Hey, Hollywood

Don’t worry about the reception – it takes a bit of getting used to, but all said and done, I’ve seen folks here concede a well-reasoned and supported point. Just like they’re not super tolerant of sloppy argumentation.

That said, I’ll echo the comments in regards to excerpting long posts. In general, I also find it far better to make my own points (illustrated with external supporting evidence) rather than borrowing someone elses, simply because you write with the luxury of knowing exactly who your audience is, rather than some sort of missive sent off into the vasty deep.

Finally, I would also agree that diverging too far from the thread topic isn’t generally too helpful. As you can see, threads that drift a lot tend to pull a hydra and become simply unmanagable, as several different topics get argued, dropped, and confused in parallel.

Now that all the pro forma stuff is done, the reason that Mike Moore arouses such a reaction is simply that he is a polemicist hiding under the cloak of virtue. Nobody thinks that either Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken are exactly the height of unbiased virtuous commentary. One of the principle complaints about Moore is that he peddles the same sort of nonsense, but does it under the guise of telling the truth. It’s not so much that he’s spinning, but rather that he can’t even be honest about his honesty.