News and views from inside the media bubble
ANOTHER BOOT FOR SPAG
According to his own Facebook feed, Greensboro attorney, blogger and onetime candidate for Guilford County Commission Sam Spagnola has been banned from the Facebook page for 101.1 WZTK’s “Brad and Britt Show.” On his own page, Spagnola says, “Brad knows that he banned me because he couldn’t win the argument.” Brad Krantz, co-host of the show, addressed the issue in a lengthy comment on their page stating, among other things, that it was Spagnola’s cantankerous, confrontational style, i.e. “injecting ad hominem/false equivalency/ continuous demands for ‘balance’ over and over again” that got him 86ed. Writes Krantz, “The problem with this is that neither Britt nor I can spend 24 hours a day here, and his crap unanswered appears as if he is ‘winning’ these arguments. It would seem that a bright, well-educated guy like Sam would know the ropes of propriety well enough. I was wrong.” Of course, this is not the first time Spags has been disinvited to an online forum. Greensboro blogger Ed Cone banned him from his blog, Word Up, in June 2009.
The interesting thing is that a number of people who frequently comment on the Brad & Britt FB page told me that they completely disagreed with Brad's decision and that they thought my comments made the page more interesting- contrary to Brad's assertion. Quite a few of them don't agree with me on anything but said that there was no justification for the ban and that the ban was contrary to the free exchange of ideas that Brad himself often touts.
It appears to me that the decision was simply pretext for the real reason for the ban- I applied the same standards to Brad's arguments that he applies to conservative arguments and most of the time his positions were exposed as being completely steeped in double standards and hypocrisy.t,
For example, a common theme of Brad's is that conservative "talk radio" criticism of Barack Obama is based on hatred that could incite some people to violence against Obama. Yet, when I point out that applying Brad's logic to his constant attacks on Sarah Palin could also lead to violence, his only response is "false equivalence". He never explains why. Instead, he would just attack me personally.
In the world of talk radio, the goal is always to have the commenters make the host look good. Brad applied that rationale to the Brad & Britt Facebook page and instead of talking over callers and then hanging up on them, he just decided it was easier to ban me for making him look bad.
Ed Cone basically did the same thing for the same reason.
I wear both bannings like a badge of honor and note that I know of no local conservative blogs or other internet venues that have banned people on the Left. Brad often accuses people on the Right of only wanting "affirmation, not information". Apparently that is just one more standard of his that he doesn't want applied to himself.
That's too bad because I always thought Brad was an okay guy and I was a fan for many years. But I guess he just couldn't take the heat.
The ban makes him look bad, not me. Even his ideological brethren think so.
P.S., if my arguments truly were "crap" then why would they make it "appear" as if I was "winning"? Ad hominem and arguments based on false equivalency usually don't have that effect because they speak for themselves.
Brad's explanation is telling because it really is an admission that my arguments did have substance. He just didn't want to take the time to respond to them or more likely, had no credible response to them. If they really were "crap", he wouldn't have worried about them or how they "appeared" to make things look.