Friday, January 14, 2011

Questions, Questions, Questions ...

This one had been flooding our mind:

Is the Right Speechless Without Hate?


Seeing that was a relief, as it fit right into the on-going Just Another Blog™ policy of "Link Before You Think, Let Alone Type."

As might be anticipated, we were disappointed upon reading it, because the big ol' headlined question was not answered, certainly not to our satisfaction. Clue you won't be getting much from typing: Use of the phrase "going forward," here esp. notable as it's appendixed to the item's only worthwhile paragraph (It's short, too.):
That Rush and his audience, which can easily be said to be representative of the entire Right’s thinking, believes civility means you’re being censored reveals something stark about the campaign we’ll see waged going forward.
True, but as it turns out it's not as much hate speech (& we might never have gotten to this revelation/conclusion, 'cause we weren't headed that way) it's lie speech*, as clearly explained by mistermix, most of which we'll save-you-the-trouble-of-clicking here:
The reason that hundreds of angry people came to town hall meetings in my Congressional district in 2009, and the reason that police had to be present where they had never been before, wasn’t because someone was “uncivil”. It was because their media heroes and party leaders told them a pack of lies about death panels, federal funding for abortions, Medicare being taken away and free insurance for illegal immigrants. The questions that my Congressman took at those hate-filled meetings weren’t reasonable queries about limited government, deficits and healthcare outcomes. They were questions about why he wanted to kill grandma, let the government pay to abort babies, and take away Medicare.

It’s an exaggeration to say that the whole Tea Party movement is built on lies, but not by much. And the beltway media is complicit in those lies, because they were so goddam eager to have a narrative of populist anger about healthcare that they conveniently neglected to emphasize that most of that anger was based on utter bullshit. The only way that’s going to change is if the same DC media decides they can call out liars and the lies they tell during next week’s repeal debate directly in the front page stories they write, not in some goody-goody factchecking ghetto buried behind the fashion section.
There. Links, pull a quote or two, dose of smart-assery & sneering, no actual thought, typing thereof, re-arrangement & polishing ... Getting tired just describing it.

*Granted that the nature of the lies makes some of the speech hateful & demonstrably inciting.

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