Political YouTube Clips Thread

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Just to be clear, this:

is hate. It may be perfectly justified hate, but that's hate nonetheless. And just to be clear, there is such a thing as justified hate. Hate is not evil, it's a legitimate emotion that can provide a great deal of forewarning. It's only a problem when it's whipped up inappropriately, or targetted at the wrong targets. Still, it's hate.

 

No. That is not hate. What Malkin does is hate. In fact, Malkin is making a living off hate, and quite cynically and lucratively so. The only thing worse than Malkin's posts tend to be the comments on her blog.

 

Bullsh*t, NOG. If I hated Michelle Malkin, I'd say I hate Michelle Malkin. Don't put words in my mouth, and do NOT attribute that word to me when it isn't called for. This is just as infuriating as the crap Snook said.

When conservatives get a reputation for being thin-skinned crybabies, it's for stuff like this. "Oh that DR, so full of hate." I had specific, legitimate criticisms of Michelle Malkin. My opinion - formed from several years of reading her blog and watching her on TV - is that she brings nothing constructive to the debate at large; she only serves to inject partisanship and hysteria in an arena that already has too much of both. Hate, in fact, is what she trades in. Hence, her presence is cancerous to rational debate. Calling my statements hate is a cheap way of dismissing my words as irrational, and by extension, me. Shots don't get much cheaper than that.

If you want to throw the word hate around willy nilly, fine. DO NOT attribute that word to me and my position. Ever.

 

Why? I mean why do you even pay attention to her. I don't listen to Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, or Michael Savage. Nor do I listen to Ed Schultz, Al Franken (although no one does now that he's a senator), Randi Rhodes, Alan Colmes, or Stephanie Miller. Perhaps some of the liberal hosts are not as bad as the conservatives I mentioned -- but I don't listen to them anyway.

I find that "hate" is far too often the medium of choice when one extreme is talking about the other. It is far easier to be critical rather than supportive -- people remember the negatives far longer than positives. Many of these hosts seem to see themselves as important in helping decide the nation's fate (and too often they are right).

There are also a lot more conservative talk show hosts because, quite frankly, the majority of people willing to sit around and listen to these morons spout out inane opinions are conservative. They just turn the station to the moron whose view are closest.

 

Because millions of Americans do pay attention to her. She is very influential. I try my best not to dismiss those I disagree with out of hand, I always try to give them a chance.

Just because I dislike someone and what they're saying doesn't mean they can't ever be right. When they are, I acknowledge it. It's also instructive to know what the other side is thinking (or, as the case is often with Malkin, how they're spinning). Given, 99% of the time when I watch Malkin I just get frustrated and change the channel because she's so infantile, but I still give her that chance. And a second, third, and on and on, because I hold out hope she'll grow up. About the only person I will NEVER listen to is Michael Savage. I even turn on Sean Hannity once in a while (mostly because I was once a fan of his). If that doesn't make me a masochist, I don't know what will.

 

I just have no desire to listen to the spin and risk an ulser. I'm not a fan of extremists and get frustrated by someone who only sees the world in black and white (or red and blue).

 

I hear that, totally. But the way I see it, Rush Limbaugh has, supposedly, 22 million daily listeners. The cynical side of me might think it easy to simply declare them 22 million idiots en masse. It's the easy way. But my pragmatic side encourages me to believe that many of them are actually intelligent and well-meaning, and maybe there is something there worth listening to. So every month or so I give him a chance. Usually 10 minutes or so is all I can stand (his idiot callers make me switch the dial long before he does, though). But I think it's safe to say that's 10 minutes more than many of his listeners ever give liberals.

Needless to say, my cynical side thinks my pragmatic side is a douchebag.

 

For you older guys, have the American political scene always been this harsh and divided? It reminds me almost of a country on the brink of civil war or at least one of those mass protest, losing side not accepting outcome (whether it was fixed or not) than a stable democracy. This is not US bashing really, heck I much more prefer American politics to our own for this very reason. There just seems to be no middle ground whatsoever and it is like watching two armed camps slinging grenades at each other. Our boring politicians talk, sometimes they play sports together. They tend to mildly disagree on issues and then they have long boring speeches explaining why their way of solving the problem is better than the other guys. Sometimes it feels like the disagreements are more cosmetical in nature than anything deeper they tend to agree on most fundamental issues, they tend to have the same goals with where they want society to go they just differ slightly in how to get there. There is very little conflict, and basically no political commentators as you know them in the US and what goes for it spends more time joking with each other in the sofa than actually arguing (and that is between what around here goes for hard core right wingers and hard core communists).

