Patriotically Murdering Patroits, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #204
January 10, 2011 Mike Gold 0 Comments
We have been told Jared Loughner is a “pot smoking loner.” So the right-wing is blaming Saturday’s terrorism on marijuana? Really? I thought they were better than that. Besides, I know several conservatives who were pot smoking loners, and only one of them ever tried to kill someone. In his case, that someone was himself.
And, evidently, this particular loner had at least one friend.
The issue isn’t the politics of the shooter or the propensity for “lone crazed madmen” to shoot politicians, it’s how as a matter of political discourse we have been encouraging violent and lethal rhetoric. Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, and countless right-wing politicians have promoted this type of imagery in order to spread their message of hate.
These days left-wingers tend not to go about advocating lethal violence (note: I said these days, not 40 years ago or the late 19th century). Palin, Limbaugh, Beck and their ilk do. In the 21st century, it’s the right-wing thing to do. We’ve got a lot of one- and two-man militias out there – remember Oklahoma City? – and some of them are indeed lone crazed madmen. The more they receive encouragement, the more people are going to get killed – even moderates, as yesterday’s shooting tells us.
That gun-sight map of Sarah Palin’s has received a lot of exposure over the past 48 hours. Palin aide Rebecca Mansour told a radio program “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps… There was nothing irresponsible about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday’s shooting is obscene and appalling… I never went out and blamed Al Gore or any environmentalist for the crazy insane person who went to shoot up the Discovery Channel.” Then she went on to declare Jared Loughner a liberal. “It seems that he people that knew him said that he was left-wing and very liberal.”
What I don’t get is why the rabid-right doesn’t understand that video tape and digital recording actually works. Sarah Palin is on the record as calling the cross-hairs as “bull’s-eyes.” We already knew Sarah Palin and her Tea Baggers were insane and very stupid. I just wish they’d stop being so prissy. It’s bad art.
Let’s play a game. Let’s say the target was Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer. How do you think the right would have responded?
“Terrorism from the left. Kill the terrorists.”
O.K. Now let’s say the shooter was Muslim. How do you think the right would have responded?
“Terrorism from Arabia. Kill the terrorists.”
I just can’t shake that hinky feeling that this is the start of something. It’s the way movements usually start: rouse the rabble. Nothing specific planned, just let well-stoked hatred take its course. It works for Al Qaeda, it worked for the National Socialist German Workers‘ Party, and it works for the Tea Baggers. I am truly afraid of the domino effect. My heart goes out to the many victims, and my heart also goes out to the United States of America. Those who have been so public about trying to “restore America to its roots” are succeeding.
I find myself referring to George Santayana just about every day now.
Wag, media wonk and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his truly offensive Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants are unleashed each and every day at the same venue.
Martha Thomases
January 10, 2011 - 9:47 am
While it is true that there are those on the left who advocate violence, they are not leaders of the movement. They are not running for President, nor do they get paid enormous salaries by media companies.
Palin, Beck, Bachman et alia are, and do.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 11:11 am
Mike, I have total respect for you, which is why I’m disappointed that you jumped on the “let’s blame conservatives” for the actions of a kid who was no more a “conservative influenced by Palin, Beck Limbaugh, et al” than you are.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 11:41 am
Russ, it wasn’t Keith Olbermann who was calling for Americans to pick up their guns. It wasn’t Rachel Maddow who was publishing target sites over congressmen’s districts.
It wasn’t Maureen Dowd who preached “… if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.” It wasn’t Fareed Zakaria who said “Dr. Laura: don’t retreat…reload!” It wasn’t Jon Stewart who said “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.”
It wasn’t Joshua Micah Marshall who said “The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them.” It wasn’t Arianna Huffington who said about President Obama “He has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.”
I can blame conservatives such as Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Beck, Palin and their ink for actively promoting an atmosphere of politically-directed violence, including murder, for one simple reason: their words speak for themselves. Ted Kaczynski might get a pass because he distanced himself from the media as all good Ludites do. Jared Loughner, on the other hand, had no such excuse.
