I understand that the spin coming out of the Right this morning is that the Tucson memorial was too much like a pep rally or even a campaign rally. Some are comparing it to Paul Wellstone’s funeral, which righties ripped for being a political rally. Like someone made them the funeral police.
I only watched a bit of the memorial, and did find the cheering a bit jarring. But, y’know, I wasn’t there. Experiences are much more intense for people who are really experiencing them and not just watching from far away on the teevee. I believe it was David Gergen on CNN last night who said that you had to have been in Tuscon last week to appreciate the emotion of the crowd and why they were cheering.
Not to pass up an opportunity to hate someone, however, Little Lulu and others are ripping the event because it was “branded.” The event organizers even handed out free T-shirts with the logo “Together We Thrive.” (Too socialist? But whatever will Lulu do if she finds out what “E Pluribus Unum” means?)
Michelle is shocked, shocked — messaging is going on here! And really, that’s her problem: not that (in her opinion) this tragedy is being cynically exploited, but that (in her opinion) it’s being cynically exploited by people who aren’t Republicans! Cynical exploitation is their specialty! Messaging is what they do! In fact, it’s all they know how to do. They can’t legislate, they can’t govern — but they sure as hell can craft a meme and frame a debate. They do it every day! They have a near-monopoly in this country on effective memes and expertly deployed symbols and debate-framing. How dare anyone else muscle in on their territory!
And Paul the Power Tool is an unabashed enough bigot to complain that the invocation was a Pascua Yaqui prayer rather than a proper Judeo-Christian one. I’m serious. And these are the same people who have bellyached all week about people squelching their speech.
But here’s the kicker — Adam Nagourney writes for the New York Times, “Even as it began, some conservative commentators were posting comments criticizing the memorial service for being overly partisan and more like a pep rally.”
Even as it began? Sort of sounds like they had the spin ready beforehand.
It’s particularly curious that House Speaker John Boehner declined to go to the memorial even after he was offered a ride on Air Force One. I realize there were some Republicans in attendance, but the ones I know about are those directly tied to Arizona — Sen. John McCain, Gov. Jan Brewer, who was booed. They couldn’t very well get out of it. But Boehner’s absence makes me wonder if he’d already seen the post-memorial talking points and decided to stay clear.
Little Lulu’s column in my local paper today ripped Sheriff Dupnik for being the “worst sheriff in America.” She made this stupid argument because she knows Sheriff Dupnik hit a home run with his criticism of the vitriol Lulu and her fellow travelers spread, she knows it, and all the wingnuts are scrambling to run from their rhetoric now that it has once again had lethal effects.
I missed the broadcast; Gov. Brewer really was booed? Interesting.
As regards Boehner, you’ve probably already read that he went to a fundraiser instead.
Little Lulu is a useful tool. So much anger in such an ignorant little person.
She should be the lead singer in a band called, “Rage FOR the Machine.”
khughes1963, do you live in a area where a lot of people own pet birds? She’s lost a lot of papers over the past few years and maybe you local paper carries her to line the bottom of the cages as a public service, in which case you should thank them. If not, tell them Op-ed writers like her are why the newspaper business is dying.
And did anyone see McCain’s face the few times he was on? It looked like someone fed him Ex-Lax and bran-fiber fudge brownies before the event, and he was painfully squirting into his Depends with every sentence Obama uttered. Angry little old troll, isn’t he?
Let’s face it, if they had nothing else to critisize, they’d bitch that Obama was taking time away from the basketball teams practice and it might cost them a game, and then how would the people in the state feel?
Yeeeeeeeeeesh….
A commenter at Balloon Juice made the point about the nature of Native American spiritual services and that the students cheered the professor because his presence and words acknowledged their culture in a way not normally done. #58 Jahill10 (http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/01/13/different-goals/#comment-2362776)
Cretins. Nobody, I don’t think, mentioned the playing of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” The Common Man? How Socialist can you get.
The ‘cheering’ of the fifteen-thousand college students in the audience warmed my heart.
They probably didn’t recognize it. My impression is that most righties these days couldn’t tell Copeland from Mozart. Fine arts are for academics, elites, homosexuals, and liberals, dontcha know?
More conservatives acting like children: GOP Rep. Drafting Bill to Let Lawmakers Carry Guns in Capitol. Freudians would have a field day with these frightened little boys and their penchant for guns.
The problem is not that these weenies dominate this country, the problem is that good people are cowed by them and have yet to find a way to send them back to the margins where they came from.
“[I]f he’d already seen the post-memorial talking points and decided to stay clear.”
He probably helped write the talking points.
Chris Matthews (just now) pointed out that Boehner attended a Memorial for the Tucson massacre in D.C., hence could not go to Arizona.
