Tucson shooting

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Worse than Joe "You Lie!" Wilson; worse than Allan "The Republicans want you to die!" Grayson. Will anyone say so?

Many Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have specifically stated in the past that they have no interest in budget-balancing issues, and that their primary and over-riding objective is to keep government money flowing to their neediest constituents. That’s a narrow and irresponsible position, but defensible if your view of the duty of elected representatives is that they are only advocates for the voters who elect them, and not bound by any obligation to national welfare  as a whole. Even if one accepts this approach (shared by many in the Tea Party), it does not excuse executing that advocacy by stirring up race hatred with diatribes attributing monstrous and unjustified motivations to political adversaries.

In other words, it doesn’t excuse slanderous comments like these about the Tea Party and its adherents, issuing like flaming vomit from the uncivil mouth of Rep. Andre Carson:

“This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me… hanging on a tree. Some of them right now in Congress right now are comfortable with where we were fifty or sixty years ago. But it’s a new day with a black president and a Congressional Black Caucus.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, Ethics Hero: Name Calling and One-Way Civility On the Left

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Boehner was just like this during debt ceiling negotiations. Well, sort-of. OK, he really wasn't like this at all, but I don't like him, so it's not uncivil for me to say he was.

The popular Democratic, progressive, liberal and news media (I know I’m being redundant here) slur for the Republican House and its Tea Party warriors during and after the budget ceiling debate was “terrorists,” suggesting an analogy between the GOP insisting on major expenditure cuts in the budget as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, and political and religious extremists who threaten to kill people if they don’t get their way. Needless to say, it’s a disgraceful, dishonest, illogical and slanderous comparison. Whether the GOP’s negotiating stance was fair, reasonable or right can be debated; that the intent of the strategy was to strengthen the nation’s financial health is not.

To many of the Republicans involved, incurring more debt without a guarantee of serious deficit and debt reduction in the future was more dangerous than allowing the nation to default on its obligations. Add to that the fact that many in the Tea Party  leadership believe that the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling was overblown, and it is clear: the Republicans were using their control over the immediate fate of something progressives  wanted more than conservatives as a bargaining chip in a political disagreement. It may have been irresponsible; it may have been a risk; it may have been a bluff. But it was not terrorism. It was politics. Hardball politics no doubt, but well within accepted standards

Oh, I forgot: there is another reason the Republicans weren’t acting like terrorists. They weren’t threatening to kill anybody, and they didn’t kill anybody. Continue reading →

More Civility Confusion: Jon Huntsman’s Announcement

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

 

"Oh, NO...not THAT!"

To listen to the contempt and outrage expressed by conservative critics of Jon Huntsman’s official presidential campaign kick-off yesterday, one might have thought that he had pledged to conduct his quest for the presidency in Arabic. No, what infuriated Rich and Sean and Mark and the rightward bloggers who adore them is that he pledged…to be civil. Huntsman said:

“Now let me say something about civility. For the sake of the younger generation, it concerns me that civility, humanity and respect are sometimes lost in our interactions as Americans. Our political debates today are corrosive and not reflective of the belief that Abe Lincoln espoused back in his day, that we are a great country because we are a good country. You know what I mean when I say that. We will conduct this campaign on the high road. I don’t think you need to run down someone’s reputation in order to run for the Office of President. Of course we’ll have our disagreements. That’s what campaigns are all about. But I want you to know that I respect my fellow Republican candidates. And I respect the President of the United States. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love. But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better President; not who’s the better American.”

The horror… Continue reading →

Abuse of Power and Press Intimidation At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

"Hey, Herald! Get with the program!"

In response to a complaint by the Boston Herald about the limited access its staff would have to President Obama during his visit to Boston,  Matt Lehrich, an Obama aide, attributed the treatment to the White House’s objections to a front page opinion article by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in which he attacked the administration’s job-creation record. “I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the president’s visits,”  Lehrich told the Herald in an email.

And maybe it does. Then again, there is a mountain of evidence that hundreds of media outlets, including four of the five major TV news organizations, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others, are also biased in their coverage of everything this president does–favorably. Apparently the White House, which has already disgraced itself by repeatedly attacking the one critical network by name for the state offense of not falling into line, can’t abide the fact that some print journalists are as prone to be critical of him as Chris Matthews is likely to get tingles up his leg every time Obama opens his mouth. Their response? Make it harder for the unfavorably biased journalists to cover the news. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Tucson’s NBC Affiliate KVOA

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Next  Monday night’s“Law & Order: LA” episode involves “a crazed gunman” who “goes on a rampage at a political rally, killing a state senator.” Sound’s upsetting. Hmmmm...where have I heard of something like that happening?

