Signifying Nothing

by publius

MacBeth V.v

[I]t is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Let me second Hilzoy’s post on the latest howl from the moron-o’sphere. I did, though, want to draw everyone’s attention to this hilarious line from a clearly-annoyed Jake Tapper:

I might suggest those on the blogosphere upset about this story would be better suited directing their ire at those responsible for this problem, which is certainly not new.

Good one, Jake – and best of luck to you on that. The futures market looks pretty grim on that particular outcome though.

Like the Terminator, they’ll be back. The thing about the Malkin/Aces/Reynolds wing of the blogosphere is that wrongness is no obstacle to writing. In fact, it just makes them double down. If anything, the number of words they devote to a topic is directly proportional to their demonstrable wrongness. So no, they’re not going to learn anything – I think S-CHIP taught us that. Tapper is peddling false hopes.

There should, however, be some consequences for ongoing ridiculousness like this. I don’t expect the Malkinites to reform themselves, or to engage in some self-reflection about the underlying cognitive dissonance that’s driving this rage.

What I do hope happens, though, is that the mainstream media takes notice of their non-credibility. The mere fact that a critical mass of these people is squawking should not – ipso facto – guarantee a spot in mainstream news coverage. They have proven themselves unreliable again and again. And just like the mainstream papers don’t report everything that comes out in the National Enquirer (Mickey Kaus excepted), neither should they feel bullied into a writing a story about whatever Michelle Malkin happens to be screeching about that day.

Comments

[Warren Terra]

If we're going all Shakespearean on the issues in this campaign, I prefer to focus on McCain, who has seemingly made a career out of repeatedly belying and betraying his media-fueled imprimatur of rectitude, as an 'Honorable Man'.

Think Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.

[Delicious Pundit]

The mere fact that a critical mass of these people is squawking should not – ipso facto – guarantee a spot in mainstream news coverage.

Shouldn't, but, as long as news must pay its way, probably will. Do you think Jeff Zucker thinks of NBC News's public obligation? No, he only thinks about not getting fired. Pinch Sulzberger wants to make the New York Times the national newspaper of choice for executives in Plano, Tex. and Newport Beach. Too much Krugman-type prophecy is not what these people want to see over breakfast.

[KCinDC]

Unfortunately Tapper is nearly as annoyed and unresponsive when people complain about actual mistakes and misrepresentations in his writing, such as his ridiculous piece that started the "Bill Clinton says we need to slow the economy to fight global warming" story that we'll probably still be hearing about years from now. He eventually changed the headline and added a few weasely words at the end, but the damage was already done. The piece was so bad that Hot Air and some Cornerites said that he was being unfair to Clinton.

[KCinDC]

But after defending a Clinton, let me say that I'm disgusted to see that Hillary has picked up the Obama terrorism smear job that Larry Johnson was pushing recently. I was very unhappy to see Obama was still using those health care flyers, but if she's going to be using this sort of slime, I'm finding it hard to care any more.

[Adam]

OT, but I'm enjoying this NYT article that really really wants to hate Obama, particularly this last bit:

In Edinburg, Tex., Mr. Obama briefly stuck his head through a blue curtain at the far end of the press room.

“Crank it up, guys,” he yelled to reporters bent over their laptops. “Words matter. Don’t listen to Hillary.”

To which he added: “That’s a joke.”

Gotta love that.

Even more OT: is it true that there was some sort of exchange at Obama's presser today about twinkies and mountain dew? Or was that just some randomness I saw on a Big Orange Satan thread?

[felix culpa]

This is a pleasing note: "I really don't pay much attention to blogs," he said. [John Linder (R. GA)] "You can say anything on those blogs without any attribution and get away with it."

Liberal blogs have been influential, the Georgia lawmaker acknowledged. But he dismissed their conservative counterparts, saying, "I don't pay any attention to them." [John Linder (R. GA)], member of the House GOP Steering Committee]
From a thread over at TPM, ‘All the world’s a stage’ (the Bard virus?) citing a post at Redstate, who were much exercised over it. Snarky, even. Here.

[DS]

The way to dusty death. All our yesterdays have lighted fools. Out out brief candle.

