...Lberalism today has as its highest priority not looking stupid—and that its premiere rally is framed in such a way that everyone who came to this rally is somehow indemnified from looking foolish precisely because it’s not really a political rally, it’s more like a mockery of a political rally—in a self-consciously smart sort of way. And the Daily Show Democrats who gathered celebrated themselves for this amazing achievement: that they didn’t make fools of themselves standing for something that some other guys could then use to mock them.True political disagreement will never be civil. That's the point.
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The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic.Endless hours of cable TV news are devoted to creating controversy out of thin air and reporting it, in preference to covering anything that really matters. "Terrorist fist bump" is a succinct example, but there are hundreds of them. This rally was a couple of media figures calling bullshit on the fake zeitgeist created by other media figures, and I think most of the people who showed up got that.
...that these and successive acts of the same character, unless arrested on the threshold, may send to drive these states into revolution and blood, and will furnish new calumnies against Republican Governments, and new pretexts for those who with it to be believed, that man cannot be governed but by a rod of iron: that it would be dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights.In that quote, Jefferson expressly said that the Alien and Sedition acts might result in "revolution and blood" and called the supporters of same "delusional." It is pretty far from civil. Jefferson's response was correct because there was a legitimate threat to the fundamental Constitutional rights of Americans, and he therefore spoke out strongly against it. Not a lot of ironic detachment or temporizing in that statement.
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here's a visual comparison of crowd sizes between Glen Beck's rally and this one that I found interesting
Schadenfreudiest moment of the day: Arianna Huffington's vaunted Manhattan charter buses get stuck in traffic for hours, miss half the rally.Lol.
Man, am I going to have to read this whole thread?
Hyper-gender-sensitivity has really come into vogue lately. It makes me sad.
Sara C. being a female has nothing to do with the reaction she's getting.
[scrolls up]
Wait, wait, hold up -- Rory Marinich told Sara C. to effectively go fuck herself, and she's the one being "unpleasant?"
Go fuck yourself. I just wrote you a 2,000-word essay explaining exactly why I thought this was important politically -- Rory MarinichThat was his second comment in the thread.
Ironically, you ignored my actual message to blindly dismiss my earnest message, which alienated me and made me tell you to go fuck yourself. -- Rory MarinichShe made you tell her to go fuck herself? She made you? Really?
We're saying it again and again and you're ignoring it. The rally was about respecting people for HAVING opinions, even when you have your own. -- Rory MarinichJust a hint, bro, when you tell people to 'go fuck themselves' you are not respecting them.
people in this country who believe in the kind of civility that Rory has with his Grandfather. -- arabelladragonBut not with other mefite's apparently.
Two candidates once ran who loathed each other and their political views; they doesn't prove anything. They didn't have a Congress that threatened to filibuster even close to as much as this, they didn't have 24-hour cable news networks spinning everything in the dumbest directions possible, and they didn't have one network devoted entirely to banging the drum for one side. They were still able to get things done.You might not be aware of this, but they had these things called "newspaper", and they were pretty fucking partisan at the time.
Well, besides it being awesome enough on it's own - redditors managed to secure an interview with Colbert by reaching $500,000.That's a hell of a lot of money for an interview.
The point, it seemed to me, was that politics isn't all there is to life, there is something slightly off about those who think it is, and that political ideology has come to define us culturally and personally far too much.Yet, Stewart literally said that that was not the point.
“I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. -- Jon StewartThat's what he said in his 'serious' speech at the end of the rally. He explicitly said the rally wasn't about ridiculing people who cared about politics or were activist, yet, lots of people on the Internet decided it was exactly that, and started bashing anyone who actually cared about politics. It was kind of amazing really. -- Even a movement against people being assholes attracts it's own assholes!
I don't think Sullivan's take is contradicted by Stewart's comment at the end of the rally at all. I think that what they both are pointing out is that there are a lot of people who are tired of the poiliticization of EVERYTHING in their lives.I think it's kind of obnoxious and condescending to say there's something "a bit off" about people who care a lot about politics, especially from someone who blogs about politics 24/7.
On that point I thought that Stewart's metaphor about merging into the Lincoln Tunnel was spot-on.The problem is he uses it all the time. So it's kind of old.
To take this line of thought a bit further (and I'm sure that I'm not the first to level this criticism) why wasn't this a massive, nonpartisan, GOTV canvass?I thought that was a little odd myself, I would have expected at least that he'd tell people to go vote. But. There isn't really any such thing as a "non-partisan" GOTV. If you're talking to group X and telling them to vote, and you know group X happens to vote for party Y more often, what you're really doing is boosting Y's numbers. If Jon Stewart got his minions to vote, then that would probably boost the democrats. A GOTV message on MTV or Univision or BET is going to have a very different effect then a GOTV message on FOX or CBN (pat robertson's the Christan Broadcasting Network)
I used "go fuck yourself" thinking it would come across as "super polite and humorous"ಠ_ಠ? this is the internet. We can't hear your tone of voice. Unless you include emoticons. "Go fuck yourself" read quite differently then "Go fuck yourself ^____^~"
"You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!" "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" "Two great tastes that taste great together."And, how about their later campaign:
"There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's."See, two sides CAN get along. And sometimes there's more than one way to look at things.
The Rally to Restore Sanity, held in Washington’s National Mall, was yet another sad footnote to the death of the liberal class. It was as innocuous as a Boy Scout jamboree. It ridiculed followers of the tea party without acknowledging that the pain and suffering expressed by many who support the movement are not only real but legitimate. It made fun of the buffoons who are rising up out of moral swamps to take over the Republican Party without accepting that their supporters were sold out by a liberal class, and especially a Democratic Party, which turned its back on the working class for corporate money.Look, I understand that the rally was a good time for a lot of people, and it gave folks a sense of community that they may never have experienced before. Just remember that while hipster snark may be the preferred discourse at metafilter, an ad agency, a web 2.0 startup, or a Democratic Party Convention meeting, it does not translate well to a blue collar environment. People who work with their hands and in dangerous jobs want to know that they can trust the people they work with. There's a certain unironic discourse there of trust and reciprocity. When you are loading a cardboard baler, moving heavy stuff, or operating a spot welder, you want to know that the people around you are actually engaged and clearly communicating. Otherwise people get hurt pretty fast. Ironic disengagement isn't confidence inspiring in that environment, I can tell you from experience.
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"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also, that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue."posted by wuwei at 10:27 AM on November 1, 2010
Youtube Link
- He was born in Hawaii? What proof do you want?posted by Anything at 10:10 AM on November 2, 2010 [2 favorites]
- And you think that establishes that he's definitely not Keynesian?
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posted by Artw at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2010 [2 favorites]