I don’t see how this could be just attributed to having a tin ear. Its SOP for the MSM folks that whenever they need a boogeyman to use for comparision its always, always Moveon or the Great Orange Satan. Whether anybody agrees with Moveon or not its pretty obvious that the writers inserted that totally unnecessary line primarily to take a shot at Moveon than to actually explain the situation. Which party other than the Democratic party seeks out support from Moveon? Very very tacky.

You know AIPAC would have been a much more accurate analogy, but do you think they would ever compare THEM to the sadrists?

You are right. As much as idiots like Rush whine about The Great Grey Lady .. the NY Times was never liberal. It’s always been about the establishment.

Typically, it’s all about symbolism over substance (again? Dammit). MoveOn has been defined in the national consciousness as a symbol of all that’s evil about liberal political causes and movements. After congress, a few years ago, could find nothing more important to do than to denounce a particularly clumsy political advertisement, it was all but set in stone, and MoveOn became a particular kind of American shorthand to describe in the most negative terms a very broad collection of actions, beliefs and ideologies.

Just as the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” are accepted broadly to mean something entirely unconnected to their actual meanings, certain words are now clearly understood dogwhistles, and as such are easy for a writer to use to symbolize a collection of concepts with a wink, which allows the writer to send off his piece with that much less effort or reflection…

mikey

I don’t think that the national consciousness catatorizes MoveOn as evil, it’s probably just regarded as a group of people who have big opinions and egos and modest wisdom.

Its SOP for the MSM folks that whenever they need a boogeyman to use for comparision its always, always Moveon or the Great Orange Satan.

Really ? That’s how far your brain got and then stopped ?

I was going to ask if you don’t think that MoveOn was an appropriate US-familiar model to cite when trying to explain to US readership what model was being pursued, who would have been a better example. But if we were ever going to get a useful answer out of you on that, I don’t think you would have written this in the first place.

Given that even the GOP (in between calling them terrorist sympathisers) casually refers to established their own MoveOn type organisation, you probably should have gotten the idea by now that the model of the organisation is trying to be replicated even by its most ardent opponents.
The alternative being that you thought newspapers were comparing MoveOn to the GOP when they reported that.

Here, the context is just as obvious yet you somehow assume that MoveOn is being cited in order to tarnish them.

In many ways, it seems the [Sadrist] movement is trying to regain its relevance and transform itself into something like the American lobbying group MoveOn — a group that candidates and parties seek out for support, but that is not a party istelf.

WTF is wrong with you that you’d object to this ?

If they instead reported that the Khmer Rouge wanted to create an operating system like Windows, does that make Bill Gates a mass murderer ? How would his reputation be anything other than enhanced by citing someone else trying to emulate his successful model ?

Apart from you people just being whinging bitches looking for something else to bitch and whinge about, I really am at a loss to explain what reason you have for objecting to this.

Just as the words “Liberal” and “Conservative” are accepted broadly to mean something entirely unconnected to their actual meanings, certain words are now clearly understood dogwhistles

Maybe you can tell us what these words mean then:
“transform itself into something like the American lobbying group MoveOn — a group that candidates and parties seek out for support, but that is not a party itself”

The apparent suggestion is that this sentence and the unambiguous context and reasoning provided means nothing, and that it should be almost wholly ignored and translated simply as: “OMG Sadr=MoveOn”

Which is different from simply ignoring what is written and substituting what the voices in your head say in no way at all.

BTW, is the NYT quote accurate ? It does have a typo in it.

The support of MoveOn is not sought by parties in America — one party demonizes them and the other party is intimidated into voting against their advertisements.

Teddy, that’s testament only to MoveOn sucking at what they do.

When I say “emulate their successful model”, I do so without being to name anything successful that they’ve done or being able to recall any project, campaign or slogan of theirs.

Whether MoveOn has/hasn’t been courted by US parties, the fact remains that they are still the most recognisable name in this role. This is evidenced by the fact that if there was a better example for the NYT to cite in their example (for a US audience) of the org that these Sadrists are trying to become, someone would be able to point to who that is.

I do so without being to name anything successful that they’ve done or being able to recall any project, campaign or slogan of theirs.

I tell a lie. Apparently, they were the folks responsible for the “General Betrayus” branding. Super work guys.

Get Out of Iraq in 2006 was theirs.

Well I guess that’s not as embarrassing as CAP’s championing Harry Reid’s pronouncement that Iraq was lost (in 2005/2006?) and declaring the surge failed before all the troops arrived 6 months after it was announced.

I’ve also really enjoyed the ongoing “No Good Military Solutions In _ _ _” series over at TP. Can’t wait to hear where the first good one is.

This on the other hand is what an unfair comparison looks like…

During the 1920s, Boys Became the Prey of a Brutal Killer
http://articles.latimes.com/20…../me-then31

Related Topics: Wesley Clark

Its pretty obvious that you are a right wing idealogue and thats fine. But for someone to complain that I didn’t read and then turn around and show a total blindness to my post is really comical. Like I said Moveon is not sought out by partIES its sought out by one party, the Democratic party. The GOP doesn’t reach out to Move on so the comparison is a load of bullshit just like your justifiction of it. Again a more appropriate analogy would be AIPAC which both political parties fall all over themselves trying to be the bigger friend of Israel over when they want to try to win an election.

If MoveOn is such a failure why did the NYTimes choose THEM to try to use for comparison and why do YOU have such a disdain for them? Funny how they are so ineffective but the Democrats no hold both sides of Congress and the Presidency. But nah its not because of Moveon right? Funny how the tides of elections started changing when they started getting involved though dontcha think? Coincidence? I honestly don’t know, but I sleep better at night knowing you don’t believe its a coincidence and that MoveOn is the thorn in your side.

