Tags
05 Thursday Apr 2018
Posted Politics
inTags
30 Friday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inTags
Buzzfeed, David Hogg, Fox News, Laura Ingraham, NPR, Parkland
Laura Ingraham, in her infinite wisdom, decided to retweet this Daily Wire story and add some commentary:
That led to an advertiser exodus from Ingraham’s show:
Several companies announced Thursday that they were pulling the plug on advertising during Laura Ingraham’s show after the Fox News host bashed a teen survivor of the Parkland school shooting.
Nutrish, the pet food line owned by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, was the first to tweet that it would no longer advertise during Ingraham’s show.
The list of advertisers who will no longer advertise during Ingraham’s show includes TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Expedia, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Stitch Fix, Hulu, and Jos A. Bank.
As noted in an NPR article, Fox is used to having advertisers flee:
Almost a year ago, more than 50 advertisers yanked their spots from Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show after it emerged that O’Reilly, Fox and its parent company had paid $13 million to settle five sexual harassment lawsuits. Fox dropped O’Reilly from the network soon after, though it’s unclear how much the loss of advertisers contributed to the network’s decision.
In November, Fox’s Sean Hannity stoked controversy by supporting Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore despite reports of Moore’s sexual advances toward teenage girls. Coffee maker Keurig initially said it was pulling ads from Hannity’s show, only to face social media backlash from Hannity’s supporters, who posted videos on Twitter of themselves smashing Keurig machines.
I expect conservative commentators to criticize and attack Hogg’s and his classmates’ message of stricter gun control. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But as Ingraham has demonstrated, the right-wing commentariat cannot help itself from delivering personal, ugly attacks, regardless of who they’re targeting. If an enemy can’t be defeated through argumentation (which, coming from the right, is usually disingenuous or poorly thought out), then the next best thing is to taint the character of the enemy by making them look like a degenerate loser, though it’s not like right-wing commentators wait for their arguments to fail before they start making personal attacks against their enemies.
30 Friday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inI’ve said it before, but if we can take a step back and look at how conservatives have had to adjust their belief system because of the tumultuous nature of everything happening under the Trump administration, it’s fascinating to watch right-wingers turn their backs on all the things they’re supposed to love. From Jesse Kelly at The Federalist:
If you’ll remember, not too long ago everyone on the right was freaking out because NFL players were taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Naturally, the right—tethered to reality the way they are—took that as a protest of the flag, the anthem, America in general, and the military and veterans. “They hate the military!” these fanatics screamed. “They hate our veterans who risked their lives so that they had the RIGHT to protest!”
But as Kelly lays out, that’s suddenly no longer the case:
Most, no matter their service, come home and spend a lifetime as an example of what an American fighting man should be. They give back to their communities. They help others. They join the workforce, show up on time, and rise through the ranks. They raise families. And raise those families to have a love of country and an appreciation for where they are blessed to live.
Others spend a lifetime proving the last great thing they did in this life ended when they got back from Iraq at the ripe old age of 22. Service to your country is respectable. It is NOT a license to be a world-class scumbag.
You see, there are real veterans, and then there are scumbag veterans.
For too long now, veterans have taken the patriotic respect of Americans and used it like a Get Out Of Jail Free card in Monopoly.
I’d be interested to see when this begins on a timeline. After Vietnam? Gulf War? Or is it more specific to the 21st century? I’d also like to know what examples of this behavior Kelly would share and whether they would wholly be composed of individuals Kelly would describe as “leftist.”
Nowhere is this more evident than the veterans who joined high school kids at the anti-gun March For Our Lives rallies last weekend.
Kelly believes that veterans marching in solidarity with high school students who don’t want to be shot at are abusing the “patriotic respect” Americans have for them. Got it.
Which brings us to veterans. There are roughly 20 million veterans living in the United States today. There are going to be malcontents who don’t understand liberty in there. And nobody can track down society’s malcontents like the Left. So, now they use these veterans just like they use the high school kids. It’s not as if the Left holds some special respect for veterans (though they’ve finally stopped spitting on them when they return home from war). It is done because the Left knows patriotic Americans will be reluctant to criticize them.
That last line is key: “It is done because the Left knows patriotic Americans will be reluctant to criticize them.”
Well, Jesse, maybe if the right hadn’t spent decades venerating the military and calling anyone who didn’t blindly “support the troops” a traitor to America—especially in the wake of 9/11 and the run up to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan—that wouldn’t be such a big problem. Maybe if publications like The Federalist didn’t run endless propaganda pieces that exalted the political positions of veterans simply because they are veterans—seriously, just take a look through their archives when you search for “veterans”—you wouldn’t have to worry about all these uppity veterans who have ideas diametrically opposed to yours.
Every vet takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That oath doesn’t expire when you leave the service. It doesn’t mean you have to carry a weapon on foreign soil fighting our enemies forever, but at least don’t return home and put the Constitution you swore to uphold through the paper shredder.
