In the comments to my previous post, Brian makes the following observation:
The blogosphere looks like a grade school playground lately. It doesn’t reflect well on the blogging community.
In a way, he’s absolutely correct: partisan tensions have grown increasingly palpable, and personal animus seems to be ascendent of late.
But as I noted on Hoist the Black Flag yesterday, there is more at work here than simple playground bickering. To wit: beyond a particular individual’s pathology, what the Frisch incident revealed—to me, at least—was the lengths some in press will go to to turn a clear case of boorish behavior into a story about the “cycle of violence” between political opponents; what the Greenwald (alleged) sockpuppetry episode reveals is that many of those being cited as “experts” on issues that will shape public opinion and could, in theory, manifestly impact public policy and law, are in fact puffed up creations of an organized message machine whose goal it is to shape the official public narrative—even if doing so requires behind the scenes machinations. Because to adherents of such a worldview, anything is acceptable once you’ve decided that it is up to you to fight for the “greater good”—an impulse that I imagine grows even stronger once it joins forces with others who share that same tinpot Machiavellian’s sense of social pragmatism.
And now, with this new story, what we have is several reporters and a former CIA agent using base intimidation that has escalated into a potentially actionable—and quite serious—offense.
So while I agree with Brian that the public discourse is not particularly better for having sunk to its current level, I think it is important to cover these stories nevertheless—particularly when some in the “unified messaging†community are simply unable to keep their true natures hidden.
People who don’t follow politics closely need to see beyond the easy “progressive†bromides about supporting “tolerance†and being against “hateâ€Â.
Because the truth is, many so-called “progressives” are absolutely saturated with hate and will tolerate nothing that doesn’t hew to their idea of what the world should look like. And their impatience is beginning to show.
Best to shine a light on it now than wait until we’re living in another Carter-esque American nightmare, I think. Because there just aren’t that many Reagans around to pull us back from the hell that the hard left—which is currently wrestling for the soul of the Democratic Party—is likely to lead us into, I’m afraid.
I’m just reading all of this, and I was wondering if Fox News would report on this story – they mentioned the Frisch thing, didn’t they? The rest of the media might not touch it because they are lefties, but surely Fox News would be interested in death threats from this Leopold guy and the CIA guy, etc. …?
Perhaps I am too new here to know what to do. It just seems like something should be done!
How long before they start shooting out the windows f their political opponents, or roughing up campaign workers, or slashing their tires?
Oh thank God. I thought I was gonna get first post twice in a row.
I need a life. Do they sell those at Amazon?
Eh, errr, mmmm, well, eh, gee, errr, hmmm?
Eh, grrrr, eh, hunh? ehh, ewwe, eh, gosh, gee?
Mmmmmm, eh, hmmm, ha, errr, no, heh, hmmm, hunh?
Ah ha! YEARGHHHH!!!
As a radio/TV newsman/news director of some 30 plus years ago, I find today’s news to be so very very agenda driven as to be less even than labeled commentary in my time period.
There is nothing today which I would label as news in the MSM. That also includes most of the web.
Having a bias, admitting it, and still telling the true story is one thing. Biased folks who follow the “pattern” of agenda-driven stories are completely without honor.
Both ultra-liberals and ultra-conservatives seem to follow this pattern. However, only on the liberal side has this been carried to the levels of trying to tear control from the liberals to the ultra-liberals (read KOS, et al).
The pattern is compounded by the continuation of the agenda syndrome into follow-up stories. In my day we admitted wrong information. Today, particularly from the KOS section, once-spoken/written information becomes the theme and that theme is perpetual.
Duke
I think you’ve got a new daily feature, Jeff: “The Daily Condemnation,” featuring Duke DeLand.
Class A’s are uniform of the day, eh?
Take the hat off, Verc, it’ll be okay.
Appropriate that you should choose Brave New World as the header. If any ideology is threatening to lead us to become like the World State, one that is homogenous, anti-intellectual, and soulless, it is the left’s. This is the struggle we’re engaged in, not only here in the blogs (thank goodness for them, and for bloggers like Jeff!), but in our domestic politics and culture. There are many on the left who seem perfectly willing transition from our post-modern society to a World State, and even better that it be run by a benevolent dictator like Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and everyone’s wearing kaffiyehs.
