Mock outrage

[bascule]

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1663424,00.html

 

Is mock outrage hurting American politics?

 

 

This post is missing my opinion bacause I forgot to put it in here. Thanks for pointing that out, Pangloss!

[iNow]

It hurts everyone who wishes to live in an intelligent society and have real discussions of substance, not constant ad hominem and strawman attacks... putting down others to make oneself appear superior. Reminds me of middle school/junior high.

 

I like how Kinsley ended the piece. A great big, "Oh, grow up already!"

[ecoli]

I agree with the article.. but it's certainly goes both ways. I think the article misses that both parties play these types of games.

[bascule]

Sadly enough, the Senate just passed an amendment to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act 72 to 25 which condemns "any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org."

 

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00344

[ParanoiA]

What a weird turn of events. I've been scratching my head trying to figure out why Moveon.org matters. They're idiots, so why bother? Anyone who attacks a guy like Petraeus, right out of the gate, with ZERO reason to do so is an obvious agenda driven activist nutcase.

 

Petraeus is who he is no matter who's in the oval office or who's running the legislature. I believe it has far more to do with the fact that he's military and GWB is currently running the show. Democrats pay lip service to supporting the military, but really their relationship with the military these days is similar to the relationship between republicans and unions.

 

The only thing that should have happened is what did happen initially - republicans took them to the carpet and attempted to force the democrat's collective hand on the matter on the media stage. I can't believe they took it to a house level.

[iNow]

Sadly enough, the Senate just passed an amendment to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act 72 to 25 which condemns "any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org."

 

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00344

Oyy... I thought for sure this would be an article in the Onion. Turns out that the truth is, in fact, stranger than fiction.

[ecoli]

The response is particularly interesting, considering Gen. Petraeus himself is playing the upper hand and hasn't even mentioned the incident (to my knowledge).

[Pangloss]

It's the "you're not patriotic if you attack Bush" thing all over again. The far right calls the far left anti-patriotic, and the far left starts screaming about abridgement of free speech. It's all a bunch of malarky, and it's pathetic to watch the New York Times, CNN, and other major outlets play along. Yeah, they sure are better than Fox News Channel. Sure they are.

 

What's really dumb is taking anything Michael Kinsley says as objective.

 

Rinse, repeat.

 

(BTW, a slight addition has been made to the original post.) (cof)

[bascule]

It's all a bunch of malarky, and it's pathetic to watch the New York Times, CNN, and other major outlets play along. Yeah, they sure are better than Fox News Channel. Sure they are.

 

[...]

 

(BTW, a slight addition has been made to the original post.) (cof)

 

I think the much ado about nothing approach which Fox has pursued, with CNN, MSNBC, etc. immediately following suit has done a great job distracting from real issues and drawing attention to total red herrings and distractions.

 

In context the MoveOn ad had some poignant criticisms of Petraeus's honesty, even if the "hook" was f*cking retarded.

 

Calling for people to condemn it based on the hook and not the content is both dishonest and distracting from real issues.

 

For example, why was it the Republicans unanimously backed the resolution to condemn the MoveOn.org advertisement, but only a handful backed the restoration of habeas corpus?

 

What am I supposed to take from this besides Republican Senators hate free speech and habeas corpus?

[Pangloss]

For example' date=' why was it the Republicans unanimously backed the resolution to condemn the MoveOn.org advertisement, but only a handful backed the restoration of habeas corpus?

 

What am I supposed to take from this besides Republican Senators hate free speech and habeas corpus?[/quote']

 

... he says, deliberately overlooking the fact Republicans are the minority party and can't pass a greasy breakfast without help from the Democrats.

 

If you really want to stop spin in this country, I know a great place where you can start.

 

"Why I'm outraged -- OUTRAGED -- to find out that there's gambling taking place in this establishment!"

"Here are your winnings' date=' sir."

"Oh yes, thank you."

