Okay a lot of people continue to insist Sarah Palin’s Facebook map with some crosshairs on vulnerable districts amounts to incitement to murder, even though the exact same sort of map is fairly common currency among liberals and Democrats, too. And the connection between Palin’s map and the deranged murderer’s actions are nothing like proven, or even credible.
Well, let’s take them at their word.
Let us “hold our fire” and talk no more of “campaigns.”
Let us ban the phrase “over the top” even when discussing over the top rhetoric.
Never again must we focus on “battleground states” or even cast our eyes on a “battleground” poll.
Goodbye ad “blitzes,” “ad wars,” and “air wars” too. Politicians shouldn’t “fire when ready” or unready. And aides should never jump on even a figurative grenade.
This is the end of to union-launched “offensives” in the “trenches” and the demise of full-on “assaults.”
Let’s not discuss the “nuclear option,” and call an end to the “wars” on poverty and cancer.
We must liberate ourselves from our “bunkers” and forget “defending our territory” electorally or metaphorically. Likewise, let us never speak again of opening a new “front” here, there or anywhere.
Purge from the history books Al Gore’s oath to “stand and fight” and John Kerry’s schmaltzy “reporting for duty.”
Alas, I cannot think of what to call this cessation in militaristic discourse, since none dare call it a “truce” or a “ceasefire.”
While Pundits Point Fingers, Mexico Crumbles
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Cheers
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNever try to reason people out of something they didn't reason their way into.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs Obama a tyrant?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis isn't about parsing metaphors:
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow about when Obama said he'd bring a gun to a knife fight. Or when he referred to Republicans as his enemies?
The list goes on.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNone of these examples are anything like putting a target on a specific person.
The Kerry & Gore examples are the worst. Who could be endangered by that? How are those anything like putting a target on a specific congressman?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr we maybe could simply stop countenancing non-metaphorical threats of violence against our political rivals. Sharon Angle's "Second Amendment remedies" didn't sound like she expected people to metaphorically use guns to metaphorically displace Democrats from office. The constant use of Thomas Jefferson's "blood of tyrants" at Tea Party quote doesn't sound like a pledge to use the ballot box to better ends.
Your reductio ad absurdum ignores the ways that concretely frightening language has been used on the right. Maybe it's all just a political game, but some of us are afraid not to take it seriously.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is actually no connection between Loughner and Palin.
None.
None at all.
Zero. Either positive or negative. He never mentions Palin at all.
Dr. Rorschach, call your office.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't know Jonah, this sounds like just another flash in the pan. I was hoping you'd set your sights higher and pull the trigger on a higher-caliber of discourse, but I think you're off target here and shooting off your mouth, as this sort of talk needs to ride shotgun to making sure we don't offend anyone with a hair trigger. If you ask me, gun to my head, I think this idea is a dud: Lock, stock and barrel.
:)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is really just a war on metaphors.
Oops, strike that, a battle, no an attack. I give up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRegarding
"Alas, I cannot think of what to all this cessation in militaristic discourse, since none dare call is a 'truce' or a 'ceasefire.'"
It's a time-out.
The rest of the militaristic terms you quoted must now be replaced with co-operative terms, somewhere between corporate-team speak and hippie utopia-commune speak, with a little Nanny 911 thrown in too.
Offenses == Common Causes
Battleground states == states where we must redouble our efforts at educating people
hold our fire == keep other's confidences (and expect others to keep ours as well)
bunkers == offsite meeting places for team building
fire when ready == kickoff meeting
going in for the kill == going for the quick win
campaign (team) == project (team)
in the trenches == walking the walk as well as talking the talk
reporting for duty == onboarding
stand and fight == understanding and delivering
defending our territory == empowering our organization
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"None of these examples are anything like putting a target on a specific person."
Or, you know, putting targets on specific congressional districts.
This site gives comment stars to anyone.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree that every sane person understands that Mrs. Palin's web page and talk of reloading are verbal and visual metaphors of the type most people use and do not support in any way using actual violence. On the other hand, when people refer to using actual force or guns in American politics in an approving way, this should place them beyond the pale. Yet when Sharon Angle talked about using '2nd amendment remedies' against congress, how many Republicans stood up and said a woman who talks like that should not be a United States Senator (or dog catcher for Podunk IL)?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think we should ban all metaphors, similes, idioms, etc., whether they have a military-type connotations or not lest someone go all Amelia Bedelia on us. Better safe than sorry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseExplicitly identifying somebody by name and using a gunsight image to point them out is not the same thing as generic references to a "target," or any other vaguely marshal metaphor, and surely has no relation to something as anodyne as Kerry's "Reporting for duty!" This is not difficult to understand, although I imagine somebody will tell me again how stupid that distinction is. Abe, you out there?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat people forget is that map was posted during an election cycle to get out the vote. It wasn't there to get people killed. What were to happen if someone were to get killed in a 'battleground' state? Should we blame the person who declared it a 'battleground' state?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAemJeff, the Vile. He's back again.
The Dems put a TARGET on Giffords' District. Now Giffords has been shot. Therefore, the Dems are at fault.
Get it?
Apparently, yes, they give anybody a star, even YOU.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a bit off-topic, but Jonah and several others on NRO have made cogent, and powerful arguments against this reflexive indictment of the current political climate created by (per media orthodoxy) the "evil" Tea Partiers, and their de facto head, Sarah Palin.
Of course, after tomorrow morning's marathon hand-wringing sessions that will be held on the broadcast "news" shows and surely absent this kind of smart and reasonable counter-point, the political die will have been firmly cast. The media will have their culprit firmly in their own cross-hairs, and it will be Sarah Palin and the Tea Partiers.
Why is so hard to find intellectually sound conservative counter-point on broadcast television? For every day of George Will we get, we're treated to five days of Elizabeth Haesselbeck and a smattering of everyone's favorite PBS house conservative, David Brooks.
I might suggest that if the broadcast networks genuinely cared about "turning down the thermostat", they might actually give voice to some of the MANY smart, logical and intellectually compelling conservative voices, rather than a steady diet of the usual suspects.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNice open discussion we're having here. Sorry, but they did give me a star. I'm quite sure you can petition to have it taken away, if you like.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, Jeffy, I'm still here. And you're still in the rather amusing position of attempting to suggest that a piece of graphic design used to represent ubiquitous political campaign verbiage is somehow inherently sinister. You'd be a barrel of laughs in a modern art gallery.
Jonah wasn't likening Kerry's comment to Palin's except to point out how commonplace military allusions are in political life. As they are in sports, business and variously other testosterone-fueled pursuits which are alien to much of the progressive left.
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