Devastating billboard angers the MSM, other left

[KacyRay]

SB - My point was that Jerry was engaged in an act I call Polemic Demagoguery, which I've demonstrated and described at length.. If you haven't gotten the point by now after I've explicitly clarified more times than I can count on one hand, then I don't think it's in the cards for you.

[George H. Smith]

Within a day or two after the billboard story went national, I watched discussions of it on two MSNBC talking-head programs. There were the predictable PC charges of racism, etc. Getting worked up over a clever ad on solitary billboard located in Podunk, U.S.A., indicated that some liberal feathers had been ruffled.

I suppose Kacy will now correct me by pointing out that liberals don't have feathers, so no feathers were ruffled. 8-)

Ghs

Heh... George, you know that only radcons have feathers. Correct yourself!

All joking aside - I would point out that I never claimed that no feathers were ruffled. Obviously some folks were... and that's what got reported.

That was my point - the title of the OP claims that the MSM was all butt-hurt about the billboard. I demonstrated that the MSM was merely reporting that people were butt-hurt about it.

And last I checked... that's what media does. They report stuff.

"Devastating Billboard angers MSM".... and as evidence, he offers up the fact that many media outlets reported it.

Like i said - by that standard, the MSM is angry about a lot of things. They must be REALLY angry about those 3 kidnapped girls that were found alive... I mean gosh, they're reporting the hell outta that one, right?

"Mainstream Media" is often used in a broader sense than hard-core news. It can also refer to tabloid opinion programs, such as we find on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. We wouldn't expect hard-news reports to offer commentary, at least not explicitly. But they frequently do so implicitly by covering what others said about something. Moreover, if you followed any of the left commentary programs on cable (MSNBC especially), you could have could liberal "screams" about that billboard and its supposed racism, etc., quite easily. Why do you think they would have bothered to discuss that billboard at all, if not to recite their PC catechism once again?

Ghs

[KacyRay]

Within a day or two after the billboard story went national, I watched discussions of it on two MSNBC talking-head programs. There were the predictable PC charges of racism, etc. Getting worked up over a clever ad on solitary billboard located in Podunk, U.S.A., indicated that some liberal feathers had been ruffled.

I suppose Kacy will now correct me by pointing out that liberals don't have feathers, so no feathers were ruffled. 8-)

Ghs

Heh... George, you know that only radcons have feathers. Correct yourself!

All joking aside - I would point out that I never claimed that no feathers were ruffled. Obviously some folks were... and that's what got reported.

That was my point - the title of the OP claims that the MSM was all butt-hurt about the billboard. I demonstrated that the MSM was merely reporting that people were butt-hurt about it.

And last I checked... that's what media does. They report stuff.

"Devastating Billboard angers MSM".... and as evidence, he offers up the fact that many media outlets reported it.

Like i said - by that standard, the MSM is angry about a lot of things. They must be REALLY angry about those 3 kidnapped girls that were found alive... I mean gosh, they're reporting the hell outta that one, right?

"Mainstream Media" is often used in a broader sense than hard-core news. It can also refer to tabloid opinion programs, such as we find on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. We wouldn't expect hard-news reports to offer commentary, at least not explicitly. But they frequently do so implicitly by covering what others said about something. Moreover, if you followed any of the left commentary programs on cable (MSNBC especially), you could have could liberal "screams" about that billboard and its supposed racism, etc., quite easily. Why do you think they would have bothered to discuss that billboard at all, if not to recite their PC catechism once again?

Ghs

I have no doubt that left-wing liberal pundits seize upon stories like this to advance their social agenda.

Any objective measure of the intensity the media at large put into this story as compared to the intensity they put into other stories shows the billboard story to be nothing more than a blip on the radar in the overall scheme of things.

I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of what the MSM does or why they do it. My contention is that this OP was an example of a sort of "sensationalistic" response to a routine sensationalized story. Hardly proportionate.

