Please stay on topic. Please don't be asses.
They know full well that they do it too. The faux pearl-clutching is a response to the fact that the left is going into attack mode and isn't rolling over and playing dead so readily. They are AFRAID of us.
come on now, the o'reillys and limbaughs are just participating in some good natured ribbing. why cant you liberals find a sense of humor??
heckuva post. problem is they control the message. they can make liberals out to be anything they want. there is no substance or truth. only truthiness. sorry, had to do it.
Not sure if snaporaz is serious or not ... at any rate, I've always been puzzled by Instacracker's ongoing popularity. His blog is really just a link clearinghouse ... I mean does he have any special insight into any topic whatsoever? I mean, besides nanotechnology (BWAHAHAHA!)
But he's always called on for these silly "blogger panels" as if he's an expert at anything but having the good fortune to be the first mover in the wingnut blogwhore ecosystem.
I mean, his "own sense is that it's very hard to preserve civility" ... who gives a little green shitball about what your "sense" of things is, Cracker? You don't have comments. Shut your piehole. Stop posting "Lileks has more" every three minutes and keep some goddam office hours like you're paid to do, you walking-argument-against-tenure. I know it sucks that your students get to talk back and all, but still.
Why didn't the WaPo get somebody from Technorati or Digg or an original moderator of fucking UseNet to talk about the stats and long-term trends of forum management?
Oh, wait, I forgot ... that would be reality-based.
When I read a story about U.S. college students lacking basic decoding skills (ability to understand charts and graphs, basic logic, etc.), and non-college grads being worse, it confirmed a lot of fears. It's not simply a matter of a population being uninformed or apathetic, there seems to be a decay of common sense. As the public hyenas howl their lies, smokescreens, and maggot brained non-logic, people's minds are being dulled. A well reasoned argument is a personal attack, a vile smear is patriotic speech, love is hate, war is peace...
I've always been puzzled by Instacracker's ongoing popularity.
Early adoption, that's all. And he's ultra-sensitive about being called on the little he adds. He's exceptionally good at ignoring or dishonestly editing email criticism.
Bedwetting chickenshit.
Lots of disinglennuousness in that chat. And from Brady, too: a 'well-balanced' panel on blog comments includes someone without comments? Heck, stick him in the next panel on lesbian rights.
And a guest Wonkette? Dear me.
"He's exceptionally good at ignoring or dishonestly editing email criticism."
Well, he probably receives a lot of email that triggers his 'delete reflex' within the first sentence.
So here's a proposal ... let's make it tougher for him to get through his mail. Everybody compose a letter full of pap about how great he was on the WaPo panel, but that ends by saying something like, 'Just kidding about all of the compliments above ... I really think you're a partisan tool who 'manages' reader participation by forbidding it!'
Then, if he catches on and starts skipping to the end of emails, we can start putting the disclaimer in the middle of the text.
C'mon now! Email ambush on InstaHack!
Well, first, I agree with your argument regarding Reynold's stealth position and the right's general incivility. And I am fully in the court of those who say Brady doth protest too much (but only against his critics.) That said, however, I have some opinions about blogs and comments in general, so I might as well get them off my chest.
First of all, I think there is precious little "interactivity" to the idea of blog comments. I think it's an impoverished structure, given the capabilities of the Internet--rather more like an old bulletin board, or the antiquated form of letters to the editor (though usually unfiltered). Things vary from blog to blog, but I dare say the preponderance of blog comment areas are merely release valves for us peons to vent our opinions in a very hit and run way, sort of like sliding a note under the door of the back room. Very little interaction or discussion actually happens. Very little proposal and response. This blog is better than most, in the sense that people tend to stay on topic and sometimes even respond to what others have said. The general tone and intelligence of the posters here is also what makes it work well. But at many of the larger blogs, the comments sections are mere depositories for cheerleading or razzing, and when one is likely as not to be called a "brownshirt" by (supposed) fellow liberals, it's really not worth the drive by.
