Zap,
I think that both sides use hate-filled bile in much the same way - have you ever listened to conservative radio? Michael Savage anyone? As far as you being “attacked” by liberals being evidence of liberals being more hate-filled, consider PtrDr’s searing, unprovoked attack on a liberal poster:
“Get a correct balanced viewpoint before you say something stupid!..DORK… (I wouldn’t be suprised if you use the Smith machine for everthing and do you barbell curls in the squat rack)”. Criticize a man’s politics if you will, but leave the Smith machine out of it.
I think that liberals do sometimes spend so much time hating Bush, that they only see one side of an issue, but that republicans did the same thing to Clinton.
I generally avoid criticizing other posters, preferring to debate them, or offer agreement or supplementary information. Your response about Democratic tactics was both witless and unoriginal - how many times have we had to read similar posts, which take away from the real debate? What you did is actually illustrative of what Ann Coulter and her kind do, and in that sense, you actually contributed a great example to the thread (unintentionally I am certain). Ann was making some good points, and as someone who loathes her, that is hard for me to admit. But then she reverted to the usual irrelevant, unoriginal, ad hominem attacks (has anyone not heard the decades-old information about Kennedy and Byrd at least a million times…especially her readers?).
We all post for different reasons. For a long time, I read T-Nation only for workout/nutrion information, and posted only in those threads. I only started posting in the political forum this past fall, and this is the only website that I regularly post on. I like this site because of the differing viewpoints. While I often disagree with him, I always read Boston Barrister’s posts because they are informative, well-written, and well-sourced, and he has changed my viewpoints on some issues (wiretapping, etc). In all fairness, BB is a lawyer with probably 10 I.Q. points on the average poster, so he is more the exception than the rule. But even an uneducated poster offers a distinct viewpoint and is interesting in that way. What stops me from reading/posting more often is stupid comments like “You are correct. She does use the Democrats (sic) tactics!”
Zap, in your response to the criticism, you delineated your perception of the different ways in which the two sides play partisan politics - the left loud and angry, the right more stealth. That is actually an interesting and debatable point. Your first post encourages vicious, ruthless, personal assaults like, “DORK… (I wouldn’t be suprised if you use the Smith machine for everthing and do you barbell curls in the squat rack)”. That one still hurts when I read it. Why not skip the unoriginal, unfunny, witless pastisan comment, and actually say what you mean (which, as stated, is a very interesting point).
The effect of the namecalling attacks is that the point of the thread is lost, and people stop reading it. There have been many really good threads that have been ruined by a back-and-forth exchange of insults between members (Vroom and Rainjack I think sometimes are guilty) that is boring at best, disturbingly homoerotic at worst.
To tie this rant in with the original topic, Ann Coulter is a Harvard-educated lawyer, and as such is likely a pretty smart person.
But because so much of what she writes is unoriginal, unsubstantiated, and hate-filled trash, people do not pay attention to the actual good points that she makes. If you have a point, make it. If you have a funny, original, or pertinent one-liner, throw it out there. But refrain from just saying, “sounds like the democrats”, because it makes you sound like an idiot, which judging from some of your other posts, you definitely are not. Sorry for going on for so long, but this has been building for along time.