Evil Firefly Haters
POSTED BY: Succatash
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 07:06
VIEWED: 55301
PAGE 15 of 20
Quote:Relax, you have completely misunderstood Sarge. He is assuming that we all realize that blaming Allah for 911 is completely ridiculous.
Originally posted by Nur:
SergeantX,
I am struck dumb by the audacity of your statement. It is the equivallent of saying that Jesus was responsible for the Holocost, which is the farthest thing from the truth. I find your comment both ignorent and insulting both as a Muslim and as a human being. The acts of extemits (few or many) are not the acts of a religion or its god (who, by the way, is the same god that Christians and Jews believe in, "Allah" is just the word for god in Arabic) and it is deeply saddening to see a post like yours.
You might have a right to play the "poor me" card but Sarge doesn't deserve the brunt of your frustration, someone else does.
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Quote:
Hey Bub,
Relax, you have completely misunderstood Sarge. He is assuming that we all realize that blaming Allah for 911 is completely ridiculous.
You might have a right to play the "poor me" card but Sarge doesn't deserve the brunt of your frustration, someone else does.
SargeX and Succatash,
Well not being a mind reader mistakes can be made. Considering the fact that its dangerous to assume that anyone is going to understand exactly what he meant I'm woman enough to appologize. I have to say though that your "poor me" comment was a bit of a stretch, I don't recall feeling sorry for myself at all while writing that. Respect though, must be given for you finding out that I'm from Canada then cleverly speaking to me in the X-Men dialect of Canadian English.
Cheers Bub,
Nur
Those who restrain desire, do so because thiers is weak enough to be restrained.
-William Blake
O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous.
-Qur'an [26:83]
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You took out the 'bub', whats up with that?
Those who restrain desire, do so because thiers is weak enough to be restrained.
-William Blake
O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous.
-Qur'an [26:83]
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Okay, I haven't fully read the article, still reading it. Plus there being over hundred posts here, I don't want to sit on my ass and read them all, but I would like to add my two cents on what I read.
First off, Yes this guy is free to state his opinion, thats the beauty of America.
Second off, I am a feely moderate christian, and I have my views and morals so as presented to me by the church. I however know that you can't make everyone see eye to eye. Where I stand against abortion, another won't, but that is their choice and I respect that.
Anyways on to my few points, and please remember I did say I didn't read all of his points... I will have to force myself to read the rest later (he can have his opinion and I can respect him for it, I just don't have to respect the opinion :P ).
Now I could be wrong, but I take it one of the major arguments is that slavery was the major reason to the civil war? It was a key issue, but never the main reason. The South, with its fewer 'voting' population (even with the ... what was it 3/5's act about only 3 out of every 5 slaves would be counted in a vote???) felt it would not be able to have a fair hearing or allowed to have its own indepenence from the northern states. They felt that the North was domaiting the scene, and in many ways it was.
Plus, we never did hear if the slaves in Firefly were black, white, chinese, or whatever. They could just be a lower 'caste' as it seems to be almost in effect in firefly. The lowest of the low. There might not be a REAL caste system in effect, but that doesn't mean that people won't act like there isn't one.
In firefly, the reason the independents wanted to be INDEPENDENT was that their lifes were being constircted and held back by the Alliance (The Americans and the Chinese who run things :P). They weren't allowed to celebrate their own holidays or have their own governments. They did have their freedoms and soveinty as long as they weren't big enough to exoplit. Once that changed, once they had enough people, a industry to support themselves did the Alliance finally move in.
It was quoted as being said, that settlers were only given enough to live on, maybe a few cattle but that was it. In the shortess way I can see this, its all about expansion. In message we find out that Tracey's family was FORCED to live on their world.
In almost every example I have read of or know of, one of the main definition of "Empire" is expansion.. to expand outward, even if it isn't though conquest or settling. There were worlds that could be exploited, people that needed to dispose of and a way to use them at the SAME time. Send them away, give them only what they needed to surive, and come back to them in say 20... 30 years and tell them they are part of this great alliance, and that they would then now work for them. It would be cheap, easy, and very cost-effective.
In all my years of watching Sci-fi shows, this one has really captured my heart. Oh, other sci-fi films and shows (ie. star wars, star terk, babylon 5, farscape, and others) have held my interest, but Firefly really captured how I see the future. It isn't pretty.
