Oh, man, the fun comments I get.
I’m used to weird comments, ignorant comments, comments meant to distract, confuse, muddy an issue.
I seem to get these a lot more when I post on politics and/or religion, of course. That’s the nature of the beast. And when you go to social network sites you’re sure to see an even higher ratio of that (because, of course, the people who comment here on the BA Blog tend to be smarter, more rational, and better looking than your random person).
Many commenters on Digg.com are thoughtful, but some… well, some make me laugh. On my recent blog post about another Bush flunky who got a job at NASA, a Digg commenter wrote this (warning: that link has some NSFW language):
Interesting article, I will reflect on this with my coworkers at the water cooler. Did you know the author, Phil Plait, is a known communist who flip flops on the important issues?
Nuts, he somehow got a photocopy of my Communist Party card! Curses!
For the record, I think communism on large scales is a bad thing, because it precludes playing poker for real stakes. But that’s another issue. Anyway, I generally don’t reply when someone says something so, well, bizarro — it seems unfair, like dropping an anvil on a pecan to crack it open — but I decided to make an exception this time. I wrote back:
I’m a known communist? That’s news to me. Flip flop? I change my mind when better evidence comes in, if that’s what you mean, as opposed to some ideologues who are so fossilized and ossified they cannot move out of the way of a truck barreling down on them.
I hope he replies. Hilarity will most definitely ensue.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Could have been worse- you could have been called an unknown communist.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
They could have called you a creationist.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
The phrasing of that comment, the “interesting article,” the “water cooler,” sounds too generic. Makes me think it’s comment spam.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Digg is just weird when it comes to science. I’ve actually noticed that the chances of a comment I make there being modded down ‘increases’ with the amount of citations I give to journal articles or how many code examples I offer as proof. I’ve even played around with double accounts, making the same point with each on an article. One giving journal citations to offer evidence on a point, and the other offering “feelings” as proof. Every single test of this wound up with the former modded down, and the latter modded up. There just seems to be a high level of anti-intellectualism there.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Of course you’re a communist. What are we supposed to think when Lenin shows up on your shower curtain (now if it’d been Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises instead…)?
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Hey could have called you Ken Ham.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
It sounds to me like the commenter was being sarcastic or attempting to ridicule Republican smear tactics.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:50 pm
You guys are all barking up the wrong tree. They could have called him Charles K. Johnson.
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Funny the trolls that you draw in sometimes phil..
Now if they would have called you smug they would have been correct ;^), but a communist?! Come on!
For crying out loud, you’re a NASA lover… and I’m sure you don’t want to see NASA going the was of the Soviet space agency..
Never dawns on trolls to do some basic logic before making vapid claims.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
As Oppenheimer was to write on a 1942 security questionnaire with characteristic flippancy: “I am not a Communist, but I have been a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast.â€
http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=1&article=scientistx
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Dr. Plait,
It looks like you’ve finally been outed for the waffling pinko you really are. After all, anybody who doesn’t toe the current party line MUST be a commie, right? And all that tentativeness of ‘Science’ not to mention the falsifiability – COME ON!! If a ‘theory’ CAN be falsified, then it MUST be false!
“he somehow got a photocopy of my Communist Party card!” Where can I get one? I was under the impression that Communists didn’t HAVE parties – or was that Baptists???
Sorry, I think I got hold of some killer sarcasm tonight, gotta go try and sleep it off, if I keep posting like this I’m liable to put in words like ‘righteous’, ‘bogus’ and calling everybody ‘duuuude’.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
“For the record, I think communism on large scales is a bad thing, because it precludes playing poker for real stakes.”
Fair warning: I intend to steal this line and use it for nefarious purposes. Just so you know.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
“…the people who comment here on the BA Blog tend to be smarter, more rational, and better looking than the random person.”
Woo-hoo, we’re from Lake Wobegon!
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I heard that BA was related to Rachel Carson, who killed more people than Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao combined, using her trained hordes of superintelligent malaria-laden mosquitoes.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Good thing they didn’t mention how you shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
(Note for the perplexed: Google the last ten words of that sentence, in quotes, along with “Johnny Cash” in quotes.)
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Phil, you are a seething leftie. I’ve said it before. This is one of the few seething blogs that I read. On the Left-O-Meter, you and Fidel and Moore think that forced charity and the government control of those charities are a benefit.
DON’T Flame those fires, they don’t benefit us at all.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:03 am
Of course your commenters are smarter and better looking with great hair (not a lot of hair in my case, but great none the less). We are only communists within our own four walls where we share everything with our better half (though mine must be a party leader, what does she want with all those shoes and bags?) and we never flip-flop (I have been known to wear flip-flops, but never in public eedw!… never ever in public.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:18 am
The right-wingers’ obsession with calling anyone more than slightly to the left of Attila the Hun communists or socialists, is what really cracks me up. They don’t seem to understand how dumb it makes them look.
