Interesting Strategy, don’t you think?
Blaming the victim, that is.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) blamed Democrats for the threats they’ve received since passing the Healthcare Reform bill. He said Democrats were “dangerously fanning the flames” by blaming conservatives for inciting violence and hatred against those who voted in favor of the HCR. Cantor angrily suggested that if liberal, moderate, and progressive members of Congress receive threats they should just keep that kind of thing to themselves so as not to “invite more violence.” Cantor elaborated, “Security threats against members of Congress is not a partisan issue, and they should not be treated that way. To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible.”
Then he went to say, “Well she shouldn’t have been wearing that short skirt, flaunting her feminine unmentionables like that! It’s her own damned fault she got assaulted, acting like a whore! How’s a man supposed to maintain control of himself if she dresses like that? She was just asking for it! Besides, she probably liked it! They all do, you know. And then to report it? Tell people? Shame! Shame!”
Well, OK, he didn’t actually say that last bit, but his actual statements sure as hell didn’t sound all that different to me.
Democrats shouldn’t make reports of death threats, attacks on their persons and relatives, racism, or threats of violence that make Conservatives look bad public because this isn’t a partisan issue?
I’ve got to wonder if Cantor has been hiding in a cave somewhere. Not a partisan issue?
Hell it couldn’t be more partisan.
These people, led by Conservatives just like Cantor, have spent the last year calling democrats, independents, liberals, moderates, and progressive members of their own party traitors, socialist, fascists, communists, terrorists, tyrants, dictators, Hitler, and the enemies of America. They’ve spent two years now telling the world that Barack Obama is the actual and literal anti-Christ as foretold in the Book of Revelations and to vote for him or support him in any way was literally to risk not only your very soul but Armageddon and the End Times. They’ve scared the ever living shit out of people. They’ve spoke of rebellion, secession, revolution, war, the fight, the battle, and taking back their country for their party. They’ve courted the fringe, the nuts, the enraged, and the dimwitted and pushed them right up front to the microphone.
You incite the mob, you hand them torches and pitchforks and you get them all riled up by telling them that the monster is going to rape their daughters and eat their children and then you aim them at the castle – and you get mob behavior.
Honest to God, Cantor, what the fuck did you think was going to happen?
And now that they’re loose you want to call for discretion and gentlemanly behavior? Reason and restraint and democracy? And then you blame the victim, but don’t admonish your own followers who are doing exactly what you told them to?
Non-partisan?
Wow.
Hypocrite much, Cantor?
* Funny thing, I notice that during Cantor’s admonishment of those who have been attacked, assaulted, slurred and threatened with a good old fashioned conservative lynching, or had their gas lines cut, that he somehow forget to tell Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Michelle Bachman, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Dick Chaney, Joe Wilson, Randy Neugebauer, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and the idiot rabble who make up the Tea Party to shut the fuck up. Odd omission for a guy who claimed that his goal was to end the violence.
Dammit Jim, I was just recovering from the post before last.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, Sir - simply excellent.
Aren't there laws against inciting to violence?
ReplyDeleteBut I doubt that any news agency will call this terrorism, even though using violence to affect political behavior is such.
I hope the various news agencies don't call it terrorism. I'm sick of hearing that word every time somebody wipes a booger on somebody else.
ReplyDeleteHell, we have to qualify everything nowadays with the terrorism caveat - I saw an article the other day about a plane that had to make an emergency landing (some little commuter jet) because it had sucked some piece of FOD into the engine. Feathers and duck guts all over the front of the turbine cowling. Sure enough, third paragraph - FAA Officials do not believe terrorism was a factor. No kidding? Really? How do you know Osama didn't throw a fucking duck at the airplane?
We've got terrorism on the brain.
Well, Glenn has already done his, "I've never advocated violence, pretty little me," show. He also followed it with, "Them, them, they're the bomb throwers, look who the White House surrounds themselves with (trots out old accusations that were debunked back on the campaign trail)."
ReplyDeleteSo now that time has come to reap the whirlwind, the cockroaches are scattering to the corners. I would like to think it's a late case of the humbles. My real guess is that it's a realization that once violence starts, the targets become indiscriminate.
