Personally, I expecting him to use a split-screen technique, showing Bush sitting silent as the clock ticks by while, simultaneously, portraying the devastation of the WTC as it prepared to collapse.
Let’s try a fun experiment. Imagine that you’ve been told your country is under attack, and you are president of the U.S. Now take your hands off the keyboard and stare at your computer clock, waiting for seven minutes to go by.
You tell me it’s not a fucking eternity. I give you two minutes, TOPS, before you get bored of the experiment and think of other things you could be doing – like talking to your chief of staff, finding out exactly what the hell’s going on, demanding someone to find your secretary of defense (who btw has still never accounted for his inability to be found for a half hour that day) – even asking for advice for crissakes.
Honestly? This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Bush didn’t constantly try to project himself as the War President Father of Our Country Who’s the Only One Who Can Protect Us Against the Evildoers. Since he does, his hypocrisy and ineptitude are fair game.
A combination of one and two. From pages 38 and 39 of the 9/11 Commission Report: “The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading. He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15, where he was briefed by staff and saw television coverage. He next spoke to Vice President Cheney, Dr.Rice, NewYork Governor George Pataki, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. He decided to make a brief statement from the school before leaving for the airport. The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.” It takes time actually to create and secure a safer location. And note that it is not even necessarily seven minutes.
But he had been discussing the situation with his advisers practically all morning, including on the way to the school. This is not a dictatorship. The wonderful thing about the American military is that it empowers decision making at the lowest possible level. Some things are reserved for the very top, like launching of nuclear missiles, but American soldiers are so successful because they are not a bunch of brainless toy soldiers who wait for word from the Politburo or Reichstag that they may return fire to save their own lives. They are taught to obey orders, but they are taught to think, to react on their gut instincts, and to assess the battlefield first hand. It is not necessary that a Fuehrer bark orders that cover every cough and fart. As I said, if he had jumped up like George Costanza in an apartment fire, that is exactly what people would be criticizing now.
No, I believe that left-wing nutjobs are a minority, not a majority, of leftists. And Michael Moore is a part of that nutjob group. He sways people, not by ideological argument, but by deceit. He doesn’t even consider himself a Democrat, much less mainstream. And he holds the entire party in contempt. He told Matt Lauer, “But I’m not a member of the Democratic Party. If you know anything about me, anybody who’s followed me, I’m the anti-Democrat. I have railed against the Democrats for a long time. They have been a weak-kneed, wimpy party that hasn’t stood up to the Republicans. They let the working people down across this country. I rallied against Clinton when he was in office. I didn’t vote for him in ‘96. I didn’t vote for Gore in 2000.” May I now hear you wax indignant about how he thinks that the vast majority of leftists are weak-kneed and wimpy?
Yeah, the actual event would have been, and indeed was, boring. You can simulate several minutes in a few seconds using cinematic techniques. There were 43 cameras in that room. If it had been a big deal, do you honestly believe we wouldn’t have seen it until Moore’s film? No news outlet ever showed more than a few seconds of any of it. And that is likely because there was no story there.
Notice how there isn’t actually any new information in those stories. It’s just a couple of quotes from some twat principal twatting on with the same stupid strawman about how he couldn’t possibly have left the room because all the children would have died of fright and won’t somebody please think of the children?
Why would you expect the principal of a school to publicly criticize the POTUS after a visit anyway? Especially since the school was probably chosen because it was in a Bush friendly school district? It’s Sarasota, man, it’s Jeb country. The principal doesn’t want a bunch of complaints and irate phone calls from irate Bush zombies. She barked the party line.
Hmmm. An interesting question. I would assume, because this is how I would do it were I in charge of the Secret Service, that there’s ALWAYS a secure location ready. The last thing you want, if a madman to bursts into the room with a gun, is for the SS to hustle him out to the car, and then no one knows where to drive him.
Although precise details of SS procedures are presumably not generally bandied about.
For most people, when the first plane hit the first tower, the reaction was shock and horror, but nothing approachnig understanding of the scope of the situation. It sounded like an accident. It might have been a small private plane or something.
