You do realize you’re feeding the trolls a seven-course feast?
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Wow, straw-man much? Your bogosity is off the scale!
I like the way your handle rolls off the tongue; ‘Sheridan Q Porter’ is almost perfect for the kind of troll/fogey who looks at Stephen Fry and allegedly sees a man making a fool of himself. Please upload an avatar; I bet it’ll be priceless.
Regards, a minimally-deluded straight-shooter.
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And hey, if we never had Hitler in the first place, we couldn’t have had Star Wars.
So there you go : p
So you’ve seen the light, huh?
Say hi to Bob for me.
No offense but, as a United Statesian, I find it pretty funny to sit here and read the slapfests between your rightwingers and your leftwingers. Unfortunately, most people just don’t realize that here, regardless of which side of the political fence our politicians may be, they’re all just about exactly alike. I have to agree with the statement that the Daily Mail is a racist, hate-mongering, piece of shit of a rag although I’d be willing to bet that some of you here with that exact same belief wouldn’t hesitate to grab it to stare at some useless reality “star’s” tits. Hell, I’d do the same thing. I gotta admit that while I really have tried to read an actual article there from beginning to end, I haven’t been able to do so without shaking my head in disgust. There are awesomely bad leftwing papers that are just as bad - so I don’t read those either. Damn good thing I can find news online without all the bullshit hypocrisy that comes with being part of either the left or the right side of the political spectrum.
Oh yeah, I thought that everyone knew by now … DNFTT.
Nah mate, that’s what the internet is for.
At least if that’s the case (and as you may have seen I came to a similar
conclusion myself) then I can take comfort in that. Fewer people that
genuinely think that way the better 
I don’t see the point of this comparison. There are plenty of Brits who criticise the Mail and the people who read it and believe it.
According to a few sources (including Wikipedia, so it must be true!), Hitler didn’t snub Owens. FDR did.
On the first day of competition, Hitler shook hands only with the German victors and then left the stadium. Olympic committee officials insisted Hitler greet every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations. On reports that Hitler had deliberately avoided acknowledging his victories, and had refused to shake his hand, Owens said at the time:
“Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave.” “It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the ‘man of the hour’ in another country.”
Albert Speer writes that Hitler reflected upon Owens’s victories with a shrug as African physiques were primitive and stronger than whites.
… FDR never invited Jesse Owens to the White House following his triumphs at the Olympics games. Since 1936 was a presidential-election year, Roosevelt was afraid that he would lose southern votes if he played Kowtow to a black man. Jesse Owens also publicly endorsed Alf Landon during the upcoming election.
Owens said,
“Hitler didn’t snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
America and Britain also snubbed black soldiers in the liberation of Paris, to the extent that the French army had to be specially segregated to allow an all-white liberation. This was supposed to be “better for propaganda and French morale”.
Yes. AKA ‘Mail Reader’. I see them every day. Reading the Daily Mail.
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Then I shall see you on the other side.
I consider myself a liberal and I know of many people who consider themselves to be liberals who fit that description. I think bigotry exists outside of one’s opinion of the proper role of government in society.
EDIT: I hasten to add my agreement with you that suggestions that intolerance for bigotry is another form of bigotry are pure nonsense.
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No one’s saying we shouldn’t have the Olympics in 1936 - rather, the notion is that they should merely have been held somewhere other than Nazi Germany.
“Herr Führer” would still have been grimacing in annoyance while his “Aryan” athletes lost, it just would have happened in a different country, and Germany would not have had the occassion of hosting the games to exploit for the sake of bolstering their regime.
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The Daily Mail can be demonstrably shown to hate Gays and Jews. Given that Mr. Fry is both Gay and Jewish, the badge seems utterly appropros.
That said, your complaint isn’t that Mr. Fry was complaining about how hateful the Mail is (you yourself state that “would have been fine”), but rather that he didn’t phrase his condemnation nicely enough? I can picture it now…
"Dear sirs, I’m writing to inform you that, although I hardly wish to offend you, I must regrettably inform you that I find myself in disagreement with your views regarding various minority groups, vis-à-vis the content of your newspaper, specifically as concerns your recent less than favorable commentary on the topic of my recent open letter to the Prime Minister and the International Olympic Committee.
Now, I do hope you will not be shocked to learn this, but your views on homosexuals, immigrants, and people of alternate ethnicities happen to offend my sensibilities. Of course, I fully respect your right to voice your opinion on this and other matters, but my personal feeling is that your appraisal of these groups is, I’m afraid to say, too negative for my tastes. I would therefor like to politely request that you reconsider your position on these issues, and I would humbly ask that in the future you refrain from…
Oh, bloody fucking hell! Sod it! This bullshit faux-nicety is making me physically ill! You’re a bunch of hateful, bigoted, worthless, destructive, fear-mongering, profiteering, amoral, disgusting, offensive, divisive, monstrous trolls and ne’er-do-wells who need a good strong dose of humanity, humility, and hospitality, and who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Cheerfully yours,
Stephen Fry"
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Oh, you’re just adorable. You don’t even know what it is you’re opposed to, do you?
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Ah, I see where you’re coming from now. You’re invoking the “paradox of tolerance”–the idea that if one is opposed to bigotry, they must necessarily embrace bigots, because to do otherwise would be bigoted. Bigots in general love this argument, and have trotted it out regularly against non-bigots for decades at least. I can’t rightly imagine what makes anyone think this is a good argument, but there it is.
There is no contradiction or hypocrisy in hating hatred, in refusing to tolerate intolerance. I’ve got no desire to round bigots up and imprison, deport, or kill them (which is more courtesy than many bigots show the targets of their hate), but I will fight to my dying day against their policies and their influence in the world. You might want to seriously consider why you’re not willing to do the same.
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Hating hatred is fine, indeed laudable. Hating people who you think hate you merely increases the amount of hatred. Big difference. Look at the article, and see which description best fits.
Except that the Mail has been proven to hate gays and Jews and all that stuff. You can see the evidence by actually reading the evidence that has been trotted out for you so far.
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Examples please.[quote=“xploder, post:70, topic:6864”]
No offense but, as a United Statesian, I find it pretty funny to sit here and read the slapfests between your rightwingers and your leftwingers. Unfortunately, most people just don’t realize that here, regardless of which side of the political fence our politicians may be, they’re all just about exactly alike.
[/quote]
The range represented by just about all US politicians does not represent the range between Left and Right. And just about all US politicians, whatever their claims, are on the Right.
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In the likely event that the Olympics don’t move someplace else, what’s the back-up plan?
The thing about gay rights is, they protect everyone’s right–gay or straight–to a consensual, nobody’s-business-but-your-own sex life.
So if you don’t fight dirtbags like Putin [1] when they come after gays for their private lives, you have no protection the day they decide they want to come after you. And there’s a hair’s-breadth between hassling gays for having sex and hassling women for having sex.
Conversely, protecting the rights and dignity of G/Ls protects us all in this regard.
Anyway, my idea (which obviously needs some fleshing out) is, what if instead of taking it to Putin, we addressed ourselves to the good people of Russia?
Russians presumably like to get it on as much as the rest of us, and probably resent having religious a-holes, politicians [2] and secret police sticking their noses in.
What if we point out to them–as described above–that they all have a dog in this fight?
Apparently, you can do time in Russia for speaking of homosexuality as if it’s not some terrible thing. But most of us aren’t in Russia, no?
[1] Or Scalia, or Santorum, or the Tea Party.
[2] Seriously, if Putin was outed, how surprised would you be? How many photos of him have you seen that look like he was posing for a gay calendar?
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