Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2: Chewing over the News
537 Responses
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I also find the use of people who aren’t even the ground yet to score political points lacking in class.
*cough* How is the weather in Touscon?
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Frequent bombings, shootings, lynchings followed open threats to do so, which often wasn't punished and was even endorsed by local authorities. Birmingham, Selma, the freedom riders etc.
And there was a civil war in the USA too. All these things were a long time ago.
Between 1865 and 1984 four US presidents were killed and there were serious attempts on the lives of many more. The last was Reagan.
Many Mayors and Congressmen have been killed across the years. The last sitting Congressman to be murdered was however was by Jim Jones in Guyana. The last mayor was the guy who was shot when Harvey Milk was killed.
The last thirty or forty years have, despite everything, seen an ebb in political violence in the US and the threat of violence. Mostly, even in the Bush years, I'd argue it was angry - very angry at times - but rarely violent, at least not away from the fringes.
However, things like the number of physical threats against Senators doubling last year and that very scary time line that both Russell and I have linked to are both perhaps evidence that the tide is in danger of swinging back if it hasn't already.
Add to that the verbiage (which if it doesn't shock you, shocks me) from the almost centre-right - people who are likely presidential candidates or former VP candidates - openly asserting that they wanted people they disagreed with killed as happened last month several times.
Even Goldwater in his ugliest moments, or Nixon (at least not publicly) never asserted that murder was an acceptable political act.
And just to be clear - I don't think anyone is asserting that the current situation was caused directly by Palin's crosshairs, but given the clear escalation they are less than helpful, no?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
What you’re seeing at present pales in comparison to the ‘dialogue’ that took place in the 1950s and 60s around Civil Rights issues.
Where do I start calling bullshit on that? Well, here’s a start – Senator Stom Thurmond, un-repentant pro-segregationist that he was, (in)famously attempted to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 by speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes. At no point did he start muttering about “second amendment solutions” to his opponents and the Eisenhower administration. Doesn't make Thurmond any less of a no-account white trash sum'bitch, but even he had limits.
I’ve also posted the notorious “crypto-Nazi”/“faggot” exchange between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, during live coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention. That was a real scandal. Now, it would just be a slow day on talk radio.
I really don’t need a man-splain on how hard and ugly the civil rights struggle was in the United States. Nor do I need you to remind me that it had a body count. Perhaps you, however, need a reality check on the kind of air men like Byron De La Beckwith – the assassin of Medger Evers – breathed. Anyone who tried to assert that Beckwith was a “lone crazy” and the profoundly racist culture he lived in was totally irrelevant, would not be taken seriously. Nor should it – it required a level of obtuseness that would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.
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And one last time, Kyle:
I’ve been a “foot soldier” on political “campaigns” for twenty years – even worked in laying seige to a “target” or two. (See what I did there?)
Never, ever have a seen campaign material using gun-sights or cross-hairs as a graphic device. Nor have I been involved in a campaign event where the hook was being able to fire a semi-automatic assault weapon, while exhorting the troops to “RELOAD”.
I’m rather glad of that, because I really don’t think whipping up the base with a constant hum of violent militarised language ends in a good place. Then again, with what I do for a living, I would believe that words mean things, they affect how people interact with the world around them, and they also have consequences. But I guess in Teabagistan, that's out-of-touch liberal elitist jibber-jabber…
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Wow. Blood libel, huh? Er, if you say so, Sarah.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Wow. Blood libel, huh? Er, if you say so, Sarah.
The really creepy thing is that she doesn't even come up with her own vile talking points. The "blood libel" canard spread through the right-o-sphere like a horse laxative after that repulsive Glenn Reynolds WSJ op-ed I posted a link to up thread.
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In a way, that's kind of a relief. Because the idea of Palin knowing enough about history to understand what a blood libel actually is is actually terrifying.
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Holy crap, batman, that is about as incendiary as she could get, but as you say, 'she knows not what she do's'. Hopefully.
