It’s true. I keep meaning to cultivate a horde of frothing morons to do my bidding, but I lack follow-through.
It’s useless to cultivate such minions without a secret lair in a volcano, you know.
What’s the big deal about a hunting accident? At worst, she’d be “peppered” and then forced to publicly apologize.
I’m guessing you must not have previewed your own post, then, you fucking ugly cretin. Let me explain it nice and slow, which coincidentally exactly describes your mental condition, if you drop the nice.
If you criticize someone for saying something, you are making an ethical judgment about their statement. There is no circumstance where it is ok for you to say “Someone should kill X”, but where it is not ok for a media figure to say the same.
The only “difference” is that absolutely no one listens to you, perhaps because you’re probably not even as smart as Palin, and I’m sure you’re less attractive, as drooling and mouthbreathing are a turnoff.
So, are you suggesting it is actually morally correct for you to say “Someone should shoot Palin”? Because that was exactly what was posted, and that is a direct call to commit violence, where Palin’s statement is not.
I suppose if you have the sort of sophomoric ethical philosophy that judges actions based only upon their results, you might have a point. But, sadly for you, that would make you a simpleton who hopefully never acquires even a base understanding of morality, because the resulting embarrassment at having pushed such a childish and idiotic philosophy would no doubt be highly scarring.
Please destroy your computer now, and return to fellating your pet goats, which, according to my sources, you a quite skilled at (unlike using your critical thinking).
I think this is directed at me, and you’re right, I don’t think the speech can be distinguished so readily—at least not this facile “leader vs. anonymous” speech distinction you seem to propose.
Charisma, one facet of suasion, is not so easily cabined. A relatively anonymous junior senator first put himself in striking distance of the presidency by giving a mere speech at the Democratic convention in 2004—hardly the sort of occasion where we expect world-changing remarks.
So, no, I don’t think, on balance, “Confront Obama supporters and let them know you don’t support his policies” is more worrisome than “I hope someone shoots her,” even if the former comes from an erstwhile governor and vice-presidential candidate and the latter is mere scribblings under a pseudonym on the internet. No matter how antinomian each of our political factions have become.
ETA: And ivn1188 adds an important point: we do not ordinarily judge the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of our utterances on the basis of whether anybody will follow through on them. To say, “I wish someone would shoot X” is not blameworthy just because someone might do just that (and accordingly not at all blameworthy if one can be assured that nobody will).
DianaG was totally wrong.
What she should have said was “For the love of all things decent, can no one get this woman home long enough to stab her to death in the face with a screwdriver?”
Yes, ordinarily we don’t. However, the canonical counterexample (i.e., that given by both J. S. Mill and the supreme court of the USA) is when that utterance is an incitement to violence or panic. In other words, we must not just consider the semantic content of our speech, but also their value as speech acts. Palin’s speech act is a cannon to DianaG’s flyswatter. Yes, you shouldn’t hit people with either, but I do think one is objectively more blameworthy than the other.
Now, like the OP, I don’t claim that Palin was inciting violence or panic, but certainly her words are capable of doing so in a way that DianaG’s aren’t.
If you are not familiar with Mill’s example, he considers the case that an angry mob has gathered outside Joe’s house, and they all are angry at Joe. Then what if you go in front of the mob and yell out “get 'em!” Won’t you be somewhat to blame for the ensuing carnage? Now a widely respected public figure in front of a TV camera has a lot more in common with the person in front of that mob than a Doper does. (That is to say that you have a higher chance of a riot if the public figure says “get 'em” than if the Doper did) Thus the public figure in front of the TV camera has more of a responsibility to consider the violent/panic consequences of their words than a Doper does.
The SCOTUS’s example is, of course, “yelling fire in a crowded theater.” Again, the whole point of this example is that we must sometimes consider the reactions of those around us when weighing the morality of our utterances. Specifically, those times when the reactions would be predictably disastrous.
Again, I didn’t read the previous thread, and I don’t know what Palin said, but the OP of this thread is spot on.
This simply isn’t true. You don’t need to be famous for your words to incite violence. Plenty of complete unknowns instigate violence and mayhem everyday. Where this celebrity requirement came from, I have no idea.
Now, if your words are broadcast, there is a larger audience. Unfortunately, too many people on this board seem to think that the effect any given speech act has on its listeners is completely random and therefore, the larger your audience, the more likely your words will instigate violence merely because more people here them. But the effect words have on Person 1 is not independent from the effect that they have on Person 2. There is a covariance; peaceable words soothe their listeners, whether their number is few or multitudinous. Inflammatory words agitate.
Notice this has a great deal to do with the content of the speech and not the size of the audience or the celebrity of the speaker.
Well, I might have forborne from popping off about whose speech was more dangerous* if I were in a similar condition, but let’s fight ignorance. Palin said, “Or that bumper sticker you see on the next Subaru driving by, an Obama bumper sticker, you should stop the driver and say, ‘So, how is that hopey changey thing working out for you?’”
DianaG inquired thus: “For the love of all things decent, can no one get this woman home long enough to arrange a hunting accident?”
Perhaps you’d like to revisit your claim as to which utterance is the more baleful?
- I don’t think either person’s speech is likely to lead to physical violence. I do think Palin’s speech is likely to lead to bad policy outcomes. However, I think closing down conservative speech, either on the pretext that it will incite violence (indeed, some in the original thread postulated a Straussian subtext that tea partiers might pick up, rendering even benign speech dangerous in the mouth of Palin—one wonders what those Dopers would allow her to say) or that it will lead to bad policy is an even graver threat to the American polity.