I think Jon Stewart had it right when he said that what often gets perceived as a bias toward liberalism in the media is actually a bias toward sensationalism. But I get why the right wing needs to keep trying to de-legitimize the press at large.

[Serapis Bey]

SB - My point was that Jerry was engaged in an act I call Polemic Demagoguery, which I've demonstrated and described at length.. If you haven't gotten the point by now after I've explicitly clarified more times than I can count on one hand, then I don't think it's in the cards for you.

No, I think I get the point.

It seems you are most comfortable acting as Hall Monitor at Objectivist Living High School.

[Brant Gaede]

The major cultural-political war in this country is being waged between conservatives and liberals. Libertarians, Objectivists, freedom-loving what-have-yous are basically out of that loop. No gravitas. Liberals, who started calling themselves "progressives" after they dirtied up the "liberal" label so much it turned into wall paper for an outhouse, dominate academia and mainstream media and Hollywood. They get just as vicious and self-serving as they feel they need to be and it's "shut up!" to everyone else. What's really funny is their thinking they occupy the center of objectivity. The very worst of them are closet communists. The best, deluded fools and useful idiots. The in betweens are generally nice people, at least when they come home from work.

--Brant

and it shows

[BaalChatzaf]

The major cultural-political war in this country is being waged between conservatives and liberals. Libertarians, Objectivists, freedom-loving what-have-yous are basically out of that loop. No gravitas. Liberals, who started calling themselves "progressives" after they dirtied up the "liberal" label so much it turned into wall paper for an outhouse, dominate academia and mainstream media and Hollywood. They get just as vicious and self-serving as they feel they need to be and it's "shut up!" to everyone else. What's really funny is their thinking they occupy the center of objectivity. The very worst of them are closet communists. The best, deluded fools and useful idiots. The in betweens are generally nice people, at least when they come home from work.

--Brant

and it shows

The in-between types have not been mugged and beaten up yet. When they are they become solid conservatives.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of what the MSM does or why they do it. My contention is that this OP was an example of a sort of "sensationalistic" response to a routine sensationalized story. Hardly proportionate.

And you've made all this fuss over a possible rhetorical exaggeration? Hardy proportionate.

Ghs

[Guyau]

Hi Jerry,

I just now got to check out this thread, specifically your initial post. All of the Indian folk I grew up with had firearms, as did our own family and the white wing of it. No one has registered those old firearms, I’m pretty sure. I carried my father’s old 22 rifle starting about age 12 when we went hunting, until I got my own Remington 20 gauge pump for Christmas around 15. (A few years later, when I had stopped hunting, I sold the shotgun back to the relative from whom my father had bought it for the gift---the citizens been well armed a long time just fine with those old-style firearms.) I like the photo. The text on the billboard is doubly deceitful. Tribes at war with the US government may have been required to turn in their firearms and live on reservations, dependent on government care. But that was not the situation with the Indian tribes I knew of in Oklahoma. No one was literally at war with the government there in those days (unlike the rare nutcases that came later, such as blew up the Murray building), and no one was being denied gun ownership on account of being Indian that I knew of. The second deceit, of course, is the insinuation that the government is trying to disarm the citizens in general and make them unable to provide for themselves or unable to defend themselves, by the recent proposals concerning gun control. Bull.

Stephen

[George H. Smith]

The second deceit, of course, is the insinuation that the government is trying to disarm the citizens in general and make them unable to provide for themselves or unable to defend themselves, by the recent proposals concerning gun control. Bull.

Stephen

Suppose there existed no effective opposition to anti-gun legislation. Would guns be banned outright? Not very likely, at least not at first, but here is what would probably happen. Law X is passed, then another massacre occurs. Now we would hear the argument that Law X was insufficient, so more stringent legislation, Law Y, is passed. Then another massacre occurs, followed by more outcries and Law Z. And so on indefinitely.

In other words, the very fact that anti-gun legislation will not solve the problem of mass killings will serve as the rationale for an indefinite series of laws that are progressively more invasive of individual rights. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if an outright ban were the ultimate result.

