NOTICE TO ALL COMMENTERS!

Regular readers know how I hate to impose rules, so it is with a heavy heart that I find myself forced to write this post. But it has come to my attention that there is a serious shortage of expertise and of intellectual horsepower -- on all sides -- being displayed on this blog. Most recently, I stand accused of satirizing Michael Moore without having first formally declared whether or not I have seen "Fahrenheit 9/11." Likewise, I dared to compare Leni Riefenstahl to Michael Moore without making it clear whether I had seen any of her films!

These are very serious charges, but as I endeavor to be fair to all sides I have decided to institute some new rules around here.

Until now, I have been very liberal (and more than patient) and I have not attempted to question commenters about the state of their knowledge of material which might relate to what they're commenting on, even though some have grilled me at length about mine. After much soul-searching, I have decided to make this change in the hope of being fair to all.

Here they are: The Classical Values Eleven Rules of Etiquette for Commenters.

  • 1. No commenter will henceforth be allowed to opine on Adolf Hitler without having read at minimum Mein Kampf in its entirety, nor on Karl Marx without having read Capital. (No, I'm afraid The Communist Manifesto isn't enough....)
  • 2. Commenters shall not discuss Bill Clinton without having read My Life, nor shall Hillary Rodham Clinton be discussed by any commenter who has not read Living History. NOTE: The Clintons' older books (Between Hope and History and It Takes a Village) will NOT satisfy this requirement!
  • 3. Considering the recent misuse of this blog to launch a troll attack, henceforth no one will be allowed to criticize Glenn Reynolds without reading The Appearance of Impropriety. Nor may they comment on Law or Outer Space without having read Outer space: Problems of law and policy. To avoid any further appearance of impropriety, I must also require them to have seen Dr. Helen Smith's (aka the InstaWife's) movie Six.
  • 4. Similarly, in the event that any politician or public person under discussion has written a book, I must insist that all commenters first read such book or books before making any comments or pronouncements agreeing or disagreeing with that person. Rules 5 through 7 expand upon this general rule, spelling out specific requirements for certain well known celebrities.
  • 5. There shall be no further discussion of George W. Bush by anyone who has not read George W. Bush: On God and Country.
  • 6. Commenters will be not allowed to discuss Mel Gibson unless they are willing to execute a Declaration Under Penalty of Perjury that they have seen The Passion. (NOTE: There are many older Mel Gibson films, but be warned, they will NOT satisfy this prerequisite!)
  • 7. No other Hollywood figure or celebrity may be discussed unless the commenter is willing to certify to having seen at least two (2) of that celebrity's films. In the event that said celebrity is either a news, radio, or television personality, commenters must be willing and able to supply proof of familiarity with the celebrity's show. At this time there is no requirement as to how many hours must have been spent watching (or listening to) said shows, but I might be forced to impose such a requirement if this "honor system" is abused. (A word to the wise!)
  • 8. No one may discuss Machiavelli (or use the word "Machiavellian") without having read Machiavelli's Discourses. (Sorry, but The Prince is just lowbrow introductory High School stuff, folks!)
  • 9. There will be no discussions of either morality or immorality except by people who can demonstrate expertise in either or both fields. Similarly, there shall be no discussion of homosexuality by persons other than homosexuals, nor heterosexuality by persons other than heterosexuals. (While no official reading list has been yet announced, beware, as I will reserve the right to spring a moral/immoral heterosexual/homosexual pop quiz at any time!)
  • 10. Issues pertaining to race and racial differences may not be discussed except by members of the race under discussion. Merely being a human being is not sufficient to prove that one is a member of a particular race.
  • 11. No blogger shall ever speak ill of another blogger! Considering that even disagreement is taken by many to be a sign of stupidity, by others as evidence of outright evil, I must request that there be no disagreements of any kind posted in any future comments. Further, commenters are cautioned to be very careful of agreeing (whether with me or anyone else) if there is a possibility that someone who disagrees might interpret such agreement as disagreement with his or her own opinion.
  • I reserve the right to make changes and additions at any time as needed, but for now I will allow commenters to continue to make remarks without subjecting them to an official Knowledge Background Examination or other relevant personal inquiries.

    (I hope it doesn't have to come to that!)

