In the summer of Bush’s first-year in office the lights were blinking red with threats from al-Qaeda. In the summer of Obama’s first-year in office, the lights are blinking red with the threats from our own right-wing citizenry. When the Department of Homeland Security released a report on this threat they were shouted down and Secretary Napolitano was forced to apologize. But, the attacks began just as predicted, and the longer this goes on the more likely it is that something is gonna blow. Republican leaders need to find a way to let some pressure out of the balloon, but they’re doing the exact opposite. When people die, I’m going to be pointing my finger straight at them.
And if Glenn Beck isn’t reprimanded for fantasizing about poisoning Nancy Pelosi on FOX News last night, then News Corp. is going to deserve direct blame too. You can’t allow people to make comments like that on the air. It’s dangerous.
And if Glenn Beck isn’t reprimanded for fantasizing about poisoning Nancy Pelosi in FOX News last night, then News Corp. is going to deserve direct blame too. You can’t allow people to make comments like that on the air. It’s dangerous.
And who besides KO, Maddow and Schultz will call them out on it? CNN? Hahahahahaha!!! CBS, ABC or NBC(meaning Brian Williams, David Gregory, the CNBC crew and the rest of MSNBC)?
I intend to file a complaint with the FCC this weekend when I have time to write it up properly. Whether it will do any good or not, I don’t know, but it certainly can’t hurt.
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See my diary.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."What, are you proposing a law that prohibits this speech? I find Beck reprehensible but are we really this weak that we have to throw away our liberties because of him? It’s similar to how the right wanted to throw away our civil liberties after 9/11.
Look. Beck should be easy to defeat. Who watches cable news anymore anyway? Why are blogs trolling Fox waiting for the next unhinged comment they can jump on? Isn’t the audience pretty much white suburban older men? And shrinking? They never supported Obama or liberals and never will. Cable news feeds on this stuff and I don’t doubt that some congressmen are getting rougher treatment than they are used to but . . . is this really that much worse than before? There will always be the 24% or whatever, the dead enders, that like Beck and Maulkin and these nitwits on the right. These are easy people to defeat in an honest debate. They only get power when the rest of us stop and take their arguments seriously.
Let’s treat Beck and Fox like the outcasts they are. Maybe Obama shouldn’t give them credibility by going on their network. Maybe the Senate can condemn Beck like they did to MoveOn. How about heaping scorn on them? Democrats are good at heaping scorn on their own–how about they aim their fire at Beck and the dead end goobers?
Better yet, how about the Democrats stop running scared from these fools and simply stand up and make a full-throated defense of what they believe in.
These guys are fools. But criminalizing this speech is overreacting.
This is what happens when Democrats don’t stand or anything . . . the nonsensical opposition is empowered.
You’re not allowed to yell “fire” or “bomb” in the middle of a crowded theater because it’s not safe.
That’s not a freedom of speech issue, and neither is this.
You aren’t free to incite to riot and you should be free to incite to assassinate.
YES. There should absolutely be limits on speech. They should be self-imposed, in polite society. But if people are too stupid to see where such actions lead, then they need to be treated like the irresponsible children they are and reprimanded legally.
Well, I too agree that not all speech is “free”. The age-old question is where should the line be drawn.
And America has obviously decided the line should be a very hard line to cross. That’s why it’s in the first Amendment.
And yelling “fire” in a theater is not what Beck did here. I’m pretty sure that the first Amendment protects Beck’s statement. There is no way Beck could be convicted of a crime for this statement . . . as should be the case. I’m very happy to live in a country that values freedom slightly more than safety.
You want to prosecute him for “fantasizing” about someone killing someone else? That seems like a very loosy-goosey standard and for a right-wing nation that imprisons more people than any other country in the world I do not look forward to the days when President Beck gets to decide what speech is dangerous and what speech isn’t.
But I’m all for self-imposed limits on his speech. That’s why I don’t listen to him and I think people that do just aren’t that smart or are poorly informed. They’re confused and gullible. And maybe some deranged person will act out. But freedom of speech is a good thing and I would rather have some violence from free speech than live under a government that prosecutes speech willy-nilly.
A private citizen can say almost anything. The host of an hour-long program on cable news should be held to a different standard. I called for a reprimand, not jail-time. I don’t think advertisers should want their product associated with this kind of stuff. I hear some advertisers have begun pulling their ads from Beck, and that started before this latest comment. But FOX should rein him in, regardless of his ratings.
Treating “them” like irresponsible children is precisely why so many people hate liberals. And why this country has become wack job central.
A lot of kids hate their parents too when they ground them. It doesn’t mean they don’t need their parents, or that the parent wasn’t right to punish them in the first place.
But that’s kind of the point: we’re not their parents. The delusion that we are is precisely what keeps screwing up the left in this country.
No, I’m not Glenn Beck’s parent. I am, however, a citizen who is dealing with the destabilizing effects of his very thinly veiled incitement of violence.