Ghs

[KacyRay]

I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of what the MSM does or why they do it. My contention is that this OP was an example of a sort of "sensationalistic" response to a routine sensationalized story. Hardly proportionate.

And you've made all this fuss over a possible rhetorical exaggeration? Hardy proportionate.

Ghs

No, I haven't. As I pointed out in comment 37, my response to the OP was measured and proportionate. The fuss was over the ensuing misrepresentation of my point.

Check out the anecdote in that comment, and you'll see why I pressed the issue. Consider my position and how it feels when I attempt to make a single, simple point - then the point gets missed and distorted, and when I attempt to clarify the point I was actually trying to make (as against the strawmen that were being slain) I then get accused over disproportionately emphasizing the issue.

I can assure you that if the point I was actually trying to make in the first place had been acknowledged (which still hasn't happened), this would have been an extremely short thread.

[Guyau]

.

George, the initial supposition is not a possibility in America. We have our guns. Have had them for generations. They will not be taken away as long as we have an elected Congress. There is no need for the assistance and publicity of the kooks or ignorant, such as put up the billboard, for us to continue that result, even as we regulate firearms by law.

[George H. Smith]

.

George, the initial supposition is not a possibility in America. We have our guns. Have had them for generations. They will not be taken away as long as we have an elected Congress. There is no need for the assistance and publicity of the kooks or ignorant, such as put up the billboard, for us to continue that result, even as we regulate firearms by law.

So it cannot happen here, eh? I wish I could be that sanguine.

Many liberties that Americans enjoyed for generations no longer exist. There was a day when libertarian types, such as Jefferson, argued for freedom of religion on the ground that it is as absurd for a government to dictate which ideas we may put into our heads as it would be for a government to dictate which substances we may put into our bodies. So obvious did the right to ingest whatever we want seem to Jefferson (and others) that he used it as the end point of a reductio ad absurdum. Needless to say, what seemed obvious to Jefferson is far from obvious today.

Ghs

[KacyRay]

.

George, the initial supposition is not a possibility in America. We have our guns. Have had them for generations. They will not be taken away as long as we have an elected Congress. There is no need for the assistance and publicity of the kooks or ignorant, such as put up the billboard, for us to continue that result, even as we regulate firearms by law.

So it cannot happen here, eh? I wish I could be that sanguine.

Many liberties that Americans enjoyed for generations no longer exist. There was a day when libertarian types, such as Jefferson, argued for freedom of religion on the ground that it is as absurd for a government to dictate which ideas we may put into our heads as it would be for a government to dictate which substances we may put into our bodies. So obvious did the right to ingest whatever we want seem to Jefferson (and others) that he used it as the end point of a reductio ad absurdum. Needless to say, what seemed obvious to Jefferson is far from obvious today.

Ghs

There's a wide gulf between "It can't happen here" and "It isn't happening here". I think everyone recognizes that unlikely does not equal impossible.

I'm curious what those "They're coming to take our guns away" alarmists imagine such a scenario would look like. Can anyone imagine for one moment that any gun official could ever go to a law-abiding gun owners home and attempt to take their firearms away without the entire nation rising up to stop it from happening? I am in favor of oversight, but if I ever found out such a thing was going on I'd be an incensed about it as anyone.

I think gun ownership is safe. Like Stephen said - as long as there is an elected congress. And to that, I might add - as long as there is a military who has sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

[Guyau]

George,

What the Founders said of liberties, they often did not mean so free of unstated presumed restrictions as we naturally suppose. Freedom of the press is a well-researched example. They said the simple statement in the US Constitution, but they did not mean it in that simple, unqualified way it was stated. Jefferson in particular did not mean it (Leonard Levy’s Emergence of a Free Press). There have been losses of freedoms, but also gains, and some constants. Some of my pale-face ancestors arrived here around 1637. The generations migrated from the Virginia region to Tennessee to Texas to Indian Territory. The right to own firearms has not diminished along the way.

By the way, I’ve had your new book a while now and hope to write a review of it soon.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I buried my heart at Wounded Knee...

