Just for laughs, what remarks of mine are you basing that on?
Yes, they did: Lt. Calley was convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labor. It was President Nixon and a federal court that got him transferred to house arrest and then released.
So, My Lai was not “some disgraceful action performed by an individual that is a public figure such as a politician or entertainer that has entered the public realm and has a public record and reputation at stake”. Is this because Lt. Calley and his men were not public figures, or because the action wasn’t disgraceful, or what? The Army’s reputation was certainly at stake.
I apologize for doubting the integrity of the low paid IRS employees at the Cinncinnati office of the IRS. I was ready to jump down their throat for being partisans when in fact they were trying to treat similarly situated taxpayers similarly. So they were pulling all the tea party applications so they would all get the same treatment (and all get approved).
I think 24 were investigated and only Calley was tried and convicted.
If the US Military felt it would suffer because of those actions on that day, they and the CinC of the US Military did not treat the perpetrators as such then.
I don’t think My Lai came across as a scandal at the time although it brought shame to the US Army for allowing it to happen and covering it up for over a year.
The problem you need to realize with your comparison is that the entire US military policy in Vietnam brought shame to the US Military and US Government and yes to the American people for letting it happen.
There is so much shame to go around, so labeling My Lai a scandal was not necessary or to be bothered with back in the days we all experienced the Vietnam War era.
It was an atrocity. So was the entire war. But I don’t blame the troops for doing their duty and serving in ways we expect our countrymen to serve.
I blame the government and the top brass not the troops.
If you wish to label My Lai a scandal… please continue.
I think as a comparison to your labeling of the IRS controversy a scandal to be quite weak.
So My Lai wasn’t a scandal, because it’s inconvenient for you to acknowledge other times where the actions of underlings in an organization have scandalized the organization. My Lai had a cover-up, whistleblowers, and criminal trials. It brought great shame upon the Army, and the nation. By any non-NotfooledbyW definition, it’s a textbook scandal.
How about Castle Bravo?
How about Sabra and Shatila?
How about the point shaving in college basketball in the '70s?
Ah, but it was a massacre or atrocity, not a scandal. “Mistakes” can’t be scandals, and neither can massacres or atrocities, apparently. That’s the world according to NotfooledbyW.
How about the point shaving in college basketball in the '70s?
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How about Abu Ghraib? But I think you are wasting your time…he doesn’t get it. He has his own definition of what a ‘scandal’ is and he’s going to rationalize away anything you say if it doesn’t fit into his projection of the IRS situation currently unfolding. It’s not a scandal because he doesn’t want it to be a scandal and because that runs counter to his own world view on the entire situation, especially wrt Obama
Most conversations proceed more smoothly when all the participants speak the same language. Your threads often suffer from the disconnect that you seem to have with the American English that the rest of the world recognizes.
Yeah, Tom, but just because people call it a scandal and just because it’s generally accepted by (almost) everyone as a scandal, that doesn’t mean it IS a scandal! Sheesh.
Of course this was why Republican superdouche Darrell Issa was against it. In fact, like we’ve heard a week ago, the whole thing was the fault of a couple of self-described conservatives.
Damn those Republicans! We can’t trust them to be non-partisan and not illegally target themselves! This targeting of political parties, criminalizing a difference in opinion, must stop! I’m sure that in the interest of fairness, we need to eliminate such conservative Republicans from positions in the IRS so this can never happen again, maybe put it under the overview of non-partisan Democrats. I hope John Boehner fully investigates those Republicans responsible and gets them thrown in jail like he said he would!
There’s no “themselves” here, you understand. The Tea Party folks aren’t interchangeable with the Republican establishment. Ask Trey Grayson (the party choice for Kentucky’s open Senate seat in 2010, who lost the primary to Tea Party-backed Rand Paul) how he feels about “differences in opinion” with the Tea Party.
The IRS singling any group out for its politics is wrong, agaisnt their rules, and dangerous to democracy. This isn’t just a D or R issue, it’s about insiders and outsiders, the entrenched and their challengers.
The narrative that this incident only mattered if Obama directed the whole thing is at least as stupid as the one that declared flat-out that Obama directed the whole thing.
I have been trying to get HA and JM to explain the exact moment they personally decided to refer to the IRS incident/contiversy/mistake as a scandal. I believe it was JM who said all government employee mistakes are not necessarily ‘scandals’ it is just when many people publically have labeled the IRS screening mistake in Cincinnati as a scandal the we all should recognize a mistake as a scandal.
I am not questioning the definition of scandal because I know this IRS controversy has been escalated to the point that it is now labeled a scandal by apparently enough people that glommed onto the scandal label.
I just want HA to explain the process. Who goes first?
And the second part of my concern (yes T&D sometimes language must tie several components together which is a bit more complex than the typical soundbite communication used today) is based upon what I believe is what made this IRS controversy go from mistake to scandal. It is the majority belief of supposedly grownup Americans who believe that Obama personally ordered the IRS to harrass his political opposition.
