MSNBC host Keith Olbermann announced Saturday that all Americans must abandon rhetoric with violent imagery, saying that “the [political] rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.” Urging every politician and politically engaged American to promise to do so, Olbermann said, “I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence.”
There’s a lot for Olbermann to regret. He explicitly acknowledged and apologized for a rather mild (by Olbermann standards) reference to then-candidate Hillary Clinton, in which he’d proposed that a male Democratic delegate go into a room with Clinton “and only he comes out.”
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Maybe he regretted that one only because it involved a fellow Democrat? Over the years, he’s told opponents they have “blood on their hands,” should “go to hell,” are equivalent to al-Qaeda, and are responsible for creating terrorism.
In 2007, Olbermann called rival network Fox News “worse than al-Qaeda . . . for our society” and said the channel was “as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.” He referred to Gen. David Petraeus as “betray us.”
The following year, Olbermann said that the terms the president had applied to Iraqi terrorists applied to his administration. “Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created includes ‘cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives’?” demanded Olbermann. “They are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.” In 2009, his rage naturally extended to former vice president Dick Cheney, whom he called “as dishonest, as insane as any terrorist.” He also railed against Cheney for his support of the war in Iraq, stating, “You were negligent before 9/11. Your response to your complicity by omission on 9/11 was panic and shame and insanity, and lying this country into a war that did nothing but kill 4,299 more of us.”
In 2009, he said that deprived of “the total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred,” Michelle Malkin would be “a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” Then, Olbermann shared this hateful message with those participants in Glenn Beck’s 9/12 movement: “In short, Glenn, 9-12ers, if you are invoking 9/11 just to oppose health-care reform, go to hell!” Last April, Rush Limbaugh argued that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was motivated not by talk radio, but by how the federal government handled Waco. Olbermann reacted by talking about Limbaugh’s “hate radio” and said that “frankly, Rush, you have that blood on your hands now and you have had it for 15 years.”
During the 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts, Olbermann infamously said, “In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex–nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”
This dismal record makes it clear that if Olbermann is faithful to his pledge, he’s going to have a difficult time finding enough things to say to fill up five hours of air time every week.
— Katrina Trinko is a staff reporter for National Review Online.
The spririt of resentment and entitlement runs deep in the "liberal/progressive" psyche...it is who they are...they are entitiled to that which is not theirs and to that which they do not earn..."liberals" will not change because they can not change...expect nothing but more of the same from Mr. Olbermann and the like.
What nonsense. You cannot, in good faith, add as a coda to any of Olbermann's rants, "So pick up your guns and do something about this!"
On the other hand, when the very foundations of our precious liberty are threatened (as the right claims they are), when the values our forefathers fought and died for are at stake (as the right claims they are), one can honestly say, "So pick up your guns and do something about this!"
And that is the problem. Let's talk about the deficit as the deficit, let's talk about tax increases as tax increases, and let's talk about illegal immigration as illegal immigration -- not as existential threats to be adressed "by any means necessary."
[For those of you too young to remember, that Malcom X line was received by the vast majority of Americans as frighteningly out of bounds.]
This will be an easy one to deal with. Simply call Olbermann on any reference to martial or violent imagery or references from now on. The only problem with this type of game is that it will get old after just a few weeks.
Katrina's evidence supports Olbermann's points, not hers. None of the Olbermann quotes are exhortations to violence, and one of them even decries the violence of the W. administration. You can't put any of that in the same city as "Don't retreat, reload" and crosshairs on a voting district.
MikeB:
Are you involved in some thread jacking game of scrabble?
By my count, you get 18 points for using "existential" in each of the various posts you've dropped it. But good grief man, give it a rest.
If you want to play straw man and hold up an entertainer like Rush as the voice of millions, be my guest.
But how is that different than holding up the overheated rhetoric of a (less talented) entertainer like KO or Michael Moore as the voice of millions, er thousands?
And when has the left talked about deficits as a deficit when instead they can invoke "Scrooge" taking from the poor to give to the rich?
