So, in the aftermath of this fantastic mess, I feel compelled to go on record with the following: the aggressiveness and, more importantly, the arrogance that permeated my posts in this thread were very context-specific. I am the last person who’d ever compliment my own intelligence or ability in all save for the most extreme circumstances, and I have contempt for nobody whose opinions are proffered in good faith and with decency. Also, despite the style and substance of my recent posts, I dislike insulting people and using unnecessarily coarse language, and will try in the future as I have in the past to refrain from both of those vices.
JEATON, I came to this thread after you taunted me, and I offered my honest opinion of the matter at hand. I also refuted your central argument about a sweeping media blackout and “absolutely zero media coverage.” In support of these two claims–one an opinion born of reasoned consideration of the evidence, the other a rebuttal of your argument–I offered hundreds of examples, despite the fact that a single article in The New York Times or The Washington Post or from the AP Wire would have been entirely sufficient to rebut your claim of “absolutely zero media coverage.”
In other words, the two claims I offered at the outset of this thread–disagreement over which has constituted the entirety of our argument over the course of the past few days–have enjoyed the luxury of both irrefutable, overwhelming evidential support and, relatedly, the unequivocal approval of a number of intelligent posters who saw fit to weigh in.
In response to this, you lobbed insults–“fucking moron” and “pinhead,” if I’m not mistaken–and, unable to make valid, sound, and substantial arguments, were reduced to nitpicking minutia at the argument’s penumbra–e.g., L.A. Times subsidiaries and the chronological order of New York Times stories. None of this made so much as a slight dent in the iron foundation of my argument, which, put very simply, went like this: consumers of “mainstream liberal” media–print media in particular–have been adequately informed of Gosnell’s crimes and trial in a timely and comprehensive fashion. A reader of the New York Times, for example, learned of this horrible story two years before you did, and has been informed of every one of its major developments, from the arrest to the open of the trial.
I do not contend that every outlet has covered it with equal assiduousness, and I understand perfectly that subjective consideration of an individual newspaper’s coverage might yield the valid opinion that the arrest and trial deserved more than they received. But the salient objective truth is this: Gosnell has been covered by everybody from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post to AP and Reuters to the L.A. Times and even to the Huffington Post, which, despite being a manifestly partisan liberal publication, has run what appear to be literally hundreds of Kermit Gosnell stories, beginning in 2010 and recurring with relative frequency ever since (I’ve found stories dated 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, for the record). These pieces touched on the phenomenon’s major news developments and omitted nothing unsavory, despite the fact that many of the editorial boards of these publications are either avowedly or presumably in favor of abortion’s legality.
The emboldened portion of that last paragraph has been sourced, and sourced, and sourced again. It is true beyond any doubt whatsoever. And it vindicates me: it proves unequivocally that I was exactly correct when I said that “it’s been in the major newspapers for two years,” and it likewise proves that I was exactly correct when I said that your “absolutely zero mainstream coverage” claim was utter nonsense.
I’ve spent too much time writing and thinking about this ridiculous piffle already, so I’ll simply close with this: [i]If I tauntingly called another man out after having already displayed toward him an odd and unwarranted bitter animosity, and then that man showed up, engaged me on the substance at hand, and utterly decimated my arguments in an embarrassingly systematic and public way, I sincerely believe that I would consider it my duty as a man to own my defeat and explicitly yield to him. At the very least, I would acknowledge the inarguable fact that I had been wrong, and I would probably feel pretty goddamn stupid about having invited a fight and begun a venomous (and admittedly bilateral) exchange of insults with someone who was entirely and provably correct in every sense of the term.[/i]
And that just about does it.