We’ve watched this before in other countries — indisputably free countries today that have outlawed this kind of speech because of the ruins they found themselves in back in 1945. Arguably, if Beck’s faction had been properly gagged in 1865, we might not have had the spectacle of cops with rubber hoses beating peaceful black protesters a century later.
Glenn Beck plainly wants to be Ernst Röhm, and all that is necessary for him to do so is for us to do nothing. Today, he has mobs threatening Democratic representatives. Tomorrow, when he has them threatening you, will you be as sanguine about his speech?
Real History Lisa, Would you please explain what any hypothetical relationship between parents and children has to do with all this? The analogy is arcane and obscure, to say the least. You’re one of the world’s leading experts on perplexing me. But then I’m thick.
Btw – this IS criminal behavior in Germany, because they learned the hard way what NOT reining this in can do.
I don’t want our country to have to learn that lesson the hard way.
What the hell, if the law fits. . .
What I don’t get is why the cops didn’t arrest and haul away the protesters in Tampa yesterday. They were pounding on the windows. Wouldn’t that be disorderly conduct at least? Instead they ended the town hall early.
Why? Why aren’t the police doing their job??? I realize you can’t arrest someone for shouting (unless your name is Mr. Gates) but when public safety is involved wouldn’t it be wise to haul them away before physical violence breaks out?
What am I missing here?
“Dangerous” is a swiss army knife that justifies any and all assaults on free speech. “You can’t allow people to make comments like that on the air” is as chilling as anything coming out of the floppy jowls of the birthers and teabaggers and health-haters.
The incipient violence we’re seeing is not about any particular issue. It’s about racism and nativism and ruined minds being used the same way they were used to build the road to Krystallnacht. Reprimanding and endless e-petitions to congress members or Obama or the media are nothing short of abject.
If we want to fight, we need to fight. That means connecting the thugs directly to their corporate sponsors by name, by phone number and address. It means calling out the Becks and Limbaughs and McConnells and Imhoffs in the same terms, with the same passion, that they call out our side. It means a slash and burn campaign against the insurancecos with the goal of destroying them. If we’re not ready for that. let’s just click on some more petitions and whine amongst ourselves as we sit and watch our country’s last chance massacred.
Totally disagree.
In Germany, it’s a crime to deny the holocaust happened.
In ANY civilized society, it should be illegal to fantasize about killing officials on the air, in print, or in any other public forum. What you say between friends is your business. But there should be a line that should not be crossed. And it’s precisely because words DO lead to action.
Obviously liberals don’t recall the hate they spewed during the Bush administration. And they can’t understand that other people may actually have different (and perhaps valid) perspectives.
What is it, troll week?
Show me the liberals fantasizing about assassinations and organizing mob violence during the Bush administration. I defy you to trot out a list of incidents from the entire eight years of the Bush presidency as long as the list of right wing violence from the last two weeks.
I don’t give a shit whether your perspective is valid or not. When you are using violence to suppress debate, nothing you say is worth listening to, except perhaps when you enter a plea before the local magistrate when you are presented with formal charges.
http://www.republicanoperative.com/forums/left-vs-right/13087-documented-cases-liberal-violence-inti
midation-vandalism.html
Where did you go Corvus?
btw, I’m not even a Republican. I just think politically extreme circle jerks are counter productive.
Corvus?
Hey, I showed you the list of violence perpetrated by liberals that you were looking for. And then you disappeared. wtf?
Are you upset that liberals do the same stupid shit as conservatives?
Sorry, being at work, there’s a limit to how much time I can spend idly waiting for a reply. I’ll review the list later.
I can say that clicking on “Conservative Commentator Assaulted at University” and finding a story about Ann Coulter being missed by a thrown pie does not fill me with great anticipation for the rest of very short list of horrible atrocities promised by the remaining lurid headlines.
But like I said, I’ll take a look at it later. I don’t expect it will take long to read — it covers all of twenty incidents over thirteen years, mostly on college campuses.
Does it matter that the assaults took place on college campuses?
That’s a funny point of view for you to take. After all, David Horowitz (one of the victims) was often assaulted on college campuses when trying to make the point that liberal “Educators” were totally against the freedom of speech. The professors then rallied their students against Horowitz.
Anyway, the blogs and newspapers you read probably never mentioned the incidents. So just pretend like it never happened.
With calls to bring guns to town hall meetings, it’s only a matter of time.
where the FUCK is the Department of Justice in all of this. get off the sidelines Holder and be a fucking man about these lunatics.
Does anyone remember how all the shit started in Rawanda? Hate radio, thats how. Just like what we have going on now. It’s just that we keep thinking ‘It Couldn’t Happen Here’.
Does it matter that the assaults took place on college campuses?
That’s a funny point of view for you to take. After all, David Horowitz (one of the victims) was often assaulted on college campuses when trying to make the point that liberal “Educators” were totally against the freedom of speech. The professors then rallied their students against Horowitz.
Anyway, the blogs and newspapers you read probably never mentioned the incidents. So just pretend like it never happened.