A mistaken commenter wanders across the tracks:
It's all very good that patriotic Americans play D&D. I'm just not sure how that, you know, detracts from Goldfarb's point that the Andrew Sullivan led attack on McCain's Cross story has absolutely no backing in fact and that their original effort (the Solzhenitsyn angle) proved to be embarrassingly false.
Now that D&D players everywhere have been avenged, can we get back to the inconvenient fact that the people who are attacking McCain's Cross story are simply political hacks who have no evidence or reason to call the story into question?
But hey, you PWNED!!! (or however you spell it) Goldfarb so good for you!
Hmm, leaving aside the fact that we haven't talked much about the McCain Cross, and dude's frustration that Andrew doesn't allow comments, can someone tell this dude exactly what level of nerdom he's fucking with here? Get your little kicks making fun of the blacks, the Jews, the women, the gays, and the disabled Drw (or however you spell it). But the gamers, the gamers are off limits.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I reach into my bag of holding to retrieve my +3 wand of fireballs and with my ring of double action cast two fireballs at the commentator...I rolled...a 16
TNC,
Just because you have a +4 post of retaliation does that mean you have to waste it killing ants?
Sorn,
He's a giant ant. And as Alex can tell you, they're particularly vulnerable to flame.
thanks
I did't know that.
When I used to play it was never D&D, Final Fantasy 1-8, Dragon Warrior 1-IV, Chrono Trigger, the classics.
Gave it up after I graduated from H.S. and discovered History. Although I'm still pissed that Robert Jordan's Dead.
You can get jocks to play D&D from time to time. You can even get girls to play it.
If you want to start throwing down with the geekery, you need to make appeals to RIFTS or Gamma World.
D&D is to gaming like Van Halen is to heavy metal.
This isn't to say that Van Halen sucks... but it sure as hell ain't Mastodon or Amon Amarth.
Don't the fools attacking Andrew realize that the fact that the story seems ot be something that Chuck Colson made up rather than an actual Solzhenitsyn anecdote makes Andrew's case even stronger?
This is clearly one of those religious right urban legends that gets told over and over in pulpits all the time. I grew up on the fringes of that culture (my parents church wasn't far right per say, but you still got some overlap with the fringes), there all kinds of these "too good to be true" types of things that spread around (during the 70s especially) like viral email does today That Mark Salter would incorporate it into McCain's narrative fits even more now.
The problem is that the original story was that McCain stole it from Solzhenitsyn... and then it was debunked and that Solzhenitsyn never said such a thing.
Saying that he really stole it from Colson who said that Solzhenitsyn said it turns the story into something that is "Fake But Accurate" and the media got burned kinda bad by that last time.
I too rather despise Sully for his abject cowardice in not allowing comments. I feel the same way about TPM and think Josh Marshall is weak for it.
But his readers don't want them either.
What really got me on the cross in the sand thing is that it's basically an urban legend. Like many urban legends, it is tied to some specific person to make it more realistic (Solzhenitsyn). If McCain had told this about someone he had known in the POW camp, it might not be credible, but you could understand. To tell it about himself? That's just shady. It is literally like McCain just told us that when a teenager, he and his date were attacked by a man with a hook for a hand.
Jaybird writes: "The problem is that the original story was that McCain stole it from Solzhenitsyn... and then it was debunked and that Solzhenitsyn never said such a thing.
Saying that he really stole it from Colson who said that Solzhenitsyn said it turns the story into something that is "Fake But Accurate" and the media got burned kinda bad by that last time."
That analysis makes no sense at all. What difference does it make if the anecdote was written by Solzhenitsyn himself or was (falsely) attributed to him by the ex-con Colson?
McCain has a history of making shit up. Now it turns out his wife does, too. He's not getting his Lifetime POW Free Pass any more, so he can get used to it.
Does anyone think we've seen the last of these stories? McCain's been tossing bullshit around for decades. Now some of it is blowing back in his face. I'm hoping for a hurricane.
Jaybird,
Huh? your losing me. Andrew's argument goes like this:
No one can fnd McCain mentioning this before '99, notably he wrote and talked about his time as a POW many times and never brought it up. At first he thought it sounded like something Soltz. had written. Now it turns out it is something Colson said that Soltz had written.
If the original story had been McCain saying that Soltz said X and now it turns out that actually Colson just said that Soltz said, then yeah pretty minor, McCain heard something from Colson and passed iton as from Soltz. But that isn't what he did. McCain said THIS HAPPENED to ME. When all the evidence is that nosuch incident ever happened.
This is nothing like the Rather memogate thing.
A very telling thing is compare how McCains various embellisments are treated vs Gore's quotes turned into lies when he told the freakin truth in the first place (his actual quotes about the internet and Love Story and so on)
Barack needs to run this ad:
John McCain is obsessed with Paris Hilton and the old culture wars of the 1960s. Barack Obama is focussed on your future and your hopes. $1,000 tax cuts for every middle class family, not $300 billion dollar giveaways to people that own 8 houses like John McCain; tax breaks for companies that keep jobs in America, not for big oil; affordable healthcare for every American, and a secure social security for our seniors.
