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This post is in: Assholes, Bring on the Brawndo!, I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
I know I say it a lot, but you really can not make this shit up.
It appears that Gateway Pundit saw a picture of the Tucson memorial, in which the Jumbotron was featured. He then mistook the closed captioning as “instructions” for the audience to applaud.
*** Update ***
And the stupid is spreading.
Comments are closed.
[…] am not kidding. Sara Janacek and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick did it in late 2002, and Jim Hoft’s doing in early 2011: It appears that Gateway Pundit saw a picture of the Tucson rally, in which the Jumbotron was […]
Mark S.
They also instructed the audience to clapping and to cheers.
Is GP familiar with imperative tenses?
schrodinger's cat
May be the peroxide he uses to dye his hair, seeped into his cranium, making him rather dumb.
licensed to kill time
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
(pipe down with the laughter, you guys!)
brent
I guess I missed the LGF transition to reasonableness. That site looks positively sane now. When exactly did this happen?
TR
This piece on epistemic closure on the right really does make sense.
Why would any sane person believe this would be true? And even if it were, why would any sane person care?
Please, conservatives, keep bitching about the details of the memorial service for the victims of a tragic shooting. It makes you look incredibly good.
Jenny
moron.
I guess they gave instructions to cry, as well, because the audience was weeping through out the memorial.
Stillwater
It’s a forgiveable mistake, since he prolly has to check in with his handlers before emoting and thinks this is just how things go.
TR
@brent:
I knew Johnson had shed the insanity, but I was surprised to see his commenters had too. Good to see. That place used to be Crazytown.
stuckinred
@Stillwater: And, of course, it’s being picked up all over. What do you academics call it, a “meme”?
David
It’s stupid but it’s On Purpose Stupid. It’s stupidity as a blunt weapon — he’s trying to wear you down with stupidity. It takes no effort for Gatewaypundit to be stupid but you still have to deal with it all the same.
Professor
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t you know that these people wear ‘Crass Stupidity and Abject Ignorance’ as badges of Honor! These people call it ‘American Exceptionalism’
gwangung
@David:
Oh, I dunno. I think generating snark for such dumb comments is quite energizing.
Stillwater
@stuckinred: No. Just pure stupidity.
dmsilev
@brent: Couple years ago, I think. Amazing, really. Gives me hope that it’s possible for just about anyone to come to their senses. I’m not saying that Michelle Malkin will suddenly have an outbreak of sanity; I’m just saying that it’s at least hypothetically possible.
dms
Mike Kay
This is gonna be worse than Watergate.
Some winger found a photo of Bill Daley personally giving the Tucson audience instructions.
http://www.corbisimages.com/images/67/C632FF12-D39F-4B28-8468-6479D25B2D9D/U977000BACME.jpg
Man, Daley is more hardcore than his father. Not only will Daley have the dead voting for Obama, he’ll have them canvassing for Obama.
matoko_chan
why so surprised?
the soon-to-be-wholly-disenfranchised TP/GOP runs purely on ressentiment. its an inferiority complex masquerading as political philosophy (julian sanchez). their ONLY mode is butthurt victimhood.
that is why uberfuckwad EDK thinks its “fair” for him to come in here and shit out conservative drench all over the frontpage.
RSR
So LGF is where on the politics scale now? I recall Johnson had some revelations a way back.
Doctor Gonzo
This is exactly what they said after the Wellstone memorial as well.
Just wait, they’ll try to turn this into Wellstone 2.0.
suzanne
I remember making a similar comment to a friend during my divorce about my ex-husband, when I found out that he had stolen our infant daughter’s post-surgical pain medication out of my medicine cabinet. My friend asked why I hadn’t thought to hide the meds, and I said, “Because I’m not a lying drug addict, I cannot make my mind work like that of a lying drug addict. I am fundamentally not an asshole, and my first impulse is to operate as if everyone else is, too. Even when confronted with ample evidence to the contrary.”
