Which was the "political post"?
I really was not entirely sure what you were referring to, you see, as I couldn't see that my posting the pictures of the "US presidents in uniform" (copied from a US website somewhere) was political. Was it insulting? No.
the post of presidents in "uniform" was the post that jumped out at me -- it is clearly, explicitly, by design, an image intended to cast aspersions on the patriotism and suitability for office of obama and clinton. it was unequivocally *created* in order to insult and demean clinton and obama. it is indistinguishable from the partisan images used in political campaigns to damage the reputation of political figures. Anyone familiar with american politics should be able to confirm that to you.
-mouser
Ah, I understand now. That throws quite a different light on it. Thankyou for explaining that to me. So it
was apparently unnacceptably insulting - or at least you found it so - and it would (it seems, from what you wrote) usually be the sort of insult handed out with a party-political bias, so it could be construed as being "political" at the very least.
Well then, I really do offer my most profuse apologies for that. I had absolutely no intention whatsoever of gratuitously denigrating or insulting any US politician when I put that picture up, and I did not perceive or intend that it would have had any political bias such as you describe. I thought it was just acceptable American humour covered by the free speech rule, as it came from a US website.
Certainly, I never
wish to insult in general - it serves no useful purpose.
I can never understand the motivation for making gratuitous/unfounded or insulting statements about people, whether one knows them or not, and regardless of who they are, and regardless of whether they do or say something that I might not approve of or agree with. They might be, for example, politicians, or people one meets at a party, or someone whom you discover had just burgled your parked car - it wouldn't matter to me. I would have (correctly) called the burglar a "thief" though, as that would have been established as fact.
The thing is that I was brought up in the UK, where politicians are fair game for poking fun at, and they have all usually been pretty mercilessly satirised over the years, usually without evident, specific political bias. I was apolitical from an early age, and loved the satire where it was funny, clever and made a point, and it never seemed to influence my view of the MP or their policies. Some very good examples were the printed periodicals Punch magazine and Private Eye, and the TV current affairs satirical shows
TWTWTW (That was the Week That Was), and
Spitting Image. Then again, there was the long-running TV series,
"Yes Minister", which was quite a clever satire about a UK Government Minister and his departmental Civil Servants (the latter are supposed to be apolitical).
However, I did think that Spitting Image went a tad too far when - as I recall - in a current affairs skit they depicted US President Reagan as taking his brain out and keeping it in a cup on his bedside table at night, or something. It was represented as a walnut-sized object, and in one episode he mislaid it and picked up a walnut off the floor, mistaking it for his brain, and inserted the walnut (rather than his brain) into his ear, and it made no apparent difference. I didn't know much about Reagan but I did consider that the skit was unnecessarily insulting and for no good reason that I could see. Similarly, I did not understand the later American penchant for making fun of Bush for his "Bushisms", though Clinton was probably fair game for his womanising - yet all three (Raegan, Bush, Clinton) seemed to generally perform the role of President to the people's satisfaction (unlike Nixon, for example).
Where such jokes about the presidents seemed to be
ad hominem attacks, I would tend to disregard them as I despise the use of that logical fallacy - as it is usually found when people have no valid argument to make, so they attack an opposing debater's character, physical appearance, or speech impediment, or something, rather than the reasoning in the argument being made by that person.
It never occurred to me that I might be publishing something that you might find or that could be deemed insulting and in a political context, on your humour section, and I confess to having being completely mystified as to your accusation of my making political/religious insults. I don't even know what political party any US presidents belong/belonged to, nor do I care.
However, I am now confuzzled by something else - two things actually:
- (a) if the picture of "US presidents in uniform" that I put up was insulting, was not the picture of Reagan in drag also insulting? (And my apologies if I spelt his name incorrectly before)
- (b) where you say that "the post of presidents in "uniform" was the post that jumped out at me", I can now understand what you mean, but you earlier wrote "Just resist injecting political/religious insults into a thread", your language here indicating two categories of gratuitous offence, and your use of the plural both seeming to imply that I have done this on two or more occasions. However, I cannot for the life of me see where else I might have done that. Could you explain please - or have I misunderstood what you wrote?
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