Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Democrat and environmental activist

[cascadiance]

40. But it is relevant to calling him names like "asshat"...

.. which is an attack on his character not SPECIFICALLY on his postition on vaccines, which one could have a more constructive argument and point out where he's wrong, and others can defend that.

When you call him "asshat", you are smearing everything else good he's done too.

It's kind of like labeling Ralph Nader a "jerk" and therefore saying that "jerks" are the ones that want to regulate companies like Pinto to have them make sure that their gas tanks don't explode. That's not a specific reference to a name on Nader, but he's been called the like many times here, and we don't really facilitate constructive discussion here by calling people names, especially those that have done a lot of good for us in other ways.

If you have a problem with what he's done, point to an article that makes it clear that he's wrong to make your case, and then perhaps you can qualify what you are saying by adding, "I feel that he could have taken a better side in this area and because he hasn't, I feel let down and feel like he's being a jerk specifically for <blah>"...

Then you can show your emotions, but not just direct at him generally, which isn't helpful for us to deal with the issues you are concerned with, but just has us all engage in divisive discussions. If you can point to very specific areas where an argument can be made that he's wrong and done certain things he shouldn't have in the course of pursuing that action, that is far more persuasive than general pejoratives that many here that appreciate so many other things he's done won't accept.

With many here getting attacked like that (Greenwald, Snowden, Nader, and now RFK, Jr. amongst others), I think we really need to qualify emotional adjectives when characterizing figures like this. Maybe DU can have some sort of biography forum, with sticky threads on certain figures that have discussions of their positions in a certain area. And then when people call these people "jerks" in other forums, if they don't want to get called out for not being constructive in critiquing them, they can point back to a thread in that forum to back up their position. That might be more helpful both to the reader to get more background on this characterization, and to the poster with strong feelings not having to textually explain him/herself at lengths every time they put up emotional statements on such a figure.