Joseph Nobles
Anybody hating on the AZ memorial crowd for raucous applause and cheers in the face of evil needs to show us their real-time long form objection to this similar display:
http://youtu.be/AvMmAJfO-pk
That’s Liza Minnelli singing “New York, New York” ten days after 9/11.
So tired of the BS.
licensed to kill time
I think they are really just pissed that Obama gave such a good speech that was well received even by some Repub/conservos. And w/o a teleprompter, even! It must gall their little stones.
stuckinred
@licensed to kill time: They have no stones.
Citizen Alan
I can’t remember, but what triggered LGF’s conversion to sanity? I remember when Cole had his “Saul on the Road to Tarsus” moment during the Schiavo mess, but if you’d told my five years ago that one day, LGF would turn its back on the GOP, I’d have asked for a hit of whatever you were smoking.
dmsilev
@licensed to kill time: Some of them are claiming that he used a teleprompter, but it was just Cunningly Disguised so we wouldn’t see it.
I’ve never been quite sure why it mattered, though I don’t think he used one for this speech (he carried a folder up to the podium, which presumably contained a copy of the speech).
dms
C. Gallagher
@Doctor Gonzo: Exactly. Even their stupidity lacks originality.
Jenny
Looks like they told the audience to cry on cue.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/1/14/936376/-Requiem
kdaug
Is it wrong to wish that when these guys come to a Stop sign, their hypothalamus would comply?
Jenny
@Citizen Alan: LGF said it he was horrified with global warming deniers during the 2008 primaries.
cleek
my favorite comment from the GWPundit post:
fucking cause and effect, how do they work?!
Obama: (something inspiring)
audience: (applauds)
CC: “(something inspiring) (Applause)”
audience: reads “Applause”, claps harder.
CC: “(more Applause)”
audience: reads “more Applause”, claps even harder.
CC: “(loud Applause)”
audience: reads “loud Applause”, claps even louder.
CC: “(thunderous Applause)”
audience: reads “thunderous Applause”, claps harder still!
etc., etc.. until people start fainting from exhaustion
Stillwater
@C. Gallagher: Even their stupidity lacks originality.
They’re conservatives! Why go trying to fix what ain’t broke?
Ed in NJ
@brent:
I believe in early 2009 Charles Johnson began questioning alot of the anti-Muslim rhetoric on other conservative sites, and as a result, began getting viciously attacked from the right. By midyear, he had pretty much abandoned the right.
I always felt his site was the sanest of the right-wing blogs, and was what I used to read to get the other side of the argument during contentious issues. I don’t think a site like that exists anymore.
cleek
@dmsilev:
i was kinda thinking that he might have been using one. some of the other people looked like maybe they were, as well. maybe they were just looking at something interesting in the crowd… but they kept going back to it, and pausing.
no big deal.
LT
Even funnier, one of his commenters says something along the lines of, Yeah, but I bet the libs in the audience were too stupid to know it was CC, and thought it was instructions!, not realizing what he implies about Hoft.
Svensker
@kdaug:
:)
licensed to kill time
@dmsilev:
I read somewhere that Obama wrote the bulk of the speech himself, staying up until 3am the night before to make sure he got it just right. I am also puzzled by the fixation on teleprompters but the implication, of course, is that he is inarticulate without one (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding).
ETA: but you knew that :)
TR
@dmsilev:
I think the whole idiotic Obama-uses-a-Teleprompter! theme on the right is basically a version of Rove’s political attacks, whereby you take an opponent’s perceived strength and use it against him.
Obama is praised as an elegant speaker, so you stress the Teleprompter to make it seem like he’s an empty suit repeating someone else’s words. Check out this and this for short versions of the “argument” here.
Of course, this weird teleprompter theme only works if you’re stupid enough to believe Obama is somehow unique in using a Teleprompter
Mike Kay
Eerily, if you play Obama’s speech backwards, he can be heard saying “Rahm is dead”.
