Conservative blogger Tyler O’Neil, observing the sputtering outrage from progressives and Democrats (the New York Times even had a lead editorial about it) over President Trump’s description of the partisan effort to remove him from office as a “lynching” (the right word is coup, Mr President), decided to do a little research.
Would you believe that Joe Biden, Rep. Nadler, and many other Democrats used the term “lynching” to describe Bill Clinton’s (completely deserved) impeachment? Sure you would.
With this preface…
#NeverTrump Republican Joe Walsh said this was evidence that Trump is a “horrible human being.” Julián Castro called the lynching comparison “beyond shameful.” Kamala Harris accused Trump of invoking “the pain and trauma of lynching” to “whitewash [his] own corruption.” Elizabeth Warren called Trump’s tweet “beyond disgraceful.”
Most notoriously, former Vice President Joe Biden called the comparison “abhorrent” and “despicable.”
“Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution,” Biden tweeted. “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”
…O’Neil chronicled Democrats’ past use of the same metaphor, without complaints from African-American organizations or the New York Times, oddly enough.
Bravo.
Please post this on Facebook to silence all the posturing by the Facebook Borg over the President’s choice of words, which is, apparently, reserved for Democrats.
Ethics Alarms 
Are Democrats regretting their defense of Bill Clinton in 1998 (who was accused of committing perjury to defeat a sexual harassment lawsuit)?
And for engineering a cover-up. And lying to a grand jury.
No, Michael, they don’t regret defending him. After all, the Democrat Party narrative is that Bill Clinton was impeached for having an affair…which is only personal conduct that has nothing to do with the economy and other important things that a President is responsible for. Unless that President is Donald Trump, of course.
They don’t regret it. They have a double standard and have had one for a long time.
Culture and language on race, gender, and sexuality has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. I doubt that I would have used the word “lynching” 20 years ago, but there is a zero percent chance I would now. This gotcha’ is a bit weak.
Really? Joe Biden in particular is immune to changing mores: witness his exemption from #MeToo sensibilities. I’m pretty observant: I haven’t seen any redefinition of “lynching” as a word, just an increased intensity of efforts to declare that only certain races get to express themselves in certain ways. It’s also no “gotcha!” It’s a clear-cut double standard, no escape.
By the way, “lynching” was a ridiculous word to use in Clinton’s case, and its also inappropriate for Trump.
Meh. Joe’s not my candidate. He’s old and always follows the political winds. I’m actually not up in arms about Trump using the word lynching — well, I would be if he were a normal President. But lynching is probably one of the least offensive things he’s said all week. My point is simply that speech about race has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. When is the last time you’ve heard the word Oriental? Heck, we don’t even say Hispanic anymore. But we did 20 years ago. Most educated people (which should include Presidents) should pause before using the word lynching in 2019.
What’s wrong with Hispanics? Genuine question, not a gotcha.
Most people now use the term Latina or Latino, and even that is being replaced with Latinx. The latter does not roll off my tongue yet, but I am trying.
Shouldn’t you say “most people you know use x y or z?” No one I know uses latinx or Latina. And certainly no one I know uses “meh.” You might as well begin a comment with “I fart in your general direction.” It carries as much persuasive heft. It also says “I, unlike you, live close to New York, and what doesn’t concern me is of no consequence.
Meh.
If they do, then they are mistaken. Latino is a subset of Hispanic (meaning those from Spanish-speaking nations or regions) , which is why most political organizations use Hispanic in their title. Actually, the various groups don’t particularly like being lumped together at all. Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Puerto Rican-Americans and others resent the generalizations.
Just because one’s “crowd” does something doesn’t make it correct or virtuous, but it’s true that a shocking number of people reason that way.
Whenever I see this discussion, it prompts me to go back to watch this fantastic video:
“Most people now use the term Latina or Latino, and even that is being replaced with Latinx. ”
Only in places that live by the progressive whim. Not this is NOT ‘most people.’
In Texas, Hispanic is perfectly fine, and anyone insisting otherwise is laughed out of the room, as they should be. Notice that ‘Hispanic’ is on government forms, like the FASFA and income tax forms. Latino is fine, but covers a smaller slice of the demographic being referred to.
”Most educated people (which should include Presidents) should pause before using the word lynching in 2019.”
When you’re right, you’re right.
Heck, I recall some marvelously WOKE Lebanon Valley College (Anneville, PA) SJW’s-in-Training were so offended that they went above-n-beyond to have the name of Lynch Memorial Hall removed.