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 12:35 pm
Yeah, this is a total tragedy with the only potentially redemptive aspect being that the mainstream media can no longer duck its responsibility to calling out those reprehensibly responsible voices that both started and stoked the flames of madness and hatred. It is my fervent prayer that saner voices will now have the courage to rise and take a stand and scatter the roaches so that the a less toxic atmosphere will deter other atrocities being planned.
@ Russ….not to start beef, but no sir…there is absolutely no way to separate the PBL’s from their culpability in this.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 12:40 pm
Well, as someone who for decades now has watched popular culture villains with blatant “conservative characteristics” routinely get gunned down, stabbed, beheaded, crushed, disemboweled, vaporized, fried and killed every possible manner imagineable, your argument rings about as hollow as an argument can ring.
In films (and comics) today, the most despicable villains are most often business professionals, members of the church, members of the armed services, members of the government (including cops), or rednecks (in liberal parlance, anyone from middle America).
One caveate: PC “rules” dictate that when villains are depicted as servicemembers or government officials, they are almost always framed as Republicans/conservative types — you know, to differentiate them from the good guys (i.e., the liberals). Small solice, indeed.
Do you think 3-4 decades of popular culture incessantly depicting conservatives as cold-blooded murderers and/or fascists has helped make our political dialogue today more civil?
I don’t think so.
Martha Thomases
January 10, 2011 - 1:13 pm
@Russ: You’re changing the subject from political leaders and journalist/opinionator types to pop culture. I’m not saying that the pop culture to which you refer doesn’t hurt your feelings, just pointing out there there is a difference between fiction and reality. Usually.
Heroes have always battled against foes, and the more powerful those foes, the more heroic our heroes. Just this weekend, for example, I watched the new CLASH OF THE TITANS (awful, don’t bother) and our heroes in this film battled gods. And monsters.
In other words, I don’t think what you’re citing is an example of PC as much as an acknowledgement of where the power is. In modern times, it tends to be business (and/or rich people) and government leaders.
Churches have always been powerful. That’s why Jesus threw out the money lenders.
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 1:14 pm
I really am trying hard to connect the dots in your argument to find reasons to reverse my assertion that the decisions and actions of this murderer was in no way influenced by the rhetoric and thinly veiled ‘instructions to act’ by the PBL’s of the world, but I’m failing in the effort.
Whereas I definitely agree that there are hypocrites and malicious voices within the ‘liberal’ camp, I think that you would be willing to admit that the adherents to the ideology of the modern era have been more motivated to employ peaceful means to address the ills and evil of society than violent ones.
And I truly can’t see how anyone can take what both sides have revealed thru both actions and documented statements, lay them side by side and view with an unbiased eye and not see with clarity where the vast majority of the poison is being spewed forth.
The reality of the situation is…that if the shoes fit, you can’t acquit.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 1:18 pm
No, but it’s been great fun.
Your argument raises the specter of the “great liberal media” myth — that the media is liberal and it foists its views on an unsuspecting (and, therefore, according to these conspiracy theorists, mammothly stupid) audience. Personally, I have more respect for your average conservative than that.
To a class warrior such as my self, no company that pays its top executives seven figures while laying off the trolls in the basement is “liberal.” Time Warner has employed Robert Bork. Murdoch employed Michael Davis. MSNBC is owned (currently and for the past many years) by one of the largest war profiteers in history. I’ve raised money for a Head Start program from THE most right-wing “think tank” around. Everybody farts in the swimming pool.
But the level of rhetoric for the past few years is obscene. Maybe it would have been the same 40 years ago had left-wingers owned commercial radio the way the right does now — although Beck is losing major radio stations the way a snake sheds its skin, but radio was just as right-wing back then as it is now. Howard Miller couldn’t get a syndication deal.
As a first amendment absolutist, I have lived by the concept “say what you want, but take responsibility for what you say.” Still do.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 1:19 pm
Reg — “if the shoes fit, you can’t acquit.” Yeah, I think I heard something like that before. I think it was in a Leslie Nielson movie.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 2:07 pm
Mike wrote: “As a first amendment absolutist, I have lived by the concept “say what you want, but take responsibility for what you say.” Still do.”
