Comments on: So, was the EA anti-gay campaign for real or was it astroturf?

By: Nick Smith

Nick Smith — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:39:47 +0000

As a PS, the only affidavited card-carrying Communist Congressman I can find is Hugh De Lacy, who was in Congress 1945-47.Even these guys – http://commieblaster.com/progressives/index.html – who describe Bill and Hilary Clinton as ‘Progressive Communist’ and ‘Marxist’ can’t actually produce any evidence, even hearsay, that any congressmen are actually Communists.

Part of the problem (On this particular issue of misinformation) is that many on the right don’t appear to actually understand that there *is* a difference between the terms Marxist, Socialist, Communist, ‘member of the Communist Party, and, indeed, Democrat and Liberal.

Which is as silly as conflating GOP, Tea Party, Fascist, Racist, and Klan members – these are all different things, of course, and there may be some overlap between some of them, but they are *not* the same.

By: Nick Smith

Nick Smith — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:26:19 +0000

And…this is where the internet is a problem. See, you make a statement like the above (25 years ago there were some communists, there is one in the house currently). But that’s not anywhere close to what West – a congressman, with a staff, who really *should* ‘check at all’ what he says – stated. He stated that “I believe there are about 78 or 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party, it’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus”. It’s entirely possible he meant it as a joke, but, again, in our era, it was (at best) foolish, and at worst deliberately stirring up political division…and I have no doubt it will be being quoted as ‘fact’ by many many people on the Tea Party wing…many of whom would also be quite likely to boycott EA, or the Girl Scouts, on equally dodgy factual grounds.

By: Goodmongo

Goodmongo — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:17:16 +0000

Nick, what West was referring to are the members of the congressional progressive caucus. members of that caucus have appeared at communist party sponsered rallies and gave speeches. This is all available to be found out easily enough. In the late 1980′s a number of representatives actually displayed their communist party id cards at a rally. So not sure if this qualifies as fiction. He might be wrong on the number but I guarantee there is at least one card carrying member of the communist party in the US House. After all there are representatives that are/were members of the black panther party and weather underground.

By: Nick Smith

Nick Smith — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:26:44 +0000

Spinks expressed surprise/disbelief that some ‘out there’ groups do ‘not really check at all’ on the information they are campaigning about. I supplied evidence that some less ‘out there’ groups do – which is entirely relevant to the question she raised as to whether it was credible that EA had been the recipient of a (To her eyes) ill-informed campaign.

Had she raised a question about whether the MSM were so ‘out there’ as to use only respectable pictures of Trayvon Martin, and disreputable ones of George Zimmerman, I’d have provided samples of that. But it wouldn’t have been in any way relevant to Spinks’ point, so I didn’t.

I’m from the UK. You have to understand that we regard both your main parties from a view of smug colonialism .

By: Stabs

Stabs — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:54:23 +0000

“I don’t want to clog up Spinks blog with hundreds of links where dems and liberals are ignorant and don’t know reality from fact.”

That’s what the rest of the internet is for

By: Goodmongo

Goodmongo — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:35:32 +0000

Please lets not go down that path. I don’t want to clog up Spinks blog with hundreds of links where dems and liberals are ignorant and don’t know reality from fact.

By: Goodmongo

Goodmongo — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:16:58 +0000

Again I don’t agree with the FRC but this is what they sent EA about it:

“My family and I were disappointed to learn that BioWare and Electronic Arts plan to add LGBT content to Star Wars video games.”

Notice the word “plan”? So they are complaining about the plan to add it and that is reality. BTW that quote appeared on both the FRC and EA sites so its legit.

By: Pardoz

Pardoz — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:37:34 +0000

Well no, that’s the problem. They didn’t boycott the notice that they were coming, which would have been cranky but grounded in reality. They’re fulminating because the game has them now, which it doesn’t. They’re not complaining about a dev post saying “We’ll be adding this feature, in some undefined form, at some indefinite point in the future”, they’re complaining about something that doesn’t exist because, well, they know what they know, and reality be damned.

By: Goodmongo

Goodmongo — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:06:52 +0000

As said I’m not for this ‘boycot’. I’m just wondering what you meant by not living in reality? They boycotted the notice that same sex relationships would be in SWTOR according to a patch. That is reality. I don’t agree with their view but its a fact and reality.

By: Dril

Dril — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:15:54 +0000

Methinks a combination of perspective and (to my mind) the general theme of the BBC to state something in a completely factual way but always with a surging undercurrent of negativity (usually when it’s related to facts and figures of government proposals it’s not even pro-Labour negativity or “here’s an alternative” criticism, it’s just pointing out that it’s bad).

I’d assume that they pick up on these stories to make sure that British people have something to feel good about in that whilst we may have problems, at least we don’t have those people (and, yeah, I’m inclined to be grateful considering that Fox News link).

For instance, none of your national policies that would make headlines actually matter to us all that much (we have our own, after all), but moronic Christian right pressure groups are interesting because we don’t really have an equivalent.