When has the left talked about taxes as a means to fund the gov't when instead they can invoke class warfare: "they got it lets go get it!" and "at some point you have enough and its time to spread the wealth around".
Lawdawg, I'll be quite happy when the right forswears the "e" stuff.
If you're sensitive to Robin Hood rapaciousness, challenge it! Go for it!
As NRO says: Boehner can't name a single program he'd cut. Come on -- call a spade a spade. Give us the bad news. Hang out there and tell us the retirement age has to be stretched to 72, the top tax rate has to go to 40%, estate taxes have to go to 55% -- hey, I just did, and I am comfortable with that. In my own case, it's a small price to pay to live in America.
Mike B: when you say "You cannot, in good faith, add as a coda to any of Olbermann's rants, "So pick up your guns and do something about this!"" you are wrong.
The left's arguments frequently use the threat of governmental force to achieve their aims. Examples are higher taxes are enforced with the threat of imprisonment. Want to end conservative talk radio with the Fairness doctrine? Ignore the fairness doctrine and the government will take away your livelihood in the form of the broadcast license.
Heck even the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) tried penalties and taxes to force people to do the will of the Sec. of HHS.
Force is force, period. You can try to justify it by hiding it behind big government, but you are fooling yourself.
Has anyone ever noticed that Olbermann and Hannity seem to emote as if from a Dumas novel of separated twins? The only thing against said theory is that neither is serious enough to warrant such adjectives as "good" and "evil". They're simply far too silly for such grand modifiers.
"Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently.
Left, right, middle - politicians and citizens - sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept "targeting" of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.
This morning in Arizona, this time of the ever-escalating, borderline-ecstatic invocation of violence in fact or in fantasy in our political discourse, closed. It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters - or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.
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If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics - she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.
If Jesse Kelly, whose campaign against Congresswoman Giffords included an event in which he encouraged his supporters to join him firing machine guns, does not repudiate this, and does not admit that even if it was solely indirectly, or solely coincidentally, it contributed to the black cloud of violence that has envellopped our politics, he must be repudiated by Arizona's Republican Party.
If Congressman Allen West, who during his successful campaign told his supporters that they should make his opponent afraid to come out of his home, does not repudiate those remarks and all other suggestions of violence and forced fear, he should be repudiated by his constituents and the Republican Congressional Caucus.
If Sharron Angle, who spoke of "Second Amendment solutions," does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.
If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand - do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.
If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.
And if those of us considered to be "on the left" do not re-dedicate ourselves to our vigilance to eliminate all our own suggestions of violence - how ever inadvertent they might have been then we too deserve the repudiation of the more sober and peaceful of our politicians and our viewers and our networks.
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Here, once, in a clumsy metaphor, I made such an unintended statement about the candidacy of then-Senator Clinton. It sounded as if it was a call to physical violence. It was wrong, then. It is even more wrong tonight. I apologize for it again, and I urge politicians and commentators and citizens of every political conviction to use my comment as a means to recognize the insidiousness of violent imagery, that if it can go so easily slip into the comments of one as opposed to violence as me, how easily, how pervasively, how disastrously can it slip into the already-violent or deranged mind?
For tonight we stand at one of the clichéd crossroads of American history. Even if the alleged terrorist Jared Lee Loughner was merely shooting into a political crowd because he wanted to shoot into a political crowd, even if he somehow was unaware who was in the crowd, we have nevertheless for years been building up to a moment like this.
Assume the details are coincidence. The violence is not. The rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.
We will not return to the 1850s, when a pro-slavery Congressman nearly beat to death an anti-slavery Senator; when an anti-slavery madman cut to death with broadswords pro-slavery advocates.
We will not return to the 1960s, when with rationalizations of an insane desire for fame, or of hatred, or of political opposition, a President was assassinated and an ultra-Conservative would-be president was paralyzed, and a leader of peace was murdered on a balcony.
We will not.
Because tonight, what Mrs. Palin, and what Mr. Kelly, and what Congressman West, and what Ms. Angle, and what Mr. Beck, and what Mr. O'Reilly, and what you and I must understand, was that the man who fired today did not fire at a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters.