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Jon Stewart, for once, seems lost for words about it all, before surmising “it would be really nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn’t actually represent how we talk to one another on TV.”
Of course what he was really saying was: "it would be really nice if how we talk to one another on TV didn’t actually represent the ramblings of crazy people .”
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I really think the line should be made clearer in all your discussions that you are condemning the absurdity of the rightwing rhetoric (especially in light of someone having just undertaken the worst possible natural conclusion of it) without laying specific causation between the rhetoric and the specific act here. Russell when you say the Tea Party are important 'here' because of mainstreaming it sounds an awful lot like a definitive link between their actions and this event 'here' - completely unprovable and a MASSIVE call.
We can all be deploring the nature of the discourse given what's happened but the implicit or explicit causative links to a mass murder do nothing but provide unwarranted martyrdom. It may be a semantic weight issue but an important one.And Danielle I failed to pick up faux equivalence in John Stewart on this topic - on others, sure, but there was little of that here. Colbert's montage of all 'sides' instantly laying blame was quite genuine equivalence on the other hand...
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The initial rush to judgement was i think both wrong - since it was not based on fact - and potentially counter productive. Palin gets to play the martyre, her favourite role.
However Palin has chosen to sqander the moral high ground so quickly given to her and go for engerising her base. As if they need it. No attempt ot reach out to the middle ground. I can only hope her base can't get her anywhere near the White House.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
In a way, that’s kind of a relief. Because the idea of Palin knowing enough about history to understand what a blood libel actually is is actually terrifying.
Nah, don't be relieved. Don't you think someone so clueless she'd mouth a canard like that without know what the frak she's saying is even worse than consciously dog-whistling that anyone who dares to criticise you is as bad as a Jew-hating bigot?
I'm also rather scared that someone who casually smears political enemies as practitoners of "blood libel" in an already tendentious op-ed (and also runs of the US's more widely read right-wing blogs) is a law professor, teaching constitutional law no less. With tenure.
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I'd say Loughner had more in common with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold than McVeigh. No coherent political view but huge sense of entitlement and aggrievement.
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In other news, the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman issues a stirring condemnation of Palin’s “blood libel” canard, and demands a retraction and apology.
Oh… wait a mo’:
It is unfortunate that the tragedy in Tucson continues to stimulate a political blame game. Rather than step back and reflect on the lessons to be learned from this tragedy, both parties have reverted to political partisanship and finger-pointing at a time when the American people are looking for leadership, not more vitriol. In response to this tragedy we need to rise above partisanship, incivility, heated rhetoric, and the business-as-usual approaches that are corroding our political system and tainting the atmosphere in Washington and across the country.
It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder. Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks, and we agree with her that the best tradition in America is one of finding common ground despite our differences.
Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase “blood-libel” in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term “blood-libel” has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.
Three brief paragraphs of false equivalence bingo, no unequivocal condemnation of the use of a term denoting vicious anti-Semitism to attack her political enemies and (most curiously) no demand for a retraction and apology.
Weak. Though it is rather funny how Mr. Foxman takes a much stronger line with Arab politicians and media when they insinuate American media are are Muslin-hating Zionist tools...
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In that same video, Palin claims that acts of monstreous criminality begin and end with the individual and have nothing to do with the state. As much as I wish this was a change in her foreign policy on terrorism I figure it's simply monstrous hypocrisy.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I really think the line should be made clearer in all your discussions that you are condemning the absurdity of the rightwing rhetoric (especially in light of someone having just undertaken the worst possible natural conclusion of it) without laying specific causation between the rhetoric and the specific act here.
*head-desk* How many farking times to I have to say I DON"T BELIEVE SARAH PALIN SAID TO LOGHNER "GO PUT A CAP IN THAT COMMIE HO'S MELON FOR ME, BIG BOY" before we can all take it as read?
