The Moderate Voice - Latest Comments in Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

Leonidas — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:54:17 -0000

As long as the far right and the far left think they can get mileage out of it they will keep it up. The left is now demonizing their moderates just as the right did when they were in power. Maybe on day moderates will disregard the idiots whether they be progressives on the left or the religious right on the other side. Too often moderates let slide (myself included) the remarks of the kooks on the side they are currently closer to on an issue. We need to call out both fringes and make fun of them both.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

Leonidas — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:54:17 -0000

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

Slamfu — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:33:43 -0000

Well, buchanans "We Need &#39Rough Men&#39 at the CIA" sounds a lot like the grandmother eating one.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

HemmD — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:54:24 -0000

Thanks

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&#39t vote for Stark for dog-killer after a comment like that.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

casualobserver — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:04:03 -0000

I think a whole host of reasons are in play........media chasing readership/viewership with sensationalism, politics often attracting people that couldn&#39t get or hold down real jobs with the same level of power, anonymous internet giving certain people a sense of bravado that they couldn&#39t muster in real life........and to take on Mr. Gandelman specifically, whatever the teacher allows in the classroom.

And, yes, ShannonLee was clearly doing hyperbole for effect........she was reading too many Jazz columns lately!

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

tidbits — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:23:47 -0000

CS - Yeah, having the same problem with Disqus here. Every time I move around on TMV, I have to log back in to comment or even hit a "like" button. Very annoying.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

TheMagicalSkyFather — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:08:17 -0000

CStanley, I did not take it personally I just tend to take extreme stances so I assume that I am considered extreme and therefore wanted to explain my sources in case anyone thought I was coming from elsewhere. On the RCP thing Drudge is more extreme but Huffington is one sided as well and I use them to balance one another and I also rarely click on links that look like tabloid news which means I read little from either website. RCP moved off of my list when they struck me as a web version of Fox that seemed to prefer inflammatory material for the right and left so I moved to politicshome because they had more choices but always have the ones from RCP as well. If I could not get that news elsewhere I probably would still check them but the site I traded them for I am very found of.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:56:28 -0000

Hemm, I tried to reply earlier to your first comment about this (where you asked for similar examples from Dems) but Disqus is acting up for me today (is it me or do other people have trouble with inability to stay logged on? And then today I&#39m getting an error message saying I&#39m posting too quickly, but even after waiting and attempting again I get the same error message.)

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 &#39get their heads blown off for his amusement.&#39

I think he did apologize eventually, but it&#39s still way beyond the pale to say something like that and I don&#39t 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 &#39death panel&#39 or euthanasia of grandma.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:45:02 -0000

I really wasn&#39t referring specifically to you, and didn&#39t intend for anyone to have to list every site they frequent, but thanks for the response. I&#39m actually surprised you are OK with Drudge but not RCP- I think the latter is much more balanced and takes fewer liberties with the headlines.

And that&#39s where I&#39m 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&#39ve gone too far.)

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

derHundepo — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:31:11 -0000

C&#39mon, folks, ease up on ShannonLee a bit. I&#39m reading that comment as a bit of levity as an example of the tone of some of the articles&#39 titles. And, yes, sometimes that is, indeed, the tone that is found there. I check that site pretty much every day, and sometimes it really is like, hey, anything good today? Nope, just more people screaming that the world is ending from their narrow point of view. It goes back to MagicSkyFather&#39s comment about the media being in it for the money - I fully agree, and what gets exposure, hits, etc., better than a flashy over-the-top headline?

As for tidbit&#39s 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&#39t really have the slightest chance of loosing to a candidate from the opposing party, they don&#39t 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&#39t 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&#39m not sure, but it should definitely be taken out of the hands of the individual state legislatures.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

TheMagicalSkyFather — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:24:33 -0000

CStanley- As I will assume I am considered on an extreme side. I can tell you where I get my news.

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&#39s 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&#39s 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.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

HemmD — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:23:03 -0000

CS

And what do you do when those in congress spout te death panel rhetoric? Ot 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?

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:10:31 -0000

Hemm, just off the top of my head there was this from Pete Stark.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

tidbits — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:01:29 -0000

CS - Base on your prior comment, I went to RCP & did a search for the titles referred to by Shannonlee. While this was just a cusory search, I found no such titles.

I retract my reference to Shannonlee&#39s early comment. Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:55:40 -0000

I will add one more comment about the subject of the post itself- I tend to feel that talking about incendiary rhetoric too much tends to amplify it instead of having a chilling effect. I always thought (and I believe may have even been told this) that some of the more incendiary speech against Bush (like an assassination snuff film that came out in Canada) was deliberately not talked about here, as an editorial decision not to give any credence to people like that. I think the same general idea should hold now- let the SS determine how to protect the president from legitimate threats, and don&#39t give any extra airtime to idiots who want to crank up the potentially violent factions.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

DLS — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:45:59 -0000

It wasn&#39t "now dangerously beneath contempt" when Reagan or Bush were the object of much worse behavior. But then again, neither of them had a health care takeover attempt they and their party had sought that is now truly in trouble, either.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:41:00 -0000

Joe, just to clarify- I completely agree that you do seem to link to sites like RCP and to some of the sources that they quote, and I didn&#39t mean to imply otherwise.

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&#39d agree with me on the inaccuracy of their statements.