It makes sense to me that America (if we don't fuck ourselves someway, or someone doesn't help us do it) and China would be the dominate players in the future. America in the fact that, for better or worse, we are the most powerful country/nation in the world. China has most of the world's population, and I don't think anything would really ever change that (China and the world's larget's population... America I think might fall some day... not any time soon, but some day :P). The fact that they would realize this and say "Hey, instead of killing each other, lets rule togther!" makes complete sense to me.
It would take YEARS just to build a Infomation Age on a world from the ground up. The logicists involed to transfer the needed martieral and other supplies would most likely not be very cost effective. Only the most needed, from vitiams to medicine to the most simple of to
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Your argument that southern heads of households did not aspire to own slaves because they couldn't afford it is ridiculous. What else do people aspire to than things that are presently out of their reach?
Well.. I know I want to aspire to be a writer... but that doesn't mean I won't ever become one... and the fact that everyone in the South wanted to own a slave!?!?!?!?
From the Gettysburg movie (I can't find a script to copy this from so it is coming from memory.. so it might be off a bit).
Lt. Tom Chamberlain: "I mean no disrespect to you fighting men. But I cannot seem to see why you are fighting this here war."
Rebal Solider: "Why are you fighting it?"
Lt. Tom Chamberlain: "To free the slaves, preserve the Union."
Rebal Solider: "I don't care one way or another about no damn Darkies. I am fighting for my rights (sounds like rats). Thats what we all are fighting for"
Lt. Tom Chamberlain: "Your what?"
Rebal Solider: "My Rights (sounds like rats again). Why can't you live your way and let us live our own. (I know this isn't very exact but you have to bare with me :P). Live and let live I heard a few say."
Not every single person rich or poor wanted to own slaves. Some poor farmer might think it would be great to have one or two to help around the farm. Some rich cotton merchat might be against it for reglious. But Not everyone in the south wanted to own slaves regardless of how it is presented.
And I know this was the movie and not the book (I have read the book a hundred different times and will keep on reading it). But it does bring up a great point.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Nur:Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
As long as we're considering supernatural influence on the Sept. 11th attacks, it seems there's far more evidence to indicate Allah was the actual culprit. Just a thought.
SergeantX
"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith
SergeantX,
Better late than never but here it does. I am struck dumb by the audacity of your statement. It is the equivallent of saying that Jesus was responsible for the Holocost, which is the farthest thing from the truth. I find your comment both ignorent and insulting both as a Muslim and as a human being. The acts of extemits (few or many) are not the acts of a religion or its god (who, by the way, is the same god that Christians and Jews believe in, "Allah" is just the word for god in Arabic) and it is deeply saddening to see a post like yours.
Those who restrain desire, do so because thiers is weak enough to be restrained.
-William Blake
O my Lord! bestow wisdom on me, and join me with the righteous.
-Qur'an [26:83]
Your response more or less illustrate's my point, which is that it's not Muhammad, or Jesus, who is responsible for 9/11 but more the notion that we should all be willing to give up rationality and indulge in religious fantasies. The Christians and the Muslims are equally responsible for promoting a world view the eschews personal responsibility in favor of 'faith'.
Or to put it another way, I'm reminded of an incident immediately after 9/11. My boss at work was telling me how happy he was to have George Bush as president, because Bush was a "prayin' man". I was compelled to remind him that the terrorists who smashed into the World Trade Center towers were "prayin' men". Probably prayin' while they did it.
SergeantX
"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith
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http://www.ratsalad.com/teevee/zaza_fireflyredux.htm
anybody read his reply to this thread? lol.
On a side note - I would just like to say that: "If you really want to help the world - pick the log out of your own eye."
More problems on this earth are caused by theft, greed, and terrible parrenting than are caused by rap music, dungeons and dragons, and Heavy Metal (or media of any type).
It takes a real simpleton to point the scape goat on something that can't fight back. It makes life easy, and it makes none of us have to change.
The columbine shooters listened to hate music which was sung in a language they didn't speak. This was clearly the problem - yanno, moreso then the parrents who didn't notice their kids were using loud power tools to create bombs in their garage. I could list about a thousand examples.
TV shows don't make the world a better or worse place - people do.
The man who wrote the article we're all talking about is a moron.
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I thought this was a joke site, perhaps something from TheOnion.com? This knuckle head is as far off on his knowledge of History as he is of what a good Sci Fi show consists.
