Tucson gave the Village a much-needed wake-up call, and their response puts media critics to shame:
CNN host John King took a moment on air Tuesday night to acknowledge that a guest had just used the term “in the cross hairs” during a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. “We’re trying, we’re trying to get away from that language,” King told viewers.
Michael Scherer is also part of this grand reckoning:
“Ever more jarring violent metaphors long ago became devices for chasing clicks online, listeners on the radio or viewers on cable,” Scherer continued in an email. “It is a simple fact of online news physics: More people click on a post about Politician X ‘blasting’ Politician Y than a post about X ‘defining a policy disagreement’ with Y. We in the press, especially online and on cable, long ago turned these metaphors into clichĂ©s to trawl for audience, even when it meant losing sight of our first mission, which is to represent reality.”
We can all breathe a sigh of relief that the Villager’s false equivalences and he-said/he-said journalism will drop the incendiary metaphors “cross hairs” and “blasted”, which were certainly the only reason that Gabby Giffords faced death threats. And we can all look forward in anticipation for the holier-than-thou rhetorical policing that the Village will inflict on aberrant members and foul-mouthed, uncivilized bloggers.
Update: In fairness to Villagers, Michael Kinsley turns in a good column:
No one is suggesting that one of those voices in the assassinâs head was John Boehnerâs cigarette growl or that Loughner had even heard of Sarah Palin when he started saying nutty, paranoid things. No one is suggesting that he got the idea that the number six is somehow indistinguishable from the number 18 from the 2008 Republican Party platform. The suggestion is that we live in a political atmosphere in which nutty views (President Obama isnât a U.S. citizen.) and alarming rhetoric (âSecond Amendment remediesâ are the answer to disappointment at the ballot box.) are widespread and often go unrebutted. The suggestion, finally, is that the right is largely responsible for a political atmosphere in which extreme thoughts are more likely to take root and flower.
But all of this is now too uncivil to bring up. So wherever could Loughner have gotten his paranoid contempt for government? Who told him that the government was this hulking, all-powerful âotherâ determined to control and ruin his life? Official answer: Heâs crazy! What more do you need to know?
Well, sure. Is it ever not crazy to buy a gun, take it to a Safeway and see how many people you can kill? It will be interesting to hear what they have to say on right-wing talk radio when Loughnerâs lawyers plead insanity. The party line has always been that insanity was not a one-word explanation for anything. Now, apparently, it is.
de stijl
I declare war on false, cliched civility. False civility can suck a bagful of salted dicks.
TRNC
“We can all breathe a sigh of relief that the Villagerâs false equivalences and he-said/he-said journalism will drop the incendiary metaphors âcross hairsâ and âblastedâ, which were certainly the only reason that Gabby Giffords faced death threats.”
Well, it’s a start, isn’t it? It’s also a response to a direct complaint. I fear that their attitudes will revert after a short time and people will be able to use the violent rhetoric without any sort of reprimand or mention again, but credit where credit is due for now.
Comrade Javamanphil
Ah, the DC Press Corpse (how uncivil!) Forever learning from yesterday’s events and always it is the wrong lesson.
NPR last night on the Healthcare repeal debate: GOP rep sounbdbite: full of known lies (reporter ALMOST even calls it a lie but goes with the brave stance of “those facts are debatable.”) Dem rep soundbite: points out the GOP is still lying.
Conclusion: BOTH SIDES DO IT!
Rinse, repeat.
Keifus
In other news, support for the military and the police continues unabated on the networks, although possibly with fewer militant metaphors.
Warren Terra
For some reason you don’t seem excited that Fox might be browbeaten into avoiding certain militaristic metaphors while it continues to tell its viewers that ACORN plotted to import underage prostitutes, that anti-redlining measures caused the housing bubble, that Obama is plotting with the New Black Panther Party to steal elections, that Obama wants to take the absolutely guaranteed guilty vicious terrorists in Gitmo and install them in your guest room, that he’s going to take away your guns, etcetera, etcetera. Just so long as there are no crosshairs involved, we’re good.
phx
It’s not language like “in the crosshairs” or “We’re gonna beat up in the debate” – are they kidding? It’s the way the Libtards and Rethuglicans characterize each other, particularly on the Internet. Most politicians themselves aren’t all that offensive, they’re just wrong on the issues.
Joey Maloney
Media critics? Shame?
