that the conspiracy buffs who frequent DU feel free to assail me in scabrous terms, while the DU moderators will not allow me to make any sort of response.
I don't know why I'm banned there. During the brief time I was on DU, I was always polite, and everyone seemed to appreciate my contributions. I've privately been told that a DU moderator became outraged by my anti-tranny stance (a stance expressed only on this site, never elsewhere).
See the comment here, from a crank who thinks Omar Sheikh really did murder Osama Bin Laden. I have no idea if Bin Laden is dead or alive, but if you do some research into Omar Sheikh, you'll see what an unlikely candidate he is.
I'd like to respond -- in a civil tone -- but I can't. Very frustrating. (Yeah, I can indeed be quite sharp of tongue, but I know how to behave when I'm a guest in someone else's home.)
So until that situation changes, I would ask people who like my work not to link to it on D.U. If you don't like my work, then this message obviously will not matter to you one way or the other.
3 comments:
Hi Joseph,
I've also wondered about your banning from DU. I have asked the mods but never gotten a response.
On thing I know could not be the cause is that you disparage the proponents of controlled demolition. As I've summarized here, the official position of DU is to ridicule any questioning of the official explanation of 9/11:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=154107&mesg_id=154309
So the official position of DU seems to be to ridicule controlled demolition proponents, not to be outraged by criticism of them. If anything, it could be because you are seen as a "conspiracy theorist" that you are banned -- a Hopsicker-Pakistani ISI type, or a proponent of Paul Thompson's timeline, of which I consider myself a fellow traveler, and which types were once colorfully and insultingly labeled by more outre types as "Paki-distractionists" and "flatliners."
But although DU may encourage ridicule of non-CD "conspiracists", it ordinarily doesn't ban us.
The "outrage" however could be caused not by your disparaging controlled demolition, but by your disparaging them by calling them "trannies." I've never understood that (I mean I understand the pun), but I've had close friends who were transsexuals, would never think of the term trannie as a universal term of abuse. That could definitely have gotten you banned by the LGBT community, inasmuch as you might as well be labelling some other opponents with the N-word, as far as the transgendered community is concerned.
The only other thing I could think of is some of your positions on Israel, which are somewhat, shall we say "forward leaning" compared to what is generally considered polite in institutionally Democratic Party circles.
--HamdenRice from DU
Hi Joe,
Talk to Skinner.
He'll let you back in.
-farmer
Huh! The "tranny" notion makes sense. As you know, it was my ladyfriend who made the pun at first. The transgendered people she and I have known were always pretty free and jovial about use of the term "tranny" and did not seem to see it as a term of abuse.
Is this one of those deals where members of the in-group can use a word and members of the out-group cannot? Situations like that can get very confusing. There ought to be a guidebook or something.
At any rate, I would have stopped using the term if any transgendered person wrote in to complain. The only such person who commented (privately) on the matter thought that the term was funny.
"Paki-distractionist"? There IS such a term? Wow! I'm not even sure what "flatliner" means. At any rate, I'm not distracted by Pakistani matters that often, but I do talk about it from time to time.
If I may be distracted by Pakistan for a few more moments, let me once again point out the absurdity of the idea that Benazir Bhutto really meant to say that Osama Bin Laden was murdered.
People focused on one mis-spoken sentence and did not look at context. She was listing listing the crimes of Omar Sheikh, who is a well-known Al Qaeda supporter. (He has been in custody for a while, by the way.) Are we to presume, then, that Benazir Bhutto would consider it a great crime to rid the world of Osama Bin Laden? If so, then we must presume that she is a Bin Laden supporter -- andthat she would happily label herself as such while talking to David Frost!
Doesn't exactly jibe with what we know of Benazir Bhutto, does it?
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