I grew up in Atlanta and know a fair bit on what the War of Northern Agression was about. It was NOT about 'Slavery'. I have no prob w/ anyone who doesn't 'get' Firefly, or even like it, but to go out of their way to keep any potential Firefly productions from being made???
p.s. Anyone who hails from 'northern' Virginia, as this clown states, is clearly a Yankee anyways, so what more needs be said ?
Haters of FIREFLY
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What I find laughable is how this guy changes his tone and story in this latest article. He is obviously one of these self righteous, elitist types who is so utterly convinced of what he knows, that he can not be swayed by anything, no matter how many sources you cite.
I have to admit I am ashamed to acknowledge the fact he is a resident of the Old Dominion. I have lived in Virginia nearly all of my life, and love no place on earth the way I do Virginia. He is right in his statement that most who live in Northern Virginia are from elsewhere, mostly the North. The biggest problem I have w/ Virginia now is a lose of identity. Our government has kowtowed to Northern business and interest for so long that the hospitality and gentile manner of the population has changed since I was younger. It is fast becoming a place in which I no longer wish to raise my children.
His spouting of revisionist history and citing justifications for the War of Northern Aggression is just another in a long list of insults piled on the loser of our fight for independence.
I for one am glad he is gone.
"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
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Took me a while to catch up with this thread. Phew! But it's mostly (aside from rather pointless personal attacks) got interesting things to say, especially the exchanges between wz and the-finally-outed-as-a-pro browncoat1. 
To return to the show a little: having finally watched the DVD extras, there is a deleted scene regarding the battle of Serenity which places Mal and Zoe a bit differently, and basically makes the point (that is barely implied by the rest of the show) that the experience of the war left them totally alienated from both "causes" of the Independents/Alliance conflict. The effect I think is to place Mal more firmly in browncoat1's camp and to make, for example, the barfight at the beginning of "The Train Job" less about Mal's support of whatever political goals the "Independents" had and more about Mal's rebuffing a personal insult...and also in large part about his general desire to see fatheads taken down a peg. "We will rise again" seems less like the "Lost Cause" tagline and more ironic and playful--since it is said in a context in which Mal et. al. know full well they would never assist in such a venture.
But return to one of my original points: the specific view of freedom (i.e. as freedom from government interference in one's affairs, as detachment from society, etc.; which it is certainly possible that Joss planned to criticize through the River story arc etc.) which Mal articulates is drawn historically from the experiences of Southern whites following the Civil War who saw military Reconstruction as an attempt to boss folks around. Nearly to a person Southern blacks had the opposite view, and believed that their personal freedoms could only be protected by government interference. Of course, what they found out was that the Northerners motivated to protect black rights purely by principle were few in number, that racism didn't respect the Mason-Dixon line (e.g. in four northern states referenda on black voting were held in 1865-66 and in all cases failed by bare majorities), and that concerns of power and profit would hold sway in Reconstruction, as browncoat1 notes. To say North good, South evil is of course too broad a statement to ever be true, but I am quite certain that even the pilloried wz agrees with this.
There seems to be consensus (?) that the Southern political and economic elites who made the decision in state legislatures etc. to secede viewed the issue largely in terms of slavery. The remaining dispute (besides the North good/South bad or North bad/South good one) seems to be around whether it is fair or reasonable to tar all Southerners/Confederate soldiers with the same brush, or whether it is fair or reasonable to deny the historical voices of those who fought for other reasons. And as this issue pertains to the study of history (i.e. what actually motivated people at the time etc.), again I think there is agreement that Confederates' motivations were complex and multivalent.
However, wz's argument had less to do with the actual history (although it quickly wended its way there) than in the persistence of the myth of the Lost Cause, constructed following the end of Reconstruction through early Confederate memorials and coinciding with legalized segregation etc., and the extent to which firefly fed into/deployed this myth. The specific purpose of this "Lost Cause" was to deny entirely the relevance of slavery to the Civil War, to assert that Reconstruction (i.e. the attempt to create a South in which blacks had full civil and political rights) was a horrible mistake, etc. etc. In this way the very elites for whom the Civil War WAS about slavery appropriated the motivations of the legions of southern soldiers to glorify their own decisions, and of course their attempts to write blacks completely out of Southern political life. Now, Northern elites were perfectly happy to go along with this as well--as apparently is John McCain. To be clear, the myth of the Lost Cause performs the same interpretive work which browncoat1 et. al. criticize--taki
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