If any American told a Brit, or just about any European for that matter, that Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama were socialists, they would just laugh in his face. Even the left-wing of the Democratic party barely qualifies as being left-of-center anywhere else on the globe outside of Saudi Arabia, that is how far to the right “mainstream politics” has become in America. Hilary Clinton would probably fit in quite well with the British Conservative party these days (not that “New Labour” is SO much different).
Of course, Phil has more than his political leanings working against him. Not only is he not a wingnut, he’s a scientist, a materialist, and an evolutionist. I believe that if you fall under any two of those categories, you automatically qualify as a communist according to the righties. The fact that he’s in all four, well, it’s clearly time for him to move to North Korea.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:44 am
After 9/11, GWB has squashed the people who have declared war on us. That is the ONLY job of federal government. Social programs have had to take a back seat. So the liberals seethe. So what?
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 am
I was hiding in one of the boxes when Phil moved to Colorado, and overheard many a private conversation.
Phil is a Scientologist.
You heard it here first.
Now, I’m off to sell the story to The Quibbler.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:43 am
Stumble Upon > Digg !
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:31 am
I dunno. If I’d gotten a comment like that, I would have assumed the person was being hyperbolic. It sounds like the sort of tongue in cheek stuff I see all the time on other sites. Communist is something people tend to call each other when they’re mocking the 60’s witch hunts, an exaggerated evil thing that would say more about the person labelling than the person who was labelled. And the flip-flop thing is another political shorthand word people throw around a lot, even when it’s not warranted, just because it became so popular during the last presidential election.
So, who knows, maybe the person was really being vitriolic; it’s hard to tell without context. But I would have just shrugged it off, or even responded in kind, because to me it looks like the person is joking.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:35 am
@OxObOb
LOL: Be afraid, vey afraid. You know all allies America has in Europe are damned communists (even Tony Blair was)?
I know most Americans have complete different ideas of what a Federal Government should be responsible for or what not. Thats ok and has to be respected. Everyone has the right to choose were he lives and how he wants to have the political system in his country.
But the conception that that giving (a democratically elected!) government “control” (=the right to make and enforce laws in a certain field e.g. health care and raise taxes for this purpose) has something to do with communism is simply wrong.
Obviosuly every country has it’s favorit “enemy”. In the states it is communism (much to often confused with the old Soviet Union). In Germany e.g. it is “Nazi”. When ever someone dares to ask if maybe it would be a goood idea to control emigration a little bit more he’s called a Nazi (he wants to treat a group of people different = racist = nazi). No matter how reasonable his ideas might be.
AndreH
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:38 am
0×0b0b: Sorry, I thought you were being serious in your first post, but after you last post I see you were just getting into the spirit of this discussion, and being sarcastic. Apologies for the confusion.
“squashed the people who have declared war on us” indeed, too funny.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:58 am
Pinko, tree-hugging, star gazer.
Your anti-Bush position shows you to be unpatriotic! It’s time that mealy-mouthed liberals like yourself woke up to the real world. NASA never made life better for anyone. Increasing knowledge only takes us further from God. There is nothing of importance that science can give us that we can’t learn from the Bible. It’s time we cut NASA funding completely and put it where it can do some good, building more bombs and integrating Bible study into science classes.
Get with us or be trampled under foot. The Revolution to the Rapture is in full swing and you are on the wrong side, you flip-flopping, seditious, communist, science-type guy!
Oh, and you’re probably gay too.
OEJ
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:09 am
@OxObOb
you said: After 9/11, GWB has squashed the people who have declared war on us.
When exactly was it that US-troops invaded Saudi Arabia to get rid of the guys funding the Ozamas of this world?
Oh I forgot, US-government likes to weaken it’s enemies by giving them weaopons and money (Mudjaheddin, Taliban, Saddam, Saudi Arabia…….) before declaring war on them. Maybe Saudi will be next.
AndreH
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:12 am
I participated in a few anti-war vigils on the Pacific Coast Highway, and got called “Communist” and “Hippie”. The advice I liked best was “Go back to France!” I did. Twice.
Perhaps the most amusing thing about being called communist for opposing the invasion of Iraq is that the Taliban and al-Qaeda got their start opposing … the Communists in Afghanistan. We really ought to be able to accuse the stalwart foes of «Islamofascism» of being fellow travelers at least, but that’s not the way it works.
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:01 am
Go get ‘em, Phil!
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:46 am
Ouh I love trolls! They always have such great, original well documented insults.
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:32 am
@bad Jim
A totally off the topic question:
When exactly did it happen that not agreeing with the policy of the US-president is looked at “beeing unpatriotic”?
I never understood why so many Americans think this way. Just because he is elected does not mean he can not make mistakes. And in a free democratic country it should never be a problem to point that out. For us here it seems some times as the president is treated like a king whom has to be followed without asking questions (for the period he is voted in). Was this already in fashion 100 years ago?
As a German I am very afraid of people following anyone without asking questions.