After the government disarmed the Indians, of course. Nice massacre...

There's too many cases of the USA government disarming Indians in our history of genocide against them to take the charge of deceit about the billboard seriously.

Ditto for the government disarming blacks and keeping them from owning guns.

Indians and blacks took a long time to get coverage under the Second Amendment. It's not a good idea to take it back, not even by taking it back by including them in the collective with whites.

Although, I have to admit, the USA government has been pretty good over the years at being an Indian giver with Indians...

On another point, the charge of deceit makes an historical fallacy of presentism. Very few Indians these days ride around the countryside on horses in full feathered regalia. To compare those Indians, like those in the billboard, to modern-day Indians is what is really not accurate.

I'm one of the kooks who happens to think that billboard was not only accurate, it was a masterful marketing message using archetypes. A very painful archetype in the American conscience. Similar to this famous masterpiece of marketing:

The Crying Indian - full commercial - Keep America Beautiful

Using the "deceit" standard, I suppose it could be argued that American Indians never cared two hoots about pollution, nor did they ever cry about it, so this message was deceitful. I think that would be silly.

Michael

[Guyau]

Michael,

This is the main tribe of my family (my grandfather was a quarter). Jerry was half. It is a tribe of Indians too, just as much as the Lakota Sioux. Not all Indians, nor even the majority I expect, have Reservations in their history. My grandfather had firearms and so did his Indian grandfather.

Notwithstanding the massacres at Washita and at Wounded Knee, and notwithstanding the casualties on the Trail of Tears, the government was not engaged in genocide against Indians. (By far, the native population was reduced most by lack of immunity to diseases brought by the Europeans.)

My family is not having their guns taken away, and the grandchildren will not have those guns taken away either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS

I’ve read through the full article at Wikipedia now. The attention it gives to Mississippi Choctaw history is disproportionate to that given to the history in Oklahoma and Indian Territory. Anyway, I want to add a personal note.

If you scroll down, you will find a photo with the title “Choctaw Nation Senate in 1898.” That is in the Choctaw Council House in Tuskahoma. Jerry and I and two women friends went there (around 1970) for the annual tribal meeting held on the grounds each Labor Day Weekend. There was the tribal meeting, singing of Choctaw hymns (not bad), and Choctaw food (not so hot). Jerry had brought some watercolor interior renderings with him to show at a meeting with the Chief concerning restoration of the old Council House. In the end, he did not get the commission. I remember a dark blue light-weight coat Jerry was wearing, which he had made (what we could not afford, we made) and which looked so great on him. We met up with Jer’s mother (full-blood) and her husband (Crow/French). I met some of Jer’s extended Choctaw family from his early childhood in Hugo area. I remember sleeping on blankets on the ground under the stars. I still have Jer’s Choctaw dictionary and the little pocket hymnal that just has the words; they all seemed to know the tunes. I remember I was reading Bennett’s Kant’s Analytic on the road.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I haven't done my lineage officially, but I know my grandmother was Cherokee, or maybe strongly mixed with Cherokee. She certainly looked the part (but talked pure hillbilly. )

And I don't think she was the only Indian in my bloodline.

One day I'm going to get an account with Ancestry and maybe do the registry route I heard about during the Elisabeth Warren "I'm an Indian" fiasco.

I, unlike her, do not speak with forked tongue.

I still disagree with you--and disagree strongly--over the danger of the government disarming people. Like George said, it doesn't happen all at once. They're Progressives, progressing one step at a time. And believe me, they have a well-defined end game. Maybe it's the kook in me? I've lived under a military dictatorship, and I was one of the privileged folks.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Technocrats able to deploy law enforcement at will against disarmed folks suck big-time as leaders.

