Well, Candy, I think you’re responsible, by bringing this up, of doing the very thing you’re trying to condemn. You’re making and implying a direct connection between Sarah Palin and what happened. You’re picking out a particular incident. Well, I think the way to get away from it is for you not to be talking about it.
To recap, It's perfectly fine to put crosshairs on congressional districts as a political figure because that's free speech. But talking about the people who do that is irresponsible and should be stopped, and if the media simply stops reporting on dangerous rhetoric, the problem will magically vanish, so reporting on that should be prohibited speech.
I believe our sensationalist Village does share in the blame, but it's because they refused to attach any possible danger to irresponsible hyperbolic rhetoric like this, not because they are doing so now.
There's a difference, and Lamar Alexander should know better.
Dave Weigel meanwhile explains the Palin angle:
Among the people who gave the impression that these were targets: Sarah Palin. When she announced the list in a tweet, she wrote "don't retreat, instead - RELOAD!" Jonathan Martin points out that after the election, Palin tweeted about her success (18 of the seats went to the GOP) by saying "remember months ago 'bullseye' icon used 2 target the 20 Obamacare-lovin' incumbent seats?" Throughout 2010, when Palin was criticized for the target map, she either didn't respond or mocked the "lamestream media" for interpreting her gun metaphors as calls for violence. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, for example, she got big applause when she said "Don't retreat, reload -- and that is not a call for violence!" The media wasn't going to force her to stop using the gun line.
Palin doubled down, and she had a lot of support from conservatives for doing so, because a lot of them considered the "target map" criticism a bad faith attack on her. Were some of the attacks in bad faith? Maybe. But Gabrielle Giffords had specifically raised her concerns about the target map. Palin had many, many months to stop using the "reload" line, or to identify the targets as "surveyor's symbols," and she didn't do that.
No she didn't. Neither did Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, or Steve King, or the GOP leadership. And that's the problem. They are quick to condemn this rhetoric now. They should have been doing that years ago.
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12 comments:
It's possible Loughner was convinced by the rhetoric in this video, don't you think? How do we know Loughner didn't take these awful words to heart to help Obama?
It's possible the BlueBoy diary that was on the DailyKos site was scrubbed because there are BlueBoy ties to Loughner, right?
Think these scenarios are outrageous? The left insists on indulging their conspiracy fantasies by tying Loughner to the right, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and anything else to justify their own hate. Well, it's then entirely possible that it was fellow leftists who helped Loughner decide to commit his murder.
If you notice, I have the same amount of "evidence" tying Loughner to the lefties I mentioned above and those on the right being vilified by the left. That is, none.
Bullshit. I'm wth Jack Shafer.
"Any call to cool "inflammatory" speech is a call to police all speech, and I can't think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power. As Jonathan Rauch wrote brilliantly in Harper's in 1995, "The vocabulary of hate is potentially as rich as your dictionary, and all you do by banning language used by cretins is to let them decide what the rest of us may say." Rauch adds, "Trap the racists and anti-Semites, and you lay a trap for me too. Hunt for them with eradication in your mind, and you have brought dissent itself within your sights."
Our spirited political discourse, complete with name-calling, vilification—and yes, violent imagery—is a good thing. Better that angry people unload their fury in public than they let it fester and turn septic in private. The wicked direction the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger but of freedom. And I'll punch out the lights of anybody who tries to take it away from me."
If you truly believed in the calls to tone down the violent, hateful rhetoric YOU WOULD START WITH YOUR OWN VIOLENT HATEFUL RHETORIC ON THIS BLOG.
If you had an ounce of courage, honor, or decency you'd shut this HATE SITE down now.
I call on you to do so.
Or are you going to start disabling comments on all threads until I go away?
And SteveAR is correct.
Alexander's calls for the media to not report on this are just as unconstitutional as Zandar's call to "tone down the hate rhetoric".
Zandar objects to words and phrases of violence he has used on this blog dozens of times.
I'm calling you out as a hypocrite and a fool.
Lock the thread, you liberal fascist fuck.
You fear my free speech like all tyrants.
