-
Website
http://themoderatevoice.com/ -
Original page
http://themoderatevoice.com/44683/rhetoric-is-now-dangerously-beneath-contempt/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
Why Obama wants to eat your children
The Right is more Right than Hilter
The CIA wants to eat your grandmother
Why not let them murder? Better them than me
These attack filled, fact vacant debates are getting tiresome. And now these guys are joking about hunting the POTUS.
Say what?!?!?!
Was that a joke, Shannonlee, or am I wrong to assume that RCP stands for Real Clear Politics? I've never seen anything like the headlines you cited there.
To be fair, the source of Obama demonization is not the media (aside from Murdoch outlets like Fox News). But they are giving a lot more credence to rightwing protesters than they ever did Bush-era to leftwing protesters.
Again: discussion on this post is GREAT. I just had to clear it up on RCP and TMV
I was responding to a couple of frequent TMV commenters here who were making assertions about RCP that I found incredibly inaccurate. I assume, since you do in fact use RCP as a source, that you'd agree with me on the inaccuracy of their statements.
Now, I probably shouldn't have gone in the direction of bringing TMV into it at all. and for that I apologize. The reason I did was because I do sometimes find myself scratching my head as to where people get their ideas, and why they seem to be viewing our political world from such an angle (and yeah, I know, we all think that we're the reasonable ones and everyone else is a partisan whacko...but still...) I think it's a big problem that people won't even look at other sites that might be examining the news and opinion from one side or the other- even if that site is not into the kind of inflammatory and propagandistic type of stuff which shannonlee alleged was the case for RCP (and it's simply NOT.)
When you look at Memeorandum, too, increasingly you see that left or left leaning blogs only link to certain stories while right or right leaning blogs only link to certain other stories. Everyone seems to be comfortable with reading what confirms their own preexisting biases instead of being willing to challenge their views.
As to your initial post- I really didn't comment on it at all, but was responding to a tangent that came up in the comments. I obviously (or in case it wasn't obvious) condemn any jokes that in any way insinuate assassination of any elected official.
Oh, and in case it sounds schizophrenic that I did make that comment about who TMV links to and what I'm saying here about your own linking habits, Joe, my initial comment was in regard to the blog as a whole. I've said before that my feeling about bias here has to do with certain bloggers, and the periods of time when certain people post prolifically while others who provide balance to them aren't posting as much. That's strictly my opinion- some people may agree, some may disagree- but what I'm getting at is that the blog as a whole doesn't always follow your lead (and I realize that it's impossible for a group blog to achieve that kind of consistency.)
I retract my reference to Shannonlee's early comment. Thanks for pointing that out.
In answer to tidbits, the only way I see sort of behavior to stop this is for people in their own parties to start policing the discourse. I never had more respect for John McCain than the town hall where he snatched the microphone from a woman who was scared of the "Arab Hussein Obama" and defended him as an American.
"American." That's a funny term, isn't it? Not one you hear much these days. I'll say it again: hate sells and those being sold on hate are being suckered by people who are laughing all the way to the bank. I'm sure Rex Rammell has talkshow opportunities waiting for him after he loses in primaries.
Being an unknown voice that people can hear is exhilarating. Conversations on the site especially allow for exchange of opposing views with people you'd never meet otherwise. Another factor most people don't realize is one's opinion can be regionally shaped on an almost unconscious level, so "common sense" or "common knowledge " can be found to be neither when you say it here.
Sleazy rhetoric demonstrates a simple mind lacking intellectual discipline. If someone tells you a racist joke at work, walk away. If someone writes a racist comment, jump em hard knowing the anonymity works both ways.
Don't blame the internet for the weak minded, evil stuff put out there. Despite its revulsion, you certainly can no longer pretend it doesn't exist.
IMO
and do not lift a finger to turn the coversation back to something actually reality based.
And yes, Senator Grassley, I'm looking right at you.
But Bush also enjoyed 90+% approval ratings after 9/11. He was given a pass until it was clear Iraq was an unqualified disaster.
Obama, on the other hand, has been the target of vicious (and often untrue) rightwing attacks since the McCain campaign led the way last year.
It's interesting to try and dissect this because in provides insight in a Left vs. Right mindset. Mockery of Bush by Stewart, Colbert and the like consisted of dry witticisms of how Bush was led like a child by Darth Cheney or was an evil Machivellian genius bent on eroding American liberty. The Right, in contrast, goes for vicious humor (partially because there's so much competition for shock value) quite quickly. Plus there's a racial dimension as well which Republicans are trying to tap into. Obama as leftwing bomber, Obama as the white Granny killer, Obama staring at a woman's ass with all the associated lust of a black man, Obama as a foreigner, black radical, etc.
So I agree the Right wing hate is more fantastic, more paranoid, and more vicious, and much less subtle than the liberal contempt Bush received. I also agree it's more dangerous, because homegrown terrorism comes from the Right these days, not the Left.
