Another Right-Wing Loon Makes the News

[Kimmo]

plus, i thought you had another big run of ET's coming out?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

have you seen the cost of health insurance? only the independently wealthy can afford it.

 

well, they can "do whatever they fuck they want", after all!

[tvashtarkatena]

plus, i thought you had another big run of ET's coming out?

 

I do. The opening is at Avanti Art and Design on 73rd and Greenwood, 6 to 9 pm tonight. Come on down!

[Kimmo]

only if dee wallace is there in person, autographing your dolls.

 

will there be nice red wine?

[tvashtarkatena]

Of course! Nice, cheap red wine.

 

No autographs...these dolls are made of steel.

 

 

[Kimmo]

absurd.

 

tonite i will be partying in the ego thread.

[Fairweather]

10 to 1 He's a Tea Party Scumbag

Here's some other predictions:

 

1) Anti-Obamacare

2) Anti-Immigrant

3) Christian

4) Unemployed

 

 

Summary time! So how'd cc.com's angriest dipstick do?

 

i.)Nope.

 

1.)No.

2.)No.

3.)No.

4.)No.

 

Zero for 5. A special congrats to Choada: Cc.com Moron of the decade. :[]

[Off_White]

He was unemployed, so at worst Choada is 1 for 5.

 

Your conclusion is at least as speculative as CB's initial post.

[prole]

Why you wanna manufacture a blood libel n' shit?

[olyclimber]

I just need to know the playing field and I will keep it level!

[tvashtarkatena]

Mmmmmm, Jewish babies.....

[j_b]

The Rhetoric of Fear Feeds Terror

An attempted bombing, likely by the far right, is hardly reported – a sign of how far liberals have been silenced after Tucson.

 

by Amanda Marcotte

 

It should have been a national story with heavy coverage. The hook, on its face, seems tailor-made for breathless coverage: last week in Spokane, Washington state, a suspected rightwing terrorist attempts to murder multiple parade-goers who are out to celebrate the life of an American hero killed by a rightwing terrorist 43 years ago. The talking heads would have an endless series of important-sounding questions to ask - with "political vitriol" and "hate", no doubt, figuring highly. Experts in counterterrorism, hate groups and racial politics could be brought on as guests, alongside shocked near-victims of this thwarted bombing, which FBI officials have described as sophisticated and potentially able to kill numerous people.

 

Other attempts, which had far less chance of going off, receive heavy coverage, so why did the national news media give the attempted bombing at the Spokane MLK Day parade such cursory amount of coverage?

 

The answer lies in looking at which two national news organizations did give the story the coverage it deserves, MSNBC and the Huffington Post. Yep, that's right: the two liberal outlets. Everyone else was afraid or unwilling to give the story any oxygen - even though doing so could help catch the perpetrators by publicizing the reward the FBI is offering.

 

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer has the right instincts, which is to look at the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson, Arizona to see how it might have influenced public discourse around domestic terrorism. Liberals can - and should - be forgiven for blaming the right for the news that a Democratic congresswoman who has been heavily targeted by paranoid Tea Party activists in a state that's giving South Carolina some competition in the contest for most reactionary state in the country.

 

Interestingly, our instincts are not necessarily off the mark. We do not know yet whether the shooter's mental health status will be a matter at issue in his trial, but we do know that Jared Lee Loughner was heavily invested in fringe rightwing conspiracy theories and is apparently a misogynist who echoes many extreme right beliefs about women.

 

None of this would matter if the mainstream American right was dedicated to rationality and civility. But since the mainstream right has embraced conspiracy theories and talk of insurrection, they've created an environment where the fringe right can flourish.

 

Despite the facts on the ground, the right was able to quell discussion about the role that their paranoia and violent rhetoric likely played in this event, particularly with regard to the political figure whom, among others, Loughner chose to shoot. Sarah Palin started shouting "blood libel", and it was all so unpleasant that many in the mainstream media decided it was better to let important questions lie than to provoke her into worse assaults on decency and good taste.

 

Unfortunately, the effect of the successful rightwing freakout has been to scare most of the mainstream media from talking about domestic terrorism honestly at all. The attempted bombing of an MLK Day parade cannot be excused away as mental illness. Nor can someone muddy the waters by implying that the would-be bomber is, in fact, some sort of pinko commie. It would be far harder to deny that the white supremacist groups and militias that are flourishing in the American north west owe their success to the mainstreaming of paranoia in the American right.