This tension in US politics sure makes it entertaining but I wonder if it in the long run is very healthy and if it is a new thing or older. I am too young to remember all that much before Clinton's last term and the first real US election I followed was the Bush vs Gore one where the trenches were firmly established. Did it start there or has it always been like this? Also, how much of this conflict is media created because as I said it is entertaining so I guess it draws viewers and advertisement and how much is real between the politicians themselves?

 

Ok, let me clarify that. Characterizing anyone as "cancerous" is, 99% of the time, a statement of hate. Unless you are saying she has cancer, or that she reproduces without control and consumes needed resources, it is a critical comparison without good reason, which is almost always caused by severe dislike (aka hate).

To further clarify, what I was trying to show is that real hate isn't what everyone has demonized it as. DR hated what I said about him. So did Ragusa. So did Tal. That may have been legitimate (I may have been mistaken, but that's how I read it), and even good (in that it adequately brought attention to a potentially dangerous misunderstanding), but it was still hate. That is real hate, as opposed to the now-common political concept of "if you raise your voice and disagree with me, you hate and are evil for it".

Lastly, to clarify even further, I never said, or even suggested, that Malkin wasn't a hate-monger (something far worse than simply one who hates, but rather one who sows hate in others). I'm sure her rhetoric is filled with hate around every corner.

I just wanted to clear up that hate shows up on all sides, even (frequently) on these boards, and that it isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are many things we should hate, such as rape, child abuse, slavery, murder, government oppression of it's people, personal betrayals, etc. Politics and rhetoric has a long and sordid history of twisting words so that they loose their original meaning and become simple meaningless insults, and the latest target is this term 'hate'.

I'm sorry if I caused any confusion.

 

joacqin -- the short answer, yes. Some people will claim it's gotten nastier in the past few years, but every election I remember was like this. Every time you get a majority in congress with a president of the same party, the minority party gets nasty. Historically you can also see the rift at a change in parties in the White House -- one of the worst in history was when Eisenhower took over from Truman.

DR: Does that make you half a douchebag or a double douchebag?

 

This invokes in my mind an image of a couple of fuming lefties going, "Damn I hate that Michelle Malkin! She uncovers our every scheme and we can do nothing to shut her up, we got jack to counter anything she says, because...because deep down...we know she speaks the truth."

It's kind of hilarious until you start thinking that to some this may very well be a believable scenario.

 

@ Susi: bingo. Thank you for highlighting the silliness of the sentence that started this whole mess. One sentence dismissed all criticism of Michelle Malkin as "left hatred." As if none of it is warranted.

@ T2: it really depends on the day. Sometimes I'm a douchebag and a half.

@ Nog,

I think its very inflammatory to label someone else's feelings as 'hate.' You may think the definition apt, and it technically is, but the word itself has a very denigrating effect on the person you're directing it to. Hate is very often irrational, and therefore, serves to accuse the person you're directing it to of an absence of rational thought. Calling someone's genuine feelings 'hate' is inherently dismissive of that rational thought and the whole of their argument. Sometimes, rhetorically speaking, this can be intentional and effective, especially when they are in fact being hateful and irrational. And sometimes, as you saw, it can be very infuriating to the other person, even among friends.

I'm a passionate person. I try my best to keep my emotions in check and not go overboard. Most of the time I'm successful, sometimes not. But I think very carefully before I state that I "hate" something, or someone. I said it of Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and I regret it now. I don't like her any more today, but still - once you traffic in "hate" your credibility tends to evaporate, and that's something I take seriously. That is why I fight so hard against people like Michelle Malkin, because she's made a career out of inspiring it in others, for all the wrong reasons. There are those on the left who are just as bad as she is, and I fight them just as hard. I consider it a weakness of character to hate one's enemies, no matter how justified one might feel in doing so.