LOL so keep hating, after all what else would we expect a hater to do?.

I think that it’s unfair for to try to credit MoveOn with causing the Democratic Party to be voted into office.
Assign the credit to where it’s due!!

Perhaps you missed this line

Coincidence? I honestly don’t know,

I’ve got to say that I did overlook that.

However, nothing explains this election other than the performance of GW Bush. Give the man credit for making it impossible for life-long Republicans and conservatives to avoid voting Democratic.

Its pretty obvious that you are a right wing idealogue and thats fine.

Well of course I am. Who else is capable of reading and comprehending the NYT and their reasoning but right-wing ideologues ?

But for someone to complain that I didn’t read and then turn around and show a total blindness to my post is really comical. Like I said Moveon is not sought out by partIES its sought out by one party, the Democratic party.

Awesome. So now you’ve written something twice, which didn’t need reference at all. Have you spend the last 8 years following up every mention of Karl Rove by telling people “he’s a conservative”, or would be a pointless waste of space that merely served to make you look slow ?

The GOP doesn’t reach out to Move on so the comparison is a load of bullshit just like your justifiction of it.

WTF are you talking about ?
Unless you’re suggesting that the full spectrum of political parties all parties court the same lobbying group is required for that group to exist, then you’re saying nothing at all. Unless you’re objecting to this lobbying group comparison to MoveOn on the grounds that MoveOn isn’t a lobbying group until the GOP likes them too, you’re just wasting space.

Again a more appropriate analogy would be AIPAC which both political parties fall all over themselves trying to be the bigger friend of Israel over when they want to try to win an election.

Why is it more appropriate ? What part of the NYT required multilateral embrace of the group in order to work ? It wasn’t written, so maybe you can let the rest of us know which tea leaves told you this.

If MoveOn is such a failure why did the NYTimes choose THEM to try to use for comparison and why do YOU have such a disdain for them?

You’ve just told us why. The GOP doesn’t like MoveOn. This invalidates their existence. This makes them a non-entity. Some like myself and the NYT thought they were a lobbying group, but we were mistaken.

Funny how they are so ineffective but the Democrats no hold both sides of Congress and the Presidency. But nah its not because of Moveon right?

Oh that is comedy gold. Yeah, remind us what their big game-changing, ground-shifting campaigns were that shifted public sentiment in the House and Prez elections. Really, tell us because we won’t know what these were until you do. What did they come up with that shifted the McCainiac Revolution into the underdog Obama’s favour ? Just write it out, nobody can read what is in your strange, dishonest mind.

Funny how the tides of elections started changing when they started getting involved though dontcha think?

Yes it is funny, but not in the way you think.
Why don’t you take a look at their 20 year photo timeline (overnight successes that they are) that consists of them losing their biggest lobbying issue and then simply clue the fk up.

Unless you’re objecting to this lobbying group comparison to MoveOn on the grounds that MoveOn isn’t a lobbying group until the GOP likes them too, you’re just wasting space.

You’re usually more logical than this–the NYT didn’t just claim Sadr’s movement and MoveOn.org are lobbying groups, but they are a specific kind of lobbying group–”a group that candidates and parties seek out for support”.

Now that isn’t a very specific, as it could apply to a very large number of lobbying groups–not merely AIPAC but even the NRA or the Sierra Club fall in this category.

Nonetheless, it’s specific enough to exclude the one group they chose to name, MoveOn.org–a group which most Americans would know as a cheerleader for one particular party. In other words, the sentence would actually be clearer if they had omitted the reference to MoveOn.

I’m willing to buy that this is an example of poor rather than malicious writing, but you should be prepared to admit that this is, in fact, poor writing.

You’re forgetting that they’re writing for a stupid audience.
One that can name only 2 lobbying groups. AIPAC and MoveOn.
One that forgets that there is actually more than 2 political parties in the US*, just there is in Iraq.

* The Socialist Party in Florida took 600 votes from another candidate in the 2000 presidential election, when George Bush carried the state by 500. You know which candidate this was, just like you know whether they’d be pro or anti sentiment on MoveOn’s Iraq campaign.

I mention this only to caution against dismissing the significance of minor political parties. This minor party and the votes they got in 2000, has had a somewhat major historical impact.

BTW, I do keep meaning to point out how pathetically dishonest the claim is that anyone was objecting to this comparison on the basis of a plural being involved, but it just keeps slipping my mind.

No, obviously they’re complaining for exactly why Spencer complained–it’s kind of offensive to compare a fairly mainstream political organization to an organization of insurgents who have killed Americans that slowly morphed into a (still) anti-American political organization. If the article had compared Sadrists to, say, Saddleback Church, the offensiveness would be more obvious, even though such a comparison would in many ways be closer to the mark than the comparison to MoveOn.

Now, if it turned out that the comparison to MoveOn so utterly clarified the point the Times article was making then maybe the offense wouldn’t be such a big deal. But, in fact, it actually kind of obscured it. The plural isn’t the reason for the objection–the plural is what invalidates your defense against the objection. Nor is this plural an insignificant matter–MoveOn is a cheerleader, not a “kingmaker”, the word the article used to describe Sadrist ambitions.

Now, if it turned out that the comparison to MoveOn so utterly clarified the point the Times article was making then maybe the offense wouldn’t be such a big deal.

The quote is posted right there.
The comparison and the explicitly stated context in which it is being made is all the one sentence. There is no comparison other than that. So where’s “if” come into it ?
Is it a matter of “if” you can read words that aren’t nouns ? If you could only make it the full way through the sentence ?
Really, write out what the problem is.