It was only when the SECOND plane hit that people realized what was truly going on. So, either (a) Bush already realized that the darkest day in American history since Pearl Harbor was under way, with events still unfolding at that moment, before he got to the classroom, and yet didn’t choose to change his plans, or (b) he was given the news which should have made that very clear while in the classroom, and yet continued to read to the kids. Having discussed the situation ahead of time was irrelevant once he got the news of the second plane. At least, it should have been.
I agree. Although I don’t see the relevance of the situation. When the nation is in a state of extreme crisis, we don’t expect our leader to be just chilling, doing nothing, trusting his subordinates to make and execute efficient plans. And even if the leader isn’t doing a damn thing that’s useful, we expect him to APPEAR to be doing something useful, because that’s part of what we pay him to do. (Nor do we expect him to be micromanaging, of course. But again, on the scale of do-nothing to micromanage, Bush was WAY off on the do-nothing side.)
No, you said that if he calmly got up an excused himself, people would be criticizing that now. Even if he’d lept up in alarm and scared the crap out of the kids, I doubt anyone would care now. I mean, honsetly, it was the MORNING OF 9/11! Everyone in the entire country was about to be more scared than they ever had been before, for days! If the kids got scared a few minutes early, big deal. The only thing that would have really deserved criticism, along those lines, is if he’d just started spouting orders left and right with no thought.
And I claim that if Bush had quickly excused himself upon hearing of the second crash, there is no way that MM would have footage of Bush reading, hearing the news, and immediately and politely departing, in F9/11. He’d doubtless still have made the movie. He’d doubtless have found something else to mock Bush about. But MM doesn’t just take every last thing Bush does and, whatever it was, criticize it. He finds the things Bush does which are eminently mockable and mocks those. And Bush’s performance in that classroom was both mockable, pathetic, and (as someone who is forced to call Bush my leader) frightening.
Ummmm, what? I’ve expressed my opinion about MM in other threads, but I’ll sum it up here. I’m glad that he exists. I’m glad that he starts the discussions he does and brings to light the issues he does. They’re important, and I often agree with him. I also find him entertaining. That said, I wish he was a bit more rigorously honest (although the tales of his dishonesty are VASTLY overstated) and a bit less of a pompous egomaniacal blowhard.
He doesn’t speak for me. I’m not a loyal follower of the Moore. And his comment abuot the week kneed wimpy party is basically one I agree with, although he’s talking about the character of the party as a whole, not the vast majority of leftists (unless you left out part of that quote).
So, when you were complaining about him using parallel editing, implying (or even outright stating) that doing so was dishonest, you were wrong, because he was in fact taking short segments of those 7 minutes and using that technique to make them appear longer, because, in fact, they WERE PARTS OF A LONGER SEGMENT? And thus, his technique was absolutely 100% justified by the reality of the situation?
Furthermore, threre was obviously, clearly, a story there. His actions were something that large numbers of Americans find disturbing. Thus, the large number of people who disagree with you in this, and other, threads. Sure, it’s possible (although probably undecideable) that we’re wrong to disagree with you, but his actions certainly seem newsworthy to quite a few people.
O.K., let’s discuss your little articles. Basically, they’re saying that the principal of the school praised Bush for keeping the children calm. So I have to ask you, do you really think that’s a valid point here? Notice that Ms. Tose’-Rigell doesn’t actually offer any evidence to suggest that Bush didn’t need to leave at that time. She just says, “What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?” And the obvious answer to that question is that it would have allowed Bush to discuss the situation with his underlings and begin formulating a strategy for dealing with the crisis with which he was faced. Ms. Tose’-Rigell doesn’t really give any insight into the situation, does she? She’s just assuming he didn’t need to leave at that time, not proving it.
No, the only cogent point she makes is that Bush kept the children calm. Well, that’s a good thing, by itself, but I hardly think it’s more important than responding to a major terrorist attack. So the only way her observations are useful is if you are already assuming that the classroom was the best place for Bush to be, and that he couldn’t have possibly accomplished more by excusing himself. But if you’re already assuming your conclusion, then there’s no need to cite the articles anyway.