 

more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/24/washington-state-martin-luther-king

[Kimmo]

Unfortunately, the effect of the successful rightwing freakout has been to scare most of the mainstream media from talking about domestic terrorism honestly at all.

 

do you feel the above is really true?

 

(i'm also wondering how "honestly" you feel any mainstream media has talked about "terrorism" ever. It's a little too convenient to pin this one on the current efforts of the "right-wing media", perhaps another example of how (unconsciously) polarized we really have become. SHOUT OUT TO ROBBIE!).

 

 

[j_b]

I actually agree with that part of the article, although I don't think it is a shift in coverage after Tucson. I think the last 2 years with 18 assassinations/attempts by anti-tax, anti-government, conspiracy theorists "wackos" against government officials, the president and "liberals" have exposed corporate propaganda and double standard about terrorism. Not only the media doesn't want to acknowledge the pattern of far right wing violence but imagine what the coverage would have been if the bomb in Spokane had been planted by an Arab.

[prole]

Mustn't lose potential market share by alienating a large portion of the viewership, don'tcha know!

[j_b]

So you are saying that covering the attempted bombing in Spokane like they usually do for these events would have alienated a significant part of the viewership of almost all mass media?

 

Anyone knows what was the local media coverage?

[tvashtarkatena]

The article is pure crap in attempted to create causality for why something didn't happen. The mechanisms of this great 'silencing' are, of course, not made clear. They never are.

 

It's also a lie, as googling 'spokane attempted bombing' will quickly reveal.

 

Finally, expecting a failed amateur bomb plot to get as much coverage as the assassination of a congresswoman and mass killing of several others is pure fantasy.

 

Sorry, but two thumbs down for disseminating this kind of crap - which employs all the same trix as Faux Nooz.

 

The reality of the media is that most journalists are lazy as shit. Spoon feed them a story packaged in a manner they can cut and paste and it gets run as intended. Good media handlers from all viewpoints know how to play this game. Bad ones don't, and pay the price for it.

[j_b]

No, you are lying. The attempted bombing in Spokane got a small fraction of the coverage that a similar event with a middle east terrorist MO would have gotten.

[j_b]

"In other words, it's what Joe Biden might call a BFD. But you wouldn't know that if, for example, you visited the two websites that -- in my own 30 years of experience as a journalist, for better or worse -- do more than any other to set the agenda on national coverage in newsrooms across the country.

 

One of those (note I said "for better or worse") is The Drudge Report, which ultimate Beltway insider Mark Halperin has said "rules our world." In the 16 or so hours since the FBI went public with the "domestic terrorism" angle, Matt Drudge has spotlighted articles about things like a man arrested for taking photos at Miami airport, a blogger who may lose his firearms permit for a post related to the Tucson massacre, and laser incidents against airplanes -- but nothing about the thwarted Spokane bombing.

 

OK, so that's Matt Drudge -- but the silence of the leading mainstream news website -- that of the New York Times -- is a little harder to explain. I've checked their home page at least a half-dozen times since last night, and I have yet to see a featured story on the FBI investigating "domestic terrorism" in Washington State. The lack of Times coverage may explain while for the most part, the coverage of this story on cable TV -- the people who routinely hyped run of the mill car chases and blown-tire airplane landings -- has been very minimal. I say for the most part because there have been a couple of exceptions. "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC featured the Spokane story as major breaking news at the top of its broadcast last night, and for a time it was the lead story on the Huffington Post. Major news outlets -- but with a liberal orientation.

 

Which is why I can't help but wonder if there's a backstory here related to the past weeks coverage of the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords, and the right-wing critique of some of that coverage. As you surely recall, the fact that a Democratic congresswoman was targeted in a state that has been a bastion of the Tea Party Movement and unrest over issues like illegal immigration provoked a number of articles about political rhetoric on the right -- including the fact that Giffords had been mapped with crosshairs in the now famous political mailing by Sarah Palin's PAC."

 

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201101190028

[j_b]

"Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News wonders why the story hasn’t received more media attention, particularly as a case of what would appear to be domestic terrorism. He writes:

 

When it emerged that alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner was an almost certainly mentally ill 22-year-old who seemed to follow some bizarre conspiracy theories but not the political rhetoric of Palin or the Tea Party, there was massive pushback from conservatives who accused the mainstream media of jumping to unfair conclusions. Most famously, Palin herself emerged to call this a “blood libel.” The former GOP veep nominee was savaged for using that charged term, but you have to wonder now if the pushback from Palin is actually a case of “mission accomplished.”

