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Ugh. I don't think this is a good interpretation of the rules (and I think I explained in a parallel post why I think that). Allowing this sort of insult adds nothing to the discourse, raises the temperature and very likely turns away people in a way that reinforces any existing ideological slant as it simply allows dominant majorities to assert their dominance. Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part but I think we used to be much stricter about that sort of thing, which, yes, resulted in a constant low rumble of discontent -- but it's not like even CWR, which embodied the "we will not stifle your ability to express your righteous feelings" approach and predictably listed right until it capsized for it, didn't have the same amount of malcontents for whom even the little rules that were still enforced were too much.
On that matter, how would you feel about "Jewish creeps"? (I'm now noticing to my dismay that my phone's predictive keyboard app has already learned to suggest the second after the first thanks to this subthread.)
If you can persuade Zorba we should crack down on insulting public figures, we'll do that, but generally speaking, we've never modded someone just for being mean to celebrities and politicians. Only if their entire post is a screed about Person I Hate or general booing. Frankly, I am not willing to go through an election season trying to enforce "charity" towards all political candidates. "Trump is a big orange fat-ass!" is a pretty easy comment to mod because it's low effort and inflammatory for no good purpose, but IIRC you (or someone else) wanted me to mod someone for calling Kamala Harris a "weak candidate." Come on.
The rules against making derogatory generalizations about a broad group of people (which includes posters here) covers that.
The scenario I'm imagining is calling someone (say, Epstein) one. If that amounts to a derogatory generalisation about Jews, how does calling the artist a "leftist creep" not amount to the same generalisation about an even broader group of people (leftists)?
Conversely, I'm not arguing against "leftist creep" on the basis of it being insulting to this particular public figure. Instead, I think, as you (correctly, in my eyes) perceive for the Jewish example, that calling anyone a "leftist creep" is implying that the creepiness is related to being a leftist, which is an attack on a broad group of people including potential posters here.
That was not me, and I would not advocate for any restrictions on that. As I said, it's not about insulting the public figure, but about using public figures to insult potential forum participants (by imputing bad qualities and implying them to be a consequence of tribal membership): e.g. calling Harris a "leftist bore" would be bad.
Using "Jewish" or "leftist" or "Republican" as a negative adjective might be a flag for boo outgrouping, but not necessarily. You are the second person today who seems to want to drag out a thread as long as possible with "Can someone say this? How about this? How about if they say this? Why is this okay but not that?" I don't feel like these threads are productive, because unless we can arrive at "My judgment is perfectly in accord with yours, and also I can specify every possible scenario for future reference," you're not going to be satisfied. I believe I explained my reasoning adequately, and if you find it unconvincing, I will refer you, once more, to El Hefe to persuade him that we should change our moderation approach.
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