That’s subtle irony, right?
Andy K
@Warren Terra:
Meh. It’s a start. Maybe now that the media has started to take a look at the wingnuts under the microscope, they’ll begin to notice and report on the pure craziness of which the wingnut movements are completely composed. Maybe.
Ash Can
I can see the future CNN lede already: “A constituent expressed disagreement with Democratic Congressman/woman SoAndSo today at SoAndSo’s townhall meeting. Thirty-four people are reported hospitalized, and area firefighters now say they have the structural situation contained.”
c u n d gulag
John King – a granite head with a chiseled jaw.
You know, the only thing worse than when The Villagers are obtuse and out of touch (which is all of the time), is when the try to show how in touch they are and that they ‘get it (which is now).’
You really don’t “get it,” do you?
All of them, putz’s.
bjacques
Michael Kinsley’s column is a classic example of 1/7 thinking.
Comrade Javamanphil
More uncivil Democrats like this please
Keith G
Dudes, BJ is broken on Chrome. It is loading so large that all I can see without scrolling is “Ball” on the banner.
I shut and reloaded,same result. No other page is doing this.
In the mean time, at work there is a backroom office with a radio tuned to AM talk. Yesterday was all about three points.
1. Librals just want to control speech
2. The rhetoric was not inflamatory
3. Democrats do it too
Man, this is big. I can read without glasses.
Ash Can
@Keith G: Make sure your page view is set at 100%. Something may have put it out of whack.
Aris
Happened upon Anderson Cooper’s show last night, and he was very upset, poor darling, with Rep. Steve Cohen comparing Republicans who lie about health care to Nazis (who, of course, invented the Big Lie style of politics). Dana Bash joined in, absolutely livid that a Democrat would compare Republicans with any Nazi, and wailing about all the hypocritical liberal blogs and politicians who remained quiet after such a show of incivility by a Democrat. Some cartoon Democrat I’ve never heard of before, and whose claim to CNN fame is that he apparently did some poll for Obama in 2008, joined in to express his sadness.
Here’s the thing: What if someone, let’s say entity X, actually does something Nazi-like? Is it considered now uncivil to refer to the Nazi-like thing entity X did as Nazi-like? Throughout the “discussion,” Cohen tried valiantly to explain why the whole “Government Takeover of Healthcare” lie was a Big Lie in the style of the Nazis’ trademarked GroĂe LĂŒge, a propaganda technique the Nazis invented.
Was Cohen right? Did he have a point? Was his history solid? Inquiring minds would have been well served if Cooper and Bash and the cartoon Democrat took the time to investigate! Instead all they wanted to do is express their dismay over the use of “Nazi” by a Democrat — as if any use of “Nazi” by those not approved by the media to use the term, is now verboten as uncivil.
____________________________________________
Ija
I like this part of Kinsley’s column. He’s at his best when he is being hyper-logical.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Aris: If you follow my link above, you will thankfully see that Cohen is not backing down. He’s 100% correct about Republicans using the Big Lie in the HCR debate.
arguingwithsignposts
@Keith G: control+- shrinks the text.
4tehlulz
This eliminationist rhetoric against eliminationist rhetoric is the worst pogrom against conservatives since the PC Holocaust of the 1990s.
Joey Maloney
@Keith G: Without denying your experience, as another data point the site looks fine for me on Chrome (OS X). The default font size is larger than on Safari, but not unreasonably so. It looks like more or less the same size it was before the redesign.
mistermix
@Keith G: Check your zoom and also you could hold down ctrl-shift and hit the reload button to get a full reload.
jane from hell
@Keith G: esp. on mobile, until you click on an individual post. Hating the mobile version currently.
jane from hell
large font is LARGE
Bulworth
Wow, that worked. Good stuff.
Bulworth
I’m still having whiplash from the conservative flip-flop on this. I was alive in the 1990’s when Susan Smith (in secessionist South Carolina of all places) drowned her kids and Newtie said it was because of welfare.
kindness
I really do not like reading Politico. It’s ’cause I always read the comments and the comments there are even more rancid than they are at ClownHall or RedState.
Bulworth
And then there was Columbine, in which the fault was said to be Bill Clinton, abortion, god being kicked out of the schools, abortion, no prayer in schools, Bill Clinton, heavy metal rock music, atheism, the ’60’s, Hollywood, Bill Clinton, and the liberal media.