Seriously, I have to presume that PAS readers don't suffer from ADHD or neurological deficits that lead to short- and mid-term memory loss. Nor am I going to try everyone's patience by starting every comment with an epic man-splain of the bleedingly obvious.
M'kay?
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Neil Morrison, in reply to
Palin claims that acts of monstreous criminality begin and end with the individual and have nothing to do with the state.
she's making the exact opposite mistake that some of her critics are making.
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BTW, will anyone ask Sarah Palin if she includes Garbielle Giffords herself -- who happens to be Jewish herself, and the first Jew from Arizona elected to the House of Representatives -- is part of that media/political "blood libel" against her?
I'd certainly like to know if Abraham Foxman thinks that is merely "unfortunate".
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M'kay?
As I said, it may only be an issue of semantic weight and you personally are making some important distinctions, but plenty of people don't and as a reader I think it fair to point out that some people are making statements that sound an awful lot like implied causality, whether that is the intent or not.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Russell when you say the Tea Party are important ‘here’ because of mainstreaming it sounds an awful lot like a definitive link between their actions and this event ‘here’ – completely unprovable and a MASSIVE call.
“Here” as in the context of this discussion.
I thought I’d explained pretty carefully that wasn’t what I was saying. I said Loughner clearly isn’t a tea partier and I doubt he was directly influenced in his thinking by the likes of Palin.
But these things don’t happen in a vacuum, and the particular tropes in Loughner’s ranting aren’t new. Richard Hofstadter’s classic essay for Harpers, The Paranoid Style in American POlitics, was published in 1964 but it could have been written today.
But it’s worse, today, really. The New World Order theories of Cleon Skousen were generally considered beyond the pale when he was alive. Now, thanks to an endorsement and foreword from Glenn Beck, one of Skousen’s crazy books was a best-seller and he’s pretty much mainstream -- namechecked by Mitt Romney, Orrin Hatch, etc, etc. These kinds of ideas have actually never been as acceptable as they are now.
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I think it's important to point out that Foxman himself is the subject of much criticism within the Jewish community.
As others have noted, when even Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg can't get behind you, you're doing something wrong.
Personally I liked Matt Yglesias' comment:
"Indeed, Jews throughout America can join me in remembering when our ancestors fled Eastern Europe in order to live in a land where nobody would ever criticize us on television."
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And in other news, a black Republican district chair in Arizona resigns citing threats from local Tea Partiers: “I love the Republican Party but I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.”
And this:
Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) health care-era “you lie” interruption of President Obama is now reportedly being commemorated with a place on a new, limited edition line of assault rifle components.
The Columbia Free Times reports that the words are being engraved on a series of lower receivers manufactured for popular AR-15 assault rifles. Lower receivers are one of the primary pieces of the firearms.
“Palmetto State Armory would like to honor our esteemed congressman Joe Wilson with the release of our new ‘You Lie’ AR-15 lower receiver,” the weapon manufacturer’s site writes in the product description. “Only 999 of these will be produced, get yours before they are gone!"
Far out.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
As others have noted, when even Jonah “Liberal Fascism” Goldberg can’t get behind you, you’re doing something wrong.
Yeah, but even then Jonah Goldberg is so half-arsed about it he might as well have said nothing. “I should have said this a few days ago, when my friend Glenn Reynolds introduced the term to this debate…”
Too farking right you should have, Jonah. Instead you posted it on The Corner, without comment. (And, incidentally, when I sent him a snarky tweet about that post the reply was: “What are you talking about?”)
And, naturally, the comment are predictably vile – all about how touchy Jews and crybaby liberals should STFU with the “hysterics” and “manufactured outrage” and leave Sarah alone.
Not for the first time, I picture National Review founder William F. Buckey (who made it quite clear neither anti-Semites not Catholic-baiting cranks would be welcome on his porch) spinning in his grave. I predict he'll hit the Earth's core before Easter.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
And this:
What's wrong with a nice commemorative coffee mug?
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recordari, in reply to
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