Friday, January 14, 2011

The Myth of Civility

This is an important point as we try to understand why our society is breaking down. As mistermix points out it's not the incivility, it's the dishonesty. He gets quote of the day:
The reason that hundreds of angry people came to town hall meetings in my Congressional district in 2009, and the reason that police had to be present where they had never been before, wasn’t because someone was “uncivil”. It was because their media heroes and party leaders told them a pack of lies about death panels, federal funding for abortions, Medicare being taken away and free insurance for illegal immigrants. The questions that my Congressman took at those hate-filled meetings weren’t reasonable queries about limited government, deficits and healthcare outcomes. They were questions about why he wanted to kill grandma, let the government pay to abort babies, and take away Medicare.
Actually, they were barely couched as questions. More like red-faced, spittle-flecked taunts and they weren't exactly looking for answers so much as they were to intimidate those damned libruls with their rage.

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5 Comments:

Blogger (O)CT(O)PUS said...

Oh, dear! Another comment troll going postal.

Libby, the reason why I stopped by:

I was making my blog rounds when I visited this site, ‘From the Left,’ where I was listening to Howard Stern's rant against Sarah Palin. He made the fatal error of using the "C" word, an extremely offensive sexist reference. From that point forward, Stern lost all credibility, and I promptly left ‘From the Left.’

I just wanted to make the point that there is no excuse in substituting one distasteful polemic for another.

And I might add: Just Howard Stern discredited himself, the anonymous commenter above also shot himself/herself in the foot with the same angry tone.

6:09:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Hey Octopus. Good to see you. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Howard Stern the radio guy? He has always offended me. I've never thought he was funny. Just another shock jock.

10:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Ruth said...

There were a few teabaggage events in these parts, the funniest was when a lady got up and raged against government welfare, then remarked that she was retired military - and was greeted with hoots of laughter.

1:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I just wanted to make the point that there is no excuse in substituting one distasteful polemic for another."

That is the only thing to be found on this blog. What's your point? That it's OK for lefties to spew distasteful and vile hate but not those on the right?

You spoke like a true hypocrite.

2:58:00 PM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

"That it's OK for lefties to spew distasteful and vile hate but not those on the right? "

There are two childish gambits in your game here:

The first is that you don't differentiate in degree when attempting to show equivalence; pointing a word is not the same thing as pointing a gun, for instance. The other is that you ignore the target and the accuracy and the merit of the "distasteful" speech.

One needs to consider the target of the words as well as the severity of remedies suggested by them. School yard vulgarities do not equate with suggestions that we poison Federal Judges, for instance, nor demand that someone "Kill his ugly wife and stupid children" as at least one Teabagger suggested without much denial from Tea Central or you.

Your going to have to use something much heavier if you want the childish snickering of Howard Stern to balance out the massive uprising of the far right.

Yes, Stern is loathesome, but he does not call for the poisoning of federal judges, wave AR-15's at political rallies or come anywhere near suggesting that we suspend democracy and overthrow an elected government because it offends your political sense of entitlement.

I'm sorry, purchasing testimony that Bill Clinton made rude comments to a secretary does not balance out Nixon's felonies, nor Agnew's and nothing Obama has done has been as disruptive or damaging to this country as his predecessors deeds nor does any of your bullshit about radio comedians cover his or your ass.

10:33:00 AM  

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