The real genius of the Internet resides in true interactive conversation and the creation of communities, and that really happens better in online forums or chat rooms. Problem is, that is really where the incivility often gets severe. After a while, it gets tiresome. I'd like to see more online forums or chats that are, say, invitation only ... groups of people who have found one another on the Internet and then who wander off to form a more cohesive discussion group with real back and forth. I'm all for moderation as well. I think you have to have some rules in the end if you want to have a community that doesn't devolve into a free for all. Like a city with no laws or regulations, anarchy is not a pretty place to live after a while. We should decide the things that make our communities habitable and choose the rules we'd like to enforce to keep it that way.
Don't get me wrong. I'm mad as hell and I don't mind saying fuck to the Washington Post myself. I can dish out the snark with the best of them and I have pretty tough skin when it comes to being on the receiving end. I'm talking about the blogs and forums becoming real places for idea crunching and conversation and morale building and not just padded cells in which to vent our spleen with primal screams or places for slugfests with the opposition, or ... worst of all ... listening to ourselves speak into the void.
So while I defend to the death our right to beseige Deborah Howell and the Washington Post with our unfettered opinions, count me as someone who has been struggling with the issue of discussion on the Internet for some time. I'd like to see some new forms develop, and (you can all throw tomatoes at me) some basic rules of etiquette (which have nothing to do with fucks and shits, which are fine by me). I loves me my ability to vent on the comments here, but I'd much rather be having a real conversation that has a beginning and an end, like one might have with a group of people sitting around a table with some drinks, than merely the disconnected kinds of comment dropping we've been reduced to for the most part. Peace, love, and happiness.
samela:
I won't be throwing any rotten tomatoes at ya! I agree with much of what you say.
That said, my own interactive experience involved several years of debating in a generally polite fashion on the Yahoo clubs and other like forums. Sort of cut my teeth there.
But while I do miss those debates sometimes - and I do agree wholeheartedly with you on the limitations of the blog commenting structure - I also sort of feel like that formal, argument-counterargument milieu served its purpose for me in developing my political philosophy and whatever small skill I have at arguing for it.
Those kind of debates just aren't the kind of thing I feel I need to be spending my time on now.
I would say that to anyone who has the desire (and more importantly, the time) to engage in more comprehensive online debate - get yourself on over to a debating club. There's still plenty available.
I love this line from the perfesser:
I think there's a fair amount of manufactured outrage, really, often from people who aren't nearly as careful in describing, say, Dick Cheney's relationship to Halliburton...
This from the man who initiated a campaign to vandalize NY Times vending machines.
Amen brother.
My uncivil comment GREAT FUCKING POST. Insta-asshole is a wanker
Filler or just noise and distraction?
Ass Parrot: I agree about not wasting time debating with the "other side" on mixed forums like Yahoo groups. I gave that up after 2000, because it is really kind of pointless. I was talking about more fruitful ways to have conversations amongst like-minded groups of thinkers ... such as ourselves. I suppose I could just go to my local Drinking Liberally weekly bar meetup. But then I wouldn't be conversing with people from other locales and walks of life so much. I've confined myself to occasionally blog-comment posting of late, because I just haven't found a venue that seems sympa and useful. But I'd like to.
I found this one today Sickening. Liberalism is the philosophy of invincible ignorance. Oy
Long-time listener, first-time caller. Digby, you just get more and more awesome. I learn a lot from you, and I appreciate every chance I get to do that.
Hear hear.
For months before the Rwandan massacre some in the Rwandan media published very harsh rhetoric which was meant to prepare the Hutus for the bloodbath they would later instigate:
'We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly. It is true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach […] The history of Rwanda show us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same that he has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach. Who could tell the difference between the Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 [Kangura falsely claimed that Tutsi forces had attacked Kigali] and those of the 1960s [who had resisted the Hutu revolution of 1959]. They are all linked … Their evilness is the same. The unspeakable crimes of the Inyenzi today … recall those of their elders: killing, pillaging, raping girls and women, etc.[10]'
'The message is clear. The Tutsis represent an evil that will reproduce itself for as long as Tutsis exist. Future generations of Tutsis will not be any better than their predecessors because, "a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly."' [references in context. Source]
Compare this to Mr. Savage's words:
'The radical Democratic left is an army of soulless ghouls. Being of the living dead, they live in a world of death and try to impose it on we the living. Witness who led the charge: a radical homosexual, Barney Frank. A radical abortion Mafiosa, Barbara Boxer. What is difficult for we the living to comprehend is the reason they can engage in such anti-life abominations is because they have no souls.'