My concern is when this all gets wrapped up into one scandal label, how does anyone like me know if HA etc is talking about the improper and discraceful actions performed by a Republican and an underling or if it is about the belief based upon nothing that Obama ordered these two to target these Tea Party groups.
HA had posted the definition of scandal and it appears it is supposed to be based upon some kind of actual wrongdoing on the part of the individuals involved in it.
So I have seen no evidence of Obama’s wrongdoing or there was negligence on his part to prevent it.
But the IRS scandal is only popular I believe because Obama has been implicated in it as one if the wrongdoers.
So if I hear correctly what HA has been saying, it is proper to label misdeeds a scandal if popular belief escalates it to scandal status - And it is also proper to suspect without proof or evidence that Obama was directly involved in the misdeed, so without one lick of proof or justification, the mob is correct to believe in that kind if conspiracy theory because it is some kind of rule of politics.
I say idiots who jump to conclusions and think Obama ordered targeting of political enemies should be called exactly what they are- idiots.
What’s with defending these idiots as normal concerned citizens reacting as the should when a couple government employees screw up badly.
And T&D what’s your point posting Colin Powell faced a scandal tied to My Lai?
How did that ‘scandal’ involvement affect his career?
I do not doubt some referred to My Lai as a scandal - if you want to label it that - I’m not saying that is outside a normal use of the word.
I said Human Action’s comparison to what happened in Cincinnati at the IRS is absurd.
And I had another point that calling My Lai a scandal has little impact under the realization that the entire Vietnam War would have to be labeled as a scandal.
That point stands and if we are to be lectured on matters of language, I stand by my preference to defining My Lai as a massacre/atrocity occuring within a war/major military combat operation that went on for a decade.
If you prefer to call it a scandal in a scandalous war or a scandal within a just war - the go ahead.
I did not say it was not a scandal, I said, “I don’t think My Lai **** as a scandal at the time although it brought shame to the US Army for allowing it to happen and covering it up for over a year.”
Argue if you wish that you think it came across as a scandal as it hit the TV screens.
If it did, there was little or no negative effect on anyone involved at the level of Colin Powell etc,
So, it’s quite similar to the IRS scandal, then. Wrongful actions by low-level members of an organization, which brought shame and negative attention on the entire organization, and it’s leadership, even if no direct link existed between leadership and the actual wrongful conduct.
If My Lai is a scandal, how can the IRS flap not be one?
The “exact moment”? Are you serious? I think it was 10:51:15 pm, May 20, 2013, but I could be off by a few minutes there.
I don’t recall the exact moment. Probably sometime in June, actually. I never pay all that much attention to these things at first, I like to wait for some actual information to have come out.
Well, I’m no scandal-ologist, but the process seems to go:
Wrongdoing is discovered or alleged
Public and/or media take interest, or don’t
If so, the person/group/what have you behind or connected to the wrongdoing responds
From there, you can get a Watergate (substantiated wrongdoing at a high level), an IRS (wrongdoing, but seemingly at a low level), a Castle Bravo (wrongdoing, but accidental*)or a Duke lacross (no actual wrongdoing**).
The US response to Castle Bravo, however, was rather shameful.
** Of the type they were accused of.
Well, you can ask. This is a discussion forum. Try not assuming you know who your opponents are or what they believe.
It also includes “damage to reputation; public disgrace” and “defamatory talk; malicious gossip”, so no, not really.
The wrongdoing needn’t be Obama’s for this to be a scandal.
Not “only”, no, but it is a major factor. As I’ve written before, the IRS mishigas evokes things Americans are rightfully fearful of.
Correct.
Um, no. Not even close. It is a historical reality that second-term presidents tend to become less popular and more embattled, and it is a political reality that any whiff of impropriety will be seized upon by the opposition in an effort to score votes.
If you mean me, I never did that. All I’ve pointed out on this matter was that it was too early to make conclusions, that you’d engaged in conduct similar to O’Reilly et al, and that calling this scuttlebut a “scandal” is a concession to reality, not a judgment on the events themselves.
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If you mean me, I never did that. All I’ve pointed out on this matter was that it was too early to make conclusions, that you’d engaged in conduct similar to O’Reilly et al, and that calling this scuttlebut a “scandal” is a concession to reality, not a judgment on the events themselves. -HA.
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So all the attacks on me are essentially for ‘making a judgment’ on when to apply the definition of scandal to nearly insane and idiotic allegations and CT’s against Obama and government institutions which come by the reality of ‘idiot majority or mob rule’ while you are proud of yourself for making a concession to the reality that idiots can form into mobs and they exist.
You don’t agree but you concede to their reality not the reality that should prevail which is truth and evidence prevailing over lies and hysteria.
No. “All the attacks” on you began because you initiated this nonsense with your own CT and spent an inordinate amount of time pretending that you had not, thus poisoning the well for future discussion, then diverted the thread into silly semantic games over the use of words such as “scandal.”
At no time have you simply stood back and suggested that there was a rush to judgment. You have variously insisted that the IRS agents were simply legitimately doing their job, that the whole incident was liable to start a tax rebellion, and other scenarios.