Miraculously, the last name of the AG of the self-anointed 4th Greatest President EVAH, which one might opine was in their triggered little safe spaces far more often, escaped unscathed.
Needless to say, a grateful nation breathed a sigh of relief!
“When is the last time you’ve heard the word Oriental? Heck, we don’t even say Hispanic anymore. But we did 20 years ago. Most educated people (which should include Presidents) should pause before using the word lynching in 2019.”
Oriental was considered a dated reference when I was in college, which was a bit longer ago than 20 years. You’re just wrong about Hispanic: the term certainly isn’t considered offensive by most Hispanics, any more than any mass adjective lumping many culturally disparate ethnic groups together.
Actually, most educated people should know that “lynchings” have a broader meaning than just racist murder. Or do they have to use “neck-tie parties” for what happened to Leo Frank and other white victims of vigilante justice?
Bill’s impeachment, and the use of the word lynching, was used years after Clarence Thomas called his confirmation process a “high tech lynching.” And everybody knew what that meant.
I love you Sparty, but your gotcha of the gotcha. Is what’s weak.
Has culture and language changed, nope not one bit! Was the word culture really what you meant to use?
What has changed is that perpetually offended irrational people are exerting ridiculous double standards and blatant hypocrisy all over our society. This particular anti-Trump smear job that’s based on his use of the word lynching is a perfect example of tunnel visioned perpetually offended irrational people acting like complete idiots.
I think the use of the word lynching is incorrect, it’s intentionally bastardizing the word to trigger emotional response. The usage by Democrats when Clinton was being impeached was to trigger an emotional response against the impeachment. Trumps usage is just another tit-for-tat trolling statement to get the Democrats to go berserk and show off more of their signature significant facade-peeling double standards. Democrats are fish in a barrel to Trump’s trolling, they just can’t help themselves but to bite on every piece of bait that Trump throws out there. The Democrats are showing off their stupidity.
UPDATE! Just posted on this—you and your friends are misinformed.
I heard that Joe Biden used it before and, when confronted about it, explained that, when he used it, it was different from the way Trump used it.
Such a statement is so stupid as to be implausible, but it is Joe Biden.
-Jut
And another thing…
I completely reject lynching as a racial thing.
Yes, there is a particular aspect of lynching that was racial. But, The Oxbow Incident, an American Classic (right?) involved a non-racial lynching. Hang ‘Em High (definite classic) did as well. But, lynch mobs can go after anyone.
The desire to racialize the term springs from the same place that all attempts to racialize words does: power.
-Jut
Agreed.
Great point. Thank you, Jut. Objections to Hispanic elude me. Oriental as well. It means east of here. Am I supposed to get all bent out of shape when some refers to people or things as western, as in western civilization. How demeaning! You dare to define a culture by reference to where it isn’t! I’m heading to my safe space. Give me a break.
Biden’s excuse was maybe the dumbest and least-plausible thing he’s said in quite a while. His claim is that Trump “chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching”, but ol’ Joe’s use was a mere slip of the tongue. To believe this, one would have to accept the premise that Trump has any capacity whatsoever to choose his words deliberately, a proposition that his entire career in the public eye has shown to be utterly ludicrous.
Everything Joe says is a slip of the tongue.
Biden’s comment that Trump was using the word as a “dog whistle” is extremely puzzling to me. My first reaction was “WTF?” Exactly which “dogs” was he whistling to? White supremacists? Please explain this to us regular old deplorables, Joe. We don’t know the secret handshake. I fail to see any hidden meaning to the obvious unnecessary hyperbole of his remarks. I’m wondering if Creepy Uncle Joe isn’t sipping from the same jug as Meemaw Clinton.
I think Biden was just bumbling. Does he know what “dog whistle” means? I don’t know. I think he just knows that it’s something trendy to say of a conservative’s inflammatory remark, and so he offers it readily.
I’m with Sparty. Let’s get back to the good old days of normal, better educated Presidents. People who disguise their policies in lies and legalisms. People who accuse the police of acting stupidly or hire attorneys general who push forward progressive concepts like guilty until proven innocent. People who use the state to engage coups against their domestic political enemies.
I miss them so, those good old days.
How is this not a textbook rationalization #2, They’re Just As Bad?
“… because there is other wrongdoing by others that is similar, as bad or worse than the unethical conduct under examination, the wrongdoer’s conduct shouldn’t be criticized or noticed”
Because it isn’t being used to rationalize. There are two ways you could look at this:
1) The language is inoffensive. It was inoffensive when Biden, Nadler, et al said it, and it was inoffensive when Trump said it, the only thing different is the opinion of Trump, and the rest of the world doesn’t have to cater to the neurosis of the left. That is: We aren’t saying this is offensive, we’re pointing out the hypocrisy, and perhaps the hypocrisy is offensive.