The Rwandan case was extreme enough for newspaper executives in Rwanda to be charged with war crimes:
'In December 2003, an international court in Tanzania convicted three Rwandan media executives of genocide for helping to incite a killing spree that took the lives of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus.[1] It was the first conviction of news media executives for crimes of genocide since 1946, when the Nuremburg tribunal sentenced Nazi publisher Julius Streicher to death for campaign of anti-Semitic propaganda through print media.[2] Both the court in Tanzania and the Nuremberg tribunal based their decisions on recognition of the power of media to inflame hatreds and provoke violence. The presiding judge of the Tanzanian court, Navanathem Pillay, emphasized this point as she addressed the defendants in her closing remarks: "Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians."[3]' [ibid.]
No one on the Right has done this yet, but as several bloggers have pointed out in the past, the rhetoric on the popular Right is of an increasingly vitrolic strength. I don't know where the line is, but I'd say Mr. Savage's remarks are very close to it, if they haven't explicitly crossed it. It's one thing for some commenter on a blog to say such things; it's another entirely for someone with a megaphone and official media backing to do so.
As a bonus, on the page I linked above scroll down a bit and you'll see a page reprinted from a pamphlet of Nazi propoganda. It shows, at the top of the page, pictures of a white man and a white woman. On the bottom of the page, it shows pictures of an African man and African woman. The caption? "Does the same soul dwell in these differing bodies?".
...more fun with quotes from that page, here is a slightly edited version of one of the quotes (again from Nazi propoganda):
'Now there is war! The [Terrorists] forced us into a struggle for life and death. […] The devilish hatred of the [Terrorists] plunged the world into war, need and misery. Our holy hate will bring us victory and save all of mankind.[47]' [reference in context]
Our "holy hate" will not save us from terrorism.
"Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture."
You nailed it. That is the very essence of the problem, and you summed it up perfectly.
Perpetrators always blame their victims for resisting and retaliating against the perpetrators' own unjust or immoral acts.
It goes with the territory.
These right wingers are perpetrators that refuse to acknowledge the reality of that fact. Therefore, they blame their victims and targets for being angry at them and fighting back.
Their moral blindness to their own sins and shortcomings is extraordinary.
Maybe someone can help me. No doubt in order to put off doing something I should have been doing, I read through an enormous mass of comments at the WaPo on Deborah Howell. I don't know how long it was before the comment section was shut down. I wasn't expecting it to be shut down and I wasn't trying to impress in my memory a record of the kinds of comments people were making. But it wasn't that bad. The largest number of comments were along the lines: 'that's not true; you owe us a correction'. Next, I would say, came harder remarks like DH should be fired, next, though much less numerous, comments about DH and the Post being in the pay of the admin or the Republican party, A still smaller number and a very small proportion were openly nasty, talk of DH or the post as whores, that sort of thing. The line from the post was that they were screening the really bad ones, so what people with memories like mine or those familiar with the data they were able to dig up at Kos are saying is not to the point. But then why shut down the comments at all?
In any case, something like the point that applies to the original WaPo coverage applies here. If some dems were getting money from Abrahamoff in some way--and I take it that it's far from clear --it's highly misleading to say both parties benefitted if there was an enormous inbalance in favor of the Republicans. If the vast majority of the comments ranged from the studiously polite in tone--'please correct your mistake'--to the hard but in no way improper 'this person isn't doing her job and should be sacked'--it's misleading to focus on the very small number of nasty comments and imply that they were somehow representative. They weren't; I was there and saw it with my own eyes.
Samela, just ran out to pick up the kids from school (the real reason I don't have time for long-winded debates!)
Anyway, I think the kind of forum you're after is indeed illusive.