Paul in KY
@Doctor Gonzo: I think they’re gonna try, but it sounds like we learned from that fiasco & the Pres. kept it on the ‘angels of our better nature’ level. Which I knew he would.
nancydarling
@Citizen Alan: That would be Damascus. I can’t help it—too many weeks of my childhood spent in vacation Bible school.
Zach
Why the hell did I click through? Apparently, because someone with an Obama-for-America account used the phrase “together we thrive” that means that it’s all part of Obama’s creepy sloganeering. Weird.
LT
@cleek: That was my favorite comment, too. “Yeah, but WHAT IF people there were as stupid as WE NOW KNOW Jim Hoft is?! Huh?!
Paul in KY
@suzanne: I’m assuming you did not know he was a lying drug addict (at that time).
Phoenix Woman
John, this is a retread of the lie used by various conservative activists (most notably Sara Janecek of Politics in Minnesota) against the Wellstone event in Williams Arena in 2002:
Turns out that Al Franken caught this lie — one repeated by Gingrich acolyte Kellyanne Fitzpatrick for a national audience — and it was one of the things that pissed him off so much he decided to run against Norm Coleman in 2008:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/reflections-on-the-wellst_b_15459.html
TR
@efgoldman:
Heh, beautiful.
Benjamin Cisco
@dmsilev:
Good to know; Malkin’s more of a “Shaka, when the walls fell” type.
techno
@Doctor Gonzo:
It is true what you say about this stupid slander about closed captioning being used after the Wellstone funeral. In fact, it was first said by that execrable Republican hack Sarah Janecek on MPR the day after the funeral.
The reason I remember this so clearly is that I was driving my car and got so upset at this lie that I had a heart attack and wound up in the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. I have not knowingly conversed with a Republican since that day except to insult them. I am STILL angry about that cynical lie.
Mike Kay
@licensed to kill time:
Their loser inferiority complex coupled with racial animus can’t take seeing super articulate Black person, so they try to cope by saying, he’s just reading someone else’s words.
The same crowd does the same thing with black athletes. Their ingrained sense of racial supremacy is threaten, so they cope by saying, it’s “breeding” and not long hours of dedication and perseverance.
asiangrrlMN
@cleek: Did you quote that correctly?
And if you did, is there a reason of which I don’t know why he spelled ‘the One’ like that? Because Obama won? What? I’m not clicking through, so you please to explain to me. kthxbai.
Bunch of fucking clowns. The Wellstone memorial spin pissed me the fuck off.
Mark S.
Huh?
Joseph Nobles
BTW, I am an actual closed captioner. In fact, I captioned this event for one of our clients. It was rough because it was so emotional.
These aren’t my captions, though. I can tell by line placement. However, we know this event was being piped into an overflow room, and the university has its own public access channel that would have broadcast this live and thus been closed captioned. My guess is that the TV feed was being simulcast in the arena and the overflow room, and captions meant for television audience were enabled for the benefit of the large crowds in both rooms.
Our rules for indicating applause are to send the [APPLAUSE] if the TV audience couldn’t see a crowd applauding. You don’t always know this, however. Most of the time captioners are working off of an audio-only feed, and so they would send [APPLAUSE] anyway, just to be sure. The picture at Gateway is of Obama looking at his notes in an extended pause, and so [APPLAUSE] would be necessary to let the television audience know what is happening.
Could it have inspired the crowd to applaud? No. Number one, you wouldn’t send [APPLAUSE] unless the crowd was applauding. That might get a “begging the question” rebuttal, but there is more. Captions will always be delayed. You are hearing the words, transmitting the captions back to the original station, and then the station sends them out. Technology is getting better, but not all that better. The captioner may have been working off of a non-time-delayed audio line, but we don’t know that and that would still only get [APPLAUSE] up there after the crowd was already applauding.