    UPDATE: Glad I reserved the right to make additions. I'm hereby adding a rule about abortion: No man may discuss abortion or the abortion issue unless he has had one. (Sorry folks, but I'm afraid this means only Glenn Reynolds.)

    posted by Eric on 11.15.04 at 04:47 PM





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    » Alas, I am a Troll from CounterPundit
    Well, apparently he has never seen F911, and it is not even clear that he has seen any movie by Michael Moore. However, he and his minions think this is just fine--to comment on something on which you have no direct experience. So I give up. [Read More]
    Tracked on November 16, 2004 03:19 PM
    » Carnival of the Vanities CXIII from Parableman
    The 113th COTV is at Food Basics. My Affirmative Action VII: Sidebar on Reparations is in it. I'm linking to a bunch of posts, with longer comments on a couple of them, so I've put it all in the extended... [Read More]
    Tracked on November 21, 2004 08:18 AM



    Comments

    ha! i think this might be my favorite post i've ever seen on here. i've looked at counterpundit, and, for all his high-minded talk about 'reason' and 'argument', i've mostly seen a lot of name-calling. for example, his latest post in which he 'dissects' the 'rants' of bushies, he has the following to say:

    Here's Something...
    ...you won't see the wingnuts talking about. Especially Captain Underpants, who apparently is taking a few days off from his arm chair "analysis" of the war in Iraq. Reading all of those news feeds must have exhasuted him.
    -----------------------------------
    some dissection, eh? it's about as persuasive as a michael moore film.

    anyway, that is beside the point. the idea that one must see F911 to talk intelligently about michael moore is as prima facie absurd as the proposition that one must have listened to 'suite no.1 in G major, BWV 1007: sarabande' to be able to say anything intelligent or accurate about bach, and i thank you for your satirical treatment of said idea.

    E   ·  November 15, 2004 08:03 PM

    Thanks, Eric!

    You're a credentialed commenter here, so of course the rules (which I must by necessity be able to make or break at any time) do not apply to you!

    :)

    Eric Scheie   ·  November 15, 2004 09:47 PM

    Hot dam, I can comment on all I want to! Dang! I knew all those dam BA degrees were going to pay off.

    Kathianne   ·  November 15, 2004 11:13 PM

    I hope I'm not disqualified because I'm too dumb.

    1) I did read "Mein Kampf". I hope that doesn't make a Nazi. I hate potato salad. I haven't read "Capital", though I did read "The Communist Manifesto". I did read Ludwig von Mises's "Human Action" many years ago. Sorry, but economics books just aren't sexy enough for me. I did read a Communist book about Donald Duck, "Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic". I have a couple books by Stalin and by Mao, too. I also have Senator Joe McCarthy's "The Fight for Americanism", J. Edgar Hoover's "Masters of Deceit", and Whittaker Chambers's "Witness". I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

    2) I haven't read anything by the Clintons, though the Starr Report was interesting. More so was the special report on pornography put out by the Meese Committe in 1986.

    3) I think I present an appearance of impropriety. (At least, I hope I present as much an appearance of impropriety as I do of stupidity!) I have a book on the law of outer space buried somewhere. I watched "Lost in Space" as a boy, and I have good books on astronomy. I buy astronomy magazines every month when I go to Crossroads.

    4) I have read Bork's books "The Tempting of America" and "Slouching Toward Gomorrah". Has Santorum written a book? That would be interesting to read, though I already have "The How and Why Wonder Book of Dogs" from when I was a little boy. Tom Coburn's book on the problem of lesbianism in the girls' restroom would be _extremely_ interesting to read.

    5) I have not seen President George W. Bush's "On God and Country", but it does sound interesting. I'll look for it. The _style_ of the title is conservative.

    6) I swear upon the altar of Osiris and Isis that I did indeed see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". Quite an excellent film, in my opinion, best film on Jesus that I've yet seen. It concretized the essence of the Christian soteriology, including the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The Body and Blood of the Christ. You probably won't want to watch it too close before dinner. Some have said that it was anti-Semitic. I did not find it to be so. It did portray the penal system of the Roman Empire to be rather cruel and unusual by our modern Constitutional jurisprudence. I wrote a review of it in Up With Beauty. Again, I love the _style_ of the title.
    Holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma, the High Priestesses of the One And Only Christian Apostolic Tridentine Tribadentine Catholic Church of the Cathedral of Our Most Holy Virgin Mother, The Queen of Heaven, have themselves enacted "The Passion of the Christ", Dawn as the Christ, Norma as the Queen of Heaven.

