How the right will spin the AZ shootings: They are the victims
Read Time:4 Minute, 14 Second
This morning, Robert Parry has a good read up about how the right is already spinning this tragedy and trying to distance themselves from it. From his ConsortiumNews article:
We saw this in 1995 when right-wing anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building. Though some on the Left linked that terrorist act, which killed 168 people, to the hateful rants of right-wing radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, the mainstream Washington press corps quickly rallied to Limbaugh’s defense.
Similarly, within hours of the Tucson shooting, which left Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition with a bullet hole through her brain, former Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz was out with a commentary establishing a defensive perimeter around former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who had put Giffords’s district in a rifle’s crosshairs.
Like others on the Right, Palin also has favored violent rhetoric in discussing the need to strike back at Democrats who supported health-care reform during the last session of Congress, as Giffords had done. “Don’t retreat, RELOAD!” Palin urged her followers.
While deeming Palin’s language and imagery “highly unfortunate” and “dumb,” Kurtz absolved Palin and other right-wingers of any responsibility for the Tucson slayings and termed any linkage a “sickening ritual of guilt by association.”
I do not hold Palin personally responsible for the tragedy in AZ but I do blame her and other rightwing pundits for instilling double-edged rhetoric into the national discussion. A play on words is how the right is spinning the idiot from Alaska’s dialog, but to me it’s a serious lack of intelligence and the inability to hold a discussion based on facts and logic. With mentally ill people having the ability to purchase large caliber, semi-automatic handguns that are easily concealed I think yahoo’s like Palin need to tone down the violent rhetoric and try, for once in their lives, to talk in an intelligent manner about issues that we face as a nation.
Personally, I believe that Palin, Rush, Beck and the majority of the rightwing punditocracy can not intelligently speak to important issues. They rely solely on buzz words and emotionally charged rhetoric to make their points. They lack the ability to rationally discuss issues like healthcare reform, the deficit, government control and all the other issues that are part of the national discussion. So they depend on short, ridiculous, double-edged assessments that add nothing to the national debate. They use hysterical, hate-filled verbiage to incite and connect with the uneducated masses that follow them and their every word. Parry also lays out the other way the right controls the conversation: playing the victim:
Yet, while right-wing commentators have often accused African-Americans and other minorities of exploiting their “victimhood,” the Right has learned over many decades the political power that comes from framing issues as “hey, we’re the victims here.” And, often the Right’s exaggerated “victimhood” has been accompanied by violence toward the supposed “victimizers.”
For instance, in the South of the 1950s and 1960s, white segregationists portrayed themselves as the victims of “outside agitators” and a “liberal Northern press” intent on destroying the South’s “traditional way of life,” i.e. white supremacy. Thus, many white racists saw the murder of civil rights workers as a legitimate act of self-defense, the protection of “states’ rights.”
This chip-on-the-shoulder “victimhood” has remained an element of American right-wing politics ever since. Whenever truly discriminated-against groups, such as blacks and women, have demanded their rights, the Right has cast the reforms as attacks on American traditions.
*snip*
In many other cases, the Right has found “victimhood” a powerful political motivator. For instance, the Right rallied white male college students around their “persecution” from “political correctness,” which often involved a college administration punishing boorish conduct like shouting racial slurs at blacks and yelling sexual insults at women and gays.
The right has honed this skill for decades and it works..plain and simple..it works for them. But how do we, as intelligent, logical individuals, combat this crap? Intelligent people usually know when they are being conned, but we can not rely on the majority of American’s seeing through the rights manipulation of the conversation. Many people want to be seen as a victim, they feel it gives them the right to lash out at the other side, to make the other side the bully when the reality is..they are not the bullies, they are people that can intelligently discuss an issue using facts, logic and common sense.
