=== Debate vs Snark ===
"Snark" carries the connotation of "supercilious" ... haughty contempt or disdain.
The idea is that I'm too good to deal with you, but take this insult with you on the way out. :- ) I get to talk; you don't.
"Snark" is not a term I would use in reference to Baker, or Lookout Landing, or most Seattle blogs.
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Geoff and Jeff S and G-Money and Cool Papa and Sandy get irritated, but they get irritated in the way that one man gets irritated with another man in the locker room. It's a different shade of red, one that I can live with.
Am not sure how to communicate the difference. Terry (TopCat) and I get irritated with each other, but he faces you up and argues with you. He doesn't sniff airily, and throw in a small-minded little cut, and then scurry away considering himself above having to deal with the consequences.
If it were real life, we'd probably scuffle, and then go out and have a sody pop, and having cleared the air, we'd then be good buds going to war against the other guys the next day. When Baker calls somebody on baloney, it has this same look-you-in-the-eye quality to it. That's not "snark."
Almost all MC / SSI regulars share this same look-you-in-the-eye quality, and it's not because they're dumber than anybody else. If I were smarter than Chris Langan, it wouldn't absolve me of my responsibility to treat other men and women as equals.
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Finally, acolytes of various blogs have always been wont to defend their heroes by trying to draw moral equivalency. "Granted they censor things that embarrass them, granted they demand acknowledgement as Final Authorities, but hey. Is it really any different than anyplace else?"
This has never sailed with the savvy posters at MC / DOV / SSI. It's not the same, and you can't spit down our backs and tell us it's raining. :- )
Baker has human emotions, but the way that he looks himself and at other people is in contact with reality, and is more than good enough for me. If anybody had the right to haughtiness, it might be him, with his access and his background. But online or offline, he talks to you as an equal. So does Sullivan. So does Churchill, at bottom.
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If you want to ignore somebody -- for reasons other than delusions of self-superiority -- then ignoring them is fine. But then be sure not to make "snide remarks", snarks, toward them and then ignore them.
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As we've said many times before, you can often get genuinely first-class analysis at the leading blog. There are a few fans who seem to be in a bit of a groupie mentality, which I will always find extremely off-putting, coming from adults. And I have never been able to understand why people are willing to Empower and Enable (on a small scale) that which they believe to be, yes, "wrong," such as censorship and elitism.
But in the main there are good reasons that blogs run such huge numbers. Power to them. Even most MC/SSI readers probably pop over to see what's going on -- because the ideas are info-taining.
We answered a fair question -- what's the difference between Baker and anybody else -- because you axed. :- ) We're not going to participate in a flame war -- we'll answer fair questions fairly asked, but otherwise, will give visitors the last word.
SSI heartily recommends Baker as one of the all-time local baseball columns. But it's a free country.
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BABVA,
Dr D