I don’t take banning users lightly, and despite repeated statements of disrespect from this particular commenter, I actually still feel bad about doing this. I have always wanted this blog to be open to all points of view, even ones that I find personally distasteful. I have accepted many points of view here, and have been very tolerant to people even taking an unfavorable view of me and the things I say. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and this crosses it:
Fuck you people. I get all this heartburn because I asked how NRA is treating someone to a concert that is sponsored by Gander Mountain?
No wonder you are from Waurika, that is where Comanche used to send all our mentally disabled, Bitch.
I was asking a serious question, but you assholes are so goddamned fragile you can’t answer it because you think it is some kind of attack.
Hell! It may have been, but if it was, I wasn’t aware of it. I really wanted to know about the mechanics of it.
Ok, you have provided me with an answer to a question that has been niggling at me for a while now. The answer to the question is: no! you are not small l libertarians, nor are you second amendment advocates, nor are you civil rights advocates, nor are you political conservatives (forget it, none of you are smart enough to know what that is), nor are you interested in procuring or reacquiring rights that have been lost or truncated over the years. You are simply people who like to feel important at no cost and have decided the best way to do that is to ride popular or semipopular coattails that have a chance of ascending to acceptance. You are merely cheerleaders with no loyalty to any team as long as you are paid. In your cases the pay is acceptance of a larger group .
Did I mention fuck you?
Oh, by the way, I will be in Comanche, Ok 0ver Easter. Bring your boyfriend, we’ll talk.
Comment by straightarrow on February 25th, 2008
I’ve been very tolerant of straightarrow up until that comment, despite his generally nasty disposition. I draw the line at attacking my girlfriend and making veiled threats against the host. I did not warn him. I will not lecture him like he is some kind of misbehaving school child, I just took what I thought was appropriate action. Since straightarrow is so insistent that I am nothing but a mouthpiece for the NRA, from now on, anytime he visits my blog, it will redirect him directly to NRA. No need for him to receive his propiganda filtered through this place, when he can get it right from the source.
UPDATE: I’ve determined through logs that I have one, possibly two other readers on the same IP subnet as straightarrow. Since these readers have never commented, I will deal with this issue differently, and will disable the redirect.
Hahaha, oh wow.
Don’t feel bad, you stuck up for yourself and your Lady, you didn’t resort to name calling, you took the high road and cut out the problem instead of becoming part of it. Good for you.
Don’t blame you. When debate degenerate to this level, it is time to stop. I just do not agree with the lack of manners and the indiscriminate use of profanity. Curt’s rant was a bit much, but at least it was mannerly. Straight arrow was just wrong to post this. People have to step back before posting pure irrationality take sway.
is straightarrow a blogger?
I don’t think so.
Not that I’m aware of.
Brilliant!!
Its about time.
Straightarrow’s comments were unacceptable.
Wow, I really hate it when we end up trying to rip each other’s throats out rather than focus our energies where they belong.
That was a pretty sad display of temper management. Unfortunately, I agree with SA on some points but those points tend to get lost in the foul language and threats.
Pity.
He picked the wrong week to start pushing buttons.
Curt’s blog post was just an example of the fact that there is a lot of divergence in the gun community on various topics. Straightarrow, however, did a good job of showing what is wrong with people that can only accept opinions that match their “pure” vision of how things should be. The same type of thing comes up a lot with the “big L” libertarians in our community as well.
I will admit that I don’t accept compromise as the right tactic quite as often as Sebastian does. But at least I’m mature enough to just not look at his blog for a few days if something rubs me wrong.
How to start….
First, I don’t want to seem to be condoning straightarrow’s comments, so bear with me a sec…
I read that thread. straightarrow asked a question–without being a mind reader nobody could know his motive at that point.
The three responses before straightarrow blew his lid were, in order, a sarcastic reply, a direct insult, and a veiled insult of his intelligence.
Sebastian was sarcastic, JNS was just plain insulting, and Bitter talked down to him. I can see why he blew his top, not that I agree with how he handled it–not at all–still, nobody handled it well.
Then every person making a post in that comment chain after straightarrow blew up ( except jetfxr69’s) tossed another insult.