But invading Iraq was undeniably wrong and purely stupid, while for Obama the criticism ranges from the wonky and knowledgeable to the purely insane, yet *all* this criticism is legitimized by high-ranking republicans no matter the quality or substance. The BDS was simply more justified, often reality-based even when it was very combative and blatant in tone, yet less accepted. The DNC would never have been allowed to sympathize or indulge anti-war protesters of the kind exemplified in the article. White, lower-class and heartland grievances about "government" are acceptable political tools for the GOP, while the DNC had to be very careful about the tone and pitch of its criticism during Bush's first term.
On the left right split the left began going after Bush hard after he invaded Iraq. The right has yet to stop going after Obama hard. The left disavowed the protestors and extremists on their side, notice how those anti-terror laws that would never be used against US citizens were used against eco-terrorists without any protest from the media nor from lefty pols.
The right on the other hand uses the extremists talking points and takes their side and when an abortion clinic is attacked, which is just as much terrorism as the eco-terrorists no terror charges are made because the right would go nuclear.
The problem is not the extremists and protestors its that one side stokes the flames and the other has to distance themselves from them. I find it hard to call this both sides problem when one side is taking it much further and much faster than the other side did.
Do not get me wrong I do understand that this is a greatly weakened rep party trying to re-build itself but again that does not make it right nor equivalent. Bush was given more of a pass after TWO highly contested elections than Obama has been given after a land slide, something seems fishy about trying to make this equal.
So, mildly insulting someone is the same as joking about assassination?
And what do you do when those in congress spout the death panel rhetoric? Or is rhetoric about a program fair game? If it is, I would argue that any president advocating killing grandma is in the same danger as an abortion doctor who murders babies. The line between rhetoric and insane action has been crossed long before this latest example of Obama tags.
Where do you draw that line?
Anyway- my earlier comment was that off the top of my head, the first example that came to mind was Pete Stark during the SCHIP debate saying that Bush ought to want to keep kids healthy since he was sending them to Iraq to 'get their heads blown off for his amusement.'
I think he did apologize eventually, but it's still way beyond the pale to say something like that and I don't see how it would differ in terms of inciting potential violence against the president than your example of Tiller being publicly called a baby killer, or the potential to incite it against Obama or any other Dem for the 'death panel' or euthanasia of grandma.
I knew you would come through with an example on the left.
My point being, save elections, how do people elevate the political discussion out of the slime-fest that is more and more common. I wouldn't vote for Stark for dog-killer after a comment like that.
www.reddit.com
www.drudgereport.com balanced against www.huffingtonpost.com
www.politico.com
english.aljazeera.net/
Outside the beltway
The Moderate Voice
www.politicshome.usa.com
I check some others but these are the ones I check pretty religiously. If the title is offensive to one side or the other I tend to not even bother as its pretty obvious what views they hold and I am tired of being insulted. I am also tired of the other side being insulted. I am interested in actual news and not opinion. If I want opinion I come here or Outside The Beltway or Reddit since I tend to prefer comment strings to the actual articles and on those sites the debunkable is often debunked which is why I use them.
RCP lost me when too many of their titles became inflamatory and I moved to politicshome and found a larger selection to read from and many more blogs as the handful that RCP used to have were shaded a heavy red when I quit checking them.
I will say that most of the above sites rarely if ever make me happy because they are speaking what I already believe. This could be because I am somewhere between a socialist and a libertarian or it could be because I am a history geek and both sides are always trying to re-write history. I realized that every time I clicked on an inflammatory article I gave them one more reason to post more inflammatory articles so I stopped. The best way to silence the extreme voices is to ignore them. Clicking the links to be "moderate" is a path to further extremism as much as being an extreme right or leftist gives you no standing to whine about the other sides extremism. It reminds me of the 90's habit of flipping between CBS/ABC and Fox and calling yourself a moderate while not understanding that all of your media is coming from corporate financially conservative media though the Fox portion is in the more extreme camp.
TMV's inflammatory titles I tend to ignore because the titles and the articles rarely remain on one side only which is why I like the site.
And that's where I'm puzzled about RCP because to me it seems slightly right leaning, but also provides balance from sources like TNR, Salon, Krugman, etc, and their headlines seem pretty straightforward. Maybe they went through a period of being more snarky with the headlines, but if so I must have missed it. An example of a rightie site that does that is Hotair, and I have to admit to some guilty pleasure laughing at some of their titles (while also sometimes rolling eyes or feeling they've gone too far.)
As for tidbit's question ("what can we do about it?"), I have long had the idea that a lot of this is the consequence of gerrymandered voting districts. Since candidates in these districts don't really have the slightest chance of loosing to a candidate from the opposing party, they don't have to talk about, or even consider, opposing views, and therefore they pander more and more to the base. As a result of this, all thoughts of moderation, reasonableness, or civility are out the door.
Now, I don't really have any good way to fix this, but surely someone somewhere could come up with a way to redistrict so that each side would have to take into consideration the views and thoughts of the other side in order to get elected. Independent judicial panels, maybe? Again, I'm not sure, but it should definitely be taken out of the hands of the individual state legislatures.