So while John McCain continues be obsessed with the past and rich, blonde women young enough to be his granddaughters, Barack Obama will continue to fight to keep the promise of the American dream alive for you and your family.
TNC, we should have warned you about the special overwrought subclass: people who want to comment on Andrew's or Marc's blogs (or arguably Clive's or James's) and, driven mad by the lack of comments, were reduced to haranguing Matthew. And now you. You've truly arrived now!
"If you want to start throwing down with the geekery, you need to talk about Chainmail and Empire of the Petal Throne or tell us what GURPS really stands for."
Fixed.
Jaybird: You can get jocks to play D&D from time to time. You can even get girls to play it.
If you want to start throwing down with the geekery, you need to make appeals to RIFTS or Gamma World.
So, you're saying the set of people who are geeks and the set of people who are girls has 0 overlap? Come on, there are better ways to make this point than something dripping with sexism.
No, the set of people who are geeks and the set of people who are girls has more than a little overlap. D&D is a great example. (Vampire: The Masquerade an even better one.)
But as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into the weird corners of geekery... well, I'll make the comparison to heavy metal again.
Of *COURSE* you can find women who think Van Halen ROCKSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
Find one who can sing along with Runes To My Memory.
Uhmm where do TCG's fit in with the geek hierarchy? I mean, I love those... but no way I'm going for the geek crown (you know, LARP'ing any White Wolf game...)
MLJ, I am not saying that McCain is a good guy who tells the truth who totally should be our next president.
I'm not going to vote for the guy.
I will, however, point out that the "McCain ripped off a story from Solzhenitsyn!" attack is a long-term loser. There are a number of reasons:
1) First off, it's not true. Now, maybe it's kind of technically true because he stole a story that Colson attributed to Solzhenitsyn... but someone will point out how Solzhenitsyn didn't write it.
2) If it's properly framed, we'll show a picture of McCain next to a picture of a copy of Colson's book _Born Again_. Is that an image you *WANT* on the news? SERIOUSLY??? Forget what the reporters are saying. I'm talking about the image of McCain next to a copy of Colson's book.
There are several kinds of good attacks. The first kind of attack is an attack that fires up the base to vote for your guy while not really having much of an effect upon the so-called "swing" voter. The second kind of attack is an attack that will get the swingers to vote for your guy rather than for the other guy. A third kind is an attack that demoralizes the other guys while not having much of an effect on the swingers.
This attack fits into the first category *MAYBE*... but if played poorly, the whole "Solzhenitsyn never said that, and here's his biographer proving it" counter-argument is devestating and showing pictures of McCain next to a copy of Colson's book is an attack that will get demoralized Republicans to say "hey, maybe I *WILL* vote for that guy!"
The house thing? That's a good attack. Go for that one.
Jaybird:
If I still lived in the Bay Area, I could find you several women who could hum along - I knew lots of female metal fans there. If you look on Amon Amarth's MySpace page, 13/40 of the friends on their first friendspage are women. That's not scientific proof, nor is it gender parity, but 32.5% doesn't seem to indicate any rarity to me.
But that's rather beside the point, which is that by definition you're ruling out an entire sex of being "geeks" (or metal fans). The logic behind the comment structure is If A, Then B: "if it is something that girls do, then it is not truly geeky"; "if it is a band women like, then it is not truly metal." You're not allowing, by definition, that women can be truly geek or enjoy metal. I wouldn't argue if you were going to say something like, "statistically, fewer women play the super-geeky tabletop games than men", because that's probably accurate - and more importantly, it doesn't ignore the idea that some women are geeks, and do play those games. It's the definitional aspect that is a problem.
I am *NOT* saying that women cannot be geeky... any more than I am saying jocks cannot be geeky.
I am, however, pointing out that "geeky" has a right side of the bell curve and, much like basketball players, the 1% of the 1% has, statistically, a lack of gender parity.
You know.
Like heavy metal fans.
Yes, every now and again, you find an exceptional woman in the vague corners of the tabletop world. I'm not saying you don't. But if she's not there on any given night? One tends to not be surprised.
This Drw character wouldn't survive five minutes in AB. What a noob. Gank bait.
Part of the difference here is that they've learned to code for Jews and Blacks and other minorities. They don't come out and attack them directly-- even Republicans know that's verboten. They're even having trouble with gays (the attacks intended for general consumption will mention "San Fransisco values," or, more rarely, "the gay agenda"-- more rarely gays as a group)
Gamers, though, that's a different story. Apparently, Goldfarb feels entitled to *overtly* mock people on the basis of their hobbies/lifestyles/subcultures. I think the overtness of the mockery is what comes out here-- in addition to being a nonsensical, out-of-left-field attack on several hundred thousand to a few million Americans (depending on whether you're talking about "people who self-identify as gamers" or "people who have played DnD at some point").
He chose an interest group that didn't, previously, have any ideological axe to grind, or interest (as a group) in the outcome of the election, and started picking on them because they're not cool, and he thought he could make himself more popular by denigrating them.
It's like High School all over again.
(As an aside, I had trouble bringing myself to vote for Gore in '00 because Tipper at the time is said to have believed DnD to be Satanic)