The bottom line is this: The captioning is descriptive, not proscriptive. This is a conclusion looking for evidence after the decision to believe has already been made. It’s not pretty in the 9/11 Truth crowd and it’s not pretty here.
Phoenix Woman
Amazing, how over the span of eight-plus years, high-powered conservatives with a national reach are such helpless little infants, untutored in the ways of society, that they can claim they’re unfamiliar with something that’s present in every sports bar and many fast-food places, and has been for over two freaking decades: captioning on TVs.
Paul in KY
@Mike Kay: This!
evinfuilt
@cleek:
Careful there, it seems you discovered a new weapon in humor, I’m laughing quite hard right now.
techno
@asiangrrlMN:
Yeah, that Wellstone spin was just awful. To hear that garbage while grieving was astonishingly painful. I knew Paul Wellstone personally. I was in shock. I wept bitterly through the whole memorial service.
And the NEXT DAY, those slimeballs began their lies. And worst of all, the hack media repeated it. I never watched WCCO news again and my best friend was a news producer down there. To this day, I cannot mention Don Shelby’s name without cursing.
Off Colfax
I must have missed something on my media vacation/self-exile/digital-Elba…
When the hell did CHARLES JOHNSON start sounding like a moderate Republican?!? Was it the same time that Instapundit started being the 24 Hour Snark Channel? Sheesh, at least Steven Green hasn’t changed. (He’s still drunkblogging, right? RIGHT?)
Something strange is going on in the blogosphere, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
Paul in KY
@Joseph Nobles: Outside of a game show or sitcom, ‘applause’ chyrons should never be used, IMO.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Mr. sHoft in the Head was also puzzled by the fact that when the CC said “Music Playing” the audience didn’t whip out their band instruments.
Phoenix Woman
@Joseph Nobles:
It’s an old lie going back to the Wellstone event at Williams Arena in 2002.
You know, Gateway Pundit should have had extra caution against reviving and repurposing this old lie, since it was one of the key bits of right-wing demagoguery that led Al Franken to take up electoral politics. Who knows what prominent smart and rich liberal with an iron work ethic and a long memory might see this and decide what Franken did?
j
@brent: When Pajamas Media decided to not pay anybody and shut down their ad revenue sharing stream. He had a hissy fit and now spends nearly as much time smearing the wingnuts he used to laud as he did smearing the Dems. It’s all about the Benjamins with those cretins.
Mike Kay
@efgoldman: I bet he voted for George Wallace.
I mean, that’s what the teatards are. They’re Wallace/Perot types.
licensed to kill time
@Mike Kay:
I get that part, but it’s the fact that teleprompters are so ubiquitous and so commonly used that makes it a weird thing to obsess about. I mean, it takes about two seconds to find eleventyzillion pics of every other politician in the country using them, so I guess it’s just another entry in the “Too Stupid to Spoof” category. Or in my book, “Just Too Dumb For Words” category.
TR
@licensed to kill time:
I have a comment at 37 that speaks to the teleprompter issue. It only now made its way out of moderation because of multiple links.
Phoenix Woman
@techno: The worst was on the KQ Morning Zoo, where Barnyard and Company repeated it so much (and wouldn’t take any phone calls from people who were there who knew better), I couldn’t listen any more and turned to MPR — just in time to catch Sara Janacek spewing it on the Mid-Morning Show. Unlike KQ, MPR takes phone calls from non-conservatives, and immediately after she spoke MPR’s phone lines lit up as people like me, who’d actually been at Williams Arena, called in to correct her.
Again, how can such alleged smarty-pants like Janacek and Fitzpatrick and Jim Hoft truly mistake captioning for “applause signs” when every single sports bar and plenty of other bars and restaurants has had captioned TV service for well over two decades?