Hence, who is worse: Cindy Sheehan, or Jason Leopold? Who should we be more observant about? Cindy is more “known”, whereas Jason is…well, what? Jason who? Or, do you see them as not being mutually exclusive, as being kernels from the same rotten cob?
“Unified Messaging Community”? Is that like lying liars lying the same lying lies? Or is it more like lazy losers getting punked and debunked?
Great post, Jeff. No joke.
In my day we admitted wrong information.
I think I heard about this once…. It was called something like a “re-tread” … or “return”…..wait, a ”retraction.”
I hear that those went out of style with the media types around the same time as beta vcrs and episodes of Moonlighting.
What a novel concept, actually caring enough about the truth that you admit when your wrong. It’ll never work on MSNBC, but it’s still kind catchy. Like that “integrity” thingy people used to talk about…
I need something catchy to end with for my story about war-torn Lebanese refugees in Syria. Something slice of lifey. Hey, give that little boy a GI-Joe that makes machine gun sounds. He likes it? It’s his.
Starkers.
I wonder. Is Larry Johson’s character typical of employees of the CIA. Is Jason Leopold’s character typical for reporters? I begin to fear the answer to both those questions is yes.
I’m interested as well. I’m going over to email another blogger about this, and will let you know his response. He’s an ex-CIA guy.
It always cracks me up to hear “progressives” crow about how tolerant they are–except when it comes to heterosexual white males, Christians, Jews, the military, smokers, capitalists, industrialists, parents, bankers, police officers, intelligence officers, meat eaters, the ROTC, drivers of SUVs, non-car-poolers, cruise-ship passengers, owners of RVs, small-business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs, park rangers, judges, prosecuters, the beautiful, the wealthy, the happy, and most of all… Republicans, who represent all of the above.
It’s the money.
I think a lot of people’s Jew Derangement Syndrome is especially acute right now.
btw, Duke DeLand is a badass TV newsman name.
POTD
Either that or the Left’s public talk therapy. It may be embarrasing but at least it’s damn entertaining.
TomW, you forgot lumberjacks, cardealership owners, alternative energy workers, nuclear energy workers and executives, oil workers, miners, hunters, Orientals, unskilled workers and students.
Other than that, spot on.
Is Larry Johson’s character typical of employees of the CIA
Or is it more like that of Mrs. Whats-er-name?
Either way, it could explain what’s “gone wrong” with CIA intel of late.
cruise-ship passengers
Nice!!
It occurs to me that in the grand scheme of things, and despite their professed progressive/secular Darwinian proclivities, leftists just hate evolution, i.e., life.
That’s propaganda.
I heartily recommend Propaganda, by Edward Bernays. The Left has clearly read it, and it would behoove the anti-Left to do the same.
Also, the essays that Huxley published on the subject are very informative. They were published in Brave New World Revisited.
“… the Left’s public talk therapy…”
– Underachieving is as underachiever does. Progrssives have talked themselves into such a fog of confusion, even common meanings have lost all meaning. The house of cards is starting to crumble. They’re running out of idea’s, and things to attack, every day the real world undermining their ideology, so now they are digging at the very foundations, the erotion of which is one of the principle reasons that Marxism utopian troupe’s always fail.
See, this example here is exactly the problem. A sarcastic presentation of facts guaranteed to make someone feel bad. Bad enough to threaten someone with bodily harm; perhaps even worse…
Sarcasm, irony, snark: these are tools intended to keep the un-progressives (regressives?) in their place. They must not be used against the progressive elite who is only looking out for us. For our best interests.
And the thanks they get? Well, just look at that sentence above, Mr. Youthinkyouknowsomuchbetterguy.
Now don’t you feel just a little ashamed?
Which asks if the Left is anything of a bona fide ideological balance to the “Right” or if it is merely where dysfunctionals naturally go for aid and comfort, like thieves and liars to opportunity.
Mostly aid, as it turns out…
“Hey, want some coffee?”
“WHAT ARE YOU INSINUATING?!”