I agree.
But my problem with your original essay is there is no proof that this kid was influenced one whit by any of the conservative folks you (and others) have railed against on your post-assassination bully pulpit.
One of the biggest-hit video games of the year is titled “Red Dead Redemption,” which I’ve played all the way through. It’s about a former murderous outlaw, circa 1911, who attempts to atone for his past sins and go straight.
(SPOILER ALERT) You know the big villain of that game is? A government official who’s a kind of like a federal marshall assigned to clean up the western territory the story takes place in. Near the end of the game, this official, once he has gotten the anti-hero to do all of his dirty work, kills (with the help of the U.S. Army) the anti-hero in a blaze of gunfire at the anti-hero’s home in front of his wife and 15-year-old son. You know how the game ends? Three years later, the adult son of the dead anti-hero hunts down the now-retired public official and guns him down while he’s minding his own business camping out.
Wouldn’t it be a surprise if we eventually found out Giffords’ assailant was a big fan of video games — and “Red Dead Redemption” in particular?
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 2:38 pm
Curious after banging out my last post, I Googled a few things about Mr. Loughner. Below is an interesting quote from one of the assailant’s friends. Note what it says about video games…
“All he did was play video games and play music,” said Tommy Marriotti, a high school friend. Mr. Marriotti said much of Mr. Loughner’s free time was devoted to the school band. He wasn’t especially political, Mr. Marriotti said, though he expressed frustration with the Bush Administration.
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 2:42 pm
@ Russ…So you’re asserting that this ‘kid’ despite living in polarized AZ, having access to news media via internet, TV, and radio, likely had absolutely NO idea that certain folks had promoted targeted dialogue – both visual and verbal – against the specific government legislator whose political stances were in opposition to said folks?
You’re saying that no legitimate arguments of association can be made connecting his actions and those aforementioned statements and visuals?
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 2:46 pm
Russ wrote: “there is no proof that this kid was influenced one whit by any of the conservative folks.”
Yep. That’s the point. I’m pointing to the current batch of communicators, but its roots go back to Thomas Nast and even before Puck magazine. We have fostered an environment that is exceptionally violent in its rhetoric. Obviously, being in the comics business and having that damned sense of history, I don’t blame video games any more than my parents blamed The Three Stooges for my poking people’s eyes out. But we’ve grown from making scurrilous slams based upon a politician’s sexual and procreative peccadilloes to actually using a lot of violent death imagery.
Assuming Loughner hasn’t been Zangara-ed, whether he’s a Glenn Beck fan or a Stalinist (and his range of reading material is amusingly wide) he’s clearly been exposed to the same stuff everybody else is, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting he’s likely a nut job and found support and solace from the tenor of the times.
MOTU
January 10, 2011 - 2:51 pm
I wrote some time ago that the ‘call to arms’ talk and ‘Obama as a monkey’ images at Tea Party rally’s seemed to want to invite a race war. I’m hard on the GOP & Conservatives in general but I don’t think the rank and file is THAT crazy.
The Tea Party is not the rank and file. Some in The Tea Party are to the GOP what radical Islam is to Muslims.
THOSE motherfuckers ARE crazy and the GOP knows this. As a party that uses fear, having crazy on your side makes good press for the GOP.
Who tells a crazy person, ‘Don’t retreat, reload’?
Neil C.
January 10, 2011 - 2:51 pm
Wow…I posted a link to this on my facebook page and was accused by someone of “SPEWING HATE AGAIN…. WITHOUT HAVING YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.” I guess a rational discussion when you don’t agree with the premise is hateful!
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 2:52 pm
Also, it might be interesting to determine the political leanings of Loughner’s parents. I’m not in any way blaming them for their son’s mental illness, but might shed light on whether there indeed was some degree of influence received while in the home based on preferred news channels and dinner table conversation.