Mike Kay
@licensed to kill time: they are ubiquitous, but the teatards are under educated and low-information types. For decades most of them thought the clear glass was actually ballistic proof glass, used to protect the president, because they couldn’t see any words on the glass.
http://www.bartcop.com/reagan-teleprompter.jpg
Phoenix Woman
@techno: Of course, she’s spent the last few years trying to deny she really said it. Even though there are still plenty of us out there who remember and know she did: http://www.minnpost.com/sarahjanecek/2007/12/28/446/heres_hoping_al_franken_stops_all_the_personal_attacks
dmsilev
@Mike Kay:
Well, that explains the constituency that he’s going for in the Chicago mayoral race.
dms
Joseph Nobles
@Paul in KY: The idea behind closed captioning is to describe to the deaf what they aren’t hearing. Our policy is to not describe what can be seen, but you send it when you’re not sure or when you know the applause isn’t being seen on screen. The captioning standards are something that has been developed with the feedback of the deaf community, and they want to know. It’s not fair for me to decide when they get to “hear” something and when they don’t.
licensed to kill time
@TR:
I understand the Rove tactic, and it makes sense for people who are predisposed to dislike Obama for any number of reasons. I always have to adjust my Reality Specs(tm) to “Bamboozled” to be able to see things their way.
@Mike Kay: Ha.
eemom
@efgoldman:
damn, that was creepy, wasn’t it?
I almost couldn’t believe that Leslie Stahl story — I mean if he was that far gone that soon, it seems almost unbelievable that he made it to 1988 with public appearances.
GregB
I think that Johnson at LGF has an appreciation for actual science and facts.
There were a lot of people caught up in the post 9/11 hysteria. Many, many people.
It has take some longer than others to finally lose the scales from their eyes.
It has been an even bigger wonder to have never been sucked in to the post 9/11 war on terror hysteria.
suzanne
@efgoldman: No, the boring-but-harmless MIL is the mom of my current husband (#2). My ex-husband, the lying drug addict, has The Supreme Witch of the Universe for a mother.
Getting divorced = BEST THING I EVER DID
Paul in KY
@Joseph Nobles: Ain’t talking about closed captioning. I was only talking about ‘applause’ prompts.
I stand by my assertion: Should never be used in anything outside a game show/sitcom (applause signs, that is).
Mike Kay
@dmsilev: That’s why I like Daley as chief of staff.
Like his pop, he’ll “relax” registration requirements and lower the voting age.
http://www.corbisimages.com/images/U1080033.jpg?size=67&uid=e75b0e75-edd5-46da-9c99-fb19a9ddc8c5&uniqID=d45f1463-902d-4eb1-9909-2c72f49ee810
Joseph Nobles
@Phoenix Woman: I’m not surprised it’s an old lie. I have a hobby of debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, and not only do the 9/11 Truth advocates look at that attack like the JFK assassination, they actually seem to enjoy finding parallel CTs. It’s like the path is laid down on how to understand something conspiratorially, and the more you can find a common way of misunderstanding, the more entrenched it becomes in their minds.
For example, JFK CTs have the magic bullet trope. In 9/11 Truth, it became the “magic passport” that survived an airplane explosion. Well, small pieces of paper like passports and drivers’ licenses survive airplane crashes all the time. But for them, being able to describe their own CTs in the approved language of the JFK CTs helps the argument feel more real.
suzanne
@Paul in KY: No, I thought his drug addict days were long past. That was another lie.
scav
@Paul in KY: Why deprive the readers of an important social cue and possibly integral part of the experience?
jwb
@Phoenix Woman: Well, of course, the answer would be that they did not “mistake” them for applause signs, but simply used their appearance to float the meme.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: I’m sorry he treated you & your child like that. Glad you got rid of him. Saw your emphatic post up above & it made me smile.
Joseph Nobles
@Paul in KY: OK, but that’s not what is happening here.
SFAW
Bullshit. Why ruin our memories of a good show by having even a third-hand reference to that shrieking
harpycheerleader.Plus, the idea that Magalangadingdong would have anything to do with something a Negro (other than Michael Steele or Clarence Thomas) said is ridiculous.