I, me, the person writing this comment, do not think any of the parties involved handled that situation well at all.
There is only one person without blame in that comment chain–and all he did was ask “Ummm, what just happened here?”
Sebastian, this is your house with your rules. However, you invited the public here so it’s up to you to maintain order. You don’t want specific people here, that’s your prerogative–no question about that.
But, banning one person and allowing comments such as “Wow, StraightArrow. You are so incredibly dumb” to stand without comment is not the way to go either.
straightarrow crossed a line that he shouldn’t have crossed–no doubt about it. However, the way everyone responded was also inappropriate.
If people were fed up with straightarrow or not, directly and backhandedly insulting him was not the way to handle the situation.
At the time I’m writing this (comments are not turned off there yet), nobody in that comment chain (except jetfxr69) can hold their head up and say “The way I responded was not wrong.”–nobody.
I’m not sure this is a house I want to visit if this is how the people who come here treat each other–even their trouble makers.
I’d hate to ask a question here because something was outside my experience and be hit with such answers such as Sebastian, JNS, and Bitter gave straightarrow.
I should note that it’s not just this incident. Straightarrow has a long history of being mean, insulting and denigrating to those who don’t see things the same way he does. I am actually fairly tolerant of that, but only to a degree. I’ve dealt with him enough to know he was setting that question up to basically accuse the NRA of taking credit for the concert that Gander Mountain paid for. I think Straightarrow is smart enough to understand the concept of a sponsorship. That’s his MO. He got angry because instead of playing the normal game, where we rationally explain how it’s set up, so he can accuse us of being dupes, we got snarky with him.
If people were fed up with straightarrow or not, directly and backhandedly insulting him was not the way to handle the situation.
I’ll be honest, I’m rather tired of dealing with people who shit all over people and think it’s just OK. I have no problem with disagreement. I don’t even have a problem with someone being harsh with me. But straightarrow was getting to the point where I just felt like he wasn’t contributing anything beyond vile and vitriol.
I’m not sure this is a house I want to visit if this is how the people who come here treat each other–even their trouble makers.
I can assure you this is not going to be a common occurrence. I take no pleasure out of doing things like this.
Wow… Straightarrow was a regular commenter on my blog for a while, but he hadn’t been around for a while. I don’t remember him ever being this contentious on my blog. Weird.
It’s your blog, and we’ll stand by your decisions.
As a visitor here, this is the last I’ll say on the matter:
Straightarrow has a long history of being mean, insulting and denigrating to those who don’t see things the same way he does.
Your house, your rules–ban him anytime for any reason, or no reason at all. I have no heartburn with that–none.
He got angry because instead of playing the normal game, where we rationally explain how it’s set up, so he can accuse us of being dupes, we got snarky with him.
My apologies, it’s just that I was expecting a bit more professional behavior than mudslinging from this blog.
Although, I don’t see this as “snarky”–“Wow, StraightArrow. You are so incredibly dumb.-JNS”
He was pleasant back in the beginning when I spoke more philosophically than I do now. When this blog started to go in a direction he didn’t like, he got insulting. I tolerated it for a long time, and responded to him as reasonably as I could, and just ignored him when he really went off. I was completely willing to let him be mean and nasty with JNS, because yeah, JNS threw it right back at him.
Although, I don’t see this as “snarkyâ€â€“â€Wow, StraightArrow. You are so incredibly dumb.-JNSâ€
No, that was outright insulting, and he had hurled the bomb back at JNS for it, I wouldn’t have taken exception.
Sebastian, this is YOUR blog. It’s YOUR effort. It’s YOUR sandbox. If someone wants to crap in it, you have the right to boot them – not for their views but for their attitude.
There was this common misconception when I was News Director for KeepAndBearArms.com that commenters had a constitutional right to say whatever they damn well pleased, including some unpleasant, disgusting, insulting and downright threatening things. Sure they have the right to say them, but we certainly don’t have the obligation to provide them with a platform to do so. These people just didn’t get it. I was called a tyrant and some other unpleasant things when I would delete blatantly racist commentary from that site and finally had some banned for such speech.
Bottom line – if someone wants to be a jackass, they can build their own blog and bloviate all they want. But this is YOUR blog, and you have the right to get rid of them.
