We saw the same sort of wild-eyed scare-mongering when Clinton was president, and it culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. That was a wake-up call, and the overheated rhetoric about jack-booted thugs taking away our guns ebbed afterwards.
I hope the dumb-ass militia movements aren’t aren’t about to crank up again.
And hell yes, the rabble-rousing jackasses on the right bear some moral responsibility, just as they did for Oklahoma City.
Still, you have to look at all the people who haven’t gone on a shooting spree.
But it’s still early.
Well, we saw the same sort of wild-eyed scare-mongering when Bush was president, and that led the nation into a pointless and expensive war which we will be paying for for decades.
I’m not seeing an upside to giving such fearmongering yet another pass.
There’s no virtuous thought process behind what Clinton and Lieberman (among others) do. It’s the opposite: an unthinking, reflexive reaction. But yes, I guess it looks like the result of a thought process, if that matters.
I don’t think that’s the important question. It’s true that something did set this guy off after years of showing obvious problems. But if we start censoring things because they could inflame someone with problems, there’s no obvious stopping point and we lose more than we gain.
Are Beck’s words intended to inflame? Yes. I think that’s reprehensible. I think he and a lot of people like him are peddling poison disguised as entertainment. Part of their audience does sincerely believe this paranoid absurdity. In theory, Beck might believe it too, but I don’t think Rush Limbaugh does, for example. I do think these kinds of people are playing with fire and then saying “hey, I’m not the guy who burned the house down.” Nonetheless, even guys like that deserve protection from censorship.
I’m about as vigorous advocate of free speech as one can be, but this analogy is garbage. My issue with Glenn Beck and the likes is that their crazy and false rantings are aired on a New Broadcast. It’s one thing to say a musician or a game colored your world in one way or another, to imply that it somehow might make a disturbed person more likely to act out. It’s entertainment and everyone knows that. However, it’s a whole different thing when this is in the context of a News Broadcast. For better or worse, TV news is the primary way in which most people, especially the dumb, get their information about what’s real in this world. The things Beck says carry much more weight and are much closer to yelling “fire” in the proverbial crowded theater because of the venue and packaging than something portrayed in pixels and free prose.
Perhaps Beck, as an entertainer, has plenty of latitude and can be allowed to be a satirist. But, when a News organization packages him as a purveyor of news and fact they are doing something more insidious and maybe culpable. Many of the things being said on Fox News these days by the usual suspects is patently false and intentionally radicalizing. I won’t argue that we should take away the right of people to do this, but I think we should prevent it from happening in a way in which people could legitimately come to see it as reasoned fact.
“Fox News” needs to be held to a certain standard as do all news companies. They need to have a civic duty and responsibility beyond just getting ratings.
No one is saying that the government should get involved. No one is asking for censorship. Free speech is free speech. But some framework must be created to differentiate “news” from “entertainment”. A news paper or broadcast isn’t allowed to lie and fear monger for ratings. There are already laws in place to prevent libel and slander, perhaps they need to be used more frequently where news organizations are concerned.
I mean, calling the president a “tyrant” isn’t wrong because it’s “un-American” or and “image” issue. It’s simply a lie.
Was Jodie Foster saying that Reagan should be assassinated ? The analogy doesn’t work.
This is an old tactic of the Right; they push and push, spew out hate filled rhetoric, and when someone on the edge puts that rhetoric into practice they claim no responsibility. Like the right wingers who rant about abortion being murder or genocide and disclaim responsibility when one of their followers kills a doctor for them. I strongly suspect that Beck and those like him are hoping that one of their more rabid followers will kill President Obama, and that’s why they put out rhetoric designed to inflame this kind of nut.
Exactly. It’s not an either or, where either Back is innocent and Beck is guilty, or the other way around. Both can be, and in my opinion are, to blame.
And did Glenn Beck say that anybody should be killed?
For the record, I’m not making apologies for Glenn Beck; I have never listened to his show or seen him on television; I knew next to nothing about him before reading this thread. I just think it’s bullshit to blame him for this when the shooter was clearly nuts. I mean, if you were worried about losing your gun rights, you would have to be nuts to think that shooting police officers would be a good way of preserving those rights. He was CRAZY. Blaming Beck for this is like blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine. It’s bullshit.