He was not just a mad-man incited by a thousand daily temptations by slightly less-mad-men to do things they would not rationally condone.
He fired today into our liberty and our rights to live and to agree or disagree in safety and in freedom from fear that our support or opposition will cost us our lives or our health or our sense of safety. The bullseye might just as well have been on Mrs. Palin, or Mr. Kelly, or you, or me. The wrong, the horror, would have been - could still be just as real and just as unacceptable.
At a time of such urgency and impact, we as Americans - conservative or liberal - should pour our hearts and souls into politics. We should not - none of us, not Gabby Giffords and not any Conservative - ever have to pour our blood. And every politician and commentator who hints otherwise, or worse still stays silent now, should have no place in our political system, and should be denied that place, not by violence, but by being shunned and ignored.
It is a simple pledge, it is to the point, and it is essential that every American politician and commentator and activist and partisan take it and take it now, I say it first, and freely:
Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans." - Keith Olbermann
johnwbyrd wrote:
You can't put any of that in the same city as "Don't retreat, reload" and crosshairs on a voting district.
Is that really all that inflammatory? Because if it is the dems had used the exact same metaphor (targeting enemy states) with bullseyes years prior to Palin using her crosshairs and noone batted an eye.
Note how they are "targeting" won by Bush which are "Behind enemy lines" and the states in question are marked with bullseyes.
Are you incapable of understanding metaphors, or do you really think that the dems were targetting said states for assassination? Was using said rhetoric so beyond the pale that it can't be used in polite society. Then explain Obama saying "f they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.” Was Obama really describing a battle where republicans would bring knives and dems would in turn bring guns, or was he metaphorically describing politics as a brawl. How is that different than Palin saying ot rearm yourselves? Was she really saying to literally rearm actual guns? I can prove that she wasnt' since she used the phrase rearm, and not arm. Since they had to rearm that would mean they already fired their shots and not had to "rearm". Were any actual shots actuall fired when Palin went after those targeted states? Of course not. So then the only bullets fired where metaphoric ones, just as Obama's bullets fired were metaphoric ones.
The problem with you yokels constantly pointing out Palins's hateful violent rhetoric, is that it's so disingenous. If you are suggesting that it is so beyond the pale, then hold your fellow democrats and president to account. If you can't then I call you a hypocrite.
"WyomingDoug, it scares me that you (and many others) don't see the difference between oppressive taxation and grievous bodily harm.
I pray you someday will."
Lets put forward a scenario of oppressive taxation and see how that compares to "grievous bodily harm".
Lets say you have a citizen A who is taxed some amount that he deems to be fair. One day legislation is passed that increases the percentage of income he pays and gives even more benefits to the welfare state.
This is the last straw for citizen A. He decides to protest by only paying the IRS the amount that he feels is fair.
Long story short, the IRS comes to collect, citizen A refuses, and eventually law enforcement will intervene and use any means necessary including the threat of deadly force until citizen A is taken to prison.
By levying taxes on it's citizenry the U.S. government in effect has control over the lives of its people. You are only free as long as you pay your taxes. There is a percentage of every hour that you work that you are not working for yourself, you are working for the Federal Government. We are slaves to government; how is that fair?
Does anyone remember how Olbermann reacted to the Bush shoe-throwing incident? Here we had an actual act of violence against a sitting president, and I think Olbermann took great joy at that.
I wonder how that elevated the level of political discourse?
Doesn't anyone get tired of the tu quoque argument? Listen up. Both sides are capable of ridiculously overheated rhetoric. We all know that. While holding each side accountable if a perpetrator actually says, "_____ _____ made me do it!" might make sense, neither should be blamed for the actions of an obvious nutcase.
Using military jargon in politics needs to be updated, by the way. When you examine the Rules Of Engagement that our troops work under, you might be surprised at how carefully we wage war. No more crosshairs on civilians and fellow citizens! We don't even point guns at the enemy unless we've gone through the ten layers of protection that we put in place to ensure no mistakes are made.
I don't agree with the No Labels folks. Politics is a contact sport after all, however, we could all tone down some of the hateful personal attacks.
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