Honestly, you’re the only one with dancing shoes in this instance.
I can’t imagine a sillier evasion of of the actual point than this. The question was simply whether Stossel is a propagandist if Moore is, since both produce opinion pieces. Moore, at least, is presented as someone with a point of view, while Stossel is rarely identified as anything other than a straight journalist.
You’re right, this would make it utterly impossible for him to be misleading.
Ok. How about in “Greed.” He claims that factory wages have risen 70%, so workers haven’t been hurt. Of course, in this case he fails to account for inflation (in which case their wages would have fallen by 7%): a failure I’ve seem him deride as a technique used to mislead in other segments.
But even that is sort of immatterial. Surely it’s not controversial to note that Stossel’s reports are ideological: they aim to prove a certain point of view on any given subject: Stossels’. He has the last word, he frames the debate. Normal journalists don’t do pieces that bring out criticisms like his recent piece on trial lawyers: which was a virtual recitation of Republican talking points about John Edwards.
Oh, and must have forgot: there’s no music at all in Stossels’ segments. Make sure not to hear any next time you watch!
They know where to drive him, and they have all sorts of contingency plans, though obviously they (and you) cannot plan for every contingency. If he’s hit, for example, one of them shouts “Blue! Blue!” and they scurry off to the nearest hospital. But there was no mad gunman that day because the place where the president was had already been secured.
Bullshit. People were still speculating. See, for instance, this post at 9:13 ET on 9/11: “True, calling it terrorism is just speculation at this point. One plane crashing into the tower can be thought an accident. A B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building in the 1940s – in fog. But still, it’s possible a pilot might be incapacitated or be trying to “get a closer look” or performing a stunt. A 727-size jet crashing into the second tower makes it seem deliberate.” Emphasis mine.
I disagree. When I worked as the Manager of Data Processing for the southeast’s largest industrial distributor, our computer crashed one day and brought 12 branches in four states to their knees. The entire index file for our inventory had been destroyed. No one could check stock, place orders, or issue purchase orders. Into the computer room complex walks our fearless fucking leader, our nose-in-everything CEO. He stood over us barking orders, asking questions, and otherwise making a nuisance of himself while those of us who were expert in the matter at hand had to work twice as hard to hold our trains of thought and get the damn file fixed. From the perspective of the Secret Service that day, priority number one was to insure the safety of the president. That is also the priority for the nation as a whole. That’s why he has a plane to take him away in the event of a nuclear disaster. His life must be secure first before he may secure the nation. You put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help your children. If you don’t, you increase the risk that you and they all will die. It is the job of the military to handle military matters. If we learned anything at all from Vietnam, it was exactly that. All the president need say is keep an eye on this, respond with appropriate force, and keep me informed. If he goes far beyond that, he is an obsessive-compulsive Jimmy Carter or Lyndon Johnson.
Yeah, about to be scared. But you didn’t know that then. No one did. He’s not President Cleo.
So, Moore gets the benefit of the doubt when he calls the entire Democratic Party cowards that he is not saying something about the majority of leftists, who just happen to be — oh! — Democrats! But when I refer specifically to left-wing nutjobs, you jump immediately to accuse me of painting all leftists with one broad brush. Let me explain to you that a cow is a bovine, but a bovine is not necessarily a cow. If you say something about cows, you’re not saying something about all bovines. But if you say something about bovines, then you’re saying something about all cows.
No, what he did was similar to what he did when he faked the newspaper headline under discussion in another thread. He attempted to imply that seven minutes — and it might have been only five, according to the 9/11 CR — is some kind of long freaking epoch. He played deliberately on MTV fast-cut sensibilities to put a perfectly ordinary span of time in slow motion. The amount of time, in fact, was less than one-half of one percent of the total time that passed that day.