Neither brave, nor new
You know this is nothing new, the threats of violence, the blindness of the ends justifies the means mentality is the hallmark of the radical left & the only thing that has changed is the technology being employed. Before the Internet, the MSM policed itself or there was a delay in the information getting out. Now that anyone has the ability to capture & publish video, write their own opinions & respond to anyone else in real time, the “Progressive†side no longer has that buffer or filter to the general public. If you read the writings of SDS or the yippies, the Communist & worker/labor movements of the 20’s & 30’s… their rhetoric hasn’t changed, much less their opinions or talking points – only their accessibility to the public at large. Let them howl at the moon, let them show themselves to be what they really are, for the general public isn’t really fooled. The only group that has consistently lower approval ratings than Bush is Congress & the MSM & in that order. Fox News is destroying MSNBC & CNN, the Big 3 networks are losing viewers steadily & their response is Katie Couric, newspapers are losing circulation & the next closest to Rush in listeners in talk radio are conservatives as well.
The left isn’t getting more shrill, we’re just getting the unfiltered product.
GIVE ME SOMETHING TO CITE THE HELL OUT OF THAT AND I WILL HAVE YOUR BABIES!
Man, I WOULD LOVE to wave that in people’s faces.
There’s a reason why discourse in the blogosphere is as bad as it is, and why it’s so prevalent on lefty blogs and comments sections.
I once read somewhere where blogs and their comments were compared to corner bars, as in a place where people can go, shoot the shit, argue, and just generally hang out.
BUT, the biggest difference is, at the corner bar in my old SW Philly neighborhood, if you talked shit or got out of line or called someone any number of names, you were called outside and asked to back up your tough talk.
The blogosphere allows people to talk all tough and never have to back it up. It allows cowardly lefties to feel tough because they’ll never have to back up all the smack they talk.
“You want it black?”
“AND WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Your place or mine?”
Back when the earth was still cooling, I offered to friend the suggestion that lower taxe rates would generate higher revenues. The ensuing, all knowing smirk told me his intellectual game. Thank God I can’t see smirks on blogs.
God, thank you.
Voila! Protected class math is distributive.
Remember: it is the dialectic that leads the way to materialist, collectivist glory. Increase the contradictions; conflict is key!
I dunno. I needed a break and I’m a little bored.
gay*(lumberjacks, cardealership owners, alternative energy workers, nuclear energy workers and executives, oil workers, miners, hunters, Orientals, unskilled workers and students)= 1/notgay*(lumberjacks, cardealership owners, alternative energy workers, nuclear energy workers and executives, oil workers, miners, hunters, Orientals, unskilled workers and students)
Therefore:
Tolerance = 1/Progressive
Chickenhawk = 1/Chickendove
Logical discourse = 1/Liberal mentality
Leading to: Hunters postulate -In the Limit, The definate intregal sum of all progressive idea’s taken from 1 to infinity = Stupidity (QED)
TW: That’s my analysis, and I’m sticking to it.
Don’t forget rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.
Phinn, being a big fan of Huxley’s I google up this. I haven’t read it as yet–I bookmarked it–as I’m still reading on the Leopold thing. But thanks for the tip.
And also moles, voles, stoats, goats, foxes, oxes, rats, bats, cats…
But especially rabbits!
http://www.pollingreport.com/institut.htm
Multiple fresh polls on “confidence in institutions” (the term of art in the polling biz).
No childbearing necessary, I already have three.
In ‘96, fresh from his post as State Department
anti-terror coordinator; (hang on; wasn’t that
when AL Queda got it’s training wheels (1992-1996)
and Deputy CTC head (despite the fact, he had no
middle east experiences; he had served in the previous quagmire of Latin America) He speculated
on the night that TWA 800 exploded, that it was
terrorism; Ironically, almost exactly 5 years later; he declared that international terrorism
is not a problem. At the time the 9/11 nineteen
were all in the states, ready to strike, so how
does he have any credibility
Looks like the best trolls are at Ace’s place.
Either that, or one heckuva parodist.
marcus – the fingerprints do not lie! (Try the new comments thingy on Ace’s blog.)
That is some good shit. But I can tell I’m gonna have a world-class case of the munchies after reading all that.
Ever notice how many of the moonbattiest lefties are over 40? I rest my case.
TW: Deep thought is not their forte.