The Responsibility Of Cable News

Great video from Media Matters



(h/t Oliver Wills)

"You Can't Just Make Up Your Own Facts"

If only David Shuster could host Hardball everyday. Oh wait he DID have a show then the geniuses at MSNBC decided that he was expendable. What a frikking joke.

Well at least he was there today to connect the dots from the cop shooting in Pittsburgh to the hate talk from the wingnuts on Tee Vee and radio. And he pretty much sent the 2nd Amendment guy running home with his tail between his legs. Good on him for that and good on Charles Blow for calling the guy's argument "laughable".

Enjoy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Dave Waldman AKA Kagro X Is A BEAST!

Dave Waldman has a diary up over at dailykos that is definitely worth the full ready about the mainstream media's epic fail covering the cop massacer in Pittsburgh by right wing nutjob Richard Poplowski. But I just HAD to excerpt the ending because it expresses my thoughts exactly.

It's a little shy of two years now since reporters at the press conference at the last event held under the Yearly Kos banner in Chicago expressed amazement at having been shown the FOX Nutwork record of "mistakes" in reporting basic facts that were embarrassing to Republicans. And it seems clear that even now, traditional media reporters are unable to come to terms with the fact that there are people masquerading as "their kind," yet who not only can't and won't work in the same fact-based reality as they do, but actively beam out a steady stream of incendiary, counter-factual rhetoric that you'd have to be willfully blinding yourself not to connect to shooters who end up parroting, well, pretty much exactly what they're broadcasting on FOX.

Wake the hell up, people. There's a 24-hour eliminationist "news" nutwork broadcasting poison to already-fevered minds. Call it what it is. Be aware of what they're doing. And reporters, be clear on what they're up to, and whose profession they're using as cover.

And really, when a cop killer's best friend tells you casually that he was consumed with Zionist control of the government and imminent martial law and gun confiscations... that's actually the story!

When a shooter's best friend tells you he killed cops because his mind was being controlled by aliens from planet Xoltron, you have a sad and inexplicable illness on your hands, and "just the facts" reporting is all you can responsibly do.

When a shooter's best friend tells you he killed cops because he believed fake stories you can hear reported as "news" on a well-known (and even "respected!") 24-hour cable television network, you've got a very serious story on your hands that it's actually irresponsible not to look deeper.

This stuff isn't just appearing from out of nowhere. It's being beamed out under the protections you've worked hard to protect for your profession.
To the extent that you refuse to call FOX out for their nonsense, you become partly culpable for its continuance.

Take the reins and lead.

A Total Lack of Self Awareness And Personal Responsibility

Now that the story about that scumbag Richard Poplawski in Pittsburgh killing 4 police officers and wounding others because, in the words of his closest friends, he feard that President Obama was going to take his guns, the reactions on the blogs have been interesting to say the least. You can go to several different conservative blogs and you won't find even the hint of responsibility. Instead with the officers' bodies not even cold yet they try to contend that the guy really wasn't concerned about Obama taking his guns but rather that he lost his job, damn what his friends said. Or you might find words to the effect that the REAL tragedy here is that the guy actually helped those dirty fucking hippie liberals in their eternal fight against the second amendment. In still other places what you will find people absolving themselves by declaring that the guy was just insane. Now this last point has actually been echoed even on some progressive and left leaning sites like Washington Monthly.

Well I am calling bullshit on all of that, especially the whole "he was crazy so its nobody's fault" meme. He may very well have been insane, but that doesn't excuse the fearmongering spouted from the wingnuts which helped to push his insanity to a violent and deadly outburst. I am as big a proponent of free speech as anybody but you can't just keep scaring people everyday and making it seem like President Obama is going to personally target them and take away their freedoms and then turn around and not bear a great responsibility when someone acts out this way. Its just the same as why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. What it comes down to is that your speech is not and should not be protected when you use it in an irresponsible manner to put other people in danger. There can be no better example of that than this situation. Yeah Poplowski may well have been bat shit crazy without all of the 2nd amendment bloviating from the wingnuts but would he have gone out and shot police officers? Would he have went out and bought an AK47? Would he have lived his life in fear of the government personally oppressing him? I don't believe so at all.

Now I don't expect the assholes on the right to ever change their ways because even though they preach personal responsibility you rarely see them take any, however its about damned time that we on the left stop giving them free passes. When they incite violence they need to be called out for it and held accountable. When they fearmonger and it leads to a tragedy, they should be made to own it. When they preach armed rebellion and revolution and then a nutcase actually goes out and attempts some of the things they allude to then the connections have to be made. I can tell you right now that I personally am not looking forward to 4 to 8 more years of this shit. The only way to change the behavior of the right is to try to shame them. If people actually start pointing directly at them when this stuff happens instead of letting them off the hook then maybe, just maybe, they will calm all that fear mongering bullshit down. But every single time we give them a pass with that "its nobody's fault" bullshit we damn near insure that they will continue to preach conspiracy and violence and sooner or later tragedy will happen once again.