And the following directive from Fox’s CEO Roger Ailes is telling. IMO.
‘Fox News CEO Roger Ailes said that he has told his network to “tone it down”.
“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” Ailes said. You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.”
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 2:55 pm
Neil, I wish I could say I’m surprised. Look at the dialog Russ has initiated: everybody’s respectful, everybody says their piece politely, there’s give-and-take, and points are listened to and considered.
That’s why I love MDW.
And, yes, this old bomb-thrower is getting old. Proudly.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 2:57 pm
Reg, I wish I could trust Ailes. He’s a very decent, interesting man on a one-to-one basis, and his old interview show on MSNBC (or was it CNBC — I can’t tell the difference back in those days) was fairly respectful. But Fox “News” is so ugly-bad I can’t type Fox “News” without the quotation marks.
Neil C.
January 10, 2011 - 3:09 pm
One other thing I was just thinking: the Right will say that you can’t blame them for the actions of one ‘lone nut.’ But wasn’t this the same people (including Tipper Gore) who were willing the blame rock music for causing kids to commit suicide?
Bill Mulligan
January 10, 2011 - 3:15 pm
Tipper Gore is on the right???
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 3:31 pm
Neil, it’s the same mentality. The lone nuts kill other people because they’re nuts. Rock music kills people because it’s Satanic. Or Negro, if you’re over 60.
Putting aside the issue of how probable is it that every political assassination attempt except one was the work of a single lone crazed gunman, even most of the lone nuts operate out of the same society we all live in. That’s not an excuse for slamming down on our rights, but it is a plea for greater responsibility. And that means eating a little crow instead of getting all defensive.
Oh, and for those who aren’t blessed with a brain full of dark crevasses, that one exception was in 1954 when four Puerto Rican nationalists — one woman, three men — attacked the the House of Representatives chamber from the visitors’ gallery. Five Congressmen were shot. The attackers were sentenced to death, but Eisenhower commuted the sentences to 70 years in prison. All were released 25 years later; three were traded to Cuba for incarcerated CIA agents.
Wonder why I haven’t heard that story lately?
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 3:41 pm
Reg wrote: “You’re saying that no legitimate arguments of association can be made connecting his actions and those aforementioned statements and visuals?”
That’s exactly what I’m saying. For all we know he has the same opinion of, say, Glenn Beck, as you do, and wouldn’t watch Beck’s program in a million years.
Mike wrote: “…but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by suggesting he’s likely a nut job and found support and solace from the tenor of the times.”
I can agree with that. What I can’t agree with is the liberal tsunami of “let’s-blame-everyone-on-the-right-for-this-tragedy-and-hope-some-of-it-sticks” strategy I’m seeing.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 3:46 pm
Oh yeah, Russ? What if Loughner shot up the event from a helicopter? You know the Left would be blaming Palin. And at what a time: right when she’s mourning the cancellation of her teevee show.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 3:47 pm
Mike wrote: “Oh, and for those who aren’t blessed with a brain full of dark crevasses, that one exception was in 1954 when four Puerto Rican nationalists — one woman, three men — attacked the the House of Representatives chamber from the visitors’ gallery.”
I was born in 1954, and a while back I picked up a vintage book titled something like “1954: The Year in News,” and I remember reading about that incident in Congress. It shows that despite all the rhetoric we’ve heard over the past couple of days, the fact is, stuff like this has been going on throughout the history of this country.
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 3:47 pm
Errr, Mr. Gold… Please note that I was in NO way inferring that YOU were being hypocritical or a malicious voice in my earlier reference to post modern ‘Liberal’ ideology.
You old bomb-thrower, you. That’s self defense.
😉
MOTU
January 10, 2011 - 3:48 pm
Neil C,
I’ve been called an Uncle Tom because I disagree with some issues within the black community. I’ve been called a racist because I host ‘The Black Panel’ each year at Comic Con.
Rational discussion for some people is simply not an option.
Pity.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 3:50 pm
Mike wrote: “And at what a time: right when she’s mourning the cancellation of her teevee show.”
