I need to be moderated
After seeing Catch the fire ministry’s horrendous response to the Black Saturday fires I decided to add their news feed to my RSS reader. It’s rare that I pay much attention to it, rarer still that I read a whole article, but I couldn’t help but take a look at an article that they released the other day discussing the health care debate in the USA.
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to developments in the USA, the latest right-wing talking point is that if a government department is allowed to run health care it will lead to forced euthanasia of the sick and elderly as a cost saving measure. This is completely fabricated, of course, but it has evolved out of the argument that the government would have to ration health care because of cost constraints. What this argument completely ignores is that health insurance companies in the USA ration care every single day, purely in the name of corporate profit and shareholder value. The whole argument is little more than “government is bad and scary”, but it is the argument of choice at the moment anyway.
I personally believe that decent health care is a human right, and I can recall no shortage of appeals for Catholic aid organisations trying to build hospitals in 3rd world countries while I was at school, so I’m fairly sure that a Christian organisation would have no objection to the suggestion of improving care for millions of people. Apparently I was wrong.
The article on the CTFM site was nothing more than the right-wing ‘deather’ meme, and I was just about to close my browser tab when I decided to instead leave a quick comment. Nothing too argumentative mind you, I just copied and pasted two paragraphs from the article and replaced the term “government bureaucrat” with “Insurance Company worker”. The comment went up and I didn’t give it a second thought until today, when I decided to check back for a response. It had been deleted. So I posted it again. This time instead of the comment appearing straight away, I was informed that it had been placed in the moderation queue.
It seems that CTFM aren’t as interested in comments and discussion as they are in conformity.
They’re a bunch of wank stains.
Sorry, that’s all I can say about them.
But PS, nice comment you left on their site.
Oh Dave, that’s worse than leaving comments at right winger’s blogs. What did you think an institution like “Catch the fires” would do with a comment like yours?
To be honest, I didn’t think that my comment was even remotely inflammatory. I suspected it might prompt a rebuff, but to delete it and then put me in the sin bin is well beyond what I would see as reasonable.
Dave, years ago I tried commenting at Bolt’s blog, but quickly realised that you weren’t going to get any comment that was remotely controversial (i.e. mockery, sarcasm, mimicking, etc) published. These ‘institutional’ right wing blogs are just going to control the agenda – full stop – so it’s not worth the trouble of even reading them let alone trying to debate them.
Very true Ray. I must admit to a bit of a strange curiosity about groups like CTFM, nothing about them bears any similarity to my concept of Christianity so I want to get an idea of what makes them tick. Thus far I’m no wiser.
Dave, sometimes it’s an honour to be censored. You can be proud of your beliefs .
Remember, next time the drop kick Steve Fielding is holding forth mindlessly on some subject, that there but for the grace of god, might have gone Danny Nalia.
Imagine if Family First had placed him as number one on their Senate ticket instead of Steve who, by comparison, seems mild mannered.
Your “cut, paste & replace key phrase” idea is catching on, Dave:
http://clubwah.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/how-to-make-reading-andrew-bolt-fun/
You’re on the money about Naliah and Family First joe. It was only after Naliah’s insensitive comments after Black Saturday that Family First made any effort to distance themselves from him.
The find/replace trick is always good for a laugh Ray, but on a serious note I think that if it can easily undermine something that you’ve written, it’s a pretty good indication that you’ve written nothing more than a rant.
I might try it with one my own
rantsposts.And one “of” my own …