2) The language is offensive, and always was offensive. There is a sub-argument to this that the language and/or society has moved on, which means that when Biden, Nadler, et al said it, it was not understood to be offensive the same way it is now. This is probably the better way to argue the point, but I’m not sure that it has the benefit of being true, and regardless of the veracity of it, the individuals who said it then, and are now in the throes of vapours over it now are probably *the* worst possible advocates for the point. “It’s offensive when he says it, even though I said in in basically the exact same context” is never going to go over well without some extreme differentiators.
Bingo.
It is different because the point of the piece was not that using “lynch” was good OR bad, but that if one group used it without criticism, that group should not demand that an adversary using it should be buried in a hail of rocks.
As I wrote, the use of “lynch” was inappropriate in all the cases.
But thanks for making that point: I knew someone would.
But isn’t that literally what “ethics estoppel” is used to reference? That by using a word without criticism (even though it was inappropriate at that time), the group is now estopped from criticizing someone else for using the inappropriate word?
The piece may have been even-handed and simply pointed out the different responses to Democrat vs Republican use of the word (although I would argue that is the “I’m just saying” dodge, where you’re clearly making an argument even though you’re just stating facts). But by recommending the piece be shared to “silence all posturing… over the President’s choice of words” you’re clearly saying that Trump should be immune from criticism over the word just because his adversaries have used it in the past. That’s either “Ethics Estoppel” or “Everybody Does It.”
It is the Democrats and others who used the word to describe the last impeachment effort who are ethically estopped from condemning the next person who does exactly what they did. If the news media treats the episodes differently, they are obligated to explain why this isn’t a double standard.
CNN commentator Keith Boykin (who is reportedly black) on EVIL (mostly) White Republican Y-Chromosomal Units crashing Lefty’s closed door impeachment meeting:
“This looked like a Klan group assembled outside a jail trying to get the sheriff to let them in so they could deliver justice to somebody who was inside.”
Glass half full?
He appears to know enough NOT to reference the term “lynch.”
It’s still called a “lynch mob.” Still Spartan is, unfortunately, engaging in convenient linguistic airbrushing. I get it: the rule is “lynching” and “lynch” are acceptable when Democrats and progressives use them to vilify the Right, but the reverse doesn’t apply. “Times change” the instant a media target uses the same metaphor as a favored Democrat did a year, a decade, or half a minute earlier.
Virginia’s Justin Fairfax, accused twice of sexual assault and being pressured to resign, used the “lynch” metaphor just this year.
I hate responding to Spart because I think this comment section is so starved for left-leaning commentators that when they pop up everyone is eager to tell the left why they’re wrong and it ends up looking like a massive dogpile.
That said…. It’s sure one hell of a wavy line of differentiation sometimes. “It was acceptable, or at least more common, and now it isn’t, except when it is, and when it is, it’s almost always our guy” is such a wonderfully revealing logic pretzel, and I can’t think of a place it’s more applied than on democrats caught up in #metoo, but eventually, a Democrat will slip up and refer to something as a lynching, and it’s going to be one of those litmus tests the left always sets up and fails when the bill comes due.
Because…. Like I’ve said before. They. Don’t. Care. They don’t actually care about racial sensitivity, they aren’t actually looking for couches to faint into or pearls to clutch, they think the voters do and are. This is a power play. It’s both why they can change their positions like a grass in the wind, and why they can excuse the same behavior in their peers that they demonize in their opponents: They have no principles other than the accumulation of power.
“I hate responding to Spart because I think this comment section is so starved for left-leaning commentators that when they pop up everyone is eager to tell the left why they’re wrong and it ends up looking like a massive dogpile.”
Yup. It’s a dilemma. I find myself treating left-leaning commenters with kid-gloves, though Sparty is an exception. I know her, she’s smart as hell, has a sense of humor, and she can take it.
I do wish she’d weigh in more often.
Have any Italians weighed in?
It has probably already happened and I just haven’t heard or read about it yet, but, I am waiting for the morally superior Democrats in Congress to start an investigation of every one of the (automatically) morally inferior Republican Congress members who “crashed” that star cha– er, “hearing” or “inquiry meeting” the other day, for obstruction of justice. Breaking news of the new investigation on CNN in 3…2…1…