Well, he’s the name I recognized. He’s a state assemblyman from San Francisco. I wouldn’t expect anyone from outside the San Francisco Bay area to know who he is. I’d barely expect most people from within the Bay Area to know who he is.
I thought it was rather self evident that Der Trihs was talking about politicians at the national level. Yes, obviously, in a country this large, with as many different levels of government as we have, you could find some politician, somewhere, who takes almost any position you’d care to name. One could say that there are no neo-nazis in American government, and that would be an essentially factual statement, even if there’s a mayor of some podunk town in Idaho who’s a member of Aryan Nation.
I just wanted to take this opportunity to agree with the OP that I HATE it when this happens. I have no opinion on the case in question, but I regularly deal with people blaming the subject of the lie for them being stupid enough to believe it. I play rugby, and one of the guys on the team is fond of sending out mass emails that have some absurdly idiotic claim about what Obama is doing to the country. I reply to all citing how it is completely and in all ways false and he will come back saying that it just goes to show how terrible Obama is that people would find this stuff to be reasonable. No it doesn’t. You believing some dumb ass lie about Obama doesn’t show he is terrible and Maddow believing some dumb ass lie about Palin (if that is what happened, again no opinion) doesn’t reflect on them, it reflects on your intelligence for believing it.
Well, that would be as unfortunate as it would be amusing.
Anyhow, this all reminded me of the recent non-event about Chuck Schumer remarking that the government has three branches - the House, the Senate, and the President.
:rolleyes:
Now, anyone can make a mistake like this - but if Palin had said this there would have been endless mockery. Schumer got a pass, relatively speaking. And I don’t want to get into whether Schumer or Palin is smarter or understands government more - that doesn’t matter. Wrong is wrong, and Schumer is the kind of pompous politician who is mocked for plenty of other things.
To be fair, he didn’t. He said there were no “far left” politicians. He then said that the left was “essentially nonexistant.”
And naming three people on the left (if indeed they are on the left) doesn’t deny the veracity of the claim that the left is “essentially nonexistant.”
For starters, nobody’s heard of Chuck Schumer. Has he done something to put himself in the public eye, as Palin and Bachmann have?
Secondly, we don’t have a Stupid Democrat Ideas thread. We could have, but nobody’s started one.
Thirdly, having now heard of it, I’m happy to point and laugh. Ha ha! You big dumdum, Schumer.
FoxNews’ “ooh, double standard” onanistic pontificating does kind of ignore the abuse Biden gets from all quarters whenever he says something stupid, which is frequent. Lots of Senators and Congresspeople say dumb things (the Daily Show usually throws these into the Moment of Zen segment unless it’s particularly good). Unless they’re in a particular position of influence or otherwise publicity whoring, nobody cares that much. People say dumb things.
I think what he’s trying to say is that there’s a narrative in the press and the public and such that “Palin is dumb”, so that the dumb things that Palin says (or even the dumb things people attribute to Palin) get reported, while dumb things that Schumer says don’t, because there’s no such narrative associated with Schumer.
I think it is on point. Palin is singled out in the media for verbal gaffes, reportage of behavior and other matters, to the point that the media sometimes misreports the story. This happens to an extent with Biden as well, and I think the argument can be made that it happened with President Obama. Yet when Schumer (who us a U.S. Senator, third in the Democratic Leadership and chairman of the Rules Committee) makes a verbal gaffe, there is a collective yawn.
Mr. Moto, I’ve seen plenty of Dopers make that mistake. It’s common. And in any event you are making a hypothetical assumption. It really has nothing to do with anything and it’s impossible to rebut (and thus doesn’t contribute anything).
Meanwhile the OP seems to have gotten this one backward or misunderstood the story.
In your opinion, perhaps. In any event, it is a question taken up by that poster at The Atlantic, and he links Matt Schneider at Mediaite and a Fox News discussion. No reason we can’t discuss it as well, were we to be inclined.
And the links do take up the question about whether Palin would be taken to task for a similar statement to Schumer’s. Given the media behavior described in the OP, I don’t think that is a hypothetical. Sorry.
But we’re not talking about a Palin gaffe. We’re talking about a supposed gaffe by somebody else. The only one bringing up Palin is you (although admittedly a few people cited Poe’s Law earlier.)
I’m utterly confused by this thread. Granted, I’m German and thus lacking a great deal of political and cultural background for the whole story. But after watching this clip, I wonder what all the fuzz is about. Maddox clearly says that they’re citing from ChristWire.com, and she states at 0:48:
What has that to do with presenting a satirical piece as hard facts? Do they have to lift a sign that says: “Caution! Satire”?
After watching the clip, I got the impression that Maddow thought that the magazine article was serious in it’s suggestion that Palin should advocate for an invasion of Egypt. I don’t get the impression that she realised the magazine article was satire.
So, it seems to me that it wasn’t Palin she was poking fun at, but the extreme right wing.
Somewhat sloppy. Something I might expect from Doper’s, but not a major news network.