Blogs, like Atrios fr'instance, that attract the MOST likeminded people, have comment threads that become unwieldy and impossible to follow after a couple minutes.
I haven't experimented with the multi-threaded comment system on Kos, mostly because whenever I see "469 comments" I simply don't click. But I'd be interested in people's thoughts on the multi-thread thing ... does it work to focus a conversation within the greater thread?
This blog is great because the comments rarely hit 100, and as you say, most people actually respond to what's been said by others in the thread. I also enjoy the Poorman and sometimes World o' Crap for the friendly atmosphere of snarky oneupsmanship in their comments.
I think what you may be after is the kind of meta-conversation that occurs between the bloggers themselves, especially the good, popular ones. Or perhaps a closed-system conversation, like in (shudder, must find better example) the Corner?
Thought of starting a blog yourself? 'Cos you're a very good writer.
Another excellent post, Digby. As for the issue of blog comments, here's a couple of solutions I use on a regular basis:
First, after awhile you get to know which blogs have comments worth reading. Once you've decided which those are, you can just read the blogger's post and skip the comments if you aren't interested in them. (Some blogsites have quite a bit of "Hi, there, jingodad! How are the kids?" in the comments and I don't know these people enough to care about their private conversations.)
Second solution is technological. If you're used to getting some good comments on a regular basis (as with this site) then you click on through to what others say and even join in. Let's say there's a blog where most of the comments are something you want to read. You just use that little mouse-thingie in your hand to scroll down past the ones that are stupid or ignorant or insulting and skip to the next comment. You can do this as many times as you like. It's an excellent way to keep your blood pressure down when trolls come on the scene, which occurs more regularly on some blogs than others.
"leftist incivility"
What in the fuck are these stupid assholes talking about?
Did you catch Daou's brilliant piece, Daou's Triangle?
http://daoureport.salon.com/syno...c7-
b51768df79a3
Node of Evil ... scary. You know, sometimes I think Dave Neiwart is overreacting to the rhetoric of the right, that you know, people are just always going to a nasty streak w/o necessarily going state fascist.
But then I read Savage's comments compared to the Rwandan stuff you posted, and I shudder inside.
BTW, I was in the car with my wife, who is Thai, driving up to my mom's place for Christmas in 2004, listening to the radio, when Savage unleashed his famous diatribe against the tsunami victims. After sneering that Americans shouldn't give the victims "one dime" he speculated that the tsunami might have been "God's wrath" on Thailand's sex industry and Indonesia's Muslims.
My wife just looked at me with a puzzled expression, completely blindsided that an American with an actual job on the radio would say such things, and that an audience was apparently there that appreciated it.
That moment immediately made my Top 5 Most Ashamed Ever list.
Hey j - didn't watch the thread develop, but I trust you're right.
That said, can we all agree that whenever WaPo elects to resurrect their comments (if they do) it is to be shunned like the plague?
If they want to stifle criticism, shouldn't they have to pay?
I am a nobody and I have no fancy degree. I kept track of this via the firedoglake blog and other places.
I am simply a common man, but that does not mean I am stupid.
What I see coming is a division in the bloggers. I was dismayed once to see a hoity toity comment on a blog where the blogger is well respected but quite boring, who does not entertain comments. This poster sneered at posters on Democratic Underground as "sophomoric"
and that is the impression I got from the bloggers who were commenting on the WP debacle today. (not Hamsher)
There will come a time when bloggers begin to become full of themself and assume the ivory white tower of the MSM.
It will happen especially if they become "popular"
As usual you're right on the money, Digby. This is all part of the GOP's effort to discredit its opposition as so much rabble. From the desperate victims of Katrina to the Democratic Senators holding the Alito hearings to the liberal commentors on washingtonpost.blog and Amazon, Rove's got his minions working overtime to label the lot of us undignified and uncivil. It's just the latest dose of poison down our well.
How very true. The "mainstream" journalists' blind spot for this toxic cultural slide, where the worst vitriol from the right has become not only acceptable but normal, makes them equally guilty. Those journalists, on go on about their jobs taking all this as perfectly acceptable and normal, have been complicit in taking our political system, and the country itself, to a very bad place.
