USPOL Nov: I would've preferred Huckabee have said nothing at all

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Nov: I would've preferred Huckabee have said nothing at all

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Chalets the Baka posted:

When one Justice dies, the rest should be forced to die with them.

I'm imaging the Justices pulling some Weekend at Bernie's-style shenanigans with the dead one to escape this, at least for a while. If Kennedy was the one that croaked, it would probably be a while before anyone noticed.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 20:14

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 05:01

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

DemeaninDemon posted:

The right wing spin machine can make up anything it wants and their followers will believe it.

This one is pretty amazing since it seems so clear cut. Is my timeline accurate on this?

1. Carson writes a book in which he claims he got a scholarship to West Point
2. Journalists look into it, find that he never applied to West Point, according to West Point
3. Politico calls his campaign, campaign manager says he was told he should apply but decided not to, confirming 2.
4. Politico writes story stating this
5. Carson campaign claims Politico is lying.

I have to say, one of the scariest things about the last couple of election cycles has been watching campaigns realize that they can just straight up deny stuff like this and not pay a price for it with their constituents.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 20:55

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

zoux posted:

Joementum's alter-ego is pushing the narrative that Politico is overplaying its hands because 3 months ago he said this:

Here's the book text:

and these are the people who are still gleefully going on about "herf derf it depends on the definition of "is!""

# ¿ Nov 6, 2015 21:14

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Mr Jaunts posted:

You're both wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJcPVB-we7g

I knew what this was before I clicked the link. This might be the worst song ever created.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2015 19:05

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Casimir Radon posted:

If a cop had done this to a journalist you'd be making GBS threads your pants over it and saying it was definitely assault.

Police are agents of the state, college students protesting are not. Journalists are supposed to be adversarial with those in positions of authority, not people opposing authority.

That whole "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" chestnut. The fact that so many in the media have apparently forgotten this distinction and treat college students who don't cooperate with them the way they should be treating Senators and crooked city councilmen is a big problem.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 04:46

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Casimir Radon posted:

He wasn't being adversarial towards the students, or the stupid teacher. You idiots keep acting like he was there to pull some kind of James O'Keefe gotcha! poo poo. He's a student journalist who was probably only there because he was told to.

He wasn't being particularly aggressive or adversarial, but he was going on about his first amendment rights, which had nothing to do with the situation at hand, since the people preventing him from taking pictures were not government officials or law enforcement. However all the other media types that have subsequently latched onto this story to bemoan the big bad college students oppressing that photographer are displaying exactly the attitude I described.

For the record I think shoving the guy and calling for muscle and all that poo poo was wrong and stupid. I just think that all this weeping and concern trolling over the oppression of journalists by protestors is extremely problematic and indicates a fundamental problem with how some in the press view their jobs.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 04:56

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Tatum Girlparts posted:

He was totally right that he had the right to be there and their disapproval meant literally nothing about that, and it's not his fault that other idiots used him to push an agenda. Equating that to getting aggressive is absurd.

I'm not blaming him for the dumb poo poo David Simon and Jonathan Chait have been saying. I think he handled himself about as well as can be expected and he's been all class afterward.

What I am saying is that the fact that his first response was "but I have a right to be here" kind of tells you where journalism is at right now. There's a distinction between law and ethics. A journalist may have a right to do something but there are plenty of situations where there professional ethics require they handle things with a little bit more delicacy than the law strictly demands. When journalists cover the cops or Congress, doing so by insisting on their rights is appropriate. When they are covering every day citizens, they don't typically lead with "I have a right to be here" because then they get told to gently caress off.

I'm not making an argument about who violated whose rights. I'm making an argument about how apparently, a lot of journalists are more interested in getting cooperation because "my rights" than they are in engaging with their subjects to get the story. If a reporter is covering a potentially dangerous subject, like a mobster or a drug lord, do you think they get all "I have a right to be here and ask you questions!" ? Of course not. They play by their subjects rules to gain their trust as much as possible so they can get the story, because that's supposed to be the bottom line. The whole earning trust and cooperation thing doesn't go out the window just because this particular subject is unlikely to have you killed and dumped in the river.

Journalists exist to promote the public good. That goal should inform their conduct- if jouarnlists are getting mad at subjects for not cooperating instead of asking what they could do differently, they are fundamentally failing in their duty. A protest happened, and instead of informing the public on the how's and the why's and on what led to it, many in the media are running with a ridiculous story about how they're being oppressed by college students. We can argue about whether the protestors' behavior is strategically sound (probably not) but blaming them because the journalists are abdicating their duty to report the actual story here is ridiculous.

DeusExMachinima posted:

Professors employed at a public university are paid by the taxpayers, however. So they probably shouldn't be in a group surrounding a minority photog pushing him along with a bunch of 20 year old (mostly white) dipshits.

Eh I don't buy this. What if she was a janitor instead of a professor? Does the fact that someone is "paid by the taxpayer" on it's own make them a state agent for purposes of determining whether they violated this guy's first amendment rights? That seems pretty silly.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 05:28

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Joementum posted:

Even at private higher ed institutions, physically threatening a student is something that can get you immediately fired no matter if you're faculty or staff.

Which is right and good. I still don't think that qualifies as the government restricting speech.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 05:34

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Tatum Girlparts posted:

It's just a state paid employee restricting the press' access to public, state sponsored, land, that's all. Like, no she didn't tackle him and smash his camera I guess, but I think this is nothing but a state employee restricting the first amendment rights of a journalist.

And again, she herself agrees with that, she says she was in the wrong. This isn't some crazy projection thing, she also has said she actually didn't have any right to impede the dude.

I guess I need to be clearer that I don't think she was in the right, at all. I don't think the students were right to be aggressive or to get physical. I believe I've mentioned all those things but hey, sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle. I'm glad she apologized/was fired and I'm glad the students have since decided to let the press in.

