The really aggravating part is that there are people defending Breitbart.
|
The really aggravating part is that there are people defending Breitbart. I know the spam is getting kinda crazy. Trying to get on that. See, there’s “not letting the terrorists win” and then there’s “openly antagonizing an entire religion”. I’m not at all a fan of religion in general, but any (and I do mean any) efforts like this to deface and insult the faithful is, in my opinion, a slap in the face of humanity. The funny thing is, if a bunch of Muslims burn the church down, you can’t even call that terrorism. Just a “no shit”. From national to local news, seems like everyone’s been talking about the site. But the million dollar question is, who is the villain: the one who commits the atrocity, or the one who breaks the law to expose it? Razor’s gonna be around at least another six months. Think I’m feeling a little more encouraged.
What I should have mentioned, however, is that occasionally right-wing bullshit has a rather profound effect on that world. Take the story of Breitbart and Tucker Carlson heavily editing and lying about statements made by one black USDA official to make her sound both racist and acting in a racist manner on behalf of the USDA. The problem, aside from the obvious that the whole story was a fabrication, is that after this woman was fired… she didn’t get re-hired. There’s a rather frightening timeline that comes along with these fake stories:
You can make a list a mile long. Half of the 2004 presidential campaign was eaten up with Swiftboat nonsense, all of which turned out to be lies, and no effort was made by anyone to repair the damage to John Kerry’s campaign and reputation until long after he lost the election. ACORN lost their federal backing thanks to edited videotapes and heavily selective “reporting”, and thus far I’ve seen nothing to indicate that they’ll be getting anything back. This woman loses her job and there’s no push to get her re-instated. That’s just three, there are many more examples. There’s an old saying that a lie repeated often enough becomes truth. Another one that says what happened doesn’t matter, only what you can convince people happened. What we’re seeing is an expert exploitation of this fact. What’s the cause? There could be a few. I suspect one is the fear of being assumed liberal, and one is the desperate desire to be ahead of the competition. Some story “breaks” on a right-wing website and the old MSM wants to make sure they get the scoop, so they just run along with it without doing any checking. Next thing you know, there are House Resolutions and White House statements based on what was reported, and no one digs in to see if it was even true. It’s pathetic, and that’s how things seem to work these days. And there’s an interesting secondary point: the people who originated the story knew that they were lying, and did so simply to destroy someone’s reputation and cause trouble for them, so isn’t that libel? I say yes, but again, I don’t suspect much will be done. No big post here. Not until we see what the next step is. Or when the other shoe drops. However, the White House’s relative silence is telling. |
||
|
Copyright © 2010 Hanlon's Razor - All Rights Reserved |
||