Fred Phelps (or NOT)

[hfojvt]

Spitting into the tsunami, I know.

But could we please NOT have another 20 threads about Fred Phelps? Pretty please, with sugar on top?

Seven years and eleven months ago, a great liberal economist died.

John Kenneth Galbraith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith

I posted a thread on DU about it, about him. Got maybe three or four replies. Seven months later, an evil conservative economist died and DU had a score of threads about him.

We pay far too much attention to those we hate and not enough to those we should promote.

Let Fred shuffle quietly into the obscurity he deserves, and let's honor somebody like Galbraith with our attention instead.

"Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as United States Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His prodigious literary output and outspokenness made him, arguably, "the best-known economist in the world"[4] during his lifetime.[5] Galbraith was one of few recipients both of the Medal of Freedom (1946) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) for his public service and contribution to science. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur."

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Lotta replies and recs on this one, too...

My father told me that if Mrs. Smith bakes a pie it's not news until she throws it in Mr. Smith's face.

The basic principal works here-- threads of praise are boring while hate and destruction get the attention.

[SomethingFishy]

3. LOL...

Your dad was clever...

And I for one won't complain if GD spends an entire day doing nothing but dancing on this clowns grave.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I agree

that controversial freakazoids like Phelps draw far more attention on here than they deserve. At the same time, I see a tendency to assume that noteworthy individuals will get covered...by someone else, as it takes a lot of time & effort to express outrage at every utterance that drips from Ann Coulter's piehole.

[LiberalAndProud]

4. Galbraith was a brilliant man with a brilliant legacy. His pithy observations are timeless.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

[hfojvt]

5. that first one is so spot on

Not sure about the second. Picking the unpalatable over the disastrous should be easy.

Except I guess when the disastrous is cotton candy and the actual tooth decay does not happen for decades.

[LiberalAndProud]

6. You haven't been reading the recent ACA threads?

[progressoid]

7. You should have posted about John Kenneth Galbraith's CAT.

That'll get you more hits.

[hfojvt]

9. he was a cat person?

I did almost post a thread about my dog.

[progressoid]

10. I don't know but apparently Krugman is!

[FSogol]

8. Counting this one? Is it 19 more or 20 more?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

11. Thanks for starting yet another Fred Phelps thread

because each Fred Phelps thread means one less Missing Airliner Theory thread.

[hfojvt]

12. there's a missing airliner?

Why doesn't anybody tell me these things?

I guess it is my fault though. I'd know these things if I hadn't spent last week in Malaysia.

[Gothmog]

13. Juanita Jean has the best idea as how to respond to this death-Ignore Phelps

http://www.juanitajean.com/2014/03/20/yes-i-know-that-fred-phelps-died-today-im-doing-the-meanest-thing-i-can-do-to-him-i-ignoring-him/