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> With great respect, I would like to suggest that Paul's perceptions > of our forum being a bunch of "liberals shouting down opposing > viewpoints" was based upon only a handful of actual posts. A handful > of posts out of a total of 130 plus in the last week. People remember what they had strong feelings about. It doesn't really matter what those feelings are -- love or hate, happiness or anger. The perception of any form of media -- and I'll argue that this is primarily a media outlet, in that people get news and opinions from it -- is based on the things that really piss you off, primarily. There may be a few things you really love, but hate is pretty strong and I'd say that hatred weighs more when remembering how you feel about an outlet. In this way, people's loyalty to a media institution is very much like their loyalty to a Soap Opera. If that show made them cry and laugh, they become hooked on it. It's the depth of the feeling it can pull out of you. I remember one day, long ago, when someone I worked with came in and said that "They" were going to replace Thanksgiving celebrations in schools with "Diversity Day". Now, I'm sure that happened somewhere -- in a nation with 300M people someone, somewhere has a bad idea right now. But it got turned into a relatively big deal by someone who needed the prop. Who could that be? This person listened to KQRS in the morning, so I can only guess that these guys were inflaming their audience in a way that made it clear that "They", the makers of all that is bad, were getting smoked out by the K-Crew. Now how did that make my colleage feel about KQRS? Pretty good. Way good, in fact, 'cuz she was very mad about the whole idea. That strong feeling stayed with her all day, and for a long time after the actual "issue" at hand faded from memory. My long-winded point is this -- we have some really passionate people here, who say some very strong things. Some are just over the line, and that will happen in a media outlet like this. These things will piss people off -- and unless there is a lot more for them to love about the forum, in roughly a 2:1 ratio (from experience), they will remember the forum as a bunch of "Liberals". Worthy of note: I know of several Lefty friends who can't stand this forum because it's so full of Right-Wingers. Any forum that is well balanced will eventually either go one way or the other, or collapse into name calling, and eventually wind up dying. It's the Unified Godwin Theory*, if you will. Contrast this with a conventional outlet, like the Strib, that is carefully controlled. Because they can control the content, it keeps on going. But their attempts at creating balance will leave them universally reviled as "the Red Star" or "the Establishment Rag". Only people who want a balanced paper wind up reading it. But controlled balanced papers are one part of an axis, and the plethora of hate radio (soon to be enjoined by the Left) makes up the other part of the spectrum. People love that crap in large part because it pisses them off -- those Liberals, I'm so glad someone has smoked them out! Once we have that left and right, we can plot it all out. This is the fourth part -- an attempt at balance, with little control. It will always be hard, but there it is. The precise mechanism for doing this is being worked out on the fly. In my 20 years of internet experience on this topic, I've never seen anything like this really last. So far, however, it's going very well. I have hope. Saint Paul needs this sort of thing, and it needs this place much more than it needs one more discussion about Gay Marriage or any of the other lightening issues that came not from Saint Paul, but from someone, somewhere else. Many such people have a real stake in pissing you off one way or the other, and thus may have succeeded. Meanwhile, my dear city slips into Spring yet again. Yes, there is still hope. As long as I refuse to carry hatred in my heart, I have hope. My neighbors and I can get along and work things out. I will not let the mysterious "Them" teach me to hate, because I have no reason to be loyal to those I haven't met. * Godwin's Law [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. From: http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/Godwin_s_Law.html Erik Hare Saint Paul _____________________________________________ SPPS Budget Reduction Forum - Feb. 23-27 Co-Sponsored By NEAT: http://www.stpaulneat.org/ _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