On the other hand, you can’t spell “TeaTard Amok” without “Darmok”. Doh!
Sly
@TR:
It also only works if your stupid enough to insist that the President of the United States has the time in their schedule to rehearse speeches.
Paul in KY
@scav: I wasn’t thinking about deaf people. I’m talking about applause signs for us hearing folk.
As for applause indicators for deaf people, no problem. Alhough, if the deaf people can follow along with the comments, those comments (by themselves) should prompt them to applaud or not applaud based soley on the quality of the comments themselves.
R-Jud
@suzanne: Well done walking away. Is the new infant treating you all right?
Paul in KY
@Joseph Nobles: Am beginning to figure out that the closed captioning had ‘applause indicators’ for our deaf attendees.
See my comment above, but I don’t think I agree with that (unless the closed captioning had some kind of delay so that the deaf people are seconds behind the rest & then would clap out of sequence with everyone else). I guess in that situation it is OK, as no one wants to look like a goob, clapping when no one else is.
TR
@Sly:
Excellent point.
Also, you would’ve thought Obama’s deft work in a long series of presidential debates and an unscripted 90-minute filleting of the House Republicans at their retreat would’ve done in this theme as well.
jwb
@Paul in KY: Are you being obtuse? The [applause] just indicates that people are applauding. There are a whole set of these, and they exist to tell the deaf about offscreen sound.
Locker
Some of the more progressive commenters went to war with the really hard line wing nuts at LGF starting in the summer of 2009.
The problem for the wingnuts are simple:
1. Charles isn’t a racist
2. Charles isn’t anti-science
3. Charles isn’t a homophobe
With these basic factors, the wingnuts couldn’t win and began flouncing one by one, little by little.
Into the vacuum came a new group of people from moderate conservative to ultra liberal. It’s a very good place to get a bit broader discussion that on some of the more partisan boards.
Mnemosyne
@Paul in KY:
It was simulcast, so the closed captions were not just for the people who were actually there — they were also for the deaf people who were watching on TV. And, yes, if they’re watching a program, most deaf people like to know everything that’s going on, which is why the captioners let them know that there’s applause, or music, or something else audible going on that they can’t see on the screen.
ETA: The [applause] caption isn’t giving people instructions on when to applaud, it’s telling people who can’t hear that there is applause so they know what’s going on.
Paul in KY
@jwb: I’ve been thinking it was an applause sign like you’d see at a sitcom taping (sign saying ‘applause’ lights up). That’s what I’ve been talking about.
Evidently, it wasn’t like that.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Oh, my bad then on that.
SFAW
Unfortunately, it matters little that Johnson has (apparently) seen the light. His (one hopes) former Wingnuttiness just transferred somewhere else.
With apologies to Clausius:
jwb
@TR: See, the thing is he doesn’t need the teleprompter, because he actually has an implant. He just occasionally uses the teleprompter to throw everyone off the scent.
Now, where do I sign up for the wingnut welfare circuit?
scav
@Paul in KY: The social cue is that others are moved to applause by what is being said.
ETA: late to the ephiphany as always.
Mike Kay
Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech
jwb
@Paul in KY: No, they just had the CC turned and running on the jumbotron, probably for any deaf and hard of hearing folks in the audience. When I go to ballgames, they use CC for the announcements in the arena, though they run the CC on the scoreboard rather than the overhead jumbotron.
scav
@scav: PPS. That means me, appearing to pile on after everything’s been cleared up!
Winston Smith
So, can someone clue me in as to what happened to Little Green Fascists? Did the Illuminati replace Charles Johnson with a clone? Has he, like John, admitted his past mistakes?
Paul in KY
@scav: It can apply to me at times :-)
jwb
@Mike Kay: But Obama only lipsyncs when he has to perform difficult choreography. Otherwise the implant is sufficient.
Ash Can
Bless his heart.
SFAW
That was last week.