The funny part about this is that I imagine most everyone on the left (the actual left, not the capitalism-loving Democrats Kelly is referring to) has never believed service in the military gave them or their opinions on subjects unrelated to combat a special status in society that made them untouchable. It’s largely conservatives, and to some degree (though certainly lesser) liberals, who have created the myth of the uncriticizable veteran.
And that’s what upsets writers like Kelly and others on the right in general: It isn’t that these particular veterans are betraying the Constitution—it’s that the right has for so long claimed veterans, the military, and patriotism as a whole as their own that they can’t stand the idea that members of a group they supposedly own would dare have a dissenting opinion. For people like Kelly, it’s not possible for a veteran to simply have a different point of view, because to have a different point of view is to betray the oath they took to protect the Constitution. They are traitors.
29 Thursday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inA new poll from Public Policy Polling reveals the predictable: the constant barrage of attacks from conservatives on the Parkland students isn’t having an effect outside of Trump’s base.
In the poll, 39% approve of Trump’s job performance and 54% disapprove. 41% have a favorable view of Trump as opposed to 54% unfavorable. (These are consistent with other recent polls measuring the same.) Those stats carry over pretty consistently from one question to another: honest/not honest (40%/53%), made America great again/hasn’t (38%/54%), shouldn’t release his taxes/should (38%/57%), think the Russia story is fake news/think it’s not fake news (37%/50%), and so on. This number is the same when people are asked whether they think Trump should resign if it is proved conclusively that his campaign collaborated with the Russians in order to get elected (39% think he should continue as president, 54% think he should resign).
Here’s how it breaks down concerning how people view the students who survived the shooting:
And here’s how it breaks down according to how people voted in 2016:
Despite the best efforts by right-wing media and the NRA to make the students look bad, it isn’t working too well outside of Trump’s base. Which is good, but that we have to put up with it at all is a national shame and embarrassment.
28 Wednesday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inThe far-right outlet Red State ran an “article” that claimed Parkland shooting survivor turned student activist David Hogg wasn’t actually at school the day of the shooting:
Did this “revelation” come about by means of traditional journalism? Hardly. It came from Sarah Rumpf, who went on the internet and compared a bunch of interviews and Just Asked Questions (known as “JAQing off” in some circles). The claim that Hogg wasn’t at school came from comparing two different interviews. In one with CBS, Hogg said he got on his bike and rode to his school as fast as he could; the school is three miles away.
This led Rumpf to believe Hogg had told two different stories, but the reality was that what Hogg was referring to was later that day after the shooting, around 6pm, when he returned to the school grounds to interview classmates. And so we have this.
Did Rumpf attempt to contact CBS to clarify before publishing? Nah. And when they found out they were wrong, their retraction didn’t exactly communicate any ownership of what they’d done:
Yeah, it was CBS’s fault. They tricked you into believing that Hogg was lying. Or, you know, they’re real journalists and the fools at Red State aren’t, so they’re not as easily confused.
The problem is that the damage is done. Yes, it’s good that Red State offered a retraction. (Not that I’m giving them any credit—real news sites offer retractions when inaccurate information is reported, but Red State isn’t a real news site, and it’s a far-right site, too, which is why it’s almost surprising they bothered to retract the article.) But the disinformation is already out there, and Serious Conservatives© such as Erick Erickson helped to spread it:
(Erickson deleted that tweet and later tweeted the correction. Any apology? Nah.)
Even if Red State revised the article heavily, the idea is out there. It gives credence to the conspiracy theorists, who, like all right-wing pundits for some reason, have an unhealthy obsession with going after Hogg. Remember the one where people pointed out Hogg’s father is a retired FBI agent, so Hogg must have been a plant at the fake school shooting?
That’s been the strategy of the vast majority of the right in response to these students. They don’t argue with the ideas. They attack their character. Or they just make stuff up.
26 Monday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inTags
Here’s the latest stupid suggestion on how to deal with mass shootings from Rick Santorum:
CNN commentator and former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum on Sunday suggested students protesting for gun control legislation would be better served by taking CPR classes and preparing for active shooter scenarios.
“How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that,” Santorum said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Their problem,” of course, is being shot by people armed with semiautomatic rifles, and it’s one Santorum makes out to be their problem and not anyone else’s problem. Not their parents’. Not their schools’. Not their police departments’. And apparently, if Santorum had his way, not the problem of their representatives in government. It’s not even the problem of people who get shot in similar fashion outside of schools.
Learning CPR to be able to assist people who have been shot in the face is a stupid idea. It’s almost as stupid as saying kids ought to use time in art craft to refashion discarded Coke cans into bulletproof vests instead of haranguing decent folks like Marco Rubio to try and do something about child murder. I mean, sheesh.
25 Sunday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inTags
The NRA keeping it classy:
No kidding, you idiots.