Ha! Yeah, well, I have a sneaky suspicion there were never really any plans for a season 2. After all, the ratings were pretty exceptional for a cable show (at least initially — it could have tailed off a bit).
Neil C.
January 10, 2011 - 3:52 pm
MOTU,
I’ve been called out by rightist friends and yelled at by radicals at Pandagon. I must be in the middle! 🙂
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 3:52 pm
MOTU wrote: “I’ve been called an Uncle Tom because I disagree with some issues within the black community. I’ve been called a racist because I host ‘The Black Panel’ each year at Comic Con.”
Shee-oot! To me you’ll always be Master of the Universe.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 3:55 pm
Hey, Russ, don’t blame it on THIS country! Rome was a REAL hoot!
Reg — You weren’t inferring anything, and I didn’t think you were implying I was being hypocritical or malicious. I try to avoid the former, but I’ll bask in the latter as the whim strikes.
Actually, “bomb-thrower” is a misnomer. Roughly eight out of ten Molotovs go off in the idiot’s hand. They catch you making those things and you’ll lose your life insurance. “Bomb-planters” play it safer… although there were two idiots and one brilliant wonderful person who used to live in a Greenwich Village townhouse back in 1970 who might dispute that. Nail bombs — that’s a messy way to go.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 4:06 pm
Palin’s numbers dropped precipitously with the second show. By the end, they were sort of okay, but not for the show’s budget. And Sarah wanting $1 million per show for the second season probably didn’t help any.
Martha Thomases
January 10, 2011 - 4:07 pm
Russ said, “What I can’t agree with is the liberal tsunami of “let’s-blame-everyone-on-the-right-for-this-tragedy-and-hope-some-of-it-sticks” strategy I’m seeing.”
Who is saying this? And is it someone with real authority, or just someone you know?
Bill said, “Tipper Gore is on the right???” Yes, she was. Especially on this issue.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 4:26 pm
And, yet, Frank Zappa’s wife Gail was (and may still be) quite tight with Tipper and Al — despite Frank’s very public and very precise excoriation of Tipper and her political wife friends in the PMRC during his Senate committee testimony. Gail was one of the Democratic Party’s biggest contributors.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 4:43 pm
Martha: Some of the conservative Web sites are whining about it, but their laundry list and links of liberal blame-game offenders seems genuine: Paul Krugman (NYT), The U.K. Guardian, NY Daily News, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, The Chicago Sun-Times, Media Matters, etc., all allegedly blamed the right in one form or another for the tragedy.
It’s true most are partisan sources (for example, a few years ago one evening when I was bored, I went through Krugman’s archive of columns to see if he ever said a kind word about Bush and/or the Republicans since he started doing his NYT column, circa 2000 — he hadn’t), but I still found it surprising how quickly the sniping began.
R. Maheras
January 10, 2011 - 5:02 pm
Martha wrote: “@Russ: You’re changing the subject from political leaders and journalist/opinionator types to pop culture. I’m not saying that the pop culture to which you refer doesn’t hurt your feelings, just pointing out there there is a difference between fiction and reality. Usually.”
Unless, of course, one happens to be a nut-job. Then all the lines blur.
If the words of Palin, Beck and Limbaugh had the effect some on the left are alleging, why hasn’t there been thousands of instances of right-wing terrorism occurring? Hell, Limbaugh’s been on the air for something like 20 years! The U.S. ought to be in the flames of anarchy by now, based on the rheotoric of some liberals.
Mike Gold
January 10, 2011 - 5:54 pm
When it comes to killing off our leadership figures, nobody beats us: Since the above-mentioned shoot-up of Congress in 1954, a whole lotta people have been assassinated or had been subject of near-misses — two Kennedys, George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Gerry Ford (for cryin’ out loud), George Wallace, Larry Flynt…
We’re very good at it, but the circumstances must be right. You’ve got to have the means, which is fairly easy, and opportunity, which is a real bitch. Even harder if you’re a loner. You need a perfect storm to get an assassination attempt off, let alone successful.