If I remeber my history lessons correctly it was Thomas Jefferson who was very afraid of giving the president to much power.
Sometimes it is interesting how things develop in 5 or 6 generations.
Andre
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:49 am
Phil, he was being sarcastic.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:21 am
Phil, I suspect you’re misinterpreting the comment here, partially due to a typo. “Known” should have been “knowing,” making you a “knowing communist,” or one who feels knowledge should be shared equally among society. The clue is not capitalizing “communist.” This is a fairly common usage of this, so I suspect that’s what the poster intended, but phonetic familiarity has caused people to start using the “known” version you saw, just like the more and more frequent use of “shouldn’t of.”
“Flip flops” is a new catch phrase, actually referring to the footwear, the kind you wear on the weekends or vacation – when you’re being casual and laid back. What the poster was saying is that you walk over the important issues with a slappy dragging sound, and basically don’t get as uptight about them as most people (the opposite would be “high heeling on the important issues”). It’s a way of saying you keep your perspective and don’t make mountains out of molehills, kind of thing.
I would have suggested you owe the poster an apology, but then there’s the crack about the water cooler, which decorum forbids me to go into the meaning of here – briefly, it’s not a nice thing to say about someone’s fashion sense. So yeah, the post was a bit snarky. Have at it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:34 am
So wait… you are saying that you do not use an anvil to crack nuts?
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 am
AndreH, it happened shortly after George W. Bush stole the 2000 election. Prior to that, the same folks who maintain that criticism of the President is unpatriotic were going around with “CLINTON IS A COMMUNIST” bumper stickers.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:06 am
The potential trouble with this post, is that mud sticks
“why would he say that if it were not true?”
Given US history and that of the cold war, being a called a communist would be the kiss of death, and so anyone accused of being such would be ignored. In these enlightened days it does seem a bit archaic, if he wanted to keep up with the times then why did he not call Phil an “Al Quaida apologist” say.
The concept of the Patriot act is quite an interesting slippery slope which infers guilt by association using the “Only a terrorist would disagree, are you agreeing with terrorists?” argument. It runs a close cousin to that old chestnut “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”
I am not sure if even Russians still believe in communism anymore.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 am
Is there an equivalent to Godwin’s law for invoking communism?
When will the right-wingers realize that communism became irrelevant 25 years ago, even as an insult. Calling someone a communist is like shouting “I’m stuck in the 1950s.”
Please join us in the 21st century. The correct thing to say is:
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:01 am
Phil should know the first rule of the Internets: Do No Feed The Trolls. Nothing good ever comes of it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
Of course by “No” I meant “Not”.
/I am teh Idot!!!1!1
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:27 am
I wondered if he was being sarcastic or not, but I have been accused of such things before. The problem with satirizing stupidity is that sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Awww. You hurt this little communist’s feelings, Senor BA.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:43 am
Hehe, i couldn’t help but reply with the following:
—————
He may be many things, but he is NOT a communist..
That title remains mine..
Now back off.
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Hmmm,,,Right wing/Left wing,,,I believe if you go far enough in any two dimensional space, you’ll end up right back where you started. My favorite personal appelation (usually applied to me) is either,”long haired, bearded, wierdo, furry freak” or, even more to the point,”fat, hairy old white guy” to which I usually respond,”Who you calling White? I’m actually pinko-gray,,,”.
Name calling is an old time religion however, as my great grand-ma used to say,”,,,sticks and stones,,,etc.”
I expect Rational/Materialist will be as much an insult to those small minds as Communist was in the “old” days(25 years ago).
Yesterday, an acquaintance at Red Top campground pointed out an article on the web that said some Americans, fed up with our current political turmoil, are relocating to Canada because they were tired of their government ignoring their desires for a rational country. At the rate the arctic is melting, they may have some really good real estate opportunities opening up,,,
Gary 7
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Don’t make the assumption that this is a person. I have seen this odd comment phrasing on other sites too. Mostly left political blogs and such.
Tin foil hat time:
I wonder if there are bot programs triggering on keywords (i.e. Bush, Flunky, etc…) and leaving a comment that has it’s own keywords.
To what end? Influencing Google searches, subliminal suggestion, don’t really know.
Anyway, great blog. Thanks.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Joe, that’s interesting! I’ll keep my eyes open for it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
It’s a bit like the DJ 3000 from the Simpsons episode where Bart wins an elephant in a call-in contest (Episode:1F15) Boss: If you don’t get that kid an elephant by tomorrow, the DJ 3000 gets your job.DJ 3000: Those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns. Bill: [laughs] How does it keep up with the news like that?I should get a life, you know it’s that time when you can spell: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
August 4th, 2007 at 5:15 am
It seemed obviously meant as sarcasm/humour on my reading…
August 12th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
It’s summer, and I was just in Australia, so this is a translation joke:
It could have been worse, he could have mentioned AUSTRALIAN flip-flops.
At least he didn’t call you a troll who writes inacurate and mean comments about innocent people cooler than you.