    7) I don't watch TV any more, not have I seen too many movies lately or very often. I don't discuss or think about celebrities all that much, though I think Barbra Streisand's nose is sexy, and a man's man once pointed out that Sean Hannity is sexy from a manly point of view. I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. Eleanor Clift is very sexy to me. I used to watch her on "The McLaughlin Group".

    8) I only read "The Prince". I have read James Burnham's "The Suicide of the West", who draws upon Pareto and Machiavelli to a large extent. I shall leave the deft statesmanship to President Nixon.

    9) I'm definitely an expert in immorality, being a masturbater and a deviated prevert. I have read the Marquis de Sade's "Justine", "Juliette", and "120 Days of Sodom", as well as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs". I'm gynosexual, so I have much more in my inner being of a Lesbian's, a homosexual woman's, desire than of any heterosexual woman's attractions, though I have felt some attraction toward some of my fellow men as well from time to time. I'm not really man enough to be a man's man, though.

    10) I seem to be entirely of Northern European descent according to my genealogy as pieced together so far by my relatives (primarily my Aunt Fran) who study that field, and Gentile, not even any Jews at all. I have blue eyes and was blond as a child. I hope that doesn't make me a Nazi. I hate potato salad. Sometime, I wish I was a beautiful Negress like holy Norma. Dawn is her captive. Wanda -- Hmmm....

    11) A blogger speaking ill of another blogger? A commenter disagreeing with another comenter? Hmmm....

    12) Abortion? No, I never had an abortion (and neither did my mother, I'm happy to say), unless masturbation counts. On the other hand, I was a fetus once.

    I'm not as beautiful as Leni Riefenstahl nor even quite as fat as Michael Moore, so I guess I'm not qualified to discuss their films, either, by all these criteria.

    Well, I think you've just cut your comments down ta zero, with the possible exception of thet thar Thezbian Egoist feller above me. *waves Hi Steve!* ;)

    Ironbear   ·  November 16, 2004 07:52 AM

    Ironbear, you have an Official Indulgence, License, and Credential to comment at will. These rules, of course, are not intended to apply to the Anointed. They are very complicated, and are therefore enforceable only by the Honor System, with reference to gut feelings.

    Eric Scheie   ·  November 16, 2004 08:14 AM

    Great post. I think you should put a permanent link to it on your sidebar towards the top. Use it as a club... :D
    Also, I had no idea that I fulfilled the Classical Values' prerequisite reading list.
    Yay me! My readership (2 people!) would be appalled to find out that I don't only read new age schlock and occult books.
    Have a great day, Eric!

    Excuse me while I slink back, back into the darkness to resume my lurking.

    Rue   ·  November 16, 2004 11:06 AM

    Well. I guess the party is over here, then. :)

    bink   ·  November 16, 2004 12:13 PM

    Rue and Bink are of course credentialed, indulged, grandfathered in, titled, anointed, etc.

    Bink, there are no party rules.

    Eric Scheie   ·  November 16, 2004 02:46 PM

    Well... I'm close to watching every episode of Stargate SG-1. Can I comment on situations involving alien parasites in people's brains, even though I haven't had one myself?

    I've also been a biophysicist, so I can comment on any dilemmas involving protein structure.

    I'm also theoretically a writer, so I should be capable of spelling dillema correctly. Dilemma? Dillemmmma? Oh crap, this is what we have editors for...

    silvermine   ·  November 16, 2004 05:57 PM

    Well, this leaves me with nothing to say! (Oops, was that a moral argument?)

    Allan Beatty   ·  November 16, 2004 08:02 PM

    You don't have to eat cat duty to know it doesn't taste good.

    You don't have to hit your head with a hammer to study the treatment for concussions.

    A person can be an expert on the effects of cyanide on the human anatomy, and the chemical structure of cyanide, without ever having chugged a shot of the stuff. In fact, that person has a better chance of being an expert than someone who does drink it regularly.

    You can't speak about the emotional impact of Moore's filmmaking, or the artistry of his montages, without seeing the film.

    However, it is consructed mostly of footage that can be seen elsewhere. That footage has been discussed, in its context in f-9/11 and in its true context, to expose the propagandist's tactics. It has been criticized and defended in great detail.