20 years ago, Rush’s rhetoric was pretty lame. It started to escalate as Clinton took office, and it all got louder as more folks chimed in — Hannity, Savage, O’Reilly, now Beck. And it’s all being validated by violent comments made by elected officials, giving this madness the patina of authority.
And that was the heart of my column. This escalation is beginning to look like its getting to critical mass. This would be a wonderful time for people to reassess their actions, and I hope that happens.
Yes, I only mentioned a bunch of right-wing broadcasters. That’s because left-wing personality radio doesn’t exist, and it barely exists on teevee, and even then, Chris and Keith and Rachel don’t use deadly rhetoric, although I guess they might provoke a heart attack someday.
Vinnie Bartilucci
January 10, 2011 - 6:59 pm
Sarah Palin is only guilty of using terminilogy that was too easy to be taken literally. She ABSOLUTELY meant those gunsights to be gunsights. It’s all metaphor and allegory intended to appeal to a certain audience. She’s a hunter, she uses hunting and gun analogies. If she were a fisherman she’d be saying things like “going deep for the big ones” and the like.
She (I have to assume because no one’s THAT crazy) did not, COULD not mean it to be taken literally.
This is The Fisher King. A crazy person is going to find the Message they need to go do their crazy thing somewhere, no matter how hard they have to go look for it. It just so happens that in this case, he didn’t have to look all that hard.
You have no idea what the person on the other side of the television or radio is going to do with your words. It’s as poor an argument when that one person tries to act out the stuff he saw in Grand Theft Auto. The problem’s not with the game, or the text of Catcher in the Rye, but in the major malfunction of the person who thought it was okay to go do those things.
Now for her (people) to spend the weekend trying to surreptitiously try to take the website down is just dumb. First off, trying to erase something off the internet is a self-failing act. She’s made herself more of a fool by trying that, and going into denial mode.
It is silly to believe that ahe ever intended someone to actually shoot anyone, it really is. But to go for protecting her own ass (even via her people) instead of going straight to the outpouring of concern is a crass act, and a bad move. You go straight to “Let’s worry about the victims now, and you can do your blamin’ thing later”. But she’s more worried about her own image. And that’s going to be more injurious to her than the original graphic.
This isn’t “joke ’em if they can’t take a fuck”. You want to argue that the rhetoric has gone too far away from facts and logic, I’m right there with you. But nobody said “go kill people”, and no rational person would believe that what they were saying.
He’s crazy (seriously, have you seen that mugshot?), he should get everything he deserves, but at the end of the day, the only person responsible for that act was the one who pulled the trigger.
Reg
January 10, 2011 - 7:36 pm
Gotta disagree with you, VB. Someone at that level can not NOT know that the hot language they’re using is being viewed and consumed by the sane and the unsane alike. At SP’s level of visibility and handling, one has to consider that it went thru a layer of vetting before being sent out. And the Reps just can’t sit back now and try to wash their hands when a blind person could see the types of head cases this type of rhetoric was attracting.
One can’t unring the bell and one can’t say ‘Oops, My Bad’ if you shout “FIRE!!” in a crowded theater and somebody gets trampled.
mike weber
January 11, 2011 - 6:24 am
But Fox “News” is so ugly-bad I can’t type Fox “News” without the quotation marks.
Personally, i just call it FOX Izvestia.
At SP’s level of visibility and handling, one has to consider that it went thru a layer of vetting before being sent out.
Why does one? Palin’s VP candidacy obviously didn’t.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 6:28 am
Russ said, “If the words of Palin, Beck and Limbaugh had the effect some on the left are alleging, why hasn’t there been thousands of instances of right-wing terrorism occurring? Hell, Limbaugh’s been on the air for something like 20 years! The U.S. ought to be in the flames of anarchy by now, based on the rheotoric of some liberals.”
Talk to anyone who works for a Planned Parenthood, or an ob-gyn. They get personally threatened with physical violence every day. And sometimes, they get shot and killed.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 8:47 am
From Digby’s Hullabaloo:
— July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America,” walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.