Well, actually, that’s your question. But look out your window. See those bipedal things moving about from place to place? Those are… “other people”. I am one of those, and we have questions, too. Mine specifically was how you compare the use of cinematic techniques and special effects to make time seem slower or headlines seem bigger to the mere expression of opinion. If Moore had showed the 5-7 minute span of time (even giving him a pass for arbitrarily selecting the longest possible estimate) in the context of a whole day, it would have been seen as the brief moment that it really was. If he had showed the op-ed piece in the context of the whole page, it would have been seen as the minor article that it really was.
That’s not the case, according to leftist nutjob, Ted Rose. He says that it would be a net gain of 3%. And Stossel didn’t say that workers “haven’t been hurt”. He said merely that the data don’t mean that workers were hurt. And in fact, they don’t.
I have no problem with Moore’s films being ideological. Some of the greatest films of all time have been ideological. I don’t have a problem with him framing the debate. Those are red herrings. My problem is with his misrepresentation of reality and passing it off as how things really are. He should either keep his documentaries honest, or else market them as fiction movies.
When questions are in the service of evasion, you’re the first to jump on them and accuse people of badgering you with irrelevant questions. Stossel and Moore both have points of view. They both present these points of view by framing debate (though Moore never calls himself a journalist and many of his person to person contact is presented as comic “bits” rather than sincere interviews) how they want to sell this point of view, using the varied techniques of their mediums. This includes taking things out of context, featuring talking heads that support your views front and center while not giving the other side informed or adequate response, etc.
Asking whether they both use particular or the exact same techniques in doing this is, I think most would agree, completely evading that subject.
Did you read your own cite? While I got my figure from FAIR, which cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics, (actually now that I check, they claim 6%, which I misquoted myself), and all these cites disagree your cite still confirms that basic issue: Stossel didn’t adjust for inflation. He admits it.
Or take his recent lawyer piece. People complain about Moore linking Bush with the Saudis. But Stossel does the exact same thing with John Edwards: cuts back and forth between Edwards and all manner of other trial lawyers, most of which are portrayed in a hashly negative light. Every chance he gets he links people whom Edwards has never worked with or in some cases even met with Edwards: cases that may or may not be outrageous (Stossel never gives us enough of the facts to judge for ourselves, as if often the case when it comes to his pieces on lawsuits), but that Edwards had no control over or even knowledge of. At least the Bushes have actual personal, family, and business ties directly to the Saudis. The closest most of the lawyers Stossel tries to associate with Edwards come to him is donating money to his campaign, and Stossel never suggests that all those he profiled and tied in with Edwards actually did.
“Of course, the money for Scruggs’ planes and the millions Edwards made comes from someone, and that someone is you, the consumer.” You tell me, is that a fair and unbiased take on reality? Is it a fair association to make?
Or take his discussion on the increase of C-sections lays the blame entirely at the feet of trial lawyers, not even addressing the question of whether the profit motive for doctors could play a role or the desires of patients themselves (or noting that unecessary C-sections and complications from C-sections can also lead to costly lawsuits).
And of course, there is a long history of his methods, among which were parents that accused him of basically putting words in their kids mouths with leading questions to get the answers he wanted, producers who resigned in protest when reseach they had done for his segments came out with different conclusions than he wanted and got hushed up or cut out of his pieces, his devices of using partisan think-tank spokespeople as talking heads but only calling them “philosophers” or “economists” or stacking the talking heads of side he likes with scientists and experts while the counter side only gets often uninformed laypeople. He has a long long history of bogus statistics, citing studies that were never actually conducted the way he claims they were, and so on. In “The Food You Eat” Stossel claimed that organic food contains high amounts of E Coli: without bothering to tell the viewing public that there are different strains, some harmful and some not, and that the high levels he cites were only present if you take into acocunt the harmless kinds. He also claims that certain non-organic foods contained no pesticide residue: a claim that turned out to be utterly unsupported since pesticide was neve tested for in the food in question. And when pesticide residue WAS found in poultry, that was left out of the report entirely.