That they get their knickers in a bunch when peope on the other side make a bit of a fuss about gross factual lies in a major paper suggests that many of them are disingenuous and that their complicity is not just passive.
When they're not busy equating liberals with bin Laden (Matthews, Carlson, O'Reilly -- which, of course, is supposed to be a 'clever' point to make, while to point out the frightening similarities in world-view and the symbiotic relationship between our fundamentalist and neo-con right-wings and the wahabists... well, that's anti-American hate speech) -- when they're not busy with that, they celebrate and give magazine covers and air time to the "wonderful" right-wing pundits that put out eliminationist rhetoric (Savage on MSNBC, Coulter on Time and on every scurvy network all the time, etc.) And then, without missing a beat, they join in with the right in painting any uppity liberal as 'uncivil' and extremist.
Well, forget civility. It is well past time to fight back. This toxic slide must be halted. The only morally acceptable option is to be relentless -- get a thicker skin and be ready to step on some toes.
Can you hear it Digby? The sound of my cheers through the Internets. Bravo!
What's truly hilarious is that Rush has been 'egging on' his audience for 20 years and the inveterate cowards still won't actually do what he wants.
Digby,
This is my first time posting at your blog, but your latest entry is godsend to me:
...And we've been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths. It's made us a little bit testy. When important news outlets like the Washington Post see "leftist incivility" as a topic worthy of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth it makes us wonder if they are even living in the same universe we do.
Every time a conservative blogger shows up at one of the boards I frequent and accuses liberals of being angry and profane I have tried to explain to them why it may seem that way.
It's like these people would hit me in the nose and then complain when I hit them back. So tiresome.
Anyway, thank you.
I'm reminded of the "do as I say, not as I do" adage. Lack of civility is acceptable when they do it, but they howl when anyone else follows their lead.
And, by the way, Jim Brady is still lying through his teeth and dodging the real question.
There were two events:
1) The posting of new comments was frozen.
2) A while later, the existing comments were deleted.
Brady always conflates the two. He has to, because he was forced to admit that the existing comments after 1) were almost all reasonable (he first said otherwise in his initial post, but then people pointed out that the comments at point 1) were saved and available on other web sites for all to see).
I can understand them doing 1), the freezing of new comments.
There was no reason or excuse for doing 2), the deletion of the existing, 'civil' and well-argued comments -- nearly 1000 of them.
In a rethorical move that would make Karl Rove proud, Brady refuses to even ackowledge any question about this distinction. He just stays on-message and replies as if 1) and 2) were the same event.
Ok. We know the problem.
Now, what's the solution?
Give me marching orders. I'm smart, I can write, and I can talk.
Instapundit claiming any high moral ground is truly disgusting. All of these right wing clowns need to be bitch slapped in the worst way - and like Duke Cunningham crying in a fetal position after he got a few shoves with some admonishment from Jim Moran. They simply can't take it.
Does anyone else ever get the feeling these clowns have to pretend that they're human?
Same bastards that have called Zinni a traitor, ( Zinni "only" took three AK slugs in VN )belittle Shinseki's partially blown-off foot and can actually laugh at Wes Clark's
grievous wounds in Vietnam.
Just like Coulter no longer glowing about Pat Tillman after she found out he was not a right winger, opposed to Iraq and was to meet with Chomsky. Suddenly he was no longer a hero. Thanks for letting me rant and keep up the good work!!
taters - Not to mention Coulter's hit job on Max Cleland, in which she claimed his own "clumsiness" led to the loss of his limbs. (For the record, his CO at the time believes the fallen grenade came from another soldier). Oh, and she also had the gall to question whether Cleland's horrible injuries could ... ah, fuck I'll just let her speak for herself:
"Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman - or what Cleland sneeringly calls "weekend warriors." Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam. ...
"... Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn't "give his limbs for his country," or leave them "on the battlefield." There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight."
Now if you will please excuse me ... there is some throw-up I must wash out of my mouth.
You know, I'm not one to call for violence or elimination, Lord knows there's not much value in adding to the bile, but...
