Someone sent me a picture of a campaign sign with a sombrero on it. It was a Mahoney for Congress sign. It was, well…kind of funny, given that Mr. Mahoney stated on video that he was basically supporting the Grahamnesty path to amnesty. He has flip flopped since then, and insists he’s for a border fence first, but it’s a campaign thing…who really knows. But that didn’t make the sign any less amusing. So I posted it.
As with most things a blogger posts, not everyone agrees. And that’s kind of the point. We encourage that, but somtimes the comments are not well thought out. For the record I posted the photo in question with no supporting text.
Comment number one on the jump
Comment number one.
I didn’t know granite grok supported vandalism? Good to know!
Posted by: John Fortune | August 13, 2010 7:00 PM
John has established for us that by merely posting a picture of a Mahoney for Congress sign with a sombrero on it, that Granite Grok supports vandalism. I’m actually relieved. What if he had actually accused us of supporting Sean Mahoney, or amnesty?! Close call, that.
I suppose John thinks himself the swaggering provocatuer here but he’s not. Based on John’s 49 letter thesis, if the Grok posted a picture of looters and people burning cars, the Grok must by default support rioting. If we post a picture of the twin towers burning on 9-11, we would be supporting terrorism and murder. How about a picture of Carol Shea Porter or Nancy Pelosi? Oh, we must be progressives now. Make your own examples at home, it’s fun! Posting a picture of any criminal could be construed using the John Fortune complicty filter as support for them or their crime.
"I didn’t know the grok supported vandalism? Good to know?" Good indeed.
The obvious result of accepting John’s brilliant observation would mean that the Grok could no longer use pictures or video of anything lest they be misinterpreted as advocacy. But it’s not a total loss. By using the same methodology we can say that John supports the willful suppression of photographic political speech–Good to know.
Comment number two.
wow Skip way to send the message that the tea party isn’t racist, this is deplorable. It’s tea partiers that do and support things like this that give us all a bad name. I resent this disservice to our cause.
Posted by: Terry Bellageron | August 13, 2010 7:04 PM
Terry posits the idea that this picture makes the tea party look racist. By my thinking it says that Mahoney signs increase sombrero sales. Way to stimulate the eoconomy! We actually can’t tell either. But it might be instructive to note that after being posted for over 20 hours, and thousands of site visits later, none of the liberal trolls or lurkers made that connection. I guess it must have been a busy day over at the F*ck Tea Jihadi headquarters because we had to wait for Tea Party Terry to tell us that this is not just racist, but clearly the Tea Party was involved.
Well how does he know that from the picture? I thought Sean Mahoney was all about the Tea Party, having been at ‘several’ or was it ‘many’ events. Why would the Tea Party—let’s use John’s word here—vandalize a Mahoney for congress sign with a sombrero? And if that’s not it, how does he comport with the idea that a political web site can’t or should not report that using pictures, video, or commentary of a political nature?
Does it sound to you like Tea Party Terry is manufacturing racism? I think it does. Does he want people to think we at the grok are hate mongers? Why would Tea Party Terry do that? To intimidate the Grok? To persuade us to take down the photo? To scare off visitors? To supress future posts….? It really does sound like an effort to suppress “political speech” he objects to.
So is it a coincidence that two comments with undertones of speech supperession were posted 4 minutes apart–probably not, but we can only speculate.
For the record, we did not stage this photo, it was sent to me by someone who saw it and thought it was amusing. I never realized it had legs.
And, no we are not remotely concerned with your claims of our complicity to either vandalism or racism. But don’t let that stop you from trying again. We support free political speech in all its forms and invite the open debate. Just don’t use vulgar language and you can accuse us of whatever you like. But next time try to do a better job of it.
