Daniel Greenfield
This was what the political climate looked like back in 2006 when this was the DVD cover of a widely promoted movie featuring the murder of President Bush, as a way of discussing how awful Bush is. This wasn't the work of a single lunatic. Roger Ebert, who is predictably outraged over Palin, praised the movie as "necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush's role in the world today."
Here's more:
"The scenario is a familiar one: What would happen if a much-hated world leader was killed in office? Since the failed assassination attempts on Adolph Hitler, fictions imagining how things might have changed with the elimination of one powerful figure have fascinated historians and the public."
and
"Bush Jr., whose methods and ideology have been vilified as Hitlerian in real-life speeches and demonstrations that we've all seen already" Ebert's attitude was commonplace among liberals at the time. And anyone whose memory reaches back a mere 4 years has to laugh every time we get another sanctimonious lecture about creating a climate of hate toward the man in the White House.
By the way here's how the movie was promoted in one day
No wish fulfillment here. No climate of hate. Just an ad agency, a distributor and a newspaper running a picture of him being killed. But man, that Sarah Palin is dangerous with all her rhetoric.
The week has passed along with the ugly circus that resulted when an unstable man opened fire on a crowd that included a congresswoman and a judge. Some of the circus can doubtlessly be attributed to a tabloid media that has long ago learned to shape tragedy into a narrative. Rather than report the news, they manipulate emotions by fitting the news into a story that is meant to move, outrage or uplift viewers.
This is not reporting so much as it is storytelling, presenting heroes and villains, a Punch and Judy show for the audience to identify with. Think of it as a Reality TV show that encompasses not just individual volunteers who agree to act out for the cameras, but everyone. From the populations of entire nations to individuals who are just going about their business-- no one escapes its grasp except through the embrace of absolute privacy and by refusing to consume any of the products of the media.
This week the media jumped on the Arizona shootings and the Ted Williams story, two narratives that they created, spun out and then plumbed to exhaustion. There is no real difference between the two narratives. Both were artificial. Ted Williams, like most homeless people is a drug addict and a criminal with serious mental problems. The Arizona shootings were carried out by a mentally ill man for reasons divorced from any normative politics. But the media played out their side of the narrative, until it collapsed and then began telling the other side of the story, without ever admitting that the mess they were reporting on was a mess they had created.
Probably the most outrageous portion of the media's hypocrisy came in their condemnations of Sarah Palin's speech. "How dare she make the story about her?" they asked, when they had been the ones who had dragged her name into the story on no grounds at all. Except a campaign map with bullseye targets of politicians targeted for election defeats.
The absurdity of it is apparent. The constant mentions of the bullseye campaign map went without answering the simple question, did Loughner ever even see the map? And if he didn't, then what possible relevance does the map have?
For example Shakespeare wrote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Which means you can blame Shakespeare for the shooting of Judge Roll who did have a law degree. But unless you can show that Loughner had even read Henry VI, then it's a non-starter.
The left has made the argument that the right "created a climate of violence", which gives Loughner a ready made alibi and avoids having to actually prove that there is any connection between Palin, the Tea Party and Loughner.
Let's take these two examples from a liberal blog
"PUMPING THE AIR FULL OF GUN-BASED IMAGERY AND RHETORIC, WHICH HAD ALREADY REACHED FEVER PITCH AND RESULTED IN THREATS ON GABRIELLE GIFFORDS’ LIFE AND SOME VIOLENCE AGAINST HER, WHEN SOMEONE ACTUALLY SHOT HER AND KILLED A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE, AND NO MATTER WHO HE WAS OR WHAT HE WAS THINKING, HE WAS LIVING IN A CULTURE THAT LINKED GUNS, VIOLENCE"
"(what if it turns out he didn’t like Palin? He still lived in the culture of violence she helped to create)"
So Palin is guilty of playing a role in Loughner's shootings, regardless of how he felt about her, regardless of whether he ever saw her bullseye campaign map, regardless of absolutely anything.
The climate argument says that Sarah Palin poisoned the climate so badly that whoever kills a liberal for any reason, even if the killer is on the far left, was clearly influenced by her. If Squeaky Frome breaks out of her cell tomorrow and tries to shoot up congress again-- we can still blame Sarah Palin.
But the liberals promoting the climate argument haven't thought about that one too carefully. If we can blame any crime on anyone who creates a culture of violence, while skipping that middle part 2 where we show a clear connection between the two, then the party is on.
You know all those arguments about how movies and rap music cause murder? Well guess what. Everyone on the left who decided to be a shamelessly dishonest idiot this week just proved it.
Did a police officer get shot? It must be Ice Cube's fault. Lock him up right now. No, we don't have to prove that the shooting happened because of him. He contributed to a culture of violence and PUMPED THE AIR FULL OF GUN BASED IMAGERY. He's guilty.
And why stop there. If we can treat all violent rhetoric as the cause of murder, then we can go after movies too. How many times were Natural Born Killers or Clockwork Orange blamed by defendants and relatives of victims of violent crimes? More than a few. It's time to hold everyone involved accountable. Movies and TV shows with violent gun based imagery? Forget about it. Same goes for video games.