    In this case, a person who has studied the background of the material in the movie, and what was cut out from it to make the movie, is better qualified to discuss it than someone who has seen "F-9/11" a hundred times and has seen or read nothing else about it.

    Doug Harper   ·  November 16, 2004 11:00 PM

    Eric Scheie, the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, and God of Classical Values, wrote:
    "Well done Steven. Love your awareness of unforeseen (and often paradoxical) consequences.

    I hereby extend to you the Official Steven Malcolm Anderson Indulgence And Permanent Exemption from the "Eleven Rules of Etiquette for Commenters" I was just forced to implement!

    (Hey, they're my rules! I can break them whenever I want -- and now you can too!)"

    Dear Eric:

    THANK YOU! THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!!

    Ironbear wrote:
    "Well, I think you've just cut your comments down ta zero, with the possible exception of thet thar Thezbian Egoist feller above me. *waves Hi Steve!* ;)"

    Hi, Ironbear!

    And Eric replied:
    "Ironbear, you have an Official Indulgence, License, and Credential to comment at will. These rules, of course, are not intended to apply to the Anointed. They are very complicated, and are therefore enforceable only by the Honor System, with reference to gut feelings."

    Good! Good! Good!

    I must add a few things to what I wrote:

    Eric wrote:
    ":* No one may discuss Machiavelli (or use the word "Machiavellian") without having read Machiavelli's Discourses. (Sorry, but The Prince is just lowbrow introductory High School stuff, folks!)"

    Good old Central High School, Monmouth-Independence, Oregon, Class of 1973! "The Royal Orgy House"! I'm as lowbrow as Mike Nomad, I think. I should be driving a truck for "Proof" magazine. Maybe Steve Roper. I'll have to dig up that old letter to the editor of our High School paper, the letter that says "Mole Says Hippies Wrong". That's my kind of reading.

    I wrote:
    "5) I have not seen President George W. Bush's "On God and Country", but it does sound interesting. I'll look for it. The _style_ of the title is conservative."

    Sometimes President Bush even looks a little bit like E. Merrill Root.

    I wrote:
    "Holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma, the High Priestesses of the One And Only Christian Apostolic Tridentine Tribadentine Catholic Church of the Cathedral of Our Most Holy Virgin Mother, The Queen of Heaven, have themselves enacted "The Passion of the Christ", Dawn as the Christ, Norma as the Queen of Heaven."

    I must add that these two Goddesses re-enact their sacred "Passion of the Christ" every Easter morning, and they are showing films of it to the warriors inside our nuclear missile silos and submarines. Commies beware!

    E wrote:
    "ha! i think this might be my favorite post i've ever seen on here. i've looked at counterpundit, and, for all his high-minded talk about 'reason' and 'argument', i've mostly seen a lot of name-calling. for example, his latest post in which he 'dissects' the 'rants' of bushies, he has the following to say:

    "Here's Something...
    ...you won't see the wingnuts talking about. Especially Captain Underpants, who apparently is taking a few days off from his arm chair "analysis" of the war in Iraq. Reading all of those news feeds must have exhasuted him."
    -----------------------------------
    some dissection, eh? it's about as persuasive as a michael moore film."

    This blogger just quoted from also calls Glenn Reynolds "the partisan hack" and calls Michelle Malkin "the breathless nitwit". Something about these misogynistic references from men of the Left to women of the Right makes those women all the sexier to me.

    The _style_ of it all....

    I had a dream about "breathless" Michelle Malkin last night. I hated her, she was a complete fascist, but she was _very_ sexy. She wrote a book in that dream, the kind of book I often dream about, with lots of charts and spectrum dualisms, even though I completely disagreed with the the ideology she was advocating. She was against homosexual marriage. Then, she changed sides and started preaching the ideology, the Conservative Lesbian Individualist Theology, of "breathless" holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma, for homosexual marriage and against adultery. The _styles_ of the Starboard side of a spectrum! Tight and High.

    I was born a thespian. At a very early age I just "knew" it. Being one (a thespian; not, you know, a zen buddhist or anything like that), I never felt a need to read a book on thespianism. Writing one, maybe, but that's a future project.

    So can I comment on thespians? Do I have to wait until I have written my book (assuming of course that having written it I will actually manage to have read it as well)? What if I know Mary Cheney personally?

    Kenneth Greenlee   ·  November 17, 2004 07:46 PM


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