[/quote']

[iNow]

... he says, deliberately overlooking the fact Republicans are the minority party and can't pass a greasy breakfast without help from the Democrats.

 

If you really want to stop spin in this country, I know a great place where you can start.

 

I suggest you've just amply illustrated why we so often struggle to engage in real discussion anymore, and why we so often struggle to find real solutions as a result of said discussion.

 

 

Realizing the importance of the case, my men are rounding up twice the usual number of suspects.

[bascule]

... he says, deliberately overlooking the fact Republicans are the minority party and can't pass a greasy breakfast without help from the Democrats.

 

The Senate split the way it is (effectively 50/50, especially considering Lieberman the "Democratic Independent"'s recent voting record) the Republicans can certainly obstruct whatever they want to their heart's content, and if that doesn't work Bush can just veto it.

 

It's kind of a stalemate, don't you think?

[Pangloss]

You know as well as I do that they have a majority caucus and every single chairmanship. They control legislation and its appearance on the floor, they control what happens in committees, and they control the calendar. That's not a stalemate, it's a Democratic majority. The ONLY thing they lack is veto and filibuster override capability. In other words, EXACTLY the same thing Republicans had when they were in charge.

 

And you've posted about Democratic congressional leadership and its successes and failures right here on these boards, so don't act like you never took that position. I'm very sorry the Democrats are failing at their "leadership" as badly as Republicans were, but trying to spin the blame isn't going to cut it here.

[bascule]

You know as well as I do that they have a majority caucus and every single chairmanship.

 

That's not what I'm trying to say. The Senate Democrats are divided among whom you might call the "far left" and whom I might call the "Bush enablers". I think the MoveOn.org vote was a good example of that: many Democrats turned out to lambaste the "liberal activist group" who would question the honesty of General Petraeus.

 

Contrast that with the Republican Senators... where's the division there? Spector, Hagel, Lugar, and a handfull of others?

 

The Democrats can't get anything done because they aren't a uniform, resolute group, and sadly there's a wide contention of them who keeps siding with the Republicans and backing down at any confrontation. So as not to look "unpatriotic," "support the troops" and all of that...

[Pangloss]

Or maybe the reason they're making the choices they're making is because making different ones is really bad idea if your goal is anything other than hurting George Bush.

 

Don't you remember when "uniter not divider" was a COMPLAINT from the left? Didn't that mean that the left believed that uniting was a GOOD thing? Or did they really mean "uniting" in the sense that "set aside your own beliefs and join our ideology, or else"?

 

It takes two to tango. You want progress in this country, learn how to find middle ground, not stamp your feet and insist on the most stubborn and intractible policy imaginable.

[iNow]

One of the problems living in a society where sublties so often go unheard is the feeling that we must yell at the top of our lungs and in the most outrageous way to get a point across. This comment is not directed toward anyone in particular, but just a general observation.

[Glider]

I agree with that. We've been crying wolf with language for too long. It's like a self-inflicted ceiling effect stemming from a persistant overuse of hyperbole.

 

If people grow up considering new MP3 players or cell phones 'awsome', they are going to be buggered for words if they come across something that truly inspires awe. The only option left is emotional display and volume.

 

It's the linguistic version of the (bad) hospital practice of ticking the 'urgent' box on every blood test request form you complete. When a genuinely urgent test appears you're stuffed, and have to write 'really, really urgent' on it in big red crayon.

 

Every mundane thing everybody has said has for so long been so 'important' that there's now no way to let anybody know when we actually have something important to say, unless we accompany it with some kind of emotional display to flag it. That's going to get old soon too (as this thread indicates).

[Pangloss]

Interesting comparison.

[Sisyphus]

If people grow up considering new MP3 players or cell phones 'awsome', they are going to be buggered for words if they come across something that truly inspires awe.

 

Awful?