No, sorry but you don't have freedom of speech. You're poisoning the climate with carbon gun based imagery and violence.
And who knows how many people died because Obama said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
There's your gun-based imagery right there. No we don't have to prove that Obama's words actually got anyone killed. Let's just pick a shooting and blame it on him. It doesn't matter if the shooter was one of his supporters. It doesn't matter if the shooter heard of him. It doesn't matter if the shooter thought that a dog was talking to him. THE CLIMATE WAS POISONED BY GUN BASED IMAGERY AND VIOLENT RHETORIC.
Only two types of people will fall for this. The very easily frightened who want a nanny state to smooth over any unpleasantness and the completely irrational who are so filled with hate that they stopped making sense around the Nixon Administration.
But polls show that most Americans have not fallen for it, and so the media pulled back a little on their non-stop propaganda tour, and instead began regaling us with the stories of everyone who ever met and knew Loughner, thereby giving him his celebrity and providing an incentive to future would-be-shooters. Another public service brought to you by that most invaluable of institutions, the free 'owned by a small group of media conglomerates' press. What would we ever do without it, except perhaps think for ourselves, and process tragedies as tragedies instead of ways to goose the ratings that week so another executive can buy himself a yacht and promote their favorite politician of the month.
This week has passed. And like a hungry dog, the media looks elsewhere to feed. Another bone of tragedy to dig up, grip between its paws and gnaw on all over again.
The speeches have been given. There's a slogan and t-shirts. Yes G-d help us, even memorials have to be properly branded and marketed. Heaven forbid that people attending a memorial be unsure what message we're supposed to take away from it. No, we must spell it out for them. Carefully.
I don't know if it was sponsored by Coca Cola (Together We Refresh), but it wouldn't surprise me at this point.
And Obama's appearance completed the appropriation of tragedy for political purposes, with a high road speech, while his supporters did the low road work for him.
By giving the media what he knew they wanted, a scapegoat, Sheriff Dupnik avoided having to answer tough questions about why Loughner was allowed to run loose. And the media gave him what he wanted, a free pass, with the tough questions only coming from the local Arizona Republic. But who cares about asking why a dangerous schizophrenic was allowed to run loose after allegedly making death threats-- when you can instead blame the GUN-BASED CLIMATE OF VIOLENT RHETORIC or some such nonsense, as RFK Jr crawled out from his hideaway deep beneath a volcano to tell us that JFK was not killed by a Lee Harvey Oswald, a radical Communist, but by RIGHT WING GUN BASED RHETORIC.
And now that everyone has played their parts, the curtain falls and we move on. Those who have lost someone, mourn their dead. Gabrielle Giffords makes her slow journey to recovery. And the nation gets back to dealing with the economic and political disasters that Obama and his supporters have foisted on us, and tried to exploit a horrible massacre to prevent us from talking about it.
You know that Constitution. You know the one they didn't want us reading out loud because it might give people ideas about how they have the freedom to criticize the government, instead of the obligation to volunteer to sort recycling and buy tickets to Obama's latest speech. Not such a bad document, is it. Even if it was written because OF THE GUN-BASED CLIMATE OF VIOLENT RHETORIC when some crazy racists from the South decided they want to secede from the mother country because of too much government control.
Not such a bad document at all.
In the roundup, Dan Friedman contributes a list of the new speech guidelines to avoid any more violent rhetoric...
According to the Dept. of Homeland Security the following words, phrases and idioms are henceforth verboten:
1. Target audience
2. The movie bombed
3. I have a question. “Shoot!”
4. Attack ad
5. He shot his big mouth off
6. Over my dead body!
7. Annie get your gun
8. Bullets over Broadway
9. Killer app
10. I almost died laughing
Graphic guidelines to follow.
Speaking of the spin cycle, the RNC elections are giving the media another chance to do their catch 22 spin. If Michael Steele loses, the media will repeat that he was only a token and that the defeat is proof the Republican party isn't serious about change. If he wins, the media will use that as proof that the Republican party isn't serious about change.
Catch 22 spin, a negative talking point for every outcome.
Tunisia is melting down. And the American message is to urge reforms. Which would be great, if the reform alternatives were any better. They rarely are. Often worse.
Speaking of the power of democratic elections and political reform, Iran's program to take over Lebanon using Hezbollah has reached a new phase. And Hezbollah is informing Hariri that he should stay home (unless he wants to get blown up like dad.)
The Hezbollah leader said he was sure there would be no civil conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in Lebanon.
Nasrallah blamed Hariri for the current political crisis.
Hariri met with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Wednesday and held talks in France and Turkey on Thursday.
Nasrallah called on Hariri to stay abroad and not return to Lebanon.
The current political crisis being that Hezbollah is about to go down for murder. And not of Jews either, but of the locals. Everyone else is calling for calm dialogue and the usual sort of cheerful things.
But really this is the endgame. Hezbollah is forcing a crisis and so far every time they've done that they've come out ahead, because the "international community" rewards terrorists. Over and over again.