No, he doesnt include a segment in which he runs 24 hours of footage in order to illustrate how short 7 minutes seems. But the basic problem is the same: one-sided, heavily biased takes on the subject matter, complete with all sorts of dissembling and hazy, incomplete associations used to make the case. Maybe both were well intentioned, and made sincere mistakes. Stossel has apologized for his mistakes occasionally, though often his pieces then run again unaltered and uncorrected.
And the fact is, while I like a lot of Stossel’s ideas and positions, just like I agree with Moore that George Bush is a terrible leader, that doesn’t mean I can bring myself to see one as a shameless pandering slanderer, while the other is just a harmless editorialist.
Oh, except that Stossel never uses any music in his pieces.
If the point of your argument is that Bush is such a fuckwit that his involvement in the process would have hindered rather than helped, you should have said so up front. It would have saved a lot of time and not damaged what tiny amount of credibility you had left.
If, on the other hand, and as I suspect, you’re just saying random provocative shit to stoke your ego during one of you manic phases, I urge you to recognize it, and deal with it.
Wow, people here on this message board were still speculating, just a few minutes after the second plane.
Presumably, we had access to a bit less information that morning than those high up in the government did. Which of course is one reason why Bush needed to be somewhere besides that classroom reading “The Pet Goat” (reviewed here by Gene Weingarten, just for a chuckle) and staring off into space. At that time, he needed to know more about the attack than the average SDMB poster, not less.
Especially because this assertion of yours is wrong as it applies to that particular morning:
It’s been well documented that permission to fire on a civilian airliner in US airspace needed to come from the President. Hell, right now, there’s a mini-flap going on (which I personally don’t give a flip about) that Cheney might’ve given that order in Bush’s name, but without consulting with him first.
OK, was the Secret Service referring to the school as a whole, or the classroom itself? Is there any indication that they felt it would be dangerous for GWB to leave the classroom, walk down the hall to wherever his staff people were, and meet with them immediately, rather than wait for seven minutes? Is there any evidence that Andy Card told Bush to stay where he was?
I haven’t written about anything that I haven’t seen for myself.
Yes, I’m sure you could marshal quite the gang to pound on me and tell me that your opinion is the correct one. Notwithstanding your appeal to the gallery, the fact remains that there is a fundamental difference between presenting your own interpretation of events and presenting an interpretation of events that never happened. There was no long span of time in which people began to wonder whether the world would end, and there was no banner headline. These were manufactured out of whole cloth. That’s why before Moore’s movie no reputable news outlet every showed extensive video of the president in the room and implied that it made any difference, despite that there were dozens of cameras there. That’s why the principal of the school who was present went on record to declare what the fuck.
Then why aren’t you giving him kudos for admitting his mistake? But even with that mistake, there is no disputing what he said, which is that the data did not show that people were hurt.
Yes, but Bush is not a Saudi, and Edwards is a trial lawyer — one in fact who can channel the thoughts of fetuses crying from the womb. Edwards has actually participated in the activities that have enriched himself and others by literally billions of dollars while falling down to us regular folk in the form of higher prices. Edwards is not a new face around these parts. We know him quite well.
The fact is that Stossel himself left his original employer when he found that he could no longer tolerate the incessant spin and censorship that they enforced on him. For his work as an independent analyst, he is entitled to hire and fire whomever he wishes, including those who, like he did before them, disagree with his take on whatever he is analyzing. And the so-called “stacking” that you refer to is commonplace in the industry. That’s why CNN puts up a professor from Cal Tech to argue with Jerry Falwell about evolution versus creationism. These things that you cite are not the same as what Moore does. I wouldn’t put it at all past Moore to show the talking head and overdub something it never even said, or something it said in some other context at some other time. Have you seen Stossel do this?
Well, that’s bully for you. What that has to do with my own position is unclear.
Well if nothing else, I do appreciate at least that small admission of error on your part. It may well be the first that I can ever recall.
And he did. But I was (as I believe you know) countering Max’s much more broad assertion that everybody had it all nailed down except Bush. It is a remarkable irony that you are going on and on about what some other man should know about something that is breaking news on the spot with very little context and conflicting details, while you presume to have perfect knowledge in retrospect of what went on not just in the room but in people’s heads.