It’s interesting that the NRA has decided to add teenagers and children to the list of things that your right-wing uncle now has to have unbridled hatred for, like football and the FBI and porn stars and Keurig machines. And they used to love all that stuff!
24 Saturday Mar 2018
Posted Politics
inTags
Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, David Hogg, Donald Trump Jr, Erick Erickson, Fox News, Gateway Pundit, Jack Kingston, Jonah Goldberg, Lou Dobbs, Marc Thiessen, National Review, National Rifle Association, New York Times, Parkland, Robert Tracinski, Rush Limbaugh, Washington Post
Today in America and across the globe, the March for Our Lives protests are taking place:
Tens of thousands of people, outraged by a recent massacre at a South Florida school and energized by the students who survived, are spilling out in public protest in Washington and communities across the world on Saturday as they call for an end to gun violence.
The student activists, many of them sharp-tongued and defiant in the face of politicians and gun lobbyists, have kept attention on the issue in a time of renewed political activism on the left, as they helped lead a national school walkout and pushed state officials in Floridato enact gun legislation. The effectiveness of the students’ efforts will be measured, in part, on the success of Saturday’s events — their most ambitious show of force yet.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, students started speaking out, and they weren’t kind about it, either. A few of those students, like David Hogg, became the unofficial spokespeople for this movement of young people calling for gun control. Unsurprisingly, those on the right have decided they love their guns so much that the best course of action would be to attack the survivors of school shootings.
From Donald Trump, Jr:
On Tuesday, the president’s son Donald J. Trump Jr. liked a pair of tweets that accused David Hogg, a 17-year-old who is among the most outspoken of the Parkland students, of criticizing the Trump administration in an effort to protect his father, whom Mr. Hogg has described as a retired F.B.I. agent.
From the same article, Gateway Pundit, Alex Jones, and Rush Limbaugh:
Gateway Pundit has argued that Mr. Hogg had been coached on what to say during his interviews. The notion that Mr. Hogg is merely protecting his father dovetails with a broader right-wing trope, that liberal forces in the F.B.I. are trying to undermine President Trump and his pro-Second Amendment supporters.
Others offered more sweeping condemnations. Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the site Infowars, suggested that the mass shooting was a “false flag” orchestrated by anti-gun groups. Mr. Limbaugh, on his radio program, said of the student activists on Monday: “Everything they’re doing is right out of the Democrat Party’s various playbooks. It has the same enemies: the N.R.A. and guns.”
From Republican congressmen:
On CNN, former congressman Jack Kingston warned that Stoneman Douglas’ teens could be a front for liberal groups funded, naturally, by George Soros. “Their sorrow can very easily be hijacked by left-wing groups who have an agenda,” he said. “Do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”
From Ben Shapiro at National Review:
What, pray tell, did these students do to earn their claim to expertise? They were present during a mass shooting, and they have the right point of view, according to the Left.
From Jonah Goldberg, also at National Review:
From Erick Erickson:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/968221925204996097
From Robert Tracinski at The Federalist:
DOM GIORDANO: That’s what the march is gonna be about tomorrow, Lou. As you know, I’m an educator, and I see these kids, the Parkland kids, a couple of them are out of control.
LOU DOBBS (HOST): Isn’t that disgusting? I mean, we’re tuning in to high school assemblies, to get the aggregated wisdom of 18 year olds. I mean, this is really —
GINA LOUDON: Who by their own words, Lou, say that they shouldn’t be able to own guns even though they can go to war but they think that they should be able to make laws. None of this makes any sense at all. And the very fact that we are giving such gravitas to people who just — they haven’t had enough life experience, yet, Lou, to be experts on much of anything yet. And I don’t think — it’s not insulting them to say that.
[…]
GIORDANO: I have to say too, Lou, as an educator, there’s a couple of these kids that are just rude in the way that they proceed here, as if they are bulletproof, so to speak. But the media is almost laundering their own opinions through these kids.
And then there are those who want to say that it’s actually the right who are the victims here, not the students. Like Marc Thiessen at the Washington Post:
I’m not even going to show you what’s been showing up in places like Breitbart. And in case you hadn’t guessed, the comments sections at Breitbart and Fox and the like are their usual cesspools. The supposedly “respectable” conservatives can’t help but take pot shots at these students, even if they’re doing so in a way that makes it look as though the eternal bogeyman “The Left” is taking advantage of them. But a lot of right-wing pundits are pulling their hair out, insane with anger that they’re getting attention in the national spotlight and that the media won’t see that it’s the right who are the real victims here.
That’s why I won’t be surprised when some right-wing idiot—be it a sitting or former congressperson, pundit or guest, op-ed columnist, or radio host—says he wishes it were today’s protesters who had been shot instead. Today’s protests promise to be huge, and there will be someone on the right who will be so furious and so desperate to try and level the playing field that he’ll say something really outrageous. He’ll apologize, probably, but the message will be out there, and it will be one lots of Republicans agree with. That’s how bad things are.