Conservatives hadn’t yet established the link between ACORN, university professors, and Sharia Islamofacism.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Bulworth: You forgot it was also Doom’s fault. Games about violence kill people, not actual violence.
Bulworth
@Comrade Javamanphil: I knew I was leaving out something.
Sentient Puddle
@Aris:
If entity X performed or is attempting to perform the genocide of a racial, ethnic, or religious group, then no, it would not be uncivil. Otherwise, yes, and it has been this way for quite a while now.
You do not get to suspend the corollary to Godwin’s Law just because you’re too lazy to come up with a different, more appropriate comparison. You damn well better be sure that you are not trivializing the evil that was Hitler before invoking Naziism in an argument. Failure to do so is quite uncivil.
catclub
@Bulworth: “And then there was Columbine, in which the fault was said to be Bill Clinton, abortion, god being kicked out of the schools, abortion, no prayer in schools, Bill Clinton, heavy metal rock music, atheism, the â60âs, Hollywood, Bill Clinton, and the liberal media.”
I think we can confidently predict that most of these are still eligible for blame for the Giffords shooting.
Hob
Just to be a little nit-picky… did Kinsley really say that “no one is suggesting” that Loughner had even heard of Sarah Palin? The Republican candidate for Vice President in the last election, darling of all right-wing media, who makes the news every time she farts? If no one is suggesting that, then no one must be stupid– and that can’t be right.
Jeanne ringland
@Hob: Beat me to it. That’s what I was going to say.
StringonaStick
The only reason why the Villagers are affected enough by the AZ shootings to dial down the rhetoric 0.01% is because a member of Congress (and therefore a part of their Village, even if she is a democrat) was gravely injured, a federal judge was killed (also by extension part of the Village) and they also had the symbolism of a little girl born on 9-11-01 being killed (I am tempted to say “white” but my cynicism isn’t that deep, at least not yet).I don’t recall calls from the press for a return to civility after Oklahoma City since they were too interested in the Clenis to let that juicy bone go.
In other words, important people were killed and wounded this time, instead of just a bunch of ordinary citizens in flyover land. People like them! This is what it has taken to get the attention of the mainstream press, while the RW media uses it as a collective step ladder to hop up on their cross for their listeners/viewers. It is beyond disgusting, but it is also a very, very clear insight into just exactly how much the press couldn’t care less about anyone not in their Village or of their income level, and that means us.
wengler
The core of the problem is that Republican politicians and their supporters don’t respect the results of democratic elections that they lose. Furthermore they engage in many undemocratic and antidemocratic actions rather than helping to create a good nonpartisan democratic process. Poll watchers challenging voters that look likely to vote Democratic, voter ID laws that mandate photo IDs but then make them hard to get for the urban poor, phone jamming operations that target union volunteers GOTV. These are all some of the things that Republicans do that Democrats do not to effect the outcome of elections.
Of course when all of that voter suppression doesn’t work and Republicans lose then all sorts of parliamentarian maneuvers are available in the US Senate to make sure that none of the Democratic President’s appointees make it to the bench or to his cabinet. The filibuster is applied to every single bill.
If only the corporate media that benefits so much from Republican intransigence would highlight these things so the American people know!
dww44
@wengler:
Yes, been saying this since 1/20/2009:
Also, too, I read the Kinsley piece at Politico, a site I never visit and now know why. After reading the comments to Kinsley’s piece,I salute Kinsley for even penning a piece that could be commented on there.
shano
The nonsense that the shooter had never heard of Palin….oh Really?
In ARIZONA?
Mike B
It’s nice that the village is so concerned about the tone of rhetoric. I suppose it is too much to ask that they have any grasp of substance.
And it is probably way too much to ask to actually see serious news coverage of the fact that someone just attempted to set off a large bomb at an MLK day march in Spokane.
Why is that being ignored?
And why isn’t the blogosphere beating up the MSM for their meager coverage of a very significant domestic terrorist attempt?
Is it because the perpetrator is probably not a muslim, or because the potential victims would have been mostly black people?
StringonaStick
@Mike B: Mostly black people? Have you ever been to Spokane?
Again, the reason why the media is not interested in the Spokane incident is (1) the bomb didn’t go off, so no blood to lead with when reporting, and (2) the only victims would have been ordinary, non-politically or media connected people, therefore their interest = meh.