We all need to be a bit careful where we get out info.
On another related subject, Ms. Palin is finished.
I’ll not go into details, but her political career is over, sans doing some cheerleading.
I agree. She’ll continue to be a media figure, and it will probably take her a while to realize she’s been downgraded, but it’s obvious The Order Has Gone Out to lose Palin.
It seems to me that most of the time music for funerals is chosen by the family and normally is music that the loved one favored. For my Mom’s funeral, I gave no thought to selecting music I liked. Anyone, such as “little lulu”, really shows her lack of good manners and good sense to criticize music selections at the funeral of someone she never knew. So tacking, so gauche.
Palin’s set designer needs to get the boot also. The frozen unfurling flag in the background just screamed phony/2nd rate attempt to tie her with Americanism. I don’t know if it was budget constraints or time constraints, but the workmanship of the backdrop was really, really, piss poor.
Did anyone, particularly hunters, see Palin’s photo-op shooting of that animal? If she was going for her ‘hunters’ constituency, that little scene would only alienate them, never mind insulting their sport. Every hair in place, gun at the ready, some poor animal on the ‘set’ walks into her sites and is summarily deaded?
The Caribou shoot — yes, I understand a lot of hunters were actually angry about that. I understand she was using a small-caliber rifle and had to shoot the poor beast several times to kill it. A respectable hunter would never do that. I also understand she had to take her father along to load her rifle for her. She wasn’t even faking it well, in other words.
Felicty,
I haven’t watched TLC (The Learning Channel) since they took the “Learning” out of it years ago.
And now that Sarah’s on there shooting anything with antlers on it so that she can make her famed Wasilla Moose-o-ghetti, I’d black that channel out if I still had a TV with a dial.
They should change the name of the damned channel to TUC – The Unlearning Channel.
The Learning Channel has turned into The Freak Show Channel, hasn’t it? Although I confess I sometimes watch “Say Yes to the Dress.”
God/Universe/Spirit/Consciousness/Emptiness bless the heroic Americans who intervened in this tragic event. No one stopped to ask, “Are you conservative, liberal, heterosexual, homosexual, black, or white?” Americans stepped in and helped each other. That is who we are. The actions of one deranged individual should not be exploited to advance the liberals’ political obsession with silencing their opponents.
America is a center right country and it was overtaken by left wing whackos in a “perfect storm” which will not happen again. The ten percent of the population that believes in liberalism will soon be gone and relegated to the dung heap of history where they belong. Your health care bill will soon be overturned along with your socialist engineering of freedom loving American citizens, the illegal invasion will be ended, fiscal sanity restored, capitalism once again allowed to fluorish and that silly global warming nonsense frozen into an iceberg which will sink your repugnant Marxism forever.
Bye Bye morons
Actually, it’s right wingers (I refuse to call them “conservatives”) who are obsessed with silencing — I should say, eliminating — liberals. And with extreme prejudice, I might add.
I rest my case.
I hope Greg stays away from Safeway’s holding political meet & Greets.
OK, let’s say the last Liberal is dead, you’re done dancing on the grave, and it’s GregWorld now.
What are you going ot do for entertainment? Because most artist’s are Liberals – we’re the creative ones, remember?
Music? Nothing but Ted Nugent. Yikes!
Films” Jon Voight blowing away some darker-hued people – but with live ammo. I know you pecker’s hardening at that thought. But even that’ll get pretty boring after awile.
Comedy? You’d better hope Dennis Miller becomes funny again, ’cause you’ll be seeing a lot of him.
Literature? I think even Papa Hemingway was too much of a softy for you. And how many times can you read “The Turner Diaries?”
OK, the last Liberal is dead, and you’ve killed all of the non-white’s, who you gonna get your hate on for now? You’re going to start culling you own herd. “Look, Fred down the street forgot his flag-pin today goin’ out for mail! Honey, get the rifle with the good scope. Hurry, you bitch, while I still got a good shot!”
And then Greg, maybe it’ll be your turn. Let’s say the guns recoil badly hurt your hand, and you can’t raise it to cover your heart when your neighbor starts blaring the National Anthem. Can you feel the cross-hairs there, Cha-cha?
BAM!
Greg, dead in his own GregWorld – hoist by his own “retard.” (sic)
Too bad your parent’s were probably Conservative, too. Maybe if they’d tried something besides the missionary position, your Mom might have swallowed when it was the turn of the sperm that sprung ya, and I wouldn’t have to read your imbecilic keyboard scratchings.
But, it’s not your fault, Greg. Science, that thing you hate so much, proved that thugs like you ar born, not made.
I forgive you.
How very Liberal of me…