Edit: But Melchior said it’s OK, he’ll cut you some slack
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Mike Kay: LOL. And the state of Wyoming seceded three months ago but no one noticed.
jwb
@Winston Smith: No, the site was hacked by leftwing radicals, who managed not only to lock Johnson out of the site but also appropriated all the handles of the regular commenters.
SFAW
One can only hope that all the Go Galt!-ians end up there. Whether by choice, or by other more “directed” methods.
Winston Smith
@jwb: That somehow seems more plausible than the idea that LGF’s maelstrom of crazy somehow “got better.”
PTirebiter
@licensed to kill time:
I
I think everything about him and his family galls them. In a just world, Obama would have the dysfunctional family with the drop-outs and “illegitimate” grandchildren.
ppcli
@SFAW:
“The Second Law of Wingnutodynamics states that in general the total craziness/stupidity of any Wingnut system will not decrease other than by increasing the craziness/stupidity of some other less-Wingnutty system. And even then, there ain’t no decrease. Also, too.”
Does this mean, extending the analogy, that the Third Law is that peak Wingnut may be approached, but never reached?
greennotGreen
@scav: Besides the sufficient-in-and-of-itself fact that deaf people have requested information about sounds that are occurring during the closed caption event, captioning does not convey tone of voice, so other than interpreting body language and facial expression which may be deceiving in a public speech, [Applause], [Cheering], [Booing] tell the CC audience what the effect of the speech is on those who can hear it.
Obdicut
@Winston Smith:
I’ve been commenting there since the election.
I can’t really speak to whatever LGF was before. I looked into it once in awhile, and found that it wasn’t close to where I was in feelings on the War on Terror, and a lot of the commentators were batshit insane. In the leadup to the election, I strongly disagreed with his take on Obama.
From what I understand, there were always a bunch of commentators there who complained constantly about how soft Charles was. There was one initial meltdown when he stated that he had contempt for creationism. There was another one over Charles reviewing the evidence for global warming and being convinced. There was yet one more when, in the wake of the election, Charles’s fears about Obama proved unfounded and he recognized that the right wing was criticizing him baselessly.
So basically, Charles has the capacity to change his mind when new evidence arises. I know it’s teh shocking.
Many of the conservatives on LGF are still there. Some haven’t changed much, some would say they haven’t changed at all but that the GOP headed massively right, and others would say that on some subjects, like AGW, ACORN, and the rest, they’ve become better informed and changed their views.
greennotGreen
Sorry, redundant. I was going to request deletion, but then everyone might wonder what scandalous thing I had written!
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@greennotGreen: Once you request deletion your comment disappears.
Although it would be cool if it was replaced with “[Commenter name] has requested deletion of his comment about goat pron.”
kerFuFFler
@Joseph Nobles:
Kinda like just about everything conservatives insist on: global warming is a hoax, the earth is 6,000 years old, Obama is a Kenyan, low taxes solve all economic problems, the healthcare bill is job-killing, Loughner is a lefty hippie, Obama is trying to deprive Americans of their 2nd amendment rights, financial regulation is bad…….
daize
@Benjamin Cisco: If I was not already married…. one of my favorite episodes!
xian
isn’t it pronounced “Gateway Pundint”?
SatanicPanic
Only racists who can’t imagine that a black man could give a speech without a teleprompter and somehow garner applause have trouble accepting Obama’s speaking ability. The only black man in history able to do this was Martin Luther King, who was, as everyone knows, a conservative.
cmorenc
@Jenny:
No, that’s because the whole place reeked of fresh-sliced raw onions. The organizers figured they could successfuly cue the audience when to applause using the jumbotron, but they decided not to leave the crying response to chance.
I’m surprised that moron didn’t figure that out too, or the O-bots would REALLY have been caught red-handed.
