I Don't Discuss with Angry Monkeys

Before I begin this blog post, I am going to apologize for a lack of blogging in the past almost two weeks with the full knowledge that I don't have to. I am not sure what the total consistent readership is apart from Chelsea and Erin at work, however, I did start this as a project for myself to write in some form consistently, and a two week gap isn't really consistent now is it? Due to the two week gap, some events happened fairly recently and some happened far enough back that I don't remember the specific date. Although that's not saying much with my memory.

The basis for this first refreshing dive into blogging arose from an online discussion amongst good friends of mine from back home in Portland. Let me open by saying that it is ridiculously amusing that a political and ethical debate arose from my best friend posting homoerotic sports photos from the Huffington Post on another friend's facebook wall. That is seriously how this all started.

Now I chose to not give too much background because that gets tedious, and also I chose to not use too many names because this is still the internet and public debate. With that being said, this "discussion" involved three major friends with two good people I know. One of my major friends I know his opinions and political standing. The predominate good person, well I had no idea. For the sake of this post, I will be referred to as myself normally, or person C. My best friend is person A and the other person is person B.

Now after the posting of the homoerotic sports pictures, B questioned the validity of the source, the Huffington Post. Person A then responded wondering why the question arose and then inquired where B got their information, Fox News? Then all hell broke lose. In my opinion, Fox News has not been "fair and balanced" as their motto claims for quite some time. Between Bill O'Reilly's interview interrogation attacks in the past to the recent signing of Sarah Palin as a regular guest and commentator, Fox News, to me, is a network with a heavy rightward Republican bias. It's not as bad as an Evangelical post on some off cable channel, but it's no where near balanced.

Person A then wondered why B was wasting their time with Fox News and began to tear apart Fox News, but not the individual B. B, however, took great offense to this, believing that A claimed that B was incompetent or something of the like, and began to tear apart any other news channel including "Communist News Network" or CNN. This just escalated, and C mainly commented for an attempt at clarification so both parties could proceed to discuss in an orderly manner.

With this being half retold, let me say this. I have no problem with opposing viewpoints. I view myself, politically, as a moderate. I am more conservative minded on business and financial information, but am more liberal on social issues such as women's rights and education. I enjoy hearing different view points with one underlying condition. Argue and discuss in a composed, intelligent fashion. Did this ever become too much to ask?

Person B took things personally. An issue does not represent you completely. It is representative of a part of you, but for someone to take a different stance on a view than you does not mean that they think you are wrong and un-creditable. Person B broke into name-calling, unnecessary passive-aggressive emotions, and lost any semblance of grammatical structure, flow of any cohesive point and basic spelling. Call me a snob, but I am very hesitant to take you seriously if you type:

maybe of u guys knew a bit more about how seriously f***ed we all are with obama, pelosi, and the socialist (this is not an opinion but a fact)--- socialist agenda being crammed down the unwilling throats of most Americans.... You would be more cautious and like me, QUESTION the media and the government.

While it is only facebook, I view anything on the internet as public domain, so please have the decency to seem like you passed through four years of English courses at respected schools. Lack of grammatical structure and spelling just tells the reader how easily you roller-coasted into a sinusoidal oscillation between timid passiveness to fire-breathing aggression. Losing your cool in any argument just tells me that you let the opposing view win. They didn't even have to try. You just did the work for them. Congratulations on yelling so hard that the white flag fell out of your pocket.

Focusing back on the actual content of the article, I do not think that there is much inherently wrong with the Huffington Post. My issue with Fox News is that you cannot claim to be "fair and balanced" if you have five Republican guests and only two weak speaking Democratic guests to discuss an issue on air. Any news source nowadays should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a reason we have higher cognitive abilities after all. It is okay to agree to disagree; not every discussion is a battle to be won. I will tackle and discuss just about any issue with a fair minded intelligent individual, no matter what the opposing viewpoint might be.

I refuse, however, to discuss with angry monkeys.