Attitude. I heard a marvelous example today on the radio. I had a chance to fire the forge for the first time in a while and had the headphones on while working. The Sean Hannity show came on; not my favorite but not bad. There was a guest host on and in once segment they had a guy from Powerline, Scott I think, and Matthew Yglesias.
Yglesias reinforced why I don't read his site. Except in this case it was not only the attitude of the words, it was the voice. Condescending, 'I know better than you on all things', etc. God, he's annoying. What he was saying was bad enough in some cases, but the way he said it...
Reminds me of the main commenter in a weekly paper here. He's a minister, and after he attended the clemency hearing for a convicted murderer(arguing for leniency), he wrote that after his fifteen minute sermon, they board actually seemed mad at him! And of course people with such an attitude couldn't give the condemned man a fair hearing, etc. My thought was that if he preached at them the way he usually writes his editorials, he was probably lucky one of the board members didn't ask a guard to shoot him. Same kind of attitude Yglesias showed; 'I'm superior, I know what is right, if you don't listen to Me it shows what kind of uncaring troglodyte you actually are'.
I don't know if some of these people know this, or just don't care, but when you speak to people that way it does not help your argument. I used to know a guy who could enter a discussion, make what might actually be a good idea, but still have most everyone else ready to strangle him by the time it was over. Even though he had a good idea, the attitude he had turned people off. Badly.
Argue with me, no problem. Speak to me like I'm an obvious retard because I don't agree with you, and I'm gone.
1 comment:
You got that right.
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