Time was once when an accusation of treason demanded a defense of one's own honor by killing the bastard who made the accusation.
Just sayin'...
AP:
[Quoting Coulter]: "Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends. He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up...."
There's worse out there. Some numbnutz with a blog has claimed that Cleland was drunk when he went for the grenade (and quoting Coulter's slime in support of this absurd proposition). Needless to say, not a candidate for a 800 verbal.
Cheers,
The right is just not used to having the left stand up and punch them right back in the nose when they take a jab at us.
I think it all comes back to the cowardly bully syndrome. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it. We've proven we can take it (we've been doing it since the Cold War--or longer!), but we can't take no more. And that bunch of whiny-ass titty-babies better get used to it.
And, of course, the sudden retreat to civility with these punks has to do with the fact that the WaPo omsbu lied in suggesting Demo participation in Abramoff's criminal enterprise.
Why would anyone care what a Republican says?
That's like Winston Churchill caring what Hitler has to say.
In fact Churchill would get a laugh out of it.
Republicans are in the same catagory.
The ONLY people bad mouthing Liberals are Republicans; The same Republicans that have the worst track record on any activity:
Some examples:
Can't put the group out of business that murdered nearly 3000 people.
Let the bad guy get away that ran the group that murdered 3000 people.
Can't fight wars correctly;
Outs their own spies to the world;
Lies about reasons for war;
Only way to win an election is to steal it in some shape or form.
Never has anything to show for it's efforts except failure.
But Republicans do know how to run a corrupt government.
Good at blaming others for Republican incompetence. Go Brownieeeee.
Oh Yes...Loves to spy on people. You Peeping Tom's.
I think Republicans would be more
happy living in the old Soviet Union
or at least Cuba, as long as they can run things.
Hey Castro...want some people who think like you? Give the White House a ring.
This is bizarro world. Bush says spying is legal ,Gonzalez says it is legal, both give ridiculous, laughable rationalizations and no one says anything. The president breaks the law, braggs about it and goes on a road show with his pathetic song and dance routine and no one dares to say anything to their faces. This is a table with no legs and only the enabling media is holding it up. As stated' you get the government you enable". Daou said today I believe- the media decides when there is a crisis and we are watching the titanic sink but the media has not decided the cold water lapping at our feet is a problem yet.
"Needless to say, not a candidate for a 800 verbal."
This blogger would not be a candidate for whatever score they give you just for signing your name correctly.
I've been trying to figure out why it's impossible to get facts through peoples internal information filters forever...
Then that report came out recently about the brains reaction in people who are strongly partisan when presented with unflattering facts about their party. The brain apparently starts doodling and whistling dixie instead of facing something it doesn't want to see.
Emory University study
http://
science.monstersandcritic...ter_1079125.php
***************
Once partisans reached completely biased conclusions -- essentially ignoring information that couldn`t be rationally discounted -- they then got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward.
'None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,' he said.
*****************
You get high believing lies basically.. How do you fight against that? People are actually addicted to being partisan assholes.. You know I'm not kidding.
I think some brains get that way because no reward is ever apparent to people for having empathy.
Teach empathy 101 in school instead of home ec or something..
For now the only way to reach these people is the emotion channel not the information channel. They have to see you mean business. They respond to anger and most of them are pussies so start bellowing back and calling out every single lie immediately. This is the only route for what's left of the democratic party, or it's whiggsville here they come..
You guys all rock...Amen on Cleland, AP. James, not to mention this admin could conceivably blow the Mossaoui case, if that's even possible.
Emel, I've found some of Alberto's family tree - possibly a relative of Yoo's, too. Certainly in spirt.
The mildest penalty imposed on Marranos began with the forfeiture of their property, which proved to be a convenient fund-raising technique for the war against the Moors. This was followed by the public humiliation of being paraded through the streets wearing the sambenito, a sulfur-yellow shirt emblazoned with crosses that came only to the waist, leaving the lower body uncovered. They were then flogged at the church door. This was the punishment suffered by Juan Sánchez de Cepeda, the grandfather of Teresa de Avila.