But first let me be clear that I do not continence assassination talk (thought I made that clear, but guess I didn't). It's over the top and should be investigated by the Secret Service and FBI. Period.
Back to the point. I liked the comment about T-shirts and Obama as the Joker. Ok, that's unacceptable to me. But, does anyone remember the T-shirts with GWB as Alfred E. Newman, or the post cards with GWB depicted as Alfred E Newman with the tag line "A village has lost its idiot" ? Just asking. Lit3 is right. We've turned personal political attacks into an industry, and both sides do it.
Why is it that Republicans can see it when Democrats do it, and Democrats can see it when Republicans do it, but neither side can acknowledge that their side does it? It's amazing how partisans are so bliind to their own flaws but so quick to identify the same flaws in their opponents.
Exactly - this is hardly anything new, and both sides will laugh it off if it's directed at their opponent and take it seriously if it's directed towards their party.
Have Democrats forgotten this kind of stuff?:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/kilborn1.html
The internet issue, however, transcends our internal political dialogue. We no longer call the opposition names in the easy chairs of our living rooms among friends or have editors culling out over-the-top letters to the editor. Instead, our rancor is spread around the world in the blink of an eye. Question: what effect does this have on our image in the rest of the world? Do we look disfunctional, hateful, both, something else?
Until recently I would have agreed with those here who suggest the Right is worse than the Left, but I have changed my view. Subtlety vs. explicitness is no excuse...that's just a matter of how the offensive message is delivered and does not go the offensiveness of the message itself. When D's suggest, however subtly, that R thinking should be equated with "trailer trash", it is not likely to endear the opposition or foster bi-partisanship. Same is true the other way around.
But, I still want to ask the question: is there anything that can be done to stop it or at least calm the waters?
The real question is what can be done to stop it or at least calm it down? Constantly publicizing the latest bile seems to have an escalating effect, not an ameliorating effect.
Btw, even in your comment you accuse the GOP of catering to the "white lower class". If you think about it, that too is disparaging of the other side, and insinuates, at least as I read it, racism or tolerance of racism by Republicans.
Now, this isn't a Left vs. Right issue now I think. I think ever since Clinton was elected, demonizing the President has turned into a cottage industry that's simply exploited by businesses. Books, radio, TV, internet, and tons of bumper stickers with custom tailored vitriol just for whatever party is out of the White House at the moment. I mean, Bush was being compared to a monkey and a daddy's boy as soon as he was elected too. Now it's Obama's turn to be smeared as a socialist or a sociopath or a Chicago mobster.
Hate sells. That's about all there is to it.
Sad but very, very true. A combination of hate, constant one-upsmanship and a constant race for more shrill hyperbole & rhetoric.
Real Clear Politics Friday
How Will Ted Kennedy Be Remembered? - Jay Winik, Wall Street Journal
A Prince With Purpose - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
Kennedy's Big Government Paternalism - Cathy Young, RealClearPolitics
Obama Slips to 50% in the Gallup Poll - Mark Silva, Los Angeles Times
Fixing Health Care Is Good for Business - Sec. of Commerce Gary Locke, WSJ
Can Dems Rescue ObamaCare? - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
Mistakes Were Made But Fight is Far From Over - Jonathan Cohn, TNR
Obama's Carrousel of Incompetence - Emmett Tyrrell, American Spectator
Incurring Deficits Through Haste and Waste - Jay Ambrose, OC Register
Don't Be Frightened by the Deficits - Paul Krugman, New York Times
Afghanistan: U.S. Can't Win Without Major Reforms - Fred Kaplan, Slate
Obama's Mideast Vision: Confusion - Michael Young, Daily Star
Congress Should Investigate Bush's Crimes - Christopher Hayes, The Nation
We Need 'Rough Men' at the CIA - Pat Buchanan, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Kennedy Inspired Change, Progress - Gordon Brown, Boston Globe
The Reagans and the Kennedys - Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
Bringing the Myth Down to Earth - David Von Drehle, Time
Clips on Kennedy: O'Reilly | Olbermann | Shrum | Rove | Biden | Hatch
RCP Blog: Crist Taps Former Chief of Staff for Vacant Senate Seat
If you guys refuse to look at RCP because of articles like these, I don't know what to say. It's no wonder people are getting such a leftward skew though if you think that such a site is off limits for being 'off a partisan cliff.' I'd venture to bet that there are more left leaning source materials there than you'll find right leaning links here at TMV.
You're right, only half are incendiary, the other half I agree with :-)
Seriously though, a well reasoned argument is no problem. Where people typically see extreme or tasteless statements is in the comments. Not necessarily RCP, I'm talking generally here.
My problem is the lowering of congressional bald face scare tactics that have surfaced in the past few years. How can an elected rep or sen say he believes there's a call for "death panels?" I don't recall a dem making such outlandish statements, but I'm sure you'll point out any i have missed.
And, yes, ShannonLee was clearly doing hyperbole for effect........she was reading too many Jazz columns lately!