This just looks to me like a case of people who hate Glenn Beck trying to find something to be angry at him for. As I said before, I don’t know or care about Glenn Beck and I am neither condemning nor defending him.
Assuming he didn’t, did he need to ? You don’t need to outright say “Kill them !” to get people to commit murder; just whip them up with enough hatred and they’ll come up with that idea all by themselves. And you can say “Well, I never TOLD them to kill anyone !” afterwords.
It means that you shun them. It’s not legal liability, but social liability.
Notably the song Helter Skelter is about children using a slide, not igniting a race war by random murders.
Video game makers are not legally liable for violence or bad driving inspired by their video games. But it does not mean that we cannot socially condemn those activities.
Surely your not unaware of the ancient and bloody tradition of exactly that in American journalism?
CMC fnord!
'Course that Glenn Beck is no Ambrose Bierce should go without saying!
Even if video games really were banned, that’s a non sequitur: neither the OP, nor anyone that I saw in this thread, is advocating banning Beck. As Second Stone said, folks are calling for shunning. Or boycotting, or speaking out against, or other nongovernmental behavior. Beck should be ashamed of himself.
And yes: the Democratic Party shares the responsibility for this shooting as well, by my thinking. Their responsibility is absolutely miniscule, but it’s there. Far smaller than Beck’s. If this shooting were the only foreseeable result of their platform, they ought not have it. If they reasonably foresee that their platform will prevent more harm than it causes, then they’re clear.
Beck has no such excuse: I do not believe there is a reasonable argument that his rants will do enough good to offset their (small amount of) responsibility for this shooting.
And calling it “entertainment” kind of sticks in my craw. He makes political tv seem like its a wrestling show targeted to the prime demographic of meth-addled bikers. If the body politic were poxed, he’d be the seepage.
So you’re implying it’s valid and just?
Exactly. Like I said a few times, Al Sharpton and the Freddie’s Fashion Market fire seems to be a pretty direct comparison.
Did Glen Beck set up a picket line? Sharpton did. Link. Second link. So the Sharpton comparison, well it really falls apart as Sharpton setup a picket line and was therefore advocating a physical response*.
Beck is a jackass but not responsible for the actions of a nutjob.
Slee
*The whole point of picket lines is to intimidate people into not frequenting a certain place. When the tool you are telling people to use is intimidation, which by definition is threatening violence, then the responsibility for violence breaking out is much clearer.
I think it’s possible that people like Beck doing the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. It’s more than just opinions, it’s a kind of false alarm – hysterical, lunatic warnings about things that aren’t really happening. They aren’t saying “shoot cops,” but they are saying “you are in physical danger.”
Is there legal responsibility? I don’t know, but they’re pulling some fire alarms. Beck might look like self-parody to normal people, but crazy people might not be able to tell.
I think you’re dead wrong here. By this logic doesn’t any mass demonstration threaten violence? A public, physical show of support is not the same as a threat.
Does that go for people who picket abortion clinics too?
All speech is NOT protected by the Bill of Rights.
Saying, “The government is coming for YOUR guns! You have the responsibility to KILL to protect your right to bear arms!” is NOT protected speech.
Yet somehow, saying “The government is coming for YOUR guns! What are YOU going to do about it?” IS protected, since the speaker is not directly advocating violence.
I think that Beck (and Limbaugh and Hannity, et al.) knows his demographic well enough to know that someone, somewhere, sometime is going to think, “He’s talking to me! I have to DO something about this!”
That’s like saying to a child, “Ever wonder what would happen if you stuck a screwdriver into a wall socket?”
Please demonstrate this based on precedent. I think it would protected in some cases and not others.
That’s not the only issue. At the moment, the interpretation is that the speech is not protected if the speaker’s word create an incitement to imminent lawless action.
Beck’s words are highly provocative, but whether they are directed to inciteme violence or other lawbreaking, or likely to cause it, is another question. If he was talking to an angry mob, for example, it would be a more compelling argument than a broadcast over a TV show.