T&S' internal battles continued over the weekend as the titanic egos of opinionated bloggers collided in spectacular fashion yet again. In case you missed it, over the weekend, instead of doing something useful with their time, like some yard work or playing with their kids, the inner circle of T&S descended into yet another cacophony of contention by slandering the Marriots in a truly over-the-top tirade against pornography by Matt Evans, which they subsequently yanked and sort of apologized for. Ah, but note the "apology" was not by Matt (which apology was more of a "we didn't approve of the post or have any prior knowledge thereof, so please Mr. Marriott do not include us on the subpoena" statement). The typical course of action would be the T&S elite subject Matt to the gauntlet and graciously offer to allow him to resign, which he does and then falls out for awhile and then goes and starts his own blog. The problem is Matt owns the timesandseasons.org domain name. Hmmmmm, how are they going to pull this one off? How do you throw out one of the original members who has the keys to the shop? Things could get messy. Real messy. At least, one can only hope.
Call me, Matt, I'll give you $1000 for the domain.
8 comments
The most hilarious link is the link to Guy Murray where he declares the T&S post out of bounds and over the top.
Because Guy Murray is such a model for rational discourse that doesn't call names or call into question anyone's righteousness.
If only Matt Evans had been more like Guy, this never would have happened.
I offer $1050.
I was waiting to see how you'd handle this. You were far too gentle. Sometimes, you SHOULD go over the line.
Man, it cracks me up how everyone goes all annonymous on Snarkernacle... I hope you can see who they are at least, SP.
By the way, your movie rocks.
Friendly sometimes,
Far too gentle, huh? Sorry. Matt had a temporary lapse of sanity.
Tracy,
No, actually, I cannot see who they are. Blogger does not pull people's IP addresses and show them to the admin the way WordPress and TypePad do. SiteMeter, the little counter all the way at the bottom of the front page, is installed and that gives general run downs on IP addresses, but it does not associate people with IPs. If someone comments frequently enough you can figure out who they by coming through the logs, but we only do that for trolls.
People post anonymously because they do not want to be punished for actually saying what they think.
Snarkimus said "slandering the Marriots". You can't slander someone if you can prove truth (plus slander is spoken, libel would be written). I'd say Matt has demonstrated enough facts to consititute truth.
Plus, you also can't slander, or libel, unless the defamation actually defames the person's character. If anything, I think that Matt has really just brought up the same argument many others have had against Christian leaders whose businesses provide or produce immoral activites. In fact, I haven't read anything morally or legally wrong with Matt's comments. Most people just don't like that he singled out one prominent mormon.
Dan, you left out the part where he called said prominent Mormon a "pimp". I think that's where he lost everybody. Yes, he redacted it but not before the damage had been done. And last time I checked, calling somebody a pimp would definitely fall into the category of calling somebody's righteousness into question.
The word “pimp” still doesn't rise to the level of libel or slander, especially given the context. It sounds more like opinion than anything else. If anything, the term is taken out of context. In the context of the argument, Matt was using it to convey a certain meaning, to create an image. Consider these examples:
- calling a President a “liar” because he said that he knew about WMD’s and committed a country to war, but there are apparently no WMDs to date.
- calling a CEO a “thief” who purportedly mismanaged a retirement account for countless employees who lost a pension, but the CEO still got paid millions in income.
- calling a prominent Christian leader a pornographer or a "pimp" because he purportedly made the decision to provide pornography through his business, and his business has profited from the business decision.
These terms are spoken in context to give us imagery that questionable business decisions made by business leaders can be as base and damaging to others in a way that is similar to the base and questionable decisions made by unsavory characters on the streets. Use of such words can create imagery in speech to provide a different perspective of an issue. They all call into question someone’s righteousness, as does calling your boss a “jerk”, calling your neighbor “lazy-bones”, etc. Almost any negative adjective does that, and yet we’d be surprised how often we all do it, every day.
Some people may have lost him on that point because "pimp" may be too strong a word to use in connection with a beloved member of the lds community. Therefore, what an outsider would view as a strong term, but arguably a contextually applicable term (“pimp”), LDS members right away jump up and say that the term is “self-righteous” and “judgmental”. But I would consider Marriott to be a public figure, even in a limited sense, b/c of the controversial issue of pornography and Marriot’s role in providing it in his hotels (which is an undisputed fact after all). Hence, as such, the public has a right to express their opinions in strong language, if that language fits into the context of the argument.
I think that Matt may have redacted the word because its imagery became more of a distraction than a point-maker, especially given that some lds bloggers are hypersensitive to hyperbole against a well respected member of the lds community. In fact, that is the very reason why the term is so controversial in this context – because Marriott is so well respected by LDS. We’d rather lash out at the speaker, in this case Matt, for putting it so “bluntly”.
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