The scale of punishments continued up to burning at the stake, which was performed as a public spectacle called an auto-da-fé ("act of faith"). If the condemned recanted and kissed the cross, they were mercifully garroted before the fire was set. If they recanted only, they were burned with a quick-burning seasoned wood. If not, they were burned with slow-burning green wood.
In 1490 Torquemada staged a famous show-trial, the LaGuardia trial. This involved eight Jews and conversos, who were accused of having crucified a Christian child. No victim was ever identified and no body was ever found; nevertheless all eight were convicted, on the strength of their confessions which were obtained through torture. They were burned at the stake.
From "A Regrettable Life: Tomas Torquemada
http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/
~gbran...Torquemada.html
Oh what a wretched swamp these intrernets are. Full of snakes and perverts and attackers, many with a keen interest in contemporary politics and public policy. Huh?
Where else but America does the press publicly insult its readers? It's really bizarre. Is this something they teach at ombudsman school or something? Or are these huge egos just too fragile to have a mirror held up, so they lash out and attack their readers, biting the hand that feeds them.
I guess maybe it's just too humiliating for them to be shown to be liars or fools or hacks by common civilian readers like us.
G. Gordon Liddy once encouraged his listeners to shoot ATF agents in the head.
Kewl Kidz diss Jane.
And, while we're at it, WaPo to clean house by demoting Froomkin? With Little Debbie's vision of the Internet!
Good post, Digby.
Behavior of an individual cannot be predicted but behavior of aggregates can. (That's why statistics works.) What can be predicted can be controlled. Mind control of individuals doesn't work: mind control of groups of people does. (That's why advertising works.) The media are in the mind control business and they are under the control of the right. Who owns/controls the large media conglomerates? Middle class or working people?
Flailing away at Jim Brady and Deborah Howell has its place and purpose but fails to address the underlying problem. Our democracy is falling apart, our Constitution is being shredded, our civil liberties taken from us. The media are both agents and apologists of these changes. And people are going to continue watching, listening, and reading those media, which in turn are going to continue fostering the right wing agenda.
Where do we look for a solution?
pzykr,
The main points I see right now are:
1) The media situation is our biggest problem. We can deal with bad politicians, but media is surrounded by a self-generated force field which we have not been able to break through. Yet.
2) The time for being "nice" is over. Our democracy is directly threatened by these criminals. We have increasingly less to lose by fighting back with everything we have. Further, if we don't get serious now, we will surely later judge ourselves to have been remiss.
3) No violence. That would only make the situation much, much worse, guaranteeing a bad outcome for our side. In fact, I suspect the authoritarians would love to see us create some violence so they could quell it and look like heroes. (Then the suppression squads will arrive. No one will be able to figure out where they came from. What a puzzle that will be!)
OK, no violence. That's sensible and moral. Where are the demonstrations? The protests? The rallies? The media has written them into their script in such a way as to write them off. What will motivate enough people to get off their butts and into the streets to reach the level of critical mass that overcomes the "force field" that Ralph says envelopes the media?
Funny how bullies are always so shocked when people fight back.
Great post--especially the bit at the end. I'd love to get a Sharpie and copy backwards it on Brady's forehead so he could read it every day for a week while he brushes his teeth.
Jeez, what a bunch of losers. The very definition of barking moonbat members of the reality-based delusion. Get over yourselves.
Wow, what an amusing thread. You'd think Saddam Hussein had just taken over the U.S., and was ordering the media around and putting people in concentration camps. (Oops, wait, that was FDR.)
Seriously, the Left has been mauling the Right for decades. It's the Right that's finally fighting back. The Left, in response, is losing the remainder of its sanity and going batshit crazy with accusations like "shredding the Constitution."
digby -
This would be a fair post - if it wasn't based on an incorrect premise. As a former student of Glenn Reynolds and an admitted conservative, I can attest that Reynolds is not (as you labeled him) a "partisan." He does not identify with the Republicans any more than other true libertarians.
I wish he was more Right than he is, but that is simply not the case.
Cheers,
Rob
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