We must call the right out every time they use the victimhood premise. We need to bring attention to this type of rhetoric and call it what it is..bs that holds no truth but is laden with violent buzzwords and creates mental images that incite those who can not speak intelligently to an issue. We need to keep the right from dumbing down the national debate. Our nation’s viability depends on it.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
Well, Dusty, i was looking for you on FB to send a friend request. The problem is that there are about 200 hundred of you.
Damn well said, Dusty. I’m with you 100%. The problem is the incendiary right will never agree with you, and in their cocoon of victimhood will only conjure more reasons to hate people like you for suggesting that they are not 100% right. There are two ways to remedy the situation: Wait a generation or two, or hope that moderate Republicans, what are left of them, step out and vocally denounce the far right and their vitriolic incoherence. Don’t hold your breath either way.
This is very thought-provoking; not for its vitriolic indictment of the Right, but for its renunciation of “dumbing” down the debate, any debate, with words bearing strong emotional force and no substance. It happens on both sides, but the Republican Party is far more organized and united in keeping a consistent inventory of emotional and meaningless buzzwords, so we get more from them.
The media leads much of public opinion, and the more outrageous ones treatment of the opposition, the more interesting one tends to be, and the more attention he will get. If you are Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, and, yes, even Olbermann, you need to be forceful enough in your presentations to retain your audience. These are the opinion leaders. The opinions they lead us into are not honest assessments of the data as they see it. They need to argue a position and the most persuasive arguments they have are fallacious, those that captivate our emotions, fuel our anger, add a sense righteousness to what think. Arguments, and buzzwords, that target our emotions sell better than arguments that acknowledge diversity of opinion and represent the issue in a circumspect way.
If you take a list of fallacies, as defined in the study of logic and critical thinking, and remove from your typical pundit’s analysis all items that are, by definition fallacious, and all statements that are mere insults with no pretense at substance, you would often be left with a blank page.
Even if they were right in their conclusions, we would never know it based on reason. They present ever fact or persuasive theory that supports their arguments and suppress all but the most easily targeted arguments of their opponents. They cannot present a calm reasonable analysis of all the data. It would be wrong. That is not what we they are paid to do.
Thank you John for your in-depth response to this post. I agree that even the left has pundits who use emotional arguments to justify their beliefs, but how often does the left use violent mental images to do that? How often does the left use double entendre’s to invoke an emotional response from their followers? My thought is very little and frankly, I can not think of one example to support your assertion that the left ‘does it too’.
Olbermann is by far the most well known of the liberal talking heads and I usually watch him every night, but I can not think of an example where he uses the same type of emotional bs and obfuscation to support his point. Ed, from the Ed Show on MSNBC has, in my opinion, gotten really worked up and might be someone who does it, but I do not watch him regularly.
If you can provide such an example, please do. I do not want to be one of ‘those’ people who take everything KO says as truth when it’s really just an emotion-charged talking point. KO’s Special Commments can be quite emotional, at least for me..so perhaps you remember one that was exceptionally heinous and ‘out there’.
I do freely admit that KO will go after Beck and OReilly on a regular basis but, for me, that doesn’t really count because it’s one talking head bitching about another talking head.
I am not referring to KO’s attacks on Bill O and others. I am referring to when he represents his position as an attorney would and intentionally judges a conservative to be evil where he would have defended the same in a liberal. I have no current example, as this phenomenon made me lose a lot my interest in him. I do, on occasion, still tune in, and the next time I see this, I will dutifully write an article about it, as it keeps coming up.
The one area where I remember seeing it was with sex scandals, but I don’t remember the specific players or the specific conversation at the time. The turn-off is disingenuous representation about what one considers acceptable ethics depending on who is committing the alleged crimes. The same phenomenon turned me off Bill O and even more so, Hannity as well. Unfortunately, at this moment, as I rarely tune in anymore, I could not cite an instance of their guilt either.
Nice stuff Dusty, you’re setting some pretty high standards, not just for yourself, but for us all.
Well said my friend.