So, it's our fault God damned us into creation and left us here in hell that everyone else chose the way of lucifer damning us in God's heaven that he won't change because we chose lucifer. So, it's not bad that their yesterdays have lighted this way and the lighting of this way is brief, but still forces this way.

So, it's boring living this life that has no way out but to cheat the second death that is heard no more.

I guess he means that we should be happy to have it figured out and not having chosen the tale told by an idiot, but trying to end the tale that is this life by understanding it; not being a walking shadow or a poor player.

The police are all mad they're losing their drug money. I guess they are losing the drug war because fools who think they run overseas.

Why did the terminator have to have human flesh anyway? Time travel is supposed to exclude that and it's supposed to creations of Satan, not lucifer, that time travel and those would be robots with a fission eye like Battle Star Galactica............

[Mike Schilling]

It's all so clear now: Bush is Benjy Compson and Cheney is Jason.

[bc]

Let me second Hilzoy’s post on the latest howl from the moron-o’sphere.

The howl goes both ways. Look at the great lengths gone in the comments to Hilzoy's post to justify what was at best a misstatement and incorrect version of the facts.

If anything, the number of words they devote to a topic is directly proportional to their demonstrable wrongness.

I fail to see how "they" are demonstrably wrong. Seems to me that Obama's suggestion that the platoon was out of ammo was demonstrably wrong (as the Captain admitted), as was Obama's claim that they were capturing weapons out of necessity.

I think S-CHIP taught us that.

I see an entirely different connection to the S-Chip. Like there, an anecdote attached to a person or persons is used to prove a point, an anecdote that is either wrong in part or at least open to criticism. Anyone then forwarding criticism is blasted for attacking the person. The focus is diverted from the issue, which is whether the anecdote is factually or logically valid.

Obama misspoke. Clarify, apologize (to the military), and move on.

[OCSteve]

They have proven themselves unreliable again and again

That would depend on your POV I guess.

Just to be contrary (I guess I’m in that kind of mood this weekend) I’ll note that MM didn’t write a single word about this.

[Ugh]

Of, fer fncks sake:

Sen. Barack Obama's refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism.

Just fncking shoot me now.

[stonetools]

Well Obama was basically correct but he exaggerated to make a point. I guess that in a kind of weird way the blogoshere worked.

[Ugh]

OT - anyone else see this Rolling Stone article (I mean, besides Gary)?

Fun quotes:

The American forces responsible for overseeing "volunteer" militias like Osama's have no illusions about their loyalty. "The only reason anything works or anybody deals with us is because we give them money," says a young Army intelligence officer. ... The grunts are frustrated: For most of them, this is as close to combat as they have gotten, and they're eager for action.

"Somebody move!" shouts one soldier. "I'm in the mood to hit somebody!"

Another soldier pushes a suspect against the wall. "You know Abu Ghraib?" he taunts.
...
Raids like this one are scenes in a long-running drama, and by now everyone knows their part by heart. "I bet there's an Iraqi rap song about being arrested by us," an American soldier jokes to me at one point.
...
"If an IED is on the ground," one [American soldier] tells me, "we arrest everybody in a 100-meter radius."

What a clusterfnck.

[cleek]

Well Obama was basically correct but he exaggerated to make a point. I guess that in a kind of weird way the blogoshere worked.

the blogosphere exaggerated the weaker points of Obama's statement to manufacture a point. so, it "worked" in the sense of getting the Groupo Outrageus Perpetuale all juiced-up, again; but as far as proving anything meaningful about anything? nah.

[Gary Farber]

"OT - anyone else see this Rolling Stone article"

But Nir Rosen is a terrorsymp, so it doesn't count.

[John Thullen]

Gary, thanks for fleshing out Nedra Pickler's rep on the previous thread.

You know, even at my advanced stage IV cynicism, I thought to myself, well, Pickler and "its" usual sources are right on schedule -- mainlining their cheap patriotic heroin into the vein the media enthusiastically rolls its sleeve up to receive from the RNC drug syndicate so that it can hit the public's brain receptors, satisfying their craving and causing their eyes to roll up inside their lids in time for the election.

