Be Quiet While We Berate You
I could go so far as to observe that Palin almost seemed to portray herself as a collateral victim. Surely a former governor of Alaska - who served the better part of an entire term - would never seek to give the impression that she views any conceivable event, no matter how distant or tragic, as being All About Sarah. (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 1/17/11)
Flat-out blamed by the Left for the Arizona shootings, the Left counsels Sarah Palin not to respond.
Striking
No one has suggested that his use of a hallucinogenic herb or any other drugs contributed to Jared L. Loughner’s apparent mental unraveling that culminated with his being charged in a devastating outburst of violence here. Yet it is striking how closely the typical effects of smoking the herb, Salvia divinorum — which federal drug officials warn can closely mimic psychosis — matched Mr. Loughner’s own comments about how he saw the world, like his often-repeated assertion that he spent most of his waking hours in a dream world that he had learned to control. (NYT, 1/18/11)
No one has suggested it? Well then let RedStateVT be the first to suggest that the use of hallucinogens was a contributing factor.
Eugene Robinson...uuuugh. My daughter was assigned to read one of his columns for her government class. No political bias there!
ReplyDeleteI found this from the AP today linked by Drudge:
ReplyDeletehttp://apnews.myway.com/article/20110128/D9L1B1SO0.html
“Rush Limbaugh's imitation of the Chinese language during a recent speech made by Chinese President Hu Jintao has stirred a backlash among Asian-American lawmakers in California and nationally.
"California state Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, is leading a fight in demanding an apology from the radio talk show host for what he and others view as racist and derogatory remarks against the Chinese people......
“While Asian-American lawmakers demand an apology from Limbaugh, some are increasingly concerned for Yee's personal safety. Public officials have been put on alert after the deadly rampage in Tucson where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot while meeting with constituents."
So Rush mocks Hu Jintao, and a Chinese-American politician demands apology. It's a dog bites man story so far. But then the AP leaps to the conclusion ("some are increasing concerned") that Yee is in danger because of the Giffords’ shooting. Why? There's no logical connection between the two even if you buy into the right wing vitriol narrative. Did Giffords demand an apology from Rush too?
Besides, don't they know it's all Sarah Palin's fault?
Well how about that! I just scored the title of today's (2/01/11) Best of the Web Today column - "Guilt by Free Association."
ReplyDeleteBy JAMES TARANTO
New evidence has emerged to bolster Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik's theory implicating Rush Limbaugh in the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Or so the Associated Press's Judy Lin seems to think.
Two weeks ago, Lin reports, Limbaugh mocked Red Chinese ruler Hu Jintao on his radio show:
During a Jan. 19 radio program, Limbaugh said there was no translation of the Chinese president's speech during a visit to the White House.
"He was speaking and they weren't translating," Limbaugh said. "They normally translate every couple of words. Hu Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha."
He then launched into a 20-second-long imitation of the Chinese leader's dialect.
The next day, Limbaugh said he "did a remarkable job" of imitating China's president for someone who doesn't know a language spoken by more than 1 billion people.
"Back in the old days, Sid Caesar, for those of you old enough to remember, was called a comic genius for impersonating foreign languages that he couldn't speak," Limbaugh said.
Some would say that Limbaugh should keep his day job. But not Leland Yee, a California state senator, who would like Limbaugh silenced. According to Lin's report:
In recent days, the state lawmaker has rallied civil rights groups in a boycott of companies like Pro Flowers, Sleep Train and Domino's Pizza that advertise on Limbaugh's national talk radio show.
"The comments that he made--the mimicking of the Chinese language--harkens back to when I was a little boy growing up in San Francisco and those were hard days, rather insensitive days," Yee said in an interview Thursday. "You think you've arrived and all of a sudden get shot back to the reality that you're a second-class citizen."
So a man who has lived in America since he was 3 feels like "a second-class citizen" because Limbaugh is mocking Hu, who is not a citizen at all but a foreign potentate? Yee seems to be suffering from some confusion about his own identity.
What, you may wonder, does this have to do with the Giffords shooting? Allow the AP's Lin to explain:
While Asian-American lawmakers demand an apology from Limbaugh, some are increasingly concerned for Yee's personal safety. Public officials have been put on alert after the deadly rampage in Tucson where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot while meeting with constituents.
Shortly after condemning Limbaugh's remarks, Yee said he received racist death threats to his San Francisco and Sacramento offices. The lawmaker also received a profanity-filled telephone message Thursday.
The caller, who did not identify himself, called Yee a "cry baby" and urged him to resign from office.
So he fears for his safety because a crank-caller urged him to resign from office? How does that not make him a cry-baby?
The connection to the Arizona shooting, however, is just bizarre. Lin has gone beyond guilt by association and entered the realm of guilt by free association: China, Chinese-American, lawmaker, shooting, Arizona. It's as if she's doing one of those connect-the-dots puzzles for kids, but she doesn't know how to count, so she's connecting the dots completely at random. That's how they do journalism at the 21st-century AP.