My daughter is really bummed by this. Understand that this was completely unnecessary - it’s a site for hobbyists, not a social media site.
They claim that they aren’t banning republicans but they are saying that, if you are a pubbie, you are a “hater” and beneath contempt.
Idiots.
Notice the term “open.” If something is open, there will be no difficulty at all giving an example of overt support.It’s one thing to make an erroneous assumption, and another to go over the top about it. “Trump is a racist” is a legitimate - if incorrect - opinion. "Trump is an open racist,” OTOH, is a fact claim, not an opinion. Where is the evidence of open racism? If true, it should be easy to document and incontrovertible.
But in fact, YOU ARE STILL CRYING WOLF (About Trump “Racism”).
The fact that the “open” racism dog didn’t bark invalidates the claim. But that doesn’t matter, because Democrats are entitled, not only to their own opinions, but to their own facts. Why? Because Republicans can’t sue for libel.
In its 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision, the Warren Court held unanimously that government officials have a high bar to cross to get a libel action heard in court - so much so, that it just isn’t done. In the majority opinion and in the enthusiastic concurrences wishing to go further, SCOTUS claimed that this was necessary to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
That was 55 years ago, and nobody since has been willing to touch that unanimous decision with a ten-foot pole. But just as the Sullivan decision was unanimous without Scalia on the bench, the 1988 Morrison v. Olson decision would have been unanimous without then-freshman Justice Scalia, too - and Morrison was dead wrong.
Justice Elena Kagan, in an event at Stanford,I claim that, altho Mr. Sullivan perhaps should have lost, Sullivan was an incorrect holding because of factors not before the court in that case:called Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson (1988), in which he argued that the Independent Counsel Act should be struck down because it was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, “one of the greatest dissents ever written and every year it gets better.” - https://www.lawfareblog.com/morrison-v-olson-bad-law
- In 1964 there was some unrest about “bias in the media,” but the reality was that there was so much “bias in the media” back then that the Court just took for granted that there was none - “a fish will be the last one to discover water.” When there is no Internet and no FR, and there is no talk radio . . .
- Although SCOTUS had in 1945 (Associated Press v. United States) found The Associated Press to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, SCOTUS in Sullivan does not draw the correct inference from that fact. Per Wikipedia, in that case
The Associated Press (AP) had prohibited member newspapers from selling or providing news (whether that news was supplied by the AP, or was authored by the member newspaper - called "spontaneous" news) to nonmember organizations as well as making it very difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP.But a listing of those business practices does not reach the real antitrust implications of the AP (and indeed, of all wire services). Which is that any wire service is a virtual meeting of people of the trade of journalism - and “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” - Adam Smith.Originally there were three separate cases (Associated Press et al. v. U.S., Tribune Company et al. v. U.S. and U.S. v. Associated Press et al.) that were joined into one when heard at the Supreme Court.
The “conspiracy against the public” which has been the result of that virtual meeting is a propaganda campaign to the effect that “all journalists are objective.” This campaign obviously promotes journalism, but it is specifically “against the public” because it homogenizes journalism ideologically. You can’t be a journalist if you compete ideologically with consensus journalism. The whole journalism establishment will declare you “Not a journalist, not objective” if you dare to try. The conceit that “journalists are objective” is inherently humbug, because objectivity is a laudable goal, not a state of being. To attempt to be objective, you must start from the assumption that it is possible, at least, that “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Justice Scalia made the point that when he found that he liked an opinion of his too much, he redoubled his efforts at objectivity to see if some personal preference of his was involved in the case. That is hard intellectual work, which someone who assumes that he is objective would take for granted is unnecessary and who is therefore very unlikely to undertake it. Thus, the claim of journalistic objectivity is inimical to the actual attempt to be objective at any given time.
Worse yet, journalists know that journalism is systematically negative. “If it bleeds, it leads,” and all that. It follows that a claim that “journalists are objective” is tantamount to a claim that “negativity is objectivity” - a claim which is consistent only with cynicism.
The funny thing about cynicism is that it is not “extreme skepticism.” Skepticism is defined as doubt, but cynicism is negative certainty. And if “A” and “B” be opposites, cynicism towards “A” is inconsistent with cynicism towards “B.” It is in fact consistent only with faith, even naiveté, towards “B.” And so it is with the cynicism of journalism. Journalism is cynical towards society and, per Thomas Paine’s Common Sense society is a blessing, but government is an evil necessary only to limit imperfections inherent to any actual society of real people. Thus we see in journalism the combination of cynicism towards society with naiveté towards government - a combination which is necessary and sufficient to produce advocacy for socialism.
- In Sullivan, the losing plaintiff was a Southern Democrat - i.e., someone who like Sen. Eastland (D, MS) and Sen. Talmadge (D,GA) never was and never would have identified himself as a Republican, but whom a (Democrat) reporter today might casually label a “Republican.” That means that while the target of SCOTUS’s Sullivan decision was nominally a Democrat, in practical terms it has no bearing on any Democrat now. Any given journalist is entitled to associate with the views of any given politician, and any given politician is entitled to associate with the views of any given journalist. But under the aegis of the “all journalists are objective” propaganda campaign, all Democrats associate with the view of the consensus journalism view, and all journalists associate with the Democrat Party view.
Consequently Democrats do not get libeled. Therefore, a rule against government officials suing for libel is a rule against Republicans suing for libel. And the consequence is that Democrats are entitled to their own facts. No court will hear any objection to that.
SCOTUS was all proud of itself in Sullivan for "upholding the First Amendment.” But if the purpose of freedom of speech and press is to “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred thoughts contend,” Sullivan has the opposite effect.
The wire services were a rational response to (the very high cost of) telegraphy. As recently as 1945, the idea of abolishing them would have seemed ludicrous on economic grounds. But that was then, and dirt-cheap Internet communications and internationally accessible news web sites are now.