Jan 25 2011

Political Correctness Amok

Category: guns,Palin,tea partyamuzikman @ 8:55 am

There is no doubt the death of six people and the wounding of 13 others in Tuscon was a terrible tragedy.  As more information on the killer comes out each day  it is clear he is and has been a very troubled man.  But there is another tragedy in all of this – the tragedy of those who would use this horrific incident for political gain.  The number of silly accusations hurled towards Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, talk radio and others have been as baseless as they have been shrill.  Sarah Palin is to blame because she used the word “targeted” in describing certain congressional districts of interest in the last election.  She is also blamed because some of her literature used the graphic image of a scope sight’s cross hairs.  The PC crowd would have us believe that these words and images, long used by many in both political parties and elsewhere, are now enough to drive someone to violence.  And it didn’t take long before the PC madness began to take hold.  A mere 10 days after the mass murder CNN was apologizing for a show guest who had used the phrase “in the cross hairs”.

Do rational people really think that removing gun metaphors from idiomatic speech will stop random acts violence by the Jared Loughners of this world?

If anyone truly believes this then in the interest of public safety let’s commit fully and wholeheartedly to remove these phrases from our language:

Henceforth…

No longer can a person be chewed out by their boss for something and then say, “She let me have it with both barrels”!
No longer can we have a civil dispute where the first side to get a lawyer is often referred to as “bringing out the big guns”.
No one is allowed to “go off  half cocked”!
You can no longer commit fully to something “lock stock and barrel”.
No more firing off a letter.
No more outlines with bullet points
Women can not be described as “hot as a $2 pistol”.
…or, as a “pistol-packing mama”. (I’m sure women are heart-broken about THAT!)
it is now off limits to “use a shotgun approach” (as to cover all bases).
Concluding a deal can no longer be referred to as “pulling the trigger”.
And poor old Roy Rodgers would have had to rename his horse AND dog!
The makers of Colt 45 Malt Liquor will be adversely affected.
Henceforth nothing streamlined will be described as “bullet-shaped”
(They’ll have to do something about that high-speed train in Japan)
Being drunk or high can no longer have the synonym “loaded”
Basketball players will have to come up with some other way of trying to make a basket since they will no longer be able to “shoot” the ball.
No one can stand “ramrod straight”
No one who speaks plainly and truthfully can be a “straight shooter”
Being accurate is no longer being “on target”
getting very angry is no longer “going ballistic”.
“Shooting from the hip” can no longer explain someone speaking extemporaneously.
“He’s just a flash in the pan” cannot be someone of temporary fame or importance
You may not “bite the bullet”.
you may not “jump the gun”.
Superman will have to describe his speed in terms of something other than being “faster than a speeding bullet”.
You cannot be “gun shy”
You had better not get caught “gunning your engine”.
…or “rifling through drawers”
no more “shotgun weddings”.
no more operations that result in “shooting blanks”.
No more job candidates described as “high caliber”
No more developed biceps described as “guns”
(And no more sleeveless shirts, apparently.)
You can no longer be “under the gun”.
…or “In the crosshairs” (thank you, CNN)
You cannot “drop the hammer”
..or look for “the smoking gun”.
You may not “ride shotgun” in a car
..or hazard a guess with “a shot in the dark”.
You cannot spend all your money and then complain “you shot your wad”.
You most certainly cannot describe the attitude of determined preparation as “locked and loaded”.
No one will encourage you to refrain from getting upset by telling you to “keep your powder dry”
You won’t be in any danger of “being out gunned”
And you won’t explain your preparation to tackle a difficult task by being “loaded for bear”.
Nobody will ever be a “loose cannon” again.
You’ll never be in danger of being “out-gunned”.
..or by having anyone “taking shots” at you.
(I wonder if this will adversely affect Tequila drinkers…)
There are no easy cures and no longer any other way to say it like, “there’s no silver bullet”.
There are no more “warning shots”
…or “a shot across the bows”
You cannot be “shot down”.
or “shot down in flames”, no matter how badly you lose an argument.
And you can’t “shoot yourself in the foot” ever again
You cannot be a “son of a gun”
You don’t have to take any “flak”.
And no one will criticize you in a malicious, underhanded manner by “sniping” at you.

That’s all there is to it.  Just see to it that these and other gun metaphors are forever banished from our language, then sit back and watch the world become a safer place!


Jul 11 2009

Why we’re losing: we brought a knife to gun fight

Category: media,Palin,politics,Republicanharmonicminer @ 9:00 am

You really have to read this whole thing. But here’s a taste.

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin

One of the most terrifying moments of my political life came last summer at the Republican convention in St. Paul. No, I don’t mean seeing John McCain careering around the Xcel Energy Center like Eyegore in Young Frankenstein, his face frozen in a Lon Chaney Sr. rictus grin as he reached across the aisle to his erstwhile friends in the media and got his hand bitten off. Rather, I’m referring to the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s outrageous acceptance speech, which whipped up the Rotary Club delegates into a frenzy of white-boy fury that not even heckling by a brave Code Pink embed could deter. Truly a fascist classic and one that sent shivers down our collectivist spines.

