Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Palin finished?

Post Tucson crystal ball gazing from Bob Ellis at The Drum:
Palin, who may be guilty of ‘encouraging a terrorist act’ is politically finished I would think now, and Donald Trump the automatic Republican front-runner, closely followed by his hair. And Fox News, which has done its fair share of enflaming domestic terrorists with its Tea Party war cries and yodellings, may lose some sponsorship and a lot of audience, fast.
Predicting the future is risky business and Ellis is almost certainly wrong: if anything the seemingly endless stream of anti-right rants – many, like Ellis's, Loughner-like – will eventually produce a backlash that will increase support for the right. Good work Bob, keep it coming – read the whole thing, it's nutty as.

Update

Biologist PZ Myers' immediate reaction to news of the shooting, and I do mean immediate – it wasn't yet known that Congresswoman Giffords had survived being shot:
I'll take a wild guess here. The scumbag who committed this crime has been caught; I'll bet he'll turn out to be a Teabagger who listens to a lot of AM talk radio.
The Tea Party connection didn't pan out so Myers changed tack:
What we have here is an attempted assassination of a politician by an insane crank at a political event, in a state where the political discourse has been an unrelenting howl of eliminationist rhetoric and characterization of anyone to the left of Genghis Khan as a traitor and enemy of the state…and now, when six (including a nine year old girl) lie dead and another fourteen are wounded, now suddenly we're concerned that it is rude and politicizing a tragedy to point out that the right wing has produced a toxic atmosphere that pollutes our politics with hatred and the rhetoric of violence?

Screw that. Now is the time to politicize the hell out of this situation. The people who are complaining are a mix of lefty marshmallows whose first reaction to the fulfillment of right-wing fantasies by a lunatic is to drop to their knees and beg forgiveness for thinking ill of people who paint bullseyes on their political opponents, and right wing cowards who are racing to their usual tactic of attacking their critics to shame them into silence. This is NOT the time to back down and suddenly find it embarrassing to point out that right-wing pundits make a living as professional goads to insanity.
Myers' attempt to score points off a tragedy is truly grotesque. As Tim Blair says, Myers is an idiot, the ever-so-smart scientist still trying to link Loughner to the right. It would be a good idea to wait until there's some evidence, any evidence.


Spelling error: it's Loughner, not Laughner. Corrected.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Richard Ryan said...

MEMO: Andrew Bolt, go fuck yourself!

5:52 PM  
Blogger Boy on a bike said...

Interesting to note that in the SMH entertainment section today, "British rock icon Jack Bruce has called for Simon Cowell's extermination - because he believes the music mogul is single-handedly wrecking the industry."

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/he-should-be-exterminated-20110111-19m0b.html

That passes off without comment. Will anyone come down on Jack Bruce for inciting violence?

6:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Boy on a bike ... I've been a Cream fan for years and found Jack Bruce's comments highly offensive. I was amazed though that the SMH published them without a word of criticism.

7:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bob Ellis a fat lazy pig too insolent to write anything with a hint of fact to suit his middle age pubescent laughable angry view of the world.

I am shocked the ABC would publish it.

Oh wait.....

7:15 PM  
Anonymous Adrian of Adelaide said...

Just read Ellis’s piece. Wow, the things an ageing, irrelevant Lefty has to do these days to distinguish himself from the pack! Clearly boozy Bob has taken a leaf from Germaine Greer’s manual on ‘How to get attention when everyone’s forgotten who you were’.

The piece is just so bad it’s hard to feel anything but pity for Ellis. Halfway through I started wondering if he had completely taken leave of his senses when suddenly he started talking about nose jobs, table top dancers, giant steaks and Elvis weddings.

I suspect even some of his supporters were a bit taken aback, with several gamely trying to characterise it as ‘poetry’.

Several other posters, without the slightest hint of irony, got so lathered up they just couldn’t conceal their hatred of anything American. One even exclaimed: ‘Death to American foreign policy’.

Another praised Bob for ‘getting to the heart of the matter’ but then, in all seriousness, warned him ‘to be very careful if you ever go to the States’. No too much to worry about there I suspect - you need to be sober to get on a plane these days.

And finally, here on this blog, we are treated to the deep insights of Richard Ryan who says it all with “Memo: Andrew Bolt, go fuck yourself”. It just doesn’t get any better than this…

I

8:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It would be a good idea to wait until there's some evidence, any evidence

Given that the Sheriff, who kicked off the whole "political rhetoric" meme is in all probability involved in the investigation, I'm not sure that evidence (in the normal sense of the word) is a realistic prospect.
One hopes that other agencies like FBI will be leading the investigation, and not the political creature that is seeking to cover his own backside. There are numerous accounts of complaints against Loughner due to his making death threats. The Sheriff's department is on record asking complainants not to press charges. Had even one complaint been acted on, Loughner would have found it difficult to (legally) obtain a firearm. Only thing the Sheriff should be saying is "I resign".

If Bob Ellis is the embodiment of truth, then the truth is indeed ugly.

10:37 AM  
Anonymous thefrollickingmole said...

Had a bit of fun with some of Bobs "facts" in the comment section. He did some damage to himself during the 60's didnt he...

http://tizona.wordpress.com/

11:35 AM  

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