Guess who's not coming to dinner; Roger Ebert with a terrific analysis of John McCain | Hacker News Reader

Guess who's not coming to dinner; Roger Ebert with a terrific analysis of John McCain

rogerebert.suntimes.com

21 pointsraganwald12 comments

Even by politics standards, this article is pretty bad. It's completely disingenuous.

Ebert starts with "I do not like you, John McCain. My feeling has nothing to do with issues..." and then goes on to complain about some irrelevant body-language point. Are we really supposed to believe that Roger Ebert, after (presumably) months of supporting Obama and (I'm guessing here) years of supporting Democrats, would suddenly have decided he didn't like Obama if it had been Obama who was not-looking at John McCain instead of John McCain who was not-looking at Obama?

Throw all this in with an ever-so-subtle playing of the race card (Roger Ebert is a great film critic and fully understands the implications of the otherwise-irrelevant "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" reference) and you've got some irresponsibly bad insinuation.

Thank you for writing a coherent and interesting critique. Much appreciated.

And this article has been posted to Hacker News for what reasons?

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/ appears to be a better place. Don't upmod me. Please downmod TFA.

Hmmm, reading the HN guidelines I find that I am encouraged to post anything that piques my intellectual curiosity. I ignore almost all articles about US politics (I'm a Canadian), but this one was interesting because of the discussion about body language, and most especially interesting because of the implications of never admitting your political opponent is correct in a negative-style campaign.

That's an interesting aspect of game strategy, which seems to tickle the same part of my brain as many other things I associate with hacking. Well, now you have my explanation as to why I feel posting this complies with the HN guidelines.

Now, help me out: What's your explanation for posting a comment complaining that something isn't hacker news, something specifically discouraged in the guidelines???

Actually, the two points made by the article (body language and agreeing with opponent) have been gone over hundreds of times in dozens of blogs starting about a minute after the debate. I love Ebert - he's a treasure - but in this case he's saying nothing new, and the post isn't "evidence of [any] interesting new phenomenon".

Interesting and new to me, I admit that this is my fault for not paying very close attention to US politics. BTW, I would be delighted if we applied that standard to all posts about the iPhone/iPod Touch app store :-)

BTW, I upmodded you for reminding me of a very useful test for submit-worthiness.

Ehh... once again someone going on about "hackernews worthiness" of some article. When it comes to politics, humor, or anything that doesn't scream Tech. from or relating to the media, I would take their remarks with a grain salt.

Most telling is how so often these individuals remain silent when various other more respected members of the hackernews community post similar supposedly off-topic posts as well.

So what if Ebert is saying something that has been spammed over another over a number of other blogs? Do you have any idea how many "successful" and "on-topic" posts fit that bill? Give shoving your ideologies down various posters' throats a rest.

That's pretty funny, as I have frequently argued for keeping things more diverse on HN. Ad nauseum, I would have said.

I would take their remarks with a grain salt [...] Give shoving your ideologies down various posters' throats a rest.

Is that what you call "a grain salt"? I'm glad you don't go for a pound!

Hmm, I guess most developers never read documentations/guidelines, etc. And they continue to type in lines of code until compilers/interpreters spit out error messages....

Impressive rebuttal. There's been too much meta-commenting going on lately.

[/irony]

You can't downmod articles, can you?

no. Strange, I guess there is an inner sanctum of sanctimonious downmodders.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com