Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Memo to Republicans: Stop it!
Enough with the phony outrage, already. We all think it is unbelievably tedious when it comes from the left. However successful it may be as a tactic, it is no less tedious coming from the right. Develop other successful tactics -- you do not have to copy everything the left does -- and leave the culture of victimhood to the Democrats.
Title reference here.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Jun 17, 07:01:00 PM:
Amen, TH. When I saw the Palin thing I thought, "Grow a pair of balls, lady. It was a joke!"
It seems like sometimes we are a nation of pussies. Both Dems and Reps need to harden up.
By , at
Wed Jun 17, 07:11:00 PM:
I understand the Palin's getting ticked over it. But, this is out of hand. Like you said, let the Left act like hypersensitive children, we OUGHT to be tough enough to win debates with our BRAINS, not through intimidation.
By , at
Wed Jun 17, 07:48:00 PM:
" Republicans (and the Palin family) tried to twist this quip into a joke about Letterman wanting to rape their underage daughter..."
That so? I thought the objection was slightly more nuanced, but what do I know?
I'm still wondering what Alex R. did to deserve humiliation. Is there something in his background to suggest he's in the habit of screwing young girls? I'm guessing a half-decent lawyer could "twist" Letterman's quip into a libel action. Maybe they were too busy laughing to bother.
By filbert, at
Wed Jun 17, 08:13:00 PM:
How about "enough with the phony outrage about phony outrage?"
Or would that be too post-modern?
By 
TigerHawk, at
Wed Jun 17, 09:00:00 PM:
I'm not outraged, I'm bored. But, more importantly, I'm really fed up with the victim culture. The GOP should be the party of self-reliance, and should stand against efforts in opposition to that as often as possible.
By Dawnfire82, at
Wed Jun 17, 09:04:00 PM:
I suspect people are just enjoying playing offense for a change. Also, after ass kickings in the last couple of elections they're looking for some payback wherever they can find it.
By Elise, at
Thu Jun 18, 12:20:00 AM:
Sure there's some phony outrage (fauxrage, perhaps) floating around and some of it probably does have to do with payback and pointing out hypocrisy and that kind of thing. But there's also some real outrage and I think you see that in the comments at BigHollywood. Frankly, I could care less about the Sykes joke. It was stupid and not funny but so what? There's a lot of that going around and from what I've heard Limbaugh can give as good as he gets.
I thought the Special Olympics joke was way tacky when it happened but there wasn't anything to be done about it - except think Obama was kind of creepy. As commenter Synova at BigHollywood puts it, how does someone get past the age of about 10 without internalizing the rule that making fun of the handicapped is "absolutely not acceptable, ever"?
As for the Letterman/Palin thing, Letterman is a sexist pig but frankly they're so thick on the ground when it comes to Palin I hardly notice them any longer. His "slutty" crack (no pun intended) about her would probably not even have have registered. Sure it was misogynistic but that's kind of dog bites man these days.
But the jokes about her kids? No way. First of all, politicians' kids are off-limits. Second, creepy sexual comments about kids are off-limits. I don't care if he was joking about 14-year-old Willow and statutory rape or suggesting 18-year-old Bristol is a slut, he was not just out of line but way over it. I don't think being angry about that is either phony outrage or tiresome and this time there's something to be done about it.
I'm not much into making signs and marching around or into yelling at CBS. But it seems to me to be perfectly self-reliant to explain to firms that want to sell me stuff that I'm not interested in buying from those who associate with a bad element.
By , at
Thu Jun 18, 12:24:00 AM:
You need to go re-read your Alinsky:
RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
The progg rulebook says, victims win. So let's have victims, faster, please.
By Gary Rosen, at
Thu Jun 18, 03:10:00 AM:
Sheep Nazi has it exactly right. A significant motivation for these reactions is the history the Democrats have of screaming bloody murder when the tables are turned. They need a dose of their own medicine. It also points up the hypocrisy of the media - Republicans have to scream ten times louder to get noticed. I would acknowledge that a time may come when the point has been made and it is better to let it drop.
By , at
Thu Jun 18, 08:34:00 AM:
Elise, I don't recall this type of outrage when John McCain joked at a Republican fundraiser when Clinto was Prez::
"You want to know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly?
Her father is Janet Reno"
Nice, John. Real classy. The President's daughter is butt ugly, and her mother is a lesbian.
Chelsea was 14 years old at the time. Of course, McCain was forced to apologize to the WH (Not sure if he offered one to Janet Reno), and then proceeded to make a run for the WH, and be the Republican's nominee for President.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Jun 18, 10:02:00 AM:
"Chelsea was 14 years old at the time."
No, she wasn't. She was 18.
By , at
Thu Jun 18, 10:40:00 AM:
So therefore it's OK to call the President's daughter ugly and suggest her mother is a lesbian? Really?
Look Letterman's joke was off base whether he was talking about the 14yr old or the 18 yr old but don't get all holier than thouu with whiny end of the world talk because the Democratic's are picking on one of your current svaior's (ahem) innocent daughter.
Letterman pretends to be a comedian who gets paid to mock people. What's McCain's excuse? And all the others who piled on?
By , at
Thu Jun 18, 10:54:00 AM:
Back in those days, it was thought that the media was playing favorites with John McCain by sweeping the crude joke under the rug. Same ol', same ol.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Jun 18, 12:05:00 PM:
I'm not here to defend McCain or lay down the taboos and mores of our society. I simply corrected your 'fact.'
All the rest of that garbage is stuff I neither said nor implied; it's simply what you wish I had said to justify a self-righteous tirade.
By , at
Thu Jun 18, 12:32:00 PM:
The point is not "outrage." The point is that we must take every opportunity to demonstrate that the emperor has no clothes. The members of our captive media are used to having their dumb opinions viewed as gospels by the cool-ade drinkers. We must take every opportunity to emphasize that they are weasels; their own words/actions do this best.
If there is an election in 2010, we'll need as many voters as possible who can see clearly.
By Elise, at
Thu Jun 18, 01:18:00 PM:
Elise, I don't recall this type of outrage when John McCain joked at a Republican fundraiser when Clinto was Prez::
I don't either and part of the reason may be that the joke was not widely reported. According to a contemporaneous account the major news outlets reported on the fact of the joke but not on its exact wording and the White House itself downplayed the joke. Had I known about the joke, I can assure you I would have been just as angry.
And, no, it doesn’t make it better that Chelsea was 18 at the time. Heck, it wouldn’t have been better if Chelsea was 25. Politician’s children are innocent bystanders at any age. This is part of why I’m unimpressed with Letterman’s latest apology which boils down to, hey, I didn’t think I was joking about statutory rape and the 14-year-old; I thought I was calling the 18-year-old a slut. At least McCain had the guts to admit he didn’t have any excuse for his comment.
As for piling on, you might want to check out Bill Maher’s “defense” of David Letterman. I almost wish I had HBO so I could cancel it.
If you read the link provided by DKNY, you would have seen this from Jay Leno:
But Mr. Leno, not one to shrink from the tasteless, protests: "I've never, ever done a Chelsea joke nor would I. Political humor is like the Mafia -- everything's open game as long as you don't go after the families."
Would that we actually lived by that rule.