I just ask that you be very careful in using that word in the future. You can say my words are very intense or even passionate, but only I can declare my own words to be hate, and the same goes for you. Sorry, but I take that very seriously.

 

I'm not sure that's true. To take a totally non-political example, last year, towards the end of the football season, you heard a lot of sports pundits say that Terrel Owens had become a "cancerous" presence in the Cowboys locker room. I think that is an observation - I do not think that those pundits hated TO. Similarly, when DR states that Malkin is a cancerous presence in a political debate, I think that's an observation that when she enters the debate, it degenerates into a partizanship shouting match - it's not a sign of hatred.

@joa - I mostly agree with T2B. The only thing I will add is that in the age of the internet and cable TV, and with entire stations devoted exclusively to covering politics, and with some of these stations having clearly partizan agendas, you hear a lot more about this stuff than you did in the past. I don't think there actually was less 20 or 30 years ago, you just didn't see 24/7 coverage of it.

 

I agree Aldeth. Back in the 70's the political talk show hosts (nutcases) were only on the radio (and AM at that) because there just wasn't the air time for the nutcases to be on TV.

 

Aldeth, to go further on that topic, I believe we don't just have more media coverage, but more people, whether they are politicians or your plain old regular citizens are speaking out or taking action because today's technology allows us to input more. It's not just the media coverage, though you are definitely right, there is alot more of that nowadays.

 

...and now we have 24-hour cable news. The nutcases are TV. Which is why I find myself watching less and less of it. God bless Tivo.

 

And this is exactly what I was trying to draw attention to. Even if all the criticism Malkin gets is "left hatred" (and I'm not saying it is), that still doesn't mean it's invalid.

Now there's a word I don't like any more (too late to fix it): irrational. All emotions are inherrantly 'irrational', because they aren't guided by strict rationality. They are usually guided by some sort of reason or another, though. In fact, short of chemical imbalances (clinical depression and the like), I can't think of a single instance of emotion I've ever heard of that didn't have a reason from the perspective of the person feeling the emotion. Now, sure, that person could have been lied to, but that's just as valid a possibility with rationality as it is with emotion. Wrong facts will always lead to the wrong conclusion, no matter what method you're using to process them.

I'm very impressed with this, DR. I just have one suggestion, and it's something I learned from my wife (a counselor and very logical mind): don't just restrict your emotions or 'keep them in check', but actively examine why you feel them. It can lead to a great deal more control over those emotions than just 'keeping them in check'.

I wish more people thought like this.

Duely noted, and I'll try to remember that.

I don't know anything about Terrel Owens, but I see describing someone as 'cancerous' as having only two possibilities:
1.) you are intending to legitimately characterize something about them as having the nature of cancer, or honestly trying to attach the meaning of that word to the person.
2.) you are trying to attach a very negative and death-associated word to the person, in an attempt to express a very poor opinion of the person. There's a huge difference between saying, "I don't like X", and saying "X is a mother-****ing a**-hole of a b*****d!!" I attach "cancerous" more with the latter than the former.

 

Thanks, Nog. I think we understand each other, though I would just like to make one further point of clarification, so you really understand where we're coming from. When you said:

...these were all very misplaced uses of the word hate. None of us hated what you said, we were critical. Given, I was really pissed off by what you said, but still not hateful. No hatred at all came from Rags or Tal. They calmly and categorically disagreed with your statement. It seems to be a common practice among some conservatives to label disagreeing language as "hate" or "______-bashing," at least in recent years. It's a really chickensh*t way of dismissing an entire person's argument without actually having to address any of it (I'm looking West of Boston when I say that). I see it all the time on FOX News and blogs and talk radio, with people going on about how "hateful" so-and-so is while simultaneously nutpicking and/or misrepresenting their position (Al Gore and Al Franken get this all the time, and it's a stretch to argue that these are angry, hateful men). It's maddening. Calling disagreement - even the vehement and passionate kind - hate, only serves to derail any semblance of actual dialogue.

Hopefully that should better explain our reaction. I think we understand each other now.

 

I never hate the recently deceased.