Not exactly the same, but not much different. Dissembling weasels can be quite good at what they do.
As far as threats to the political order, I guess I’m more worried when people seriously accuse their fellow citizens of planning the Kristallnacht because they went to a peaceable political rally for the other side.
For the record, I thought DianaG’s comment was tasteless.
Bricker’s transgression in that post, however, was in applying a broad brush in response by ascribing her apparent hypocrisy to the fact that she is a “liberal”, and thus implying that all those he considers liberals are intrinsically hypocritical. It’s not so much false equivalence as general dissembling.
“My counterexample means we don’t have to talk about your example” is a popular “debate” tactic around here and I find it really tiresome. It’s more like having to listen to an old married couple bicker through the walls, bringing up old disputes to derail the new one. Yes, when a political figure says something stupid, you can more often than not find a statement by someone in the other camp (someone equally famous, even, although a random comment on a message board will do in a pinch) who has said something equally stupid, but that’s not really actually adding much to a discussion. I don’t feel that I need to keep a scoresheet of the stupid crap that Biden might say in order to be able criticize the stupid crap that Palin says only when she moves ahead by at least one stupid comment. (And in my opinion she’s way ahead.)
And no offense to DianaG, who was obviously making a joke, but if we’re going let every debate be about the language of some of the debaters then every one will quickly not be worth reading. Make her put a quarter in the swear jar and let’s move on.
Kimmy Gibbler, I’m sure you can understand how some people might think that bringing guns to political rallies is more of a threat to the political order than mere overheated rhetoric from either side. I don’t worry about metaphors all that much. I think Sarah Plain saying “reload” is a clear as she’s willing to get, but the idea is certainly out there than Tea Party dissatisfaction is armed and pissed off, and the whole Turner Diaries, citizens-rise-up-against-their-government is a very popular fantasy on the far right. Court their votes if you want, but don’t expect it not to bite you in the ass with those less extreme. Any protest movement will have its fringe crazies, but it would worry me if equally if a Democratic leader were to make veiled references to “bringing your bricks” before a WTO meeting or something like that. Worry me more than metaphors, anyway.
In UK parlance, we, the dope members, are the people on soap-boxes at Speaker’s Corner, the readers are the passers by. Sarah Palin has been allowed to place her box on prime-time tv, hence there is a big difference in the influence she has, and the likelihood of reaching someone who’ll make a violent interpretation of her words.
Moved from The Snuggly Kitten Forum to Pissy Little Feuds.
Good day sir.
Gfactor
A guy who can reach the “Move Thread” button
What’s odd is that Bricker taught me that I can’t judge someone’s statements or actions without truly knowing that they mean. Is it possible we’re imputing our on beliefs onto this statement? Looks like a lot of readers WANT this statement to sound violent. I read it as very positive, Palin loves hunting, she campaigned on that fact. Here she is so busy with rallies that she can’t go hunting. DianaG is asking people to get Palin to Alaska so she has time to go hunting.
Also, Palin’s recent statement is rather benign, but consider this one:
Sarah Palin put a map on her Facebook page showing the offices of Democrats who voted for HCR. The locations were marked with cross-hairs. She then said:
Those offices were later vandalized, one had a rock/brick thrown through a window, and I believe one was even shot at.
The false equivalency here is equating an extremely polarizing public figure with her own tv show, with a random poster on a message board. It was also a comment Bricker should know better than to make. There were lots of ways to point out the apparent hypocrisy of DianaG statement, he choose the worst. If DianaG had anything other than a message in a pit thread there could be a case to be made, but there is nothing. Did she post this on a blog? A Facebook page? On a cable news program?
It was a dumb thing for her to say, one might incorrectly apply the H word. So we had Palin saying a series of dumb things, then DianaG said something stupid, then Bricker said something stupid. No one wins.
And the “accident” part?
You’ve never heard of a “happy accident”?
I’ve heard of a “happy dagger”…
It’s an accident, what are you reading into that? If someone shoots her intentionally, or pushers her off a cliff, then it isn’t exactly an accident now is it?
You’re absolutely right! There is NOTHING violent about that statement. He is suggesting that someone get her to Alaska long enough to do something she loves. If an accident happens, then it happens, that’s what accidents are. She is free to engage in an action that involves risk.
If she loved to sky dive, would it have been wrong for DianaG to say, “For the love of all things decent, can no one get this woman home long enough to have a sky diving accident?”
Sky diving, like hunting, is dangerous. Do it enough and eventually someone shoots you in the face. But it would be an accident. DianaG is simply acknowledging that if Palin had more time to hunt, we wouldn’t have to listen her constant yammering. But She also pointed that hunting is dangerous and accidents can happen.
It’s not unlike saying, “For the love of all things decent, can no one get Dubya home long enough to eat a pretzel?” (he almost died eating a pretzel)
It’s not a violent statement. No one is advocating that the President should be killed, he should simply be allowed to do something he enjoys. The fact that it is a risky activity is just the nature of pretzels.
Do you see now why you were wrong? You imputed your beliefs into DianaG’s statement, instead of seeking to have her clarify what she truly meant.
Easily solved.
DianaG – what did you mean?