My only point is that there are plenty of situations where journalists face much greater/more dangerous obstacles to reporting a story, and the way they usually get around that is by trying to sympathize with the subject and earn a measure of trust, not by arguing legality. Which, I think it's important to point out, the photographer in this case has sort of done - he's spoken out against students in the video receiving threats and has lamented the fact that other journalists have made him the story instead of the issues the students are protesting.

The Kingfish posted:

Legally speaking if you are comfortable with the way those students and faculty were acting then you had better be comfortable with literally any other organization acting the same way.

Just imagine klan robes instead of backpacks and remember that there is no legal distinction between the two.

Again, I'm not comfortable with the way the students were acting, but I think the reasons they acted that way (distrust of the press due to its handling of issues facing black Americans, for example) are the kind of thing journalism exists to explore, and when a large segment of the press utterly ignores that story in favor of "a reporter got shoved and also this is an example of creeping fascism" we're all the poorer for it.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 05:46

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

CommieGIR posted:

Ear Plugs mostly, though a lot of em probably don't use them.

Hearing loss/hearing damage is a common VA benefits claim, along with back injuries and knee injuries. The hilarious part is how much they emphasize in the service documenting EVERYTHING as a possible disabilities claim for when you get out, almost going so far as to suggest you document mystery ailments as deployment related for benefits.

And yet the military has a ton of guys who rant and rave about welfare.

I always wondered about this. I mean obviously hearing protection is a no brainer when you're training and what not, but how does it work in an active combat situation? It seems like wearing sufficiently effective hearing protection could cause you to miss stuff you actually need to hear, like someone giving orders.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 17:52

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

LGD posted:

Conor Friedersdorf wrote what I thought was a pretty good response to that godawful New Yorker article on Yale and the University of Missouri. It's long enough that I'm not going to quote it into this thread, but if you read Jelani Cobb's piece you should definitely read this one too.

lol

quote:

Defenders of the First Amendment aren�t distracting from attention from racism�they�re preserving the tools necessary to struggle against it.

Yes, because it's the white bloggers and thinkpiece writers who have historically affected change, and not the people doing the actual, and often messy, on the ground work, or the journalists who actually report the real story and not this navel-gazing "am I, white blogger with a national platform, being silenced by critics?" nonsense. I also like how he opens with a school unsuccessfully trying to curb racism with speech codes which...I don't think Mizzou is atempting to do? Similarly, he decries "policing" of Halloween costumes as if trying to make people aware that wearing blackface is insensitive and lovely is really some kind of aggressive act of oppression. It's more of the same bullshit that equates minorities/liberal exercising their first amendment rights with creeping fascism.

It's also silly how Friedersdorf tries to pull a "look at all the good opinions I've had about black issues" move to show that he couldn't possibly be engaging in behavior that minimizes the concerns of the Mizzou students. Cobb even acknowledges toward the end of his piece that these people like Friedersdorf are often not intentionally trying to minimize issues of racism, and yet Friedersdorf still manages to write a piece about how the big bad PC police are calling him a racist.

quote:

about Ferguson�s conspiracy against black residents; racial disparities in police killings; dangers of constructed white identity; the Campaign Zero agenda; the importance of declaring the Charleston attack to be racial terrorism; the long history of thugs attacking black churches; how video is confirming very old claims about prejudice against blacks; the brutality of police culture in Baltimore; radical experiments in converting racists; the importance of grappling with race, even imperfectly; Islamophobia and its deleterious effects; the perils of standing while Hispanic in the Bronx; the harassment of a black man tazed by a white police officer; carnage caused by drone strikes; the horrifying effects of profiling innocent Muslims, etc.

Few outside a small part of the ideological left would mistake me for someone seeking to divert discourse away from racism. Moreover, my advocacy for free speech encompasses numerous articles about controversies having nothing to do with race, as well as advocacy for the First Amendment rights of people fighting racism (including high schoolers who sought to wear �I can�t breathe� t-shirts, Black Lives Matter protestors, and Muslims who sought to build a mosque near Ground Zero.) When a staunch defender of free speech in all realms, who writes about racism as often as I do in a national publication, is reflexively cast as using free speech to divert attention from racism, it suggests a charge rooted in ideological blindness, not careful observation.

If you accidentally hit me in the face and I'm like "yo dawg maybe stop wildly swinging your arms around," and you call for the fainting couch because actually my response is the equivalent of labeling you a violent thug and calling for your arrest...that's kind of on you.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 21:13

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

LGD posted:

Nah, he addresses all the salient points in the Cobb article. Were there any you feel he missed? He also might (or might not) be mad* about being called "tone deaf," but he actually addresses that accusation directly and constructs a cogent argument about why accusations of tone-deafness are beside the point.

*though loving lol that you're needing to pull a "he mad" defense of the Cobb's article

edit:

He's responding to a New Yorker article. I cannot imagine a circumstance where playing the "effete white liberal, not any kind of real ~~man~~ difference maker" is less appropriate.

First of all, I know that, which is pretty obvious from the 90% of my post that you didn't quote. Second, I don't even know what you're on about in that second sentence. The subheader on his article is pretty clearly arguing that the protestors and the New Yorker writer don't properly appreciate how important dudes writing for the Atlantic are to their cause, which I think is pretty silly.

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 22:02

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Radbot posted:

What's the political problem, that people would rather pay healthcare premiums than tax?

Yup. Besides the kneejerk opposition to taxes a lot of people here have, I think a lot of folks think that they'll pay more in taxes than they are in premiums, which is kind of absurd but there it is.

Or they're convinced that hospitals in countries with socialized medicine look like Civil War surgery tents.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 22:14