(clinging to guns and Bible...)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

George,

What the Founders said of liberties, they often did not mean so free of unstated presumed restrictions as we naturally suppose. Freedom of the press is a well-researched example. They said the simple statement in the US Constitution, but they did not mean it in that simple, unqualified way it was stated. Jefferson in particular did not mean it (Leonard Levy’s Emergence of a Free Press). There have been losses of freedoms, but also gains, and some constants. Some of my pale-face ancestors arrived here around 1637. The generations migrated from the Virginia region to Tennessee to Texas to Indian Territory. The right to own firearms has not diminished along the way.

It would appear then that the only viable option is sterilization or gay marriage.

--Brant

we've gotta change the culture (and stay away from fertility banks!)

[George H. Smith]

George,

What the Founders said of liberties, they often did not mean so free of unstated presumed restrictions as we naturally suppose. Freedom of the press is a well-researched example. They said the simple statement in the US Constitution, but they did not mean it in that simple, unqualified way it was stated. Jefferson in particular did not mean it (Leonard Levy’s Emergence of a Free Press). There have been losses of freedoms, but also gains, and some constants. Some of my pale-face ancestors arrived here around 1637. The generations migrated from the Virginia region to Tennessee to Texas to Indian Territory. The right to own firearms has not diminished along the way.

By the way, I’ve had your new book a while now and hope to write a review of it soon.

I am quite familiar with Levy's work, but I never claimed that the Founders were consistent libertarians. That has nothing to do with my point, which still stands: Many liberties that were taken for granted by earlier generations of Americans were eventually whittled away.

Why do you think American revolutionaries protested minor taxes, such as the tax on tea that led to the Boston Tea Party? They repeatedly said that incursions on rights must be resisted at the outset so that legal precedents will not be established. Thus Jefferson's famous remark that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

I wonder if your reaction would be the same if the government censored nutty ring-wing literature, of the sort that inspired Timothy McVeigh, on the ground that it led to acts of domestic terrorism. Of if the government censored radical Islamist literature because of its connection to Muslim terrorism. Or if the government decided to regulate the Internet so as to ban pornography, etc. Would you say that we needn't worry because total censorship will never happen in America? I certainly hope not.

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

I wonder if your reaction would be the same if the government censored nutty ring-wing literature, of the sort that inspired Timothy McVeigh, on the ground that it led to acts of domestic terrorism. Of if the government censored radical Islamist literature because of its connection to Muslim terrorism. Or if the government decided to regulate the Internet so as to ban pornography, etc. Would you say that we needn't worry because total censorship will never happen in America? I certainly hope not.

Ghs

Josef Stalin once wrote: "We don't allow our enemies to have guns. Why should we allow them to have ideas?"

[George H. Smith]

.

George, the initial supposition is not a possibility in America. We have our guns. Have had them for generations. They will not be taken away as long as we have an elected Congress. There is no need for the assistance and publicity of the kooks or ignorant, such as put up the billboard, for us to continue that result, even as we regulate firearms by law.

So it cannot happen here, eh? I wish I could be that sanguine.

Many liberties that Americans enjoyed for generations no longer exist. There was a day when libertarian types, such as Jefferson, argued for freedom of religion on the ground that it is as absurd for a government to dictate which ideas we may put into our heads as it would be for a government to dictate which substances we may put into our bodies. So obvious did the right to ingest whatever we want seem to Jefferson (and others) that he used it as the end point of a reductio ad absurdum. Needless to say, what seemed obvious to Jefferson is far from obvious today.

Ghs

There's a wide gulf between "It can't happen here" and "It isn't happening here". I think everyone recognizes that unlikely does not equal impossible.

I'm curious what those "They're coming to take our guns away" alarmists imagine such a scenario would look like. Can anyone imagine for one moment that any gun official could ever go to a law-abiding gun owners home and attempt to take their firearms away without the entire nation rising up to stop it from happening? I am in favor of oversight, but if I ever found out such a thing was going on I'd be an incensed about it as anyone.

I think gun ownership is safe. Like Stephen said - as long as there is an elected congress. And to that, I might add - as long as there is a military who has sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

It would "happen here" if the political left had its way. The main reason that it isn't happening here is because of the opposition of the NRA and other "gun nuts."