Oh wow. It took how long for ICP to actually post a thoughtful, relevant comment.
And then they go ruin it. Go *figure*.
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In any case, Sen. Alexander is a fucking moron. I've said it once, some time before, and I'll say it again: this shit is like bullying, cancer and debt.
Bullying does not need attention to thrive. It must be confronted and stopped.
Cancer does not need attention to thrive. It must be diagnosed and removed.
Debt only spirals out of control. It must be paid back as soon as possible.
And for relevancy, trolls don't need attention to thrive, they need a proper moderation policy.
The only way we can deal with this problem is by accepting that we have a very, very vast history of political violence to all sorts of people, that it remains a great problem today. Once we can confront this about ourselves and our nation can we work to end the problem.
Refusing to have conversations about the problem, or even think about it, is when it will get worse. Far, far worse.
Also, again ICP uses "free speech".
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Also, I must reflect on the complete, joyful hypocracy of someone who defends incendiary rhetoric as necessary to free speech and democracy, then turns around and demands Zandar to shut his blog down because it is "hate speech", and then demands his own comments be unmoderated in the interest of "free speech".
Christ, Zandar, you need to start applying the stick rule.
"The only way we can deal with this problem is by accepting that we have a very, very vast history of political violence to all sorts of people, that it remains a great problem today. Once we can confront this about ourselves and our nation can we work to end the problem."
And yet I'm the one who acknowledges there has been political violence in our history from both the extreme right and the extreme left.
I'm also not the one who said Sarah Palin has blood on her hands. If that's true, so does Zandar.
All I want is for him to admit that.
Because if we need to "roll back the rhetoric" the LEFT must do it too.
And any objective reader of this blog must admit this is a partisan lefty blog with a specific, anti-Republican, anti-Conservative Democrat agenda.
Zandar cannot criticize Sarah Palin's actions without first admitting his own guilt if he's going to call for a limit to free speech.
Either Zandar believes in the First Amendment or he believes that the rhetoric is dangerous. You can't believe both.
Which is it, Zandar?
"Either Zandar believes in the First Amendment or he believes that the rhetoric is dangerous. You can't believe both."
You can easily believe both. If you say you're going to kill someone, that is free speech, but there will be consequences because what you said is dangerous.
The Supreme Court settled that long ago.
As far as apologizing for "my hate speech" if anything I've said here on this blog has been taken in the context to cause violence to anyone, then I apologize sincerely for it.
Will Sarah Palin do the same?
I mean she's trying to pass off her crosshairs picture as "surveyors' marks".
Now that is cowardice.
"Lock the thread, you liberal fascist fuck. You fear my free speech like all tyrants."
Man alive, the rightists really go bonkers when they know they're screwed, don't they? Ever hear of keeping a low profile?
As far as apologizing for "my hate speech" if anything I've said here on this blog has been taken in the context to cause violence to anyone, then I apologize sincerely for it.
Will Sarah Palin do the same?
How do you know it was what Sarah Palin said, or what was said by anyone else on the right, that triggered Loughner's attack? How do you know it wasn't that BlueBoy diary that was scrubbed on Moulitsas' site? How do you know it wasn't what Democrat Mark Penn said, that an Oklahoma City-like tragedy, that Americans had to die, in order for Obama to reconnect with the American people? That's pretty disgusting. Maybe it's those people who should apologize instead. Or yourself. You say you'd only apologize if proof exists showing your hate speech caused violence to someone. Yet, you demand Palin apologize even though there isn't any evidence tying her words to this tragedy. You can say you can have it both ways, but that just shows a blatant hypocrisy on your part.
Or this tragedy had nothing to do with anyone on the right or the left and was strictly Loughner and his mental issues, in which case, nobody else need do what you demand.
By the way, if that is what you call an apology for the venomous hate speech you put out regularly, you know where you can put it. Not accepted. I can tell it isn't sincere because you'll keep doing it.
I really don't give a shit what you think about it, Steve. I really don't.
Find some other blog to pollute. I'm sick of you. Now matter what I say, you'll attack it.
That's just the way you'll always be.
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