— October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.
— December 2008: A pair of “Patriot” movement radicals — the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted “to attack the political infrastructure” — threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.
— December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.
— January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.
— February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.
— April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.
— April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama’s purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.
— May 2009: A “sovereign citizen” named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.
— June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.
— February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one “domestic terrorism” too.)
— March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.
— March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.
— May 2010: A “sovereign citizen” from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.
— May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.
— May 2010: Two “sovereign citizens” named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.
— July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.
— September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year–old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the “Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 9:22 am
Martha… where are your tidbits about those on the left who are wacko, murderers or caught planning nefarious activities? Are you inferring there aren’t any? If you are, who are you trying to kid? I grew up amongst some of the most die-hard Democrats on the planet, and we had some of certifiable nut-jobs on the planet in our midst.
Even today, if you look at the day-to-day crime stats, most of the deadliest places in the United States are Democratic enclaves. In fact, I’d bet big dough a Democrat is far, far more likely to be killed by a fellow Democrat than a Republican, which is why I think painting Republicans as “dangerous threats” is nothing more than fear-mongering.
The Republicans have their own fear-mongering issues, of course, which is why I think partisans on both sides — because of an obvious halo effect regarding “their side” — routinely play fast and loose with the truth.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 9:25 am
Call me wacky, but I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the voter registration of professional miscreants. I just don’t think there’s much of a voters block there. Cook County office-holders excepted, of course.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 9:55 am
Russ: I provided a list. Where’s yours?
I don’t deny that there are crazy people on the left. I serve on a Board of Directors with one of them. However, since it’s a pacifist organization, I don’t worry about this person shooting me.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 10:20 am
Please don’t make me go tit-for-tat. Then I’d have to go to digging through conservative Web sites as you probably did through liberal sites for your list. And the last thing I want to do is go digging through righty Web sites for lefty dirt.
Off the top of my head, I know the Unabomber was a lefty, and mass-murderer John Wayne Gacy was a Democratic precinct captain, as I recall. His body-count alone outnumbers by a factor of three every single right-wing kook on your long list.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 10:35 am
Woah. Wait a minute. Since when is a Cook County Democratic precinct captain, PARTICULARLY during the Richard J. Daley era, ipso facto a Lefty? Of all the left-wingers I knew in Chicago during that period, which is easily a four digit number, not a one was a precinct captain. Or a patronage worker of any stripe. And, if you’ll recall, after August 1968 Democratic precinct captains REALLY didn’t like us one bit.
As for Ted Kaczynski, you’re confusing him with his brother, who I did know (David, not Ted, and then but briefly). If you read Ted’s manifesto you’d see that his, ah, philosophies were as widespread across the political spectrum as, oh, say, Jerry Loughner’s.
However, in the interest of friendship, if you haven’t read Kaczynski’s manifesto I really don’t recommend it. You can get the same result by getting a working power drill and ramming it up your nose.
R. Maheras
January 11, 2011 - 10:42 am
Mike wrote: “However, in the interest of friendship, if you haven’t read Kaczynski’s manifesto I really don’t recommend it. You can get the same result by getting a working power drill and ramming it up your nose.”
Yech! Thanks for the warning. It sounds about as brutal as it is cruising through partisan Web sites.
Mike Gold
January 11, 2011 - 10:45 am
Moreso. Teddy didn’t reap the rewards of social interaction.
Martha Thomases
January 11, 2011 - 10:46 am
@Russ: I read Digby every day, so I hardly went “scouring” web-sites. But aside from that, every item I mentioned was a politically-motivated crime committed by crazy people revved-up on right-wing hate.
That’s different from crimes committed by crazy people who happen to be Democrats. I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about John Wayne Gacy, but I don’t think he committed those murders to liberate the proletariat.
Reg
January 11, 2011 - 11:04 am
Come on now, Russ…you’re mixing apples and oranges again. Gacy’s murders had absolutely no political associations.