Great work Dusty. We need to keep the pressure up and on Sarah Palin and her Tea Party cohorts. I remember the woman who was beaten outside the Rand Paul rally in Kentucky. Paul merely shrugged it off without condemning the people who did it.
Great post!
I have already read that….
“Palin in particular is a victim of McCarthyism and the Republicans are being smeared by the “unbalanced” liberal media.
Fox news and the AM radio hate shows are forming a circle of defense by going on the offense.
Krell, that is why we have to be diligent in calling their rhetoric what it is..bullsh*t on a stick. Logically pointing out the fallacies in their argument is the only weapon we have against the rightwing extremists.
The republicans never take responsibility for diddly-squat. Did you ever talk to one of these people? I have. Most of them don’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot. My boss is a Tea Bagger, in all respects I suspect, but from time to time during staff meetings we have to listen to this idiot proselytize. He actually went so far this morning to tell us that Sarah Palin needs to be congratulated for her courage in showing a scope profile on her “target” maps. He went on to say that only an idiot could make a connection between them and the shooting. Idiots. I agree. He is an idiot.
You have my sympathies Wiley. It’s gotta be tough to work for such a mental midget.
Dusty this is a great post, and, like Gwen, I agree with every word. Thanks.
Thank you Mike, for allowing me to post here. I really think reading all the writers here helps to make me a better writer. Plus, I get practice on avoiding all the foul language I use on my personal blog. ;p
You are more than welcome Dusty. You fit in quite nicely 🙂
Personally, I fuckin’ love foul language.
Lol. So do I Mike. As a matter of fact I am a professional at it 🙂
Geez, lazer, Holte and Mike you guys are making me blush..you f*ckers stop that!
The Code Pink woman at Randy Paul’s rally was way too mellow. If those a-holes had tried to headstomp me, I would of taken out most of their teeth out and fractured a kneecap or two. I might be a bleeding heart liberal but I am not a pacifist.
The version of this post on my personal blog has all the usual f-bombs. I also have a rightwing commenter trying to put forth the argument that the killer was a leftwinger, but he gives no facts to support that other than the kid read Hitlers book and all lefties are violent. I immediately put him in his place with FACTS…and a few of my favorite obscenities. 😉
“We need to bring attention to this type of rhetoric and call it what it is..bs”
Hear, hear.
Hear, Hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I third the Hear,Hear!!
YES. ditto!
You’re absolutely right … they already are! I agree with the whole post. And if you check HuffPo, you’ll find the Kelly woman on Fox already giving Sheriff Dupnik the razz for saying that the vitriol and wingnutters has provoked this…. shame. All of this. A shame.
Nice post!
Thank You Gwendolyn. When i read Parry’s piece at Consortium, it was like a light went on. It totally made sense and hopefully you will read his entire piece as it’s quite specific and gives us all the background we need to refute this kind of language when we find the rightwingers using it.
Gwen Fox News even went so far as to cut abruptly away when the sheriff was talking about how the media hate contributed to this terrible crime. Personally, I think Fox News is a terrible crime and they, and their loyal followers such as The Palin, should be held responsible.
There has to accountability, MM. You are Peace Officer; I can’t imagine the times you’ve walked into a quiet house or up to a vehicle and had the ‘itch’ in your groin or along the back of your neck. It takes stunning courage to walk up to it and it makes for understanding/awareness that can speak out with strength for non-violence.
Fox News bears incredible responsibility. I’ve seen “unnamed” GOP Senator quoted in HuffPo about toning down the vitriol… what kind of coward remains UNNAMED in a tragedy of the kind magnitude?
I cannot tell you my friend how often I have felt that “itch.” It goes without saying that I agree most wholeheartedly.
Dusty I just back from “maneuvers” only to find a brand new author. I agree with what you say. The level of hatred in this country is out of control and continues to feed the fires of discontent. Great read. I suspect you will enjoy this gang by the way. I sure do.