Even worse was the glaze of horror on the phizzes of the assembled heroes of the Mainstream Media. Andrea Mitchell, yes, the very same Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, whose employer saw no conflict of interest at all when she married then Fed pooh-bah Alan Greenspan, stood there gaping like a frog while the rest of the assembled Finemans and Matthewses and Olbermanns scurried around like roaches when the light gets turned on: What the hell just hit us? For one horrible moment, it looked as if the carefully crafted plans of David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, and the Second Chief Directorate, first department, of the old KGB were about to gang agley.

Really, read the whole thing at the link above. Then start planning something. Anything.


Mar 18 2009

An anchor around CBS’s neck

Category: election 2008,media,Palinharmonicminer @ 9:32 am

The “most trusted man in America” has had his name used to shower kudos on surely one of the least trustworthy news anchors in America, Katie Couric, who has fewer daily viewers than Rush Limbaugh has listeners, if I’m reading the chart here correctly.

Don’t you know, it’s always profound journalism to attack anyone from the Right.   The simplest way to get professional recognition in academia and journalism is simply to be very left.  Advocate for the, uh, “right” stuff, and you’re a cinch to receive some award from somebody for something.

So you thought Katie Couric did the tough job of revealing “the real Sarah Palin” by demonstrating that she doesn’t read, and is incoherent?

In Media Malpractice, John Ziegler tells the truth about Katie Couric’s deliberate hit-job on Sarah Palin, proving with complete interview excerpts that:

1)  A widely circulated “incoherent answer” from Palin was actually her attempt to answer an incoherent question from Couric, which was always conveniently removed from the replay that “went viral”.  When you see the question, suddenly Palin’s answer makes sense, though everyone from CNN to SNL focused only on the answer without providing the context of what the question was.

2)  Palin’s refusal to list the exact things she reads for Couric,  which was nothing more than Palin’s refusal to be a good little schoolgirl and recite for the schoolmarm, was widely and deceitfully used by Couric and others to imply that Palin doesn’t read anything.

3)  Couric deliberately phrased questions to attempt to remove the best answers from the table before Palin could reply.  “Other than trying to reform Fannie and Freddie, what’s the most important thing John McCain has done to improve regulation?”  That’s about like asking, “Other than Social Security, what’s the most important thing FDR did for old people?”    And then, insanely, when Palin answered that fixing Fannie and Freddie WAS the most important thing McCain had tried to do in the regulation arena, other reporters (like Major Garrett, still impersonating an officer) said she hadn’t even given THAT answer, to Couric’s great joy, of course.  Garrett appears not even to have the grace to be embarrassed about it.

Sure, I wish Palin had mentioned something else just to show she knew McCain’s record, like campaign finance reform, but maybe she thought (justifiably) that “campaign finance reform” was actually a bad idea, and didn’t want to put a positive spin on it.  In any case, the entire episode was among the LEAST revealing bits of journalism around, other than showing very clearly the agenda that motivates let’s-pretend-journalism at CBS.

Media Malpractice has much more, including all the real gaffes committed by Joe Biden when he was interviewed by Couric, which were conveniently downplayed, or totally deepsixed, and to which no follow up questions were asked.

For example, Ed Morrisey reports here:

I guess the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center never saw Katie’s crack journalistic work with Joe Biden. CBS crabbed at YouTube and got the video taken down, but the flavor remains:

Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.'”

FDR wasn’t President when the stock market crashed, and he didn’t get on TV until a decade later, but Couric never seems to notice either gaffe. Why? She wasn’t out to get Joe Biden.

And that’s pretty much about the size of it for most of what passes as journalism these days. When the Left flubs, it isn’t even news, but creating news by misrepresenting the Right is always fair game.

The schadenfreud of watching CBS News’ ratings in free-fall is delicious.  Keep up the great work, Katie.  I’m sure you can land a nice sinecure teaching journalism somewhere to wide-eyed graduate students who want nothing more than to learn how “the pros” do it.  On the other hand, cheer up:  maybe the clowns you helped elect will send a nice bailout to CBS.

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Feb 07 2009

“Troopergate,” having died some time ago, is unceremoniously buried

Category: election 2008,media,Palinharmonicminer @ 8:45 am

After nine paragraphs essentially admitting that there was nothing to the “troopergate” allegations against Sarah Palin, but without quite coming out and saying so, we finally get this in paragraph number ten from the AP:

Palin herself initiated a separate investigation by the Alaska State Personnel Board and said she would abide by it instead. This investigation found there was no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act. [emphasis mine]

The fact that the state legislature found a few witnesses “in contempt” because they failed to appear when subpoenaed but later gave written statements instead, following advice on their options from the state attorney general (who was busy challenging the subpoenas in court), hardly seems worth a comment even from the AP, but of course the media can’t resist any opportunity to throw mud at Palin, however miniscule that opportunity actually is, and regardless of the thin gruel making up the mud.

Let’s not kid around.  The Alaska legislature had all kinds of options if it wanted to take the matter seriously, none of which it took, because the whole thing was a witch-hunt from the get-go.

Media Malpractice:  How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted” is going to tell the whole story on the media in the last election cycle, coming out soon.