And before some right-winger hits the blog with "But Eric's own office was hit" I'll just point out that one, it was over a week ago, and the police and FBI determined the bullet was one fired in the air and his office was not the target of the attack. I don't think you can say that about publishing the congressman's family addresses and then the gas line gets cut by accident, or that people are indiscriminately throwing bricks into the air.
Haha...I've been called an evil commie whore so many times in the past few months. So sad!
ReplyDeleteevil commie whore?
ReplyDeleteBut that makes no sense at all.
Whores do it for money - they're capitalists in the purest sense of the word. Commies do it for the State.
Oh, wait, are you one of them there fascist communists?
A while ago, on another website, somebody was called out for, uh, language unbecoming a gender-sensitive person. There was an individual who used, uh, strong language to point out the many failings of the poster. And she justified her vehement rhetoric because of past sins she had borne. And I remember thinking to myself that, while she may have had a valid point or two, she was also responsible for the actions of those she incited with her strong language. The hate mails and threats generated by others could be traced, more or less, to her passionate diatribes.
ReplyDeleteAnd so I think that Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and their ilk are similarly responsible for the actions of those individuals they incite with their vehement rhetoric.
They make bank, day in and day out, based on their ability to stir passions (and fears) in their audience. And if they lack the will to dial back the rhetoric, and risk looking "weak" to their followers, they they are responsible for the actions they incite.
Also: the Henry's blue cheese bacon burger was awesome. Washed it down with a glass of Alaskan Amber ale!
remat = politically correct word for "premature;" used when one does not wish to harm a male's ego.
the Henry's blue cheese bacon burger was awesome.
ReplyDeleteIt gives me great pleasure to say, I told you so ;)
Well, the Republicans can call it domestic terrorism, because they did -- it's the law of the land.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Patriot Act, Title VIII, definitions:
(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that— (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
Dr. Phil
grophead -- kindof like a poopyhead, but for grops.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68
ReplyDeletepeedn what the republicans did in their pants.
Great minds think alike, as lots of folks, including you, Janiece and I have posted on this particular subject. I'm wondering what answers the conservative community will have when the mob they've created turns on them. They have no alternative plan or vision, other than obstructionism. Sooner or later, folks are going to realize that they've been mislead.
ReplyDeleteWhat Dr. Phil said. If somebody is trying to effect political change through incitement of terror by acts or threats of acts of violence, they're a terrorist by tradition and (per the section of the PATRIOT act Dr. Phil cites, law). So any teabaggers who act like terrorists should be called "terrorists" no matter how they piss and moan about it. You are what you do.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the media and pundits abusing the word "terrorism" is when they call things that apparently aren't terrorism, "terrorism." Nidal Hasan, as far as anyone has been able to determine, was not trying to effect political change through terror, so he belongs to the broader category of "derranged nutbags." Ditto for Joseph Andrew Stack. (Imagine drawing a big circle and labeling it "derranged nutbags." Now imagine a smaller circle completely inside the large circle and label it "terrorists." There ya' go, you now have a Venn diagram of the subset of "terrorists" within the set of "derranged nutbags." Feel free to draw additional overlapping circles within the primary set at your pleasure.) The solution isn't to stop using the right word for the right thing (a classically Orwellian option that in this case, forgive the ridiculous cliche, allows the terrorists to win): it's to insist on using the right word for the right thing and call out people who use the wrong word for the wrong thing. While I have no hope the media and pundits will start being uncharacteristically precise with their language, we can still hope and do our part to encourage them, right?
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"uncons": Orwellian liberals.
Accidents are always qualified with the drugs and alcohol caveat. Same with child abuse when a child is injured or dies. Instead of helping people deal with tragedies, responding as if a crime took place, or people may have caused an accident because of alcohol or drugs, only because evidence of such is noticed while helping people, authorities immediately search for evidence of those things. The press always says whether the police have reason to suspect any of the above. Our society becomes obsessed with certain things, things overblown regarding how much damage they actually cause, because someone is making their living off of our obsessions.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the people who've blown up women's clinics and shot people in women's clinics over abortion. Why weren't they called terrorists by Republicans, especially when Republicans were the majority controlling DC?
About the rest: Yeah! What Jim said!