From Huffy Post by Jason Linkins
So, in case you haven't noticed, people have lately been going around killing people, indiscriminately. Is this because Fox News is sending their hypnobeams into America's brainpan through the lunatic ravings of Glenn Beck and the Michele Bachmann-boosting tyranny pillow-talk of Sean Hannity? I don't know! Maybe. That stuff mostly fills me with either humor or pity. Then I make some tacos, drink some Jim Beam, everything's OK again.
But CNN's Rick Sanchez notes the rise of Fox style crazyfaced paranoia and the uptick in gun violence, and feels that there's a connection worth exploring. Which he does by...SCARING THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF EVERYONE! Terrifying music! Scary YouTubes! Breathless, unproveable pronouncements! A cop-killer was "convinced, no doubt because of Fox News...that our rights were being infringed upon. That's according to a friend" of the killer. LOTS OF GREAT SOURCING AND CERTAINTY, THERE! Is there any truth to the notion that Fox is inexorably driving people crazy? It's an "apparent result," Sanchez says. Sounds ironclad!
Ugh. Look, I'd the first to suggest that children shouldn't play with Fox news, but if you're going to make the earnest case that Glenn Beck is literally killing America, you need more than second hand observations of spree-killers and "apparent results." You need, I'd posit, some sort of "evidence." Data points, anecdotal accounts, proof that the suits at Fox News were aware of potential harm and were negligent in allowing a specific danger to be exacerbated. Short of that, if you want to combat the pernicious effect of misinformation you deem dangerous, you got no other choice that to buckle down and do the work of a reporter. Debunk claims, research policies, stack up contrary evidence. And double down on the sobriety and the seriousness.
What Sanchez does here is lead with alarm, accusations, terrifying images, more alarm, melodrama. At about four minutes in, Sanchez finally offers a counterpoint - a statement from Eric Holder from his confirmation hearings. Unfortunately, Sanchez's first attempt at debunkery was well countered. That left Eric Boehlert of Media Matters to "help Sanchez out," but all he did was point out that there's a "media narrative" at work - which is where all of this began. From there, it became an internecine argument over what the media was doing as opposed to what the Obama administration was doing.
The end result, Fox is making people scared of Obama, CNN is making people scared of Fox viewers, and soon we'll all be peeing our pants at the drop of a hat.
Eight minutes, and Sanchez brings one solitary piece of substantive evidence was brought to the table, to support his argument. Better luck next time! Please?
[WATCH.]
[UPDATE]
Media Monitor Jon comes through with proof that CNN can, in fact, discuss the issue - and present evidence that counters the contention that a plan to curb gun owners is afoot - without resorting to histrionics, accusations, fearmongering, or "meta" media discussions.
[WATCH.]
MCL comment: I know I'm repeating myself on this one, but how in the hell can these guys get away with this? Fox News and their knuckle dragging allies in the right wing media made it their mission to stop all sorts of descent when George W. Bush was president but now, not only they pushing misinformation regarding President Barack Obama they bordering on inciting their viewers or listeners to violence. Since the up tick of gun violence many of these right wing hacks like former booze hound Glenn Beck are trying distance themselves from their dangerous rhetoric. These right wingers are not only hypocrites and their dangerous.
3 comments:
This Rick Sanchez who is accusing Glenn Beck of killing cops in Pittsburgh just couldn't be the same one who, when an anchor in Miami, was actually responsible for running over a pedestrian who later died? THIS Rick Sanchez wouldn't have been "surprised" to have been legally drunk at the time, would he?
Miami Herald - February 12, 1991 - 1B LOCAL
"TEST: SANCHEZ DROVE DRUNK ANCHORMAN SAYS RESULTS MISTAKEN
" Television anchorman Rick Sanchez was driving drunk on the mid-December night his car struck and critically injured a man who darted into a road outside Joe Robbie Stadium, blood test results show. Sanchez had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent. In Florida, a driver with a blood alcohol level of 0.10 is considered intoxicated. 'I'm totally, totally taken by surprise by this,' Sanchez, an anchorman for WSVN-Channel 7, said late Monday."
Shoot the messenger defense I see, I guess this all you guys on the right have left. Point is gun violence has gone up since the nuts on Fox News and in the right wing media started this wave of uprising against the government talk.
What I find truly amazing is that the ones who's spewing this talk and those who defend it, were the same ones who attack former President Bush critics mercilessly. Heaven sakes the right tried to destroy the Dixie Chicks career because the comment "I'm ashamed from the same state as the president" but you defend comments of hoping the president to fail and inciting violence against the government.
The right has surrender the moral ground on this issue.. I may not liked President Bush but I wouldn't use that sort of language against him or advocate violent revolution against the government.
Here's a thing for you 9.11 happen on Bush and Cheney watch right? So how can Cheney claim president Obama doesn't have what it takes to protect American,when the worst terrorist attack that happen on American soil happen on their watch?
The only relevant "hit and run" I can see here is a person who annonymously posts a message about a messenger he doesn't agree with in an attempt to discredit him.
But rather than make this about Rick Sanchez I'd rather talk to you about something even more American than God, guns, and the GOP....baseball.
Last night I was at a minor league home opener- the Binghamton Mets were playing the Trenton Thunder in Trenton, NJ. Before the game the teams and the fans stood in a moment of silence for 13 people, who did the "right thing", and studied to be good American citizens. And then another person, who had (in terms used by NRA director Wayne LaPierre) exercised his "Divine Right" to bear arms, used his weapon to mow down his fellow "Americans in training".
I have a suspicion that most of the "uber-patriots" on the extreme right have never read the works of Thomas Paine or of Thomas Jefferson. "Divine Rights" were those supposed authorizations given by God to rule over lesser men in His stead. It is the doctine that kept the Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and the Bourbons on Europe's thrones, in some cases, to the early 20th century. They were God's representatives on earth, given the authority by Him to rule over His subjects because God has chosen them to do so.
"Divine Rights", according to Paine, were a vestage of monarchy and aristocracy, and cannot be part of a functioning democracy. "Divine Rights" were part of feudalism, and its very nature was anathema to the notion of a free republic. And Jefferson was prompted by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to change the preamble to The Declaration of Independence to speak of "inalienable rights"...rights that cannot be taken away, but not necessary given to the individual initially by divine sanction.
We have Wayne LaPierre and his NRA buds drinking the Kool-Aid of a "Divine Right" to bear arms...and its as false as the "Divine Right" of one man to rule over another merely because of ones station in life.
The right to bear arms was granted by men for other men, not by God. And its a right that far too many people abuse. And that too is American as apple pie. And that too is unfortunate.
There'a alot more guns out there among those God fearing patriots. But I really don't feel any safer.
And I'm sure they don't feel any safer in Binghamton, New York.
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