From David Sirota - Please Shut Up, You Dumb conspiracy theorists

[groovedaddy]

Please Shut Up, You Dumb Conspiracy Theorists - David Sirota
I hate blogging about blogging, but I wanted to raise a bit of a concern about the strange conspiracy theory-ish tick among a small but vocal minority of bitter souls in the netroots that serves to further the image of the blogosphere as a place only for fringe lunatics, rather than thinking people. This image, of course, is inaccurate - but it doesn’t help when the discourse is infested with wild, off base and totally unsubstantiated theories that have absolutely no shred of connection to reality. My beef is with this: whenever a blogger asks substantive questions of one Democratic presidential candidate, that person usually gets accused of, at best, helping the right, or more often, working for and being paid by another presidential candidate.

This first kind of attack is irritating in the same kind of way the Bush administration regularly accuses its opponents of aiding and abetting terrorists when anyone asks an honest question about the Iraq War. Sorry, folks - “democracy” doesn’t mean just sitting back and staying silent while D.C. insiders coronate celebrities with party nominations for the most powerful office on the Planet Earth. Similarly, asking our candidates to explain themselves and what they would actually do in office is not helping our opponents - it’s doing our civic duty.

But it is this second line of attack (see this post’s comments for a typical example) that really gets me even angrier, because it is so boldly dishonest. Whenever I have posed questions about the factual record of any of the presidential candidates - whether its Obama, or Clinton or anyone else - inevitably I am accused by some commenters and some other bloggers of doing it because I am being paid by another candidate. They don’t want to talk about actual issues, or any of the factual points I bring up. And, of course, they offer no proof of their diversionary accusations because there actually IS no proof because I actually don’t work for another presidential candidate, nor have I even talked to any presidential candidates about working for them.

I was diligent about noting my work for Ned Lamont in every post I wrote about Ned when I was working for him. I have full disclosure on my blogs about what I do for a living. But that none of that - not the lack of proof nor my record of disclosure - seems to matter to these very angry, very sad, very bitter, very pathetic people who make these groundless accusations.

I’m not sure what can be done about this tiny but annoyingly loud and overly spastic/aggressive minority of people who have absolutely no regard for the truth, and in the process, are degrading the reputation of the blogosphere as a whole. All I would say to them, I guess, is please shut your traps you dumb, inane conspiracy theorists. If you want to have a debate about the substance, bring it on. But just because you can’t defend your agendas on the actual substance and facts doesn’t mean you have to destroy the credibility of the netroots with absurd, dishonest accusations pulled straight from the inner folds of your rectum.

COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry

posted by David Sirota @ 7:50 pm | Permalink

[greyl]

1. Thanks, link please? nt

[groovedaddy]

3. sorry about that

http://www.davidsirota.com/

scroll down for this entry

[jobycom]

2. I might WISH they would shut up sometimes, but I'd never try to make them. nt

[MH1]

4. Key word: substantive. n/t

[KoKo]

5. Nevermind....I see that he made this statement in the "Comments Section."

n/t

[Zodiak]

6. Yes, this sort of thing does get around

Sirota should just let them wash off of his back like the rest of us do. Even on DU, there are those that accuse anyone who has anything bad to say about a particular candidate of having some kind of grudge against that person (I really don't understand how one can have a real grudge against someone they never knew personally), sour grapes, jealousy, working for another candidate, working for the Republicans, etc.

That is the hallmark of someone who has lost the argument. They do NOT make the netroots look bad because they are not the netroots...they are in-house hecklers of the netroots.

The netroots like to go through evidence....the good, the bad, and the ugly, and come up with solutions based on all of said evidence. Detractors with strawman arguments do not hurt this movement one bit, but rather strengthen it because they are shot down so easily and in front of everyone. Sirota is a bit more upset than most of us are because his professional reputation relies on his perception of neutrality...an understandable emotion (I feel the same way about creationists who think they can "hang" in scientific circles).

Not conspiracy theorists (which is a term I hate), but hecklers. And like hecklers, they have nothing to say.

[NV1962]

7. From NV1962 to David Sirota: please shut up, you dumb self-important windbag!

Dear David,

You're not God. But whether you exist or not, you're also full of hot air.

Like it or not, the First Amendment exists. The Net is populated with brazillions of different viewpoints, ranging from the sublime to the insane.

Get over it. Get over yourself.

You're not the self-appointed arbiter of sanity. Windbag.

[wyldwolf]

8. my sentiments exactly, though for differing reasons beyond 1st Amendment

Mainly, Sirota has made a career out of conspiracy theories and sowing seeds of discontent among Democrats. To put it politely, his work is often factually challenged.

[Elidor]

11. Irony is not dead!

1) Commenting without addressing anything in the posted article: check. 2) Casting aspersions without anything to back them up: check.

Your work here is done!

[nickshepDEM]

13. hear, hear

[baldguy]

9. There wasn't a conspiracy among the neocon elite to start a war in Iraq?

[BridgeTheGap]

10. They were open about it before the 2000 election

A conspiracy implies that the neo-cons were hiding what they were up to. Hell, they had a website that laid it out there. Why the media ignored it, now that's a good question. And, Did Gore know? If he did, why didn't he hammer them on this during the debates?
After Bush was elected, the Neo-cons seemed to go out of their way to not talk about what they were up to. The conspiracy, I believe, happened in how they "filtered" the inteligence to justify invading Iraq.

[karynnj]

12. Gore may have known that these ideas existed

but he would not have been able to pin them on W. Remember W spoke against nation building in the debates. I am going just on memory - but I seriously doubt that there is a pre- 2000 election comment by W suggesting that he was in favor of invading countries to remake the middle east. (There were John McCain comments that he was in favor of regime change in several middle eastern countries - but not W.

So, Gore coming out "hammering" Bush o this would have been spun in some awful way.

[BridgeTheGap]

16. Actually, regime change in Iraq was part

of the G.O.P. Platform. Not quite laid out like the PNAC plan, but there none-the-less. Surely Gore knew what was in their platform & the two dovetail together, which should have raised questions.

[bluehighways911]

14. Sirota Is A Tool

When will this dope stop babbling.

I read his brilliant(puke) analysis of the Obama campaign.

Once thing I didn't read. Anything on the issues.

Hey Tool, you can shut up anytime. Or are you auditioning for Fox.

Good luck.

[shimbo]

15. You Need A Quantified Test For Conspiracies

Here it is -


i) A conspiracy must have two or more participants

ii) The conspirators must control and share information

iii) There must be a third party excluded from that information

iv) The conspirators must benefit from the third party's ignorance


Apply the test -

a) A married man has a mistress and cheats on his wife.... according to the four bullet points, is this a conspiracy?

b) A manager hires his best friend into a position that the friend is unqualified for. Is it a conspiracy?


Detecting Conspiracies -
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=conspiracies_as_a_function_of1

Conspiracies and Economies -
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=conspiracies_as_a_function_of3