Now as for the assholes on the right who are unsurprisingly now using this incident to score political points, (yes I am looking at you, Malkin, JamieWearingFool, FloppingAces et al) what you are doing is fucking reprehensible. Its amazing how much you claim to love the military and the police but then turn around and publish the pictures of these fallen officers not to honor their memory, but to talk about what you think the left is doing or saying. Well let me explain it to you dumbasses. Nobody gives a shit about gun control right now. What we give a damn about is the fucked up things you are saying and inciting this violence. I own guns and I have no interest in repealing the 2nd amendment but by the same fucking token I don't want to be out in public and end up getting shot because some whack job has been watching too much FoxNews or reading too much bullshit on freeper and then they just go over the edge and really try to start an armed resolution. If you dickheads had any kind of respect you would tone the bullshit down. But because you are all slimy ass bottom feeding bitches I am sure you will simply continue to fearmonger and try to scare people into sharing your beliefs and put even more police officers' lives in jeopardy.

I Wonder Where He Got That Idea From...

Today brings news of another tragic shooting, this time in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where a gunman has shot and killed 3 police officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance. But check out what at least was his percieved motivation.

From the AP

PITTSBURGH – A man opened fire on officers during a domestic disturbance call Saturday morning, killing three of them, a police official said. Friends said he feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

Three officers were killed, said a police official at the scene who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard would only say that at least five officers were wounded, but wouldn't give any other details.

Police planned to release more details at a mid-afternoon news conference Saturday.

The man who fired at the officers was arrested after a several-hour standoff. One witness reported hearing hundreds of shots.

The shootings occurred just two weeks after four police officers were fatally shot March 21 in Oakland, Calif., in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

Police did not immediately release the gunman's identity, but his friends at the scene described him as a young man who thought the Obama administration would ban guns.

One friend, Edward Perkovic, said the gunman feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." Another longtime friend, Aaron Vire, said he feared that President Obama was going to take away his rights, though he said he "wasn't violently against Obama."

Now maybe this guy was just crazy or paranoid or depressed, but what is it that would make him believe that President Obama was coming to take his guns to the point where it would motivate him to this kind of violence? Well most of us who have spent anytime on progressive and liberal blogs have a clue as to who is responsible for provoking this kind of dangerous behavior through their fear mongering and smears. But coincidentally there is an op ed by Charles Blow in the New York Times this morning that damn near foreshadowed this incident.

But, it’s not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They’re talking about a revolution.

Some simply lace their unscrupulous screeds with loaded language about the fall of the Republic. We have to “rise up” and “take back our country.” Others have been much more explicit.
For example, Chuck Norris, the preeminent black belt and prospective Red Shirt, wrote earlier this month on the conservative blog WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, imagining herself as some sort of Delacroixian Liberty from the Land of the Lakes, urged her fellow Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous,” ready to bust caps over cap-and-trade, I presume.

And between his tears, Glenn Beck, the self-professed “rodeo clown,” keeps warning of an impending insurrection by saying that he believes that we are heading for “depression” and “revolution” and then gaming out that revolution on his show last month. “Think the unthinkable” he said. Indeed.

All this talk of revolution is revolting, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

As the comedian Bill Maher pointed out, strong language can poison weak minds, as it did in the case of Timothy McVeigh. (We sometimes forget that not all dangerous men are trained by Al Qaeda.)

At the same time, the unrelenting meme being pushed by the right that Obama will mount an assault on the Second Amendment has helped fuel the panic buying of firearms. According to the F.B.I., there have been 1.2 million more requests for background checks of potential gun buyers from November to February than there were in the same four months last year. That’s 5.5 million requests altogether over that period; more than the number of people living in Bachmann’s Minnesota.

Coincidence? Maybe. Just posturing? Hopefully. But it all gives me a really bad feeling.

I swear you would almost think Blow wrote his article AFTER the shootout this morning. Yet he didn't and that should tell you something. Yes we have first amendment rights to free speech in this country but what these irresponsible assholes are doing on the right wing fringe of this country is especially harmful and dangerous and if they are not called on the carpet for their bullshit you can expect more of these kinds of deadly interactions to occur between their weakminded followers and innocent bystanders. The shit has gone too far and its high times someone said so. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Blow took up the call today but there should be a lot more where that came from by the Villagers and our elected officials. Including the colleagues of Michele Bachmann.