But, I thought, surely it won't work this time. Sure enough, though, MSN has Ugh's cited story front-paged this morning and the clown Jack Kingston, Republican from Georgia (the only person I've ever seen interviewed on the Daily Show who, judging by the low IQ look on his cracker face, had only the slightest inkling that Jon Stewart made his living being funny) is on the Bill Maher show telling us how Obama refuses to pledge allegiance to these here United States of the Confederacy.

In 48 hours, Obama (and his wife) is now the menacing black traitor insurgent. Chris Matthews might slap him across the face and call him "Boy" by the end of the week.

Have they started too soon, I ask myself, with the fairfouling foulfairing hovering through the fog and filthy air? It's only February. Do the great birnham woods have time yet to get their Ent feet moving to higher Dunsinane wood to go against the blood-soaked MacBushes and their Lady Coultermalkinmatalins?

Maybe, like the green pea soup firehosing out of Regan's mouth on their unexorcised turret heads, special effects will run short of manufactured bile (like the military running short of bullets) long before November and Obama won't get thrown down a flight of stairs by the demonRNC and their proxies.

Maybe John McCain, being an honorable man, will call the howling dogfilth off this time. Or maybe he's infected too and wasted all of that honorable behavior on the VC.

Maybe Obama will go on Russert or Matthews wearing hundreds of flag lapel pins, mimicing the war surplus fruit salad of the scum pretenders on the Right. Maybe he'll bear trays of cream pies and when the question of his patriotism comes up, he'll hit the interrogators with one in the face and one in the crotch for good measure and let them know he can take a good joke so why can't they.

Maybe the American electorate will appreciate that sort of funny, eloquent put-down of the limbaughhomunculi infesting and destroying the country these many decades.

Or maybe there is a crazy person out there, caressing the gun the Republican Party has told him is the cure for all that ails and maybe he listens to Kingston and Limbaugh, and Pickler and Redstate and Roger Stone as they drop their hateful, signaling Queen face cards repeatedly in the enabling media and maybe this crazy person takes his patriotism just a might bit more seriously and thinks he will be saving America by getting rid of the black liberal and electing the Republican Party once again.

Then again, maybe not, but this post sent me back to Macbeth and I can't help going all Orson Welles and Roman Polanski with the material.

[von]

The best thing about famous quotes from Shakespeare is that their literal meaning out of context is almost never their actual meaning.

[Ugh]

...as they drop their hateful, signaling Queen face cards repeatedly in the enabling media and maybe this crazy person takes his patriotism just a might bit more seriously and thinks he will be saving America...

Ayup.

[publius]

true von - but i think this use is far less depressing than the real thing's context. i'm about spreading cheer here at ObWi

[nabalzbbfr]

A picture is worth 1000 words:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2048/2286994803_3cf8ac2c29_o.jpg

[Gary Farber]

Too slow, nabalzbbfr.

Tsk.

[Tsam]

John, it does seem that the meme of political assassination threatening black presidential candidates is strongest in their own race.

Alma Powell had this fear.

When I was working late and shared campaign news with the labs head janitor (a cheerful black woman in a Muslim scarf) (news that the one Washington county reported as rejecting Obama was just a transcription error), she responded with her fears that Obama would be assassinated.

Like Katherine in her Stupid Tuesday post (and presumably Obama himself), I am willing to choose hope and risk, to see what good can come of his presidency. But I believe that these fears are quite plausible.

[hilzoy]

Gary and nabalzbbfr: I didn't see this discussion of the photo before I posted on it. Oh well.

[Tsam]

Contributing in secret to far-left candidates has been done by GOP political operatives.

http://tpmmuckraker. talkingpointsmemo.com /cgi-bin/mt4/mt-search.cgi ?IncludeBlogs=12& search=pennsylvania+green &x=4&y=9

Nader may receive similar aid.

[Hartmut]

The idea of Obama doing a "100 lapel pin" event may not actually be bad one, if he can pull it off tongue-in-cheek enough.

[von]

true von - but i think this use is far less depressing than the real thing's context. i'm about spreading cheer here at ObWi

I feel better already.

(My original comment wasn't meant as a ding, just an observation.)