Stewart does call bullshit regardless of the side doing it but if you watch his show you’d see the vast majority of the time he is pointing it out when conservatives do it. If conservatives magically disappeared off the planet tomorrow Jon Stewart would have almost no show.
Here’s one I just saw from Erik Erickson of Red State (and before you point out that we are talking about Red State here realize Erik Erickson is a talking head for CNN and will be doing analysis for their State of the Union address coverage).
Is there really any doubt? His criticism of Republicans is that they’re assholes, and of Democrats is that they’re cowards. Assholes do the wrong thing; cowards fail to do what they know is the right thing.
The difference is, you believe ‘popular’ is the same as ‘prominent’ while I believe ‘accomplishment’ is the same as ‘prominent’. Perhaps, your view is more close to correct than mine for this topic, but if so then I’m done discussing this with you. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if Rosie O’Donnell is sucking a Republicans dick or pissing on his effigy. I’d rather pay attention to people who have actually done something with their life instead.
Which, by the way, cuts both ways. I can’t cite a Glenn Beck nasty comment anymore than I can cite whatever you consider a prominent liberal nasty comment. Other than the Daily Show, I don’t listen to that type of person.
Still, I’m quite sure that liberals spew hatred the same as conservatives do. I know this because liberals who have REAL influence in politics have spewed this type of bile.
Fair enough. Stewart is definitely not a Republican. However, I think the sentiments he expresses around 8:30 of this skit are his real feelings, and that’s he is one of the few that seems to honestly believe it. He’s certainly one of the few who has actually said it.
Or, maybe, it’s just that Stewart makes me laugh even though I don’t always agree with his politics. Regardless, I view him differently than I view Olbermann, Beck, and all the other attention whore morons who look good in makeup and reading a teleprompter.
While Olbermann and Beck are politically opposite of each and both are on TV the comparisons end there.
Someone may disagree strongly with what Olbermann says but he makes his arguments from a rational starting point.
Beck is, well, insane. Most of what he says is patently absurd from the get-go. It is not so much a difference of opinion with what he says but rather the vitriolic stupidity of it.
I challenge you to find something comparable coming out of the mouth of Olbermann.
Worse, that is not a one-off thing for Beck. He spins that crap regularly.
So, I reject your equivalence of Beck with Olbermann.
Well, sure–people who have done something are in most cases more significant than people who are just rhetoricians.
Except when you’re discussing rhetoric.
It’s fine with me if you’re done here, but I think the distinction I’m making here is significant. Someone who’s done a helluva lot but who nobody listens to (say, the inventor of some HIV vaccine) is really unlikely to inspire some lunatic to go on a shooting rampage. If that person says something assholish, well, they said something assholish, but I don’t much care. If, however, someone with a huge audience uses it repeatedly to say assholish things, I care a lot more, because their huge audience is a lot likelier to contain a lunatic or two.
That’s true. It’s a broader statement than the one you initially made, I think, and if you expand this idea too far you run the risk of blaming too many people.
I heard about that earlier and I have no difficulty believing Loughner was familiar with his work. Miller is not Glenn Beck, though. He’s much more of a fringe figure. I guess there is a more complicated point here about the way Republican groups have gotten involved with militant lunatics to get their votes. I agree that they have done that. What I’m less sure about is how this relates to Jared Loughner. Like I have said in other threads, I’m not comfortable with the idea of coming to a conclusion about Loughner’s motives until we find out what he thinks he was doing. We have no idea what his influences were aside from Miller and a few clues about his reading list, and we don’t know how those influences came together in his mind.
Like I already said, I don’t pay much attention to blowhards on TV, but a quick google of “olbermann over the top quote” produced this quote and these quotes (among a lot of pages about his retirement, which in and of itself is kinda telling that when a guy leaves the air, many articles about it would use the phrase ‘over the top’ ). Assuming he did say those things, I’m not really seeing how that’s so much better than Beck’s nazi fetish.
Fair enough. Although I still don’t care what some jackass with too much hair gel babbles about. But lets move on from that point.
You say that you’re concerned a lunatic or two are among the audience. There’s enough lunatics around that I’m sure you’re right, regardless of who’s audience we’re talking about. Hell, someone interpreted a Beatles song about playground equipment to mean start a race war. Clearly there are loonies in the audience.
So what now? What’s the next step in the fight for civility? I’m just gonna assume that Glenn Beck isn’t going wake up tomorrow, smack himself on the forehead, and go ‘Gee, I’ve been a total dick for all these years. I need to reform!’ So is there an idea of what to do about it, or are we just spinning our wheels whining about shit we have no intention or doing anything about?
A boycott is a good place to start. Conservatives, stop listening to Excellence in Broadcasting and Glen Beck until they’re off the air. Liberals, stop listening to Air America and Keith Olbermann until they’re off the air.
While the OP is technically correct in that the Arizona shooter has not yet been found to be a card-carrying Tea Partier, he errs in jumping to conclusions before the majesty of American law has been allowed to take its course.
How do we know, for example, that Rush Limbaugh did not appear to the accused in the form of a large, modestly overweight black dog which commanded him to kill?
Unless I am very much mistaken, there also has been no confirmation of exactly where Ted Nugent was at the time of the shooting.
Until the premature conclusions have been proven wrong it would be premature to conclude otherwise.