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Jan 08 2009

John Ziegler’s interview with Sarah Palin for his new film

Category: election 2008,media,Obama,Palin,politicsharmonicminer @ 10:11 am

I’ve mentioned John Ziegler’s efforts before to correct the record about How Obama Got Elected. As part of making his new movie, “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared” he has interviewed Sarah Palin. Some of his comments on that interview are here. (you may need to scroll down)

the most important part of my visit to the Palin house is that there is a big difference between thinking that something is true and knowing for sure that it is. I now know that Sarah Palin is who I thought she was.

I also know now, with moral certitude, that the media assassination of her, her character and her family was one of the greatest public injustices of our time and I am totally justified in devoting my life to correcting the historical record in my forthcoming film “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared”

I’ll keep linking to developments on this, but I think this is going to be a gangbuster’s film, with so much content in making its case that no one, no matter how avid a media consumer, has seen it all, and many people are going to be surprised at the strength of the case Ziegler makes.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  Early rumblings in the main-stream media about the Palin interview are here, including Palin pointing out the obvious disparity in the treatment of Caroline Kennedy’s candidacy for the Senate as opposed to Palin’s for the veep slot, even though Kennedy is angling for an appointment and won’t even be vetted by the voters til 2010, while Palin would at least have to have been elected to start with.

UPDATE:  Of course, in the coverage linked here, John Ziegler is a “conservative film maker,” not merely a “documentary film maker.”  I wonder if the makers of anti-Bush films in the last 8 years are usually referred to as “liberal film makers”?   How about all the anti-war stinkeroos that have died in the box office in the last few years?  In the reviews, are their writers, producers and directors referred to as “liberal filmmakers”?  The double standards here are so obvious that pointing them out is like shooting fish in a barrel with a howitzer…  but I suspect Ziegler is going to be the target of a great deal of ad hominem attack and attempts to label him out of relevance.

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Oct 08 2008

Time to unload gaffe-prone VP candidate?

Category: Biden,humor,Palinsardonicwhiner @ 9:31 am

Sarah Biden by Victor Davis Hanson. More at the link.

Journalists continue to ask, “What was John McCain thinking in selecting the gaffe-prone Gov. Sarah Palin?”

In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President.

Holy moley… EVERYBODY knows FDR wasn’t president yet in 1929, and there was no broadcast TV yet. That Sarah…. she’s just a country bumpkin, definitely not ready for prime time.

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Oct 01 2008

Imagine……. (dreamy, puffy clouds here)

Category: Biden,election 2008,media,Palinharmonicminer @ 9:17 am

In an alternate universe, Mitt Romney is the Presidential candidate for the Republican party. His vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, will be debating Joe Biden exactly once. The moderator of the debate will be Hugh Hewitt, author of A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney.

The main stream media makes no objection to the selection of the moderator, knowing that Hugh Hewitt is a professional journalist who can put aside his own self-interest in selling books, and his own obvious political commitments, for the sake of journalistic objectivity in moderating the debate.

(suddenly jerking awake)

Man, that WAS a pipe dream. 

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Sep 30 2008

Imagine: the vice presidential debate moderated by, oh, George Will… or even Hugh Hewitt

Category: Biden,election 2008,media,Obama,Palin,politicsharmonicminer @ 10:08 pm

Michelle Malkin reports on the “completely objective” reporter who will “moderate” the vice presidential debate.

My dictionary defines “moderator” as “the nonpartisan presiding officer of a town meeting.” On Thursday, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill will serve as moderator for the first and only vice presidential debate. The stakes are high. The Commission on Presidential Debates, with the assent of the two campaigns, decided not to impose any guidelines on her duties or questions.

But there is nothing “moderate” about where Ifill stands on Barack Obama. She’s so far in the tank for the Democratic presidential candidate, her oxygen delivery line is running out.

In an imaginary world where liberal journalists are held to the same standards as everyone else, Ifill would be required to make a full disclosure at the start of the debate. She would be required to turn to the cameras and tell the national audience that she has a book coming out on Jan. 20, 2009 — a date that just happens to coincide with the inauguration of the next president of the United States.

The title of Ifill’s book? “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” Nonpartisan my foot.

…. Continue reading “Imagine: the vice presidential debate moderated by, oh, George Will… or even Hugh Hewitt”

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Sep 19 2008

The Echo Chamber, with shorter and shorter wavelengths

Category: Palinharmonicminer @ 11:53 pm

Sullivan: Palin Pick Most Irresponsible Act a Candidate Ever Made | NewsBusters.org

If you needed any more evidence as to how frightened liberals are of Sarah Palin, you got it during Friday’s “Real Time” on HBO.

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Sep 17 2008

More Palin-phobia

Category: election 2008,media,Palin,politics,Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 9:43 am

Now they’re accusing Palin of making rape victims pay for their own rape kit.

At the link above, you can read all about it, and about what was omitted from the USA Today story that made the charge.

The USA Today story continues the pattern of the NYTimes, of quoting Palin enemies in Alaska, without counterbalancing perspectives, and leaving out essential facts.

Continue reading “More Palin-phobia”

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