Nicki
Thanks Nikki. If I seem a little defensive it’s because I actually don’t really feel good about doing this.
I can attest to straightarrow going from crotchety but pleasant to downright nasty.
I’ve luckily never had to ban someone from my blog, but I’ve felt guilty the few times I’ve had to moderate comments. I think that Sebastian made a tough, but intelligent decision in this issue.
There is a great big difference between allowing open discussion and allowing people to threaten others.
I tend to throw people who misbehave in moderation. I have to approve every future comment they make. Even though I’ve been stirring the pot lately, I’ve done that with few people – 3 or 4 over more than 5 years of posting.
However, I will also argue as I did in a thread above that straightarrow’s comment could have easily been seen as a threat. In another recent post, he commented that he endorsed the use of violence against those he perceived to “trespass him,” and at least one example he gave seemed like a very low threshold, like a boss and policy he didn’t agree with. So to come in shortly after that and say he now views us as anti-rights and ask to meet up…that’s definitely shady given his previous statements. In fact, when he said that, the other comment about violence immediately popped into my head.
I think for those who seem not to have read many of straightarrow’s comments, you have understand that several people noted either on here or privately if he was in fact an invented character to make gun owners and gun rights supporters look like they were off their rockers and dangerous. When pro-gun people start asking that about someone who claims they support the same issues, it’s a pretty good sign you’re not coming off as even remotely sane.
Sheesh, at least he could spell and had a logical streak – I had to plonk a drunk old illiterate Australian gun hater from randomly pooping at ever turn.
Huh, I like the whole “redirect him somewhere else” idea… Might have to use that in the future myself, should the cause ever come up. Though, I am sure you are aware how easy it is to bypass…
And while Magnus is completely correct that it would seem as though no one really handled that comment thread particularly well, straightarrow is still ultimately responsible for his actions and comments. He chose to take the thread in a direction that was not contributory to anything… and then just keep shoving. I have no patience for people like that, myself…
I don’t even pretend to be fair on my blog … bother me and you vanish and your personal IP gets banned.
If you pay for the bandwidth, you get to make the decisions.
Magus: The reason I was just outright insulting to Straightarrow was because I’ve watched him be condescending, unpleasant, and attempt to stir up trouble on this blog for months on end. I will fully admit to having purposely attempted to get him riled up in hopes of getting him banned. I feel that Sebastian had been letting Straightarrow walk all over him for too long, disrupting the comments section in this blog time and time again, in the interest of being a polite, gracious host. Enough is enough. It seemed no one else was willing to take a stand against him being an asshole, and as soon as I came out against him viciously, others started to slowly air their grievances against him as well. Someone just needed to be an asshole to get the ball rolling, and I took the calculated risk that once I did so others would begin to display their anger towards him as well, showing that a lot of the regular readers here found him to be disruptive to their enjoyment of discussing the issues on this blog.
Such uncouth comments should be met with banning, absolutely. He obviously did not intend to persuade or discuss in a civil manner, so let him take his marbles and go home.
“Someone just needed to be an asshole to get the ball rolling, and I took the calculated risk that once I did so others would begin to display their anger towards him as well, showing that a lot of the regular readers here found him to be disruptive to their enjoyment of discussing the issues on this blog.”
If anyone ENJOYS discussing the issues of your rights being used as toilet paper you’re on the wrong side of things. I liked what was presented as a guy who wasn’t PC and “bill clinton” about things, drew a line in the sand and said enough is enough.
The country wasn’t founded by people sitting around talking, it was people who gambled everything they had for the chance at something better, for the right to speak and be heard even if others weren’t comfortable with what they heard. They may have expected a little more tact at times, but that doesn’t mean they’d have heaved folks out on their ear.
As one of the minority who voted that it’s no OK to ban folks I see this as just more “go along to get along” and look at where that kind of thing has got us as a country.
I’m not calling for political correctness, but for some basic decency. I can only take so much vitriol, and yes, I’m pretty defensive of Bitter. The founders truly did gamble everything, but they were masterful wordsmiths… and this country was founded on civil (and sometimes uncivil) debate as much as it was on the musket, pike, bayonet and long rifle.