Now, I probably shouldn&#39t 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&#39re the reasonable ones and everyone else is a partisan whacko...but still...) I think it&#39s a big problem that people won&#39t 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&#39s 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&#39t comment on it at all, but was responding to a tangent that came up in the comments. I obviously (or in case it wasn&#39t obvious) condemn any jokes that in any way insinuate assassination of any elected official.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

HemmD — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:39:50 -0000

CS

You&#39re 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&#39m 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&#39s a call for "death panels?" I don&#39t recall a dem making such outlandish statements, but I&#39m sure you&#39ll point out ant i have missed.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

Slamfu — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:33:43 -0000

Well, buchanans "We Need 'Rough Men' at the CIA" sounds a lot like the grandmother eating one.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

joegandelman — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:29:11 -0000

CStanley: I don&#39t get involved in comments but must answer yours since it is inaccurate to say the LEAST. I personally link a LOT to RealClearPolitics AND RealClearWorld. In fact, I occassionallly do link to their content or particularly on foreign issues link to them, quote a bit from their post and do my own commentary. It is one of the sites I LINK TO MOST. Even if they had 200,000 articles on it, no matter how much I did or didn&#39t link to it, it does not obscure THIS STORY and the issue it raises about the coarsening and rhetorical violence in American political discussion. It&#39s inaccurate to so say the least. And if you emailed those folks they will confirm that TMV links to it a lot because it has such great content. This is NOT a "left" or "right" issue but there are some Americans (like me) who see not just a polarization but increasing comments in terms of violence and the fanning of hatreds that could end badly. What would have happened if a politician made a joke like this 10 years ago? Or 8? Or 20? Or 30? Or right after the murders of JFK, RFK, MML, Jr, the attempted assassination of Ford, Reagan? Their name would be mud and the bulk of voters of both parties would consider them a kook, at worst, and a politician who doesn&#39t consider the weight of words at best. Again: a)not a right or left issue b)yes, we know and link to RCP a lot of TMV, have and do. I love the comments you and others leave on the site...but there is no way I can let THAT assertion stands. I raise theissue again: if THIS is where we are trending in what people think is "cute..witty" and appropriate to say give the country&#39s problems with political murders, high school shootings, etc. then exactly where are we heading as the bar is lowered so far down that you see a Welcome To The South Pole sign? There ARE thinking people in both parties who wish a lot of people on BOTH SIDES who use this kind of rhetoric would just go away. Unfortunately, I am concluding that those who tolerate and enable it are in the majority in voting. And if you think we are polarized, now, how polarized will the country be if someone on the right or left is hurt by someone on the right or left who didn&#39t quite get the joke part of the...alleged joke? (I&#39ll be offline all day)
Again: discussion on this post is GREAT. I just had to clear it up on RCP and TMV

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

TheMagicalSkyFather — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:26:09 -0000

CStanley- I actually have not looked at RCP since right before the election at which point the headlines were much as the other poster noted. If I want right leaning news I get that from Drudge every day, I see no need to fund advertising dollars for a website that went as far as they did in promoting people like Malkin. I am glad that they have calmed back down though. They used to be one of my favorite sites to read but I swapped them for politicshome.com.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:08:38 -0000

RCP leans right as an aggregator, but there&#39s nothing remotely similar to the kind of rhetoric that shannon claimed in her fake headlines. Here&#39s a link to today&#39s offerings. Examples:
Real Clear Politics Friday
How Will Ted Kennedy Be Remembered? - Jay Winik, Wall Street Journal
A Prince With Purpose - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
Kennedy&#39s 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&#39s Carrousel of Incompetence - Emmett Tyrrell, American Spectator
Incurring Deficits Through Haste and Waste - Jay Ambrose, OC Register
Don&#39t Be Frightened by the Deficits - Paul Krugman, New York Times
Afghanistan: U.S. Can&#39t Win Without Major Reforms - Fred Kaplan, Slate
Obama&#39s Mideast Vision: Confusion - Michael Young, Daily Star
Congress Should Investigate Bush&#39s Crimes - Christopher Hayes, The Nation
We Need &#39Rough Men&#39 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&#39Reilly | 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&#39t know what to say. It&#39s no wonder people are getting such a leftward skew though if you think that such a site is off limits for being &#39off a partisan cliff.&#39 I&#39d venture to bet that there are more left leaning source materials there than you&#39ll find right leaning links here at TMV.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

HemmD — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:06:16 -0000

The internet is not to blame for these extremes except for the anonymous nature we all rely on to state out views. When my kids first started hitting the web, I explained it as a big city, and like all big cities, there are streets you don&#39t want to travel.

Being an unknown voice that people can hear is exhilarating. Conversations on the site especially allow for exchange of opposing views with people you&#39d never meet otherwise. Another factor most people don&#39t realize is one&#39s 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&#39t blame the internet for the weak minded, evil stuff put out there. Despite its revulsion, you certainly can no longer pretend it doesn&#39t exist.

IMO

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

TheMagicalSkyFather — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:03:06 -0000

CStanley-This is actually why I stopped reading RCP as well, they went a bit off a partisan cliff and I have not gone back since.

Re: Rhetoric Is Now Dangerously Beneath Contempt

CStanley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:55:44 -0000

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

Say what?!?!?!

Was that a joke, Shannonlee, or am I wrong to assume that RCP stands for Real Clear Politics? I&#39ve never seen anything like the headlines you cited there.