âLegal actionâ? WTF? Stop with the BS.
Tie this to Rachel Maddowâs revelation about attempts to push false stories to the media so that they can point to those false stories and claim media bias. Rovian dirty tricks everywhere.
Welcome to America - the land of opportunists. (er, I mean opportunity)
All the dogs in the neighborhood sure perked up when I read it aloud.
No idea whether BabbleBarbie knew it because, indeed, itâs questionable whether she knows anything. But I do know that the thing that makes right wing racist dog-whistling dog-whistling, rather than just whistling, is pretext and deniability. The way they went directly onto the attack is step two in the racist dog whistle three-step waltz: 1) spurt out coded message to other racists, 2) launch instant faux-wounded attack when called out on it, and then, 3) turn back to the other racists and tell them that that whoever called them out is the ârealâ racist.
The idea that no one at the Young Conservatives has ever heard â14 Wordsâ and was unaware of the connotation is ridiculous. The fact that the banal sentence they pulled out of a speech by Trump has a certain thematic resonance to the â14 words,â just as the speech itself was straight out of the white nationalist alt-right Breitbart fever swamp id was no coincidence.
And the thing is, even if it was just a total coinkydink, there is nothing from the past sixteen years that gives us any reason to grant them the benefit of the doubt on that point.
Huh. Can someone help me figure out how this somehow un-douchebags her or the Young Conservatives?
Bingo. Itâs all about plausible deniability. Heck, itâs not even that really, because itâs generally just not plausible. Rather, it all just has the rudiments of plausibilityâŚthe barest of edges on which their denial can scrabble for a toe hold.
"You start out in 1954 by saying, âNigger, nigger, nigger.â By 1968 you canât say âniggerââthat hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, statesâ rights and all that stuff. Youâre getting so abstract now [that] youâre talking about cutting taxes, and all these things youâre talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. Iâm not saying that. But Iâm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow meâbecause obviously sitting around saying, âWe want to cut this,â is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than âNigger, nigger.â
-Lee Atwater, Champion Waltzer, Grand Wizard of the Dogwhistle (see Willie Horton ad)
So⌠itâs basically that believers of 14/88 who published a piece entitled âWhile Overseas Trump Hails Populist Poland, Declares West Must âDefend Civilizationâ and âFaithââ accuse reporters for reporting they are believers of 14/88?
OK I think I could prove in any court in the land that I have never before made excuses for Ms. Palin and am not making any now.
But.
She has a history of hearing a phrase, garbling it without ever really understanding what it means, and then rebabbling it in a different context. She read the phrase âblood libelâ misused in a column, decided she liked the sound of it, and used it herself all without ever understanding its historical meaning. With another person you might say of this 14 words business âthat canât be a mistake.â But with Palin the likelihood of her making a mistake at any time is higher than for most humans who ever lived. Sheâs a mistake-making machine, a mistake-making legend in her own time. Iâm not saying give her the benefit of any doubt. Sheâs also a damn right-wing loony. But you have to put that genius for mistake-making into the mix.
ETA You know what? Fuck it. And her. Sheâs got a huge history of dog-whistling, like the âshuck and jive schtickâ line she used that time. About the black guy. And then whined her ever-aggrieved innocence to the world. An Alaska journalist who knew her well was once asked to describe her in one word, and the word he picked was âcunning.â There. No excuses.
Trump Gives Speech to the People of Poland, Says 14 Words That Leave Americans Stunned. Also, Polish pianos have 88 keys!
What?
Desperately trying to somehow stay relevant, failed miserably. Why doesnât she get a job like real people instead of living off donation of others.
Chances are she hangs out with wing nuts all the time, and refers to them as âbuddies.â She picks up a few phrases from them that sound cool to her, so she drops them in a tweet to look and sound cool. Sort of like the Asian kid in Eastwoodâs *Gran Torino, who naively drops f-bombs all over the barbershop to prove that he is a regular American guy⌠Even though she (Palin) is still fairly dangerous, she really doesnât have a clue.
Not big fans of the First Amendment, this lotâŚ
âIâm a vacuous dimbulb and thoroughly unqualified to be President of the United States.â
Those are the only 14 words that would stun me coming from Palin.
Exactly. Itâs why, in thinking about the dog whistle in modern context, I finally realized the correct word was âpretextâ and that there shouldnât be any âplausibleâ in front of the âdeniability.â Itâs moved beyond rallying the racists. in its current manifestation itâs intended, as much as anything, as a provocation, an act of aggression.
Because years ago, starting, really, with Limbaughâs re-normalization of racism under the guise of âhumorâ beginning in the 1980âs, they tossed away the dog whistle and replaced it with a big loud-ass shrill police whistle. And year on year, theyâd get right up into our facts and blow loud blasts from the police whistle right into our ears and, when we said âhey! Stop blowing loud-ass police whistle blasts into my ear! Thatâs not acceptable behavior!â Theyâd protest.
âOh, my dear sir! Whatever can you mean! I didnât just blow a big loud-ass shrill police whistle into your ear! I am shocked, shocked and saddened, that you would ever accuse me of such a thing.â And they got away with it, because under the prevailing media conventions of the day, this was a controversy that had to be reported as a disagreement between right and left, as if they themselves had not heard the big shrill loud-ass police whistle blowing.
And that process was one of the things that has brought to a place where a recrudescent, emphasis on âcrud,â Nazi right interfaces with real power once again.
14 Words:
âIlliterate half-term quitter from Methhead Glacier spews neo-Nazi hate. Thanks John McCain!â
Yeah. Same way she picked up âblood libelâ without the first effing clue of the freight the term carried but believed it had to apply to herself because she is always the real victim.
Poor middle conservative âsnowflakes.â Remember, itâs âracistâ to call someone else âracist.â Talk about pretzel logic.
Ooh! Let me play:
"Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut UP! "
Whew! Thanks for the edit. I think that if we are going to be forced to live through The Rise of Teh Stupid, which she really kicked off, that our benifit-of-the-doubt reservoirs need to be drained to their absolute minimum. Itâs only prudent.
Ok well since this isnât a âstoryâ can we play whose clenched fist is more powerful?
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C