And the list of Latin American countries bowing to terror and recognizing "Palestine" continues to grow. The newest member of the Enable Muslim Terrorists club is Guyana.
Now granted nobody really cares, because Guyana is basically Haiti without the charm. Guyana is basically run by former Communists. Which again is something that virtually no one pays attention to, because hardly anyone pays attention to Guyana, a place that most Americans associate with Jim Jones.
Guyana is semi-unique in that it has probably the largest percent Muslim population in this hemisphere. At 10 percent, that's more than France. And yes Guyana does export its Muslim terrorists to America.
In the heart of the Queens neighborhood known as Little Guyana, Mohamed Sattaur stood Sunday over his plate of deep-fried cassava, wearing an expression of disbelief. Like many of his neighbors, Sattaur, 46, a Muslim from Guyana, was stunned by the news that men from his country and faith had allegedly plotted to bomb fuel tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
We can thank the British for importing Asian Muslim laborers to the Caribbean. And then abandoning Guyana to the local Communists. And we can thank Guyana's growing Muslim population for the vote. But the best part is just how stupid Bharrat Jagdeo's declaration is.
The Government of Guyana has today decided to formally recognize the State of Palestine as a free, independent, and sovereign state, based on its 1967 borders.
Since there was no actual state of Palestine in 1967 (or ever) this is more of a non-declaration. It's akin to recognizing Atlantis based on its 1835 borders.
But we can't blame Bharrat Jagdeo too much. He was educated at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University, along with current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Patrice Lumumba University was less about educating students, and more about training the Communist terrorists of tomorrow.
See more on this absurdity at Elder of Ziyon
At IsraelMatzav, the Obama Administration is desperate for ideas on how to revive the peace process
“There are three options that this administration can adopt,” former U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer told POLITICO Thursday. “It can elicit an Israeli initiative. It can elicit a Palestinian initiative. Or it can develop its own initiative.”
Here's a fourth option, it can butt out. Or a fifth option, fly over to Saudi Arabia and just do what they tell you. It worked out so well for Thomas Friedman. Or a sixth option, admit that the whole thing is a sham and try to fix the American economy instead.
“It’s had no success with the first two, and it hasn’t tried the third,” Kurtzer said. “So if it wants to try to develop an initiative, it’s got to come up with a substantive program that says to the parties, ‘When you get to negotiations, here are your terms of reference.’" …
Shocker. Kurtzer is biased toward imposing a solution. Fantastic. But it has been tried before, and no it hasn't worked out. Telling the parties what they should be doing isn't going to fix the problem. All it will do is cheer up Dar Al Islam.
But Dar Al Islam has plenty of willing American puppets. Take Grover Norquist, who just popped up to announce that he's found a great new way to save money. Withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq. Also maybe adding footbaths and banning pork might be other great money saving tips. Because if there's one thing that Grover Norquist is all about, it's helping Americans save money.
Other proposed money saving tips, might be getting rid of national security, shutting down all those annoying churches and firing the judges and replacing them with Imams. Because that's how much he wants to help Americans save money.
And this reminds me of the time that Benedict Arnold wanted to help Americans save money by letting the British take West Point off their hands.
Here's some pieces on Grover Norquist's ties to Islamists
Grover Norquist's Jihad at American Thinker by Pamela Geller.
What say you now, Grover Norquist? at Michelle Malkin
And Daniel Pipes, Is Grover Norquist an Islamist?
Of course the mainstream media is cheering Grover Norquist on, which should be a tip off right there. The media doesn't cheer on actual conservatives. It just doesn't. It drags them through the mud, smears and slimes them.
At Western Rifle Shooters, there's an interesting book excerpt that poses a fictional what if scenario
If you take a "Parallax View" of history, you might allow the possibility that rogue government agencies or other cliques could also be grooming likely candidates, but I tend not to believe in elaborate conspiracies. Could it happen? I suppose. But in my experience, no conspiracy involving a large cast of characters can remain a secret for many years.
On the other hand, the temporary private relationship between a mentor and a singular student, that relationship can indeed be kept a secret. My writing this secret history in freedom instead of in captivity proves that this is so. And even if one of my human tools is someday arrested alive, his mad barkings will be disregarded. His minor side-story of a mysterious helper, if heard at all, will be disregarded as just another in his cornucopia of delusions.
Converting a certain type of lunatic into a useful tool is not too difficult when you understand the dynamics that are in play. Practice makes perfect, and I’ve had a lot of practice. Good candidates for a direct action mission are often quite intelligent, at least as measured on certain scales. They can navigate by themselves between cities, and arrive at a place and time without causing alarm to the general population.
But in my experience, the best candidates for a guiding hand are not true “loners.” They often seek friendship and employment, and they may even succeed for a while. But the men who interest me invariably sabotage their social relationships by compulsively discussing their paranoid obsessions. Each human rejection adds heat to their simmering rage. Yet still they crave human companionship, and simple affirmation of their delusional belief systems. This makes them soft putty at my touch. These men, deftly guided, become my arrows. To the world, these arrows seem to plunge at random from the clear blue sky. Sometimes they do, but not always!
And so the week passes. The caravan rolls on.
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