It needs to if he says so. He may say something like, “Do not fire until I give the order,” but he may also delegate a standing order, something like, “Fire when and if you believe it is appropriate.”
Andy Card is the White House Chief of Staff and has no authority over the Secret Service.
So, what did he know? As best as we can tell, all he knew before going into the classroom was that a plane had hit the WTC. From what he’d said, he apparently believed it was a small private plane. Then Andy Card came in and told him that we were under attack - presumably specifying that another plane had hit the other WTC tower.
What else did he know while he was sitting there for those seven minutes?
I completely missed that assertion. Could you point it out to me? I saw his assertion that more information was available to Bush outside the classroom than he could get by sitting there listening to the kids read The Pet Goat.
The details may be conflicting, but the context and primary fact are obvious: Bush had been informed that the United States of America, which he was President of, was under attack. There was at least a possibility that he might need to make some decisions as C-in-C, but there was little way of knowing whether or what - and what timeframe they needed to be made in - without leaving the classroom. Despite that, he stayed for seven minutes, listening to the children read.
What I presume to know about what went on in Bush’s head is this: regarding the attack, he knew the sum total of what he knew before he went into the classroom, and what Andy Card whispered in his ear, which was undoubtedly a great deal less than a complete briefing. He could not possibly know what he needed to do without obtaining more information. Unless he has voices in his head to instruct him, he needed to leave the classroom and consult with his aides to be filled in.
Is there any evidence that he did so? Surely in the extensive analysis of the events of that morning, such a fact would have come to light.
Yes, but the guy we say leaning over and whispering into Bush’s ear was Andy Card, not a Secret Service agent. If anyone told Bush to stay put - on behalf of the Secret Service or on his own authority - it would seem like it would have had to be Andy Card.
Does this ability of yours to ignore the obvious come naturally, or did you have to study for decades at the feet of Hayek to master it?
That should be ‘saw’, not ‘say’. And I even previewed, for once.
BTW, my review of F911 goes like this: great selection of music! The Bin Laden airlift to the tune of “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” all sorts of Saudi-BushCo buddy-buddiness to the tune of “Shiny Happy People,” and the victory dance on the aircraft carrier to the tune of the “Greatest American Hero” theme.
Now that I’ve seen it, I really don’t see what all the griping’s about with respect to factual accuracy.
Ummm, I’m totally missing the point of what you’re saying. Obviously, there was no mad gunman that day. The question on the floor (at least the question being addressed by this little section of our running debate) is whether the delay at the school (both the part with Bush in the classroom and the rest) was caused by the Secret Service wanting to get Bush out of there, but not knowing where to take him, preparing routes, etc., which I find extraordinarily unlikely, although no one has as yet provided any cite that answers the question definitively.
I just find it preposterous to think that if Bush, upon hearing about the second tower, had thought to himself “hmmm, two towers struck, nation under attack, I might be in danger” and said to the SS “let’s get me out of here as fast as possible” that the SS would have responded “uhh, just give us 5 to 7 minutes sir”.
(Oh, and I agree with you that one of the absolute top national priorities during the first confusing minutes of 9/11 should have been to ensure the safety of the president. You seem to be claiming that either:
(a) The SS made the conscious decision to keep the president in the school for some time, as that was the safest possible option
or
(b) The SS wanted to move the president from the school to somewhere safer, but it took some time (5 to 7 minutes, plus the rest of the time the president was hanging around in the other rooms at the school, not to mention the time after the first tower was hit during which the president was still en route to the school) to figure out where to take the president, and how
I reject both these claims as malarkey. Instead, I strongly suspect that there was, due to the totally unique and shocking circumstances, an unfortunate and in-many-ways-understandable breakdown of leadership in which no one took the initiative to get the president the hell out of there. But I haven’t seen anything that really definitely clears the matter up.)