 

Reminds me of terrific, terrible, and terrifying. All three words technically mean basically the same thing, but overuse reduced terrific to "very good" and terrible to "very bad" in common usage. So we invented "terrifying" to to cover the original meaning, but even that is starting to slip. Never underestimate English speakers ability to mangle their own language, then put it back together with duct tape.

[Dak]

If people grow up considering new MP3 players or cell phones 'awsome', they are going to be buggered for words if they come across something that truly inspires awe.

 

awe-inspiring?

 

it reminds me of an eddy izzard skit:

 

what's it like in space, niel?

--awesome, sir

awesome? what, like a hot-dog?

--no sir: awesome like a million hot-dogs

[pioneer]

If I am not mistaking the add by moveon.org, was given to them by the Times, for a discount rate. Obviously the add pleased someone in that organization with strong ties to the Democratic party. The question that was raised by someone was, since this is a liberal newspaper, doesn't this discount equal a campaign contribution to the Democratic Party?

[iNow]

If I am not mistaking the add by moveon.org, was given to them by the Times, for a discount rate. Obviously the add pleased someone in that organization with strong ties to the Democratic party. The question that was raised by someone was, since this is a liberal newspaper, doesn't this discount equal a campaign contribution to the Democratic Party?

 

A contribution and a discount are different. Simple really. Also, the problem to which you refer goes away if MoveOn agrees to pay full price for the ad, which they have.

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2322537420070924

[New York Times' public editor Clark Hoyt] quoted Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis as saying the advertising representative who sold the ad failed to make it clear that for the standby rate of $65,000, The Times could not guarantee it would run it on the day of Petraeus' testimony.

 

That standby rate is offered to political and advocacy groups willing to be flexible about the day their ads run.

 

"We made a mistake," Mathis was quoted as saying.

 

Moveon.org said that it would wire the difference between the standby rate and the full rate of $142,083 to The Times.

 

"Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad," it said in statement.

 

 

Anyway, your question as to the contributory (or non) nature of the different price for the ad is peripheral to this thread's topic regarding the way people reacted to it.

 

 

I hope this clarifies for you the issue we're all here discussing.

[bascule]

The question that was raised by someone was, since this is a liberal newspaper, doesn't this discount equal a campaign contribution to the Democratic Party?

 

How many members of MoveOn do you want to bet are registered Green?

 

This ad is pretty much at the behest of progressives in general, which last I checked isn't represented by a particular political party...

[iNow]

I was wrong once in my life. It was a strange day, and I think there was an eclipse and some thunder, but I suppose I might be wrong again here...

 

...None of this is relevant to this thread, and another thread should be opened if a discussion is to continue on Pioneer's comments regarding campaign contributions and the partisan nature of the group who funded the ad.

 

I'm so outraged!! How could you with our ideological blah blah blah... Not everything fits into neat little boxes, no matter how hard you try.

 

 

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

 

 

Is mock outrage hurting American politics?

I say again, it hurts everyone who wishes to live in an intelligent society and have real discussions of substance, not constant ad hominem and strawman attacks... putting down others to make oneself appear superior.

 

I'm SO tired of the name calling and polarization and idiocy. Let's hear more ideas. Terrorism, war, global warming, these issues ad infinitum are not "democratic" or "republican" issues. They are not "conservative" or "liberal" issues. They are just issues...

 

Issues that we never seem to address because we are so busy spending all of our time and energies feeding the diffferences and throwing the feces instead of grouping together and forming consensus.

 

Different ideas are wonderful things. I'm not hearing too many ideas anymore though.

[Phi for All]

I'm SO tired of the name calling and polarization and idiocy. Let's hear more ideas. Terrorism, war, global warming, these issues ad infinitum are not "democratic" or "republican" issues. They are not "conservative" or "liberal" issues. They are just issues...

As Kinsley's article says, the people most outraged by the MoveOn ad are the most secretly delighted. It gives them a chance to display their umbrage so they seem like true warriors for their side. They're so happy because when the public is bickering over crap they aren't turning their sights on their elected representatives.