 

That’s because with this new episode in Spokane, not only have the pillars of the mainstream media not raced to any conclusions, but they seem to be in a competition as to who can most ignore the story altogether. But there’s no need to jump to unwarranted conclusions here; the actual facts have been laid out by the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, the FBI — that we are dealing with a case of “domestic terrorism,” that the sophisticated device along the King Day parade route was capable of causing mass casualties, and the target was American citizens celebrating an icon of the progressive movement, Dr. King.

 

Maybe the implications are just a little too frightening for the mainstream media to want to deal with.

 

There’s a fairly well-documented history of media playing down domestic terror threats that don’t involve Arab or Muslim conspirators. Those that do are treated differently; there are plenty of cases where law enforcement stepped in long before such plans were operational– and yet much of the media coverage would still refer to them as a form of terrorism. The attempted Times Square bombing might be the closest analogy, and that received widespread media coverage, much of which called it an attempted terrorist attack.

 

In this case, it doesn’t seem like the media want to call it terrorism– or even news, for that matter. NBC Nightly News did a segment on the bomb plot yesterday, but anchor Brian Williams said this at the end of the report:

 

All right, Pete Williams on what could have been a major news story out in Spokane. Pete, thanks."

 

http://foxnewswatchdog.com/?p=23197

[tvashtarkatena]

No, you are lying. The attempted bombing in Spokane got a small fraction of the coverage that a similar event with a middle east terrorist MO would have gotten.

 

How can you know that? You'd have to compare to nearly identical events (and even that would produce an insignificant sample size).

 

Pure crap.

 

Here's where I get called a Dead Ender or some such shit....

[j_b]

Numerous media people as cited above have noticed the lack of hyped coverage on cable and in the more reliable press so quit talking out of your ass for once.

[tvashtarkatena]

"In other words, it's what Joe Biden might call a BFD. But you wouldn't know that if, for example, you visited the two websites that -- in my own 30 years of experience as a journalist, for better or worse -- do more than any other to set the agenda on national coverage in newsrooms across the country.

 

One of those (note I said "for better or worse") is The Drudge Report, which ultimate Beltway insider Mark Halperin has said "rules our world." In the 16 or so hours since the FBI went public with the "domestic terrorism" angle, Matt Drudge has spotlighted articles about things like a man arrested for taking photos at Miami airport, a blogger who may lose his firearms permit for a post related to the Tucson massacre, and laser incidents against airplanes -- but nothing about the thwarted Spokane bombing.

 

OK, so that's Matt Drudge -- but the silence of the leading mainstream news website -- that of the New York Times -- is a little harder to explain. I've checked their home page at least a half-dozen times since last night, and I have yet to see a featured story on the FBI investigating "domestic terrorism" in Washington State. The lack of Times coverage may explain while for the most part, the coverage of this story on cable TV -- the people who routinely hyped run of the mill car chases and blown-tire airplane landings -- has been very minimal. I say for the most part because there have been a couple of exceptions. "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC featured the Spokane story as major breaking news at the top of its broadcast last night, and for a time it was the lead story on the Huffington Post. Major news outlets -- but with a liberal orientation.

 

Which is why I can't help but wonder if there's a backstory here related to the past weeks coverage of the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords, and the right-wing critique of some of that coverage. As you surely recall, the fact that a Democratic congresswoman was targeted in a state that has been a bastion of the Tea Party Movement and unrest over issues like illegal immigration provoked a number of articles about political rhetoric on the right -- including the fact that Giffords had been mapped with crosshairs in the now famous political mailing by Sarah Palin's PAC."

 

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201101190028

 

DID Biden call it a BFD? Did Drudge actually lose his firearms license? If not...alluding to it is the kind of manipulation that Faux is so practiced at.

 

Oh, and citing one's credentials (30 years...) - a sure sign of a weak or nonexistent thesis.

 

This is all fine - this person isn't a journalist, they're just another blogger in a sea of bloggers, most of whom basically post their emotional mood for the day. Why not just have a Facebook page instead of a blog?

 

You want cheap Chinese made plastic crap? You go to Walmart. You want shit, unvetted conjecture? You read crap like this.

[tvashtarkatena]

Numerous media people as cited above have noticed the lack of hyped coverage on cable and in the more reliable press so quit talking out of your ass for once.

 

Well I didn't get called a Dead Ender, only an End Talker.

[j_b]

These people are media observers, which media do you watch? none. So stop pretending.