Phoenix Woman
@cmorenc:
I had to administer my own smackdown:
http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2011/01/15/lies-and-the-lying-liars-that-revive-them/
BDeevDad
The ironic thing is that hearing aids are no covered by most insurance companies, making it a major healthcare expense, that diot TeaBageers will never understand.
JD Rhoades
If it wasn’t for the liberal blogosphere complaining about him, would anyone outside of a vanishingly small number of people even know who Jim Hoft is? Even my wingnuttiest friends and acquaintances give me a blank look when I bring up something really stupid Hoft has said, so I’ve just quit.
Batocchio
IIRC, the exact same accusation was made for the exact same reason with the Wellstone funeral. I’ll have to pull out my Al Franken book again…
Jeanne ringland
@Mike Kay: My dad did, and it was JFK. He really did not know what it was and thought it was for protection. I was 11 and I wondered just how that would work.
MAJeff
I’m glad others have noted the odious Sarah Janacek and her libelous claims about the Wellstone Memorial. I was in the auditorium next door (arrived too late to get into Williams) and it was obvious that it was close captioning. I’m still pissed off about the right-wing spin of that night. They are lying motherfuckers without any semblance of decency.
Ed Marshall
@JD Rhoades:
I’ve never had anyone in real life know who any bloggers are. As a matter of fact, most people think it’s spooky that I know the basic bio of the talking heads on the TV.
Skepticat
@Paul in KY: As I understand it, this is a report rather than a prompt.
JN, may I assume that it’s too time-consuming to replace this with “Audience is applauding”?
Joseph Nobles
Well, Gateway seems to not care about making a correction on this story. He and others have moved on to more fertile grounds for hating libs, the Tucson shooting victim Eric Fuller telling the Tea Party leader in Arizona, “You’re dead!” and being escorted by police out of an ABC taping.
Clearly being a shooting victim doesn’t give you the right to make your own threats, however distraught you are. This should go without saying, but the times we live in are interesting.
Joseph Nobles
And you know, calling Fuller an “unhinged leftist” the way Gateway is, umm, how did he get unhinged? Maybe Loughner should have been a better shot — is that what you’re trying to say?
Paul in KY
@Skepticat: I finally figured it out ;-)
xian
Charles Johnson was basically a generic quasi-hippie liberal Democrat till 9/11 gave him the vapors and he swallowed the neocon pill whole.
I think when he realized his bedfellows extended to Dutch fascists was when he got off that bus.
Anya
@TR:
I guess we can declare Rove’s tactic, a somewhat, success in this case. Just read what Steve Kornacki of Salon had to say about Obama’s speechifying abilities.
Get it, big crowd speeches allow him to use a teleprompter. Did Mr. Kornacki not watch the President at the Republican Party retreat, when he schooled them and challenged their empty talking points? Did he not see his speech before the HCR vote, that showed his skills “as an off-the-cuff communicator”? I think the meme that the President needs a teleprompter is not an isolated right-wing meme, anymore.
SFAW
Well, yeah, but we already knew that (Third Law or not).
Winston Smith
@Obdicut: Thanks for the summary of the site.
Obviously, Charles has kept in contact with reality in a way that many in his sphere haven’t (or can’t). It’s just kind of jarring because last time I followed that site (several years ago), it was a cornucopia of weapons-grade stupidity.
Phoenix Woman
@Joseph Nobles: Plus, Eric Fuller’s a disabled veteran who is recovering not just from the two fresh gunshot wounds to his leg and back, but from apparently being the last person to speak to Gabrielle Giffords and hear her voice in reply, as I sadly suspect she’ll never speak again. He wasn’t making a threat so much as screaming out in impotent rage against the people he perceived as creating the toxic environment from which Loughner sprung being allowed, as usual, to get away with it.
I understand the idiots refuse to listen to you over at GP. My sympathies.
Phoenix Woman
@Winston Smith: He was one of the folks who got unhinged by 9/11. He recovered, but a number of them — Alan Dershowitz being a chief example — have only got worse.
JimK
test,test
JimK
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