Your confidence in Congress and the military is touching but foolish. To suppose that democracies, including American democracy, cannot degenerate into tyranny is extraordinarily naïve.

Should the U.S. economy continue to decline to the point of collapse, and if the welfare-warfare state continues along the path to what Mises called "planned chaos," then violent mob activity would probably erupt here and there. That could elicit proclamations of martial law, and in that case we might very well see the National Guard (or even the regular military) going door to door in search of firearms.

Ghs

[jts]

I'm curious what those "They're coming to take our guns away" alarmists imagine such a scenario would look like. Can anyone imagine for one moment that any gun official could ever go to a law-abiding gun owners home and attempt to take their firearms away without the entire nation rising up to stop it from happening?

It happened in Germany.

[Brant Gaede]

Suppose there existed no effective opposition to anti-gun legislation. Would guns be banned outright? Not very likely, at least not at first, but here is what would probably happen. Law X is passed, then another massacre occurs. Now we would hear the argument that Law X was insufficient, so more stringent legislation, Law Y, is passed. Then another massacre occurs, followed by more outcries and Law Z. And so on indefinitely.

In other words, the very fact that anti-gun legislation will not solve the problem of mass killings will serve as the rationale for an indefinite series of laws that are progressively more invasive of individual rights. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if an outright ban were the ultimate result.

Ghs

In central banking this is called the corrupt Keynesian economics running of the printing press: mo money, mo money, mo money.

--Brant

they can't help themselves: the state is the solution to the policies of the state, just call that state something else like greedy capitalists or economic disjunctions so it's not appreciated what you do

[Brant Gaede]

I'm not disagreeing with your characterization of what the MSM does or why they do it. My contention is that this OP was an example of a sort of "sensationalistic" response to a routine sensationalized story. Hardly proportionate.

And you've made all this fuss over a possible rhetorical exaggeration? Hardy proportionate.

Ghs

No, I haven't. As I pointed out in comment 37, my response to the OP was measured and proportionate. The fuss was over the ensuing misrepresentation of my point.

Check out the anecdote in that comment, and you'll see why I pressed the issue. Consider my position and how it feels when I attempt to make a single, simple point - then the point gets missed and distorted, and when I attempt to clarify the point I was actually trying to make (as against the strawmen that were being slain) I then get accused over disproportionately emphasizing the issue.

I can assure you that if the point I was actually trying to make in the first place had been acknowledged (which still hasn't happened), this would have been an extremely short thread.

"An extremely short thread." Now that would have been no fun.

--Brant

[Guyau]

George,

Yes. I quite agree that there are many things that at some time or other Americans were free to do and took for granted as a rightful freedom, but that later were prohibited. Similarly, there are significant things formerly prohibited, taken for granted to be rightly prohibited, and which we are now free to do.

No. We do not require the assistance of the kooky wing of the NRA to keep our guns. Never have. Many, many American families own guns, have horse sense, and vote. And the fact that they belong to the NRA does not mean they are aligned with its kooky and deceitful (or ignorant) elements, such as would put up such a billboard. My families, Indian or White, know better than that; most all belong to the NRA. Yes, I resent the stereotype representation of Indian history in that display (as well as in portrayals of Indians of yore as environmentalists).

That we have taxation does not mean that we will eventually have 100% taxation or state ownership of everything. That we have weapons prohibited to all private citizens does not mean that eventually all weapons, shotguns and rifles in particular, will eventually be prohibited to all private citizens. Other points besides 0 or 100 in the social dynamic can be equilibria or at least points about which there is oscillation on and on.

No. America and its freedoms are not about to crash. Been hearing the alarmists for decades. Not happening.

When evangelists I used to meet in public places in Chicago would get around to telling me about Hell, I would say "Now that. That idea is a human error and not a very nice one." The coming economic collapse and rioting in America we've been hearing about from 1957, before, and since is I would bet mostly the result not from such vengeful wishful thinking (as with the fideist) as from mistaken, inadequate theory of our society. A very forgivable inadequacy.