As a Nonpartisan (albeit a left-leaning one), I generally try to engage in intelligent discourse with people from all sides of the political spectrum. My online home, of course, is here at DKos, but I maintain accounts at
MyDD and
Polstate as well as at
Redstate, where my efforts to bridge the political divide have met with generally good, though mixed, success. (See
here for a discussion of my history at Redstate; I believe I'm the only person ever banned and then immediately reinstated over there.)
I should have known better than to attempt to visit http://www.freerepublic.com based on the comments on this board, but I was foolhardy enough to try anyway. The unintelligible right-wing screeds on the site were more than enough to make me not want to visit again. However, what shocked and disgusted me the most was that I found the content of the site highly pornographic -- this from an organization which claims to advocate for the American family.
After much reflection, I have decided not to stoop to the Freepers' level and will not post links to the individual stories and photos I encountered. Most of them were linked to on
this page, for anyone who really wants to check the accuracy of my findings; you'll still have to do some digging, as I don't want to spread this sort of material around freely.
A general summary of what I found and objected to follows:
-- Around two dozen revealing screenshots of Alexandra Kerry at the Cannes film festival; the poor girl wore a black dress to the festival which turned see-through under the camera flashes, and the Freeper pigs thought fit to post the photo along with various sexual comments;
-- A detailed article on the pornography industry, complete with graphic descriptions of various sexual acts, posted "to deplore the immorality of America" -- commenters infuriated the initial poster by asking for photos of the women involved in the article;
-- An open thread on "favorite Republican MILFs" which featured nude photos linked in the comments;
-- An article about gel bracelets, worn by elementary- and middle-school girls and supposed to represent various sex acts, again with graphic details about said acts (note that this is a well-known myth which has been debunked at the nonpartisan site http://www.snopes.com, among other places), and again posted "to deplore the immorality of America";
-- An article about breast augmentation, totally unrelated to political subject matter;
-- Many other equally salacious topics.
Now, let me make this clear -- I'm no strict Victorian, and I found the Stephanie Herseth and Cate Edwards comments on this site funny. But I remember when Kos personally troll-rated a comment here that referred to Jane Mitakides as a MILF. Our standard for morality is on another level from these stupid repressed idiots who post graphically sexual articles, castigate them for immoral content, and then quite obviously get enjoyment out of the same. That's a form of hypocrisy that galls and angers me.
I'm still traumatized by the content at FreeRepublic, and I will never, NEVER go back. But I am angrier than I have been in a long time -- angry at the right-wingers on that site who are some of the most dirty-minded individuals I have ever encountered, and who DARE to rail against the immorality of the world and at the same time revel in pornographic content.
Anyone else noticed this about the Freepers -- that they're arrogant, conceited, repulsive individuals who try to inhabit the gutter and the heavens at the same time and, by doing so, profane both of them?