Again, you’re not responding to the point I’m making. You had said that there was no need for Bush to discuss the issue with his aids upon hearing of the second tower being hit because he’d discussed it with them before getting into the classroom. I’m claiming that the second tower being hit changed everything so drastically (completely ruled out any accidental cause) that any previous discussion was rendered mostly irrelevant, and thus, Bush should have gotten off his fanny and started being a leader.
Oh for crying out loud. First of all, I’ve said several times that I agree that the president going off half-cocked and spouting orders like a madman would be Extremely Bad. Secondly, that’s not really a comparable situation. You had encountered a technological failure. Those of you were technical experts were trying to fix it. There was really no need for leadership. There weren’t broad strategic decisions that needed to be made. The decision was (obviously) “fix it”. That’s totally different from a situation like 9/11 where the President, although not an expert on, say, firefighting and damage control, is obviously going to be called on the minutes, days, and hours ahead to provide national leadership and make important decisions.
Furthermore, it would have been reasonable for the CEO in your example to, say, be in his office, looking serious, and getting brief hourly updates, or something. The appearance of leadership can be important.
And what does that have to do with 9/11? 9/11 was FAR more than just a military matter. Yes, purely military matters should not have minute-by-minute presidential interruption. So?
OK, pop quiz. Two airplanes have just crashed into the two towers of the world trade center. What’s the likelihood that there’s going to be something on the news tonight that will scare some schoolkids? What’s the likelihood that there will be something on the news tonight FAR more important than whether the president scared some schoolkids? (And the kids getting scared is really a side issue, as everyone seems to agree that the prez could have CALMLY AND NONTHREATENINGLY excused himself.)
Two things:
(a) the institutional actions of a large organization can be criticized without those same criticisms being levelled at individual members of that organization. Watch, I’ll do so right now: “The US is acting like an imperialistic bully in Iraq.” Did I just call you, an American, an imperialist bully? Did I just call myself an imperalist bully? When Moore says that the Democratic Party has been weak and wimpy recently, I happen to think he’s right. And, despite the fact that I’m a registered democrat, I don’t feel personally attacked
(b) By contrast, let’s look at the context in which you first brought up left wing nutjobs, namely post #130 of this thread. The conversation went something like this:
-Many people, including MM, myself, and a bunch of other dopers, criticized Bush for sitting in the classroom for 7 minutes.
-You claimed that his actions were fine
-I argued otherwise, and said that he should have gotten up and left
-You (post #130) said that if Bush had calmly gotten up and left, “…all the left-wingnuts would be hear shouting their outrage and indignation that the president frightened a roomful of children unnecessarily while ducking out of danger and doing God knows what for six minutes.”
In that context, it seems incredibly clear to me that you are referring to everyone who is currently criticizing Bush for the 7 minutes, including me and many dopers. That is, you were basically saying “Bush was in a no-win situation with you left wing nutjobs who are complaining about what he did, because you all hate him so much that you be complaining just as strongly, and Michael Moore would be making a movie about it, if he’d done anything else”.
Now you claim that you were only referring to certain left wing nutjobs, including (I guess) Michael Moore. So, let’s be extremely clear about this. If Bush’s actions had been to calmly excuse himself from the classroom (or, heck, change his plans immediately upon hearing about the first plane and never go to the damn school in the first place), do you think Michael Moore would have made fun of him for that decision in F 9/11? Do you think that reasonable numbers of generally intellectually respectable left wing dopers (including myself) would be attacking him for that, specifically? Or were you just making a non-sequitur comment about fringe left-wing nutjobs which had nothing to do with the quite reasonable left-wing non-nut-jobs who were criticizing Bush’s actual actions?
Well, we might just plain disagree here, as I still think 7 (or 5, although 7 seems to be the consensus) minutes IS a long freaking epoch. Here’s a thought experiment. I’m going to tell you something alarming, hidden below in a spoiler box. Pretend that it’s true. After hearing this news, just sit there twiddling your thumbs for SEVEN MINUTES. Watch your computer clock. Remember, this horrible news is true. Just sit there for SEVEN MINUTES. Ready?
Your wife has been badly beaten and may not live. Evil people who hate your family may be responsible, and may be coming for you and your children
