Yesterday I made the "mistake" of watching the video posted here on Crooks and Liars: depressing and repulsive stuff. In just a few short minutes I noted the following from these McPalin supporters:- "you're stupid"
- "hangs around with terrorists"
- "he's a terrorist"
- "Obama's a Muslim; he's a terrorist himself"
- "here it is" [giving the finger]
- "commie faggots"
- "get a job"
- "go to Russia"
- "socialist swine"
- "screw Obama"
- "die"
- "European socialist"
- "he is a Muslim"
- "I don't know what he is"
- "sleazy scum of the earth" [of ACORN & Obama]
One of the readers of this blog noted below that the issue of McPalin mob hatred and vitriol is "not being properly addressed by the major media." So when ATC on Friday covered just this topic I wondered how they would cover it. The title of the web post gives a clue: "Anxiety Rules at McCain Campaign Stops." Anxiety?
Melissa Block opens the piece with "Republican John McCain held a series of rallies and town hall meetings with increasingly anxious supporters. It's not just the slumping economy that has them worried..." Anxious? Worried? That's interesting because I've been around a lot of anxious and worried people in my time, and they don't usually scream at people, calling them liars, terrorists, faggots, etc.
Scott Horsley takes over and tells us the following about the McMob: They are "outspoken in their dismay" and "there's more defiance than celebration" in them. Outspoken? Defiance? And then after not really addressing the fundamental - and dangerous - issue of McCain and Palin cultivating this viciousness, Horsley wraps it up with a plug for McCain: "McCain
7 comments:
I didn't think the Horsley piece was all that bad--it did put the loonies on display. I do agree the language soft-peddled their nature.
However, I did think Siegel was horrible, framing Obama saying McCain is "erratic" as an equal balance with the McCain campaign equating Obama=terrorist while inciting all of wingnuttia. Now I can't find that particular audio on the page for Friday's show.
On the News Hour, Kwame Holman framed a similar "balance."
Here's NPR's take "John McCain has adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward his rival Barack Obama after another week of falling poll numbers. The ruling this week by an Alaska panel that McCain's running mate Sarah Palin abused her authority as governor by trying to get her brother in law fired can't have helped."
So, according to NPR, it is all about McCain's falling poll numbers.
Not about the fact that Palin violated state ethics codes and not about the fact that Mccain and Palin CONTINUE to dishonestly link Obama to Ayers' terrorist actions.
Framing is everything and NPR has chose to frame this in a way that is easiest on John McCain.
This is what REALLY disturbs me about NPR more than anything else.
They have learned to frame things in a way that gives them "plausible deniability"
In some ways it is more dishonest that what FOX News does.
Several excellent articles at Buzzflash on Palin and the Politics of Hate.
for ex:
"Sarah Palin, who incites mobs to descend to their lowest denominator of bigotry, racism, prejudice and hate.
Her goals are radical, and if McCain were elected, if he didn’t die soon enough for some Palin supporters, one of them might just shoot him. That’s the kind of hate and lynch mob mentality that Sarah Palin brings out in the crowds that she incites."
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/127
ellen
Maine: The worst case of this "equivalency" was on Tues, ME with Inskeep saying "Here's what the presidential candidates will know when they shake hands at tonight's debate: Barack Obama will know that John McCain just denounced him and that McCain's running mate claims that Obama was quote 'palling around with terrorists.' John McCain will know that Obama's campaign ads call him quote 'erratic' - one of many apparent references to the Republican's age."
Tying "erratic" to McCain's age is Inskeep's creation not the Obama campaign's. Interestingly erratic is used as a non-partisan description of McCain's behavior during Friday's ATC post.
Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece in Salon exploding the idea that the hate exposed at the McCain/Palin rallies is the same as that directed toward Bush in the 2004 election.
TNR's Michael Crowley: McCain lynch mobs no different than Bush critics
It seems that NPR, like much of the other corporate media, cannot let go of their attachment to the mythical McCain of yore, the self-anointed "maverick" who bucked his party -- except for over 90% of the time.
Why are Obama's (and his wife's!) tenuous/nonexistent "links" to erstwhile radicals "fair game" but not McCain's much more demonstrable affiliation with Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy? Additionally, I have heard Palin's ties to the secessionist Alaska Independence Party repeatedly dismissed on NPR.
Because the media, and hence large swaths of the media-mesmerized public, can't bear to admit that McCain the Maverick was always a lie, and that they fell for it.
NPR is in panic mode because (barring significant voter fraud) their man is not going to win this time.
In the next few weeks, you are going to see NPR push balance to the limit.
To boldly go where balance has never gone before.
In other words, they are going to load up one side of the scale with a stinking heap of unsubstantiated manure about Obama to "balance" perfectly factual statements made by Obama about McCain.
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