"Is it ever right to just wind up and let someone have it with all you've got? That's a question that I think has to be asked. It's certainly possible that we've all become too used to unrestrained rhetoric as a form of entertainment, and people like me live right in the middle of the guilt parabola there. Most all of us are grownups and can handle extreme argument, but clearly some people are not, and obviously I'm not just talking about Jared Loughner. To see that, all you have to do is attend almost any family gathering, where once-loving relationships have been completely lost because of the overheated right-left culture war. If real family relationships are being lost to this kind of political debate, if someone on TV can reach into your living room and break up your family without knowing anything about you or even knowing that you exist, that tells us that this mechanized mass-media rhetoric has been almost unimaginably successful at dehumanizing whole classes of people."
-- Matt Taibbi, posted over at his Rolling Stone blog not long after the Tucson shooting
Yeah, I'm late to the party with everything these days. Good news on the horizon, though, folks -- really good news. I'll be getting into it a little more over the next couple of days; suffice it to say, output here is likely to finally get back to respectable levels by this time next week.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Quote of the Day Last Week
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6 comments:
I love when the media yells at itself. It's fucking adorable.
I'm not sure that Tabbi is correct in blaming t.v. for 'reaching in and dehumanizing whole classes of people'. Not that it hasn't, in a way; but aren't the people responsible?
In other words, haven't there always been family divisions based on politics? Certainly, I agree that political 'discourse' in your country has reached poisonous levels, especially due to the pretzel logic of unelected, professional rabblerousers like Beck, Coulter and so many others*, but in the end, doesn't come down to the people themselves to control their reactions, their feelings, in order to give priority to thoughtful talk?
People gotta start taking responsibility for speaking their minds, not just their feelings.
People gotta start realizing they've got a right, hell, a duty to talk, not to scream.
*Left-leaning media my arse! The Right has way more influence on 'media' i the U.S.!
Well, the one thing someone on TV always has to know before they can reach into your living room and break up your family, is whether the signal coming through your coaxial cables has been turned off for financial reason during the great recession.
Pot-Kettle-black.
Pot-Kettle-black
Hit-button-once.
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