Oh, right.

Tuscon, Arizona, where the NBC affiliate, KVOA  has decided that residents are not only too traumatized  to view such an episode “ripped from the headlines,” but apparently to be in the same city where anyone else can view it. Station president and general manager Bill Shaw explains that “the Tucson community is still going through the healing process” and NBC’s show has too many similarities to “that horrible day.” KVOA will broadcast the episode on May 17 starting at 1:05 a.m, because…gee, I can’t figure out what the logic is. To make the show as difficult and inconvenient as possible to see for those in the Tucson area who want to see it?  To punish NBC for broadcasting it at all? This is paternalism of the most offensive and insulting kind.

The censorship of the TV episode is an abuse of the station’s responsibility to the community, and if I was in a position to do so, I’d pull KVOA’s license. Who are the station execs to decide what network fare is or isn’t too traumatic for its viewers? Why would a Tuscon resident who would be traumatized by a fictional drama based on January’s tragic events in the city watch the show? Why shouldn’t a viewer who feels up to the task be allowed to see what everyone else in the country is watching? If the episode is a masterpiece, or sets off a national debate, what right does Bill Shaw have to take Tucson citizens—of all people— out of the debate?

The station’s decision is unfair, disrespectful, presumptuous, an abuse of power and, as is often the result of such ingredients, utterly, utterly stupid.

Are GOP Leaders Obligated to Condemn Doubters of Obama’s Birth and Beliefs?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

No.

But NBC’s David Gregory thinks so. Here was his exchange with Republican Speaker John Boehner on “Meet the Press” yesterday: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Next: A Version of “The Mikado” Without Execution References”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I promise I won’t do this often, but this Comment of the Day is by me, a reply to a comment by Ichneumon, which you will find at the end. I have been involved in this debate elsewhere, and a common “gotcha!” being employed against me is the argument that I jumped the gun defending the production of “The Mikado,” because I didn’t (and don’t yet) know what the exact lyrics were. I think this is worth expanding on, since Ichneumon and others have accused me of being “unethical” for calling the critics of the Palin lyric, whatever it was, ignorant.  Saturday is usually quiet, and this seems to be all that is going on other than the Middle East blowing up; by tomorrow I’m hoping to be able to move on to issues having nothing to do with Sarah Palin, Missoula, or “The Mikado.” So here is my reply to Ichneumon, with sample verses, on the original post, “Next: A Version of “The Mikado” Without Execution References”:

“The fact is, everyone from the Wall Street Journal to local websites to conservative commentators have been slapping around the production without an exact quote from the production. I am in touch with someone in the cast, and am hoping, waiting, to learn exactly what the lyric was. So what, exactly, would you have me do, when the vast majority is citing this, and only this, as the basis for its condemnation: the production put Sarah Palin, by name on Ko-Ko’s list, and this constituted a declaration that she should be killed? Continue reading →

Further Ethical Musings on Ko-Ko’s Little List’s “Eliminationist Rhetoric”: the Duty to Fight the Insanity

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The more I think about the controversy over the Montana production of “The Mikado,” which I discussed in the previous post, the more it bothers me.

The fact that some conservative Missoulans were disturbed by Sarah Palin’s inclusion on the iconic “little list” carried by the fictional Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s classic musical comedy “The Mikado” is disturbing. The fact that the Missoula Community Theater actually caved-in to ignorance and hypersensitivity and removed the lyric is more so.  but the fact that some sensible commentators, like the Wall Street Journal’s usually perceptive and witty James Taranto, have had their brains addled by the current attempt at language, metaphor and humor purging by politically correct hysterics is genuinely terrifying. Continue reading →

Next: A Version of “The Mikado” Without Execution References

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

For a text-book example of how political correctness, ideology, ignorance and a humor deficit can undermine speech, culture and entertainment, we need look no further than Montana, and its public critics of the Missoula Community Theater’s production of “The Mikado,” perhaps the best of all Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and one of the very best musical comedies ever written. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Incivility…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

During the recent eruption of a national obsession with civility in the wake of Jarod Loughner’s shooting rampage—odd, because his actions had nothing whatsoever to do with civility—it became disturbingly evident that most journalists have only a vague sense of what incivility is. For example, using shooting or death metaphors and imagery are not uncivil. Criticism, even strongly-worded criticism, is not uncivil. Calling lies lies is not uncivil, nor is suggesting bad motives for official actions, if the critic believes that bad motives are involved. The fact that intense and passionate condemnation of an individual’s or a group’s actions angers or inflames others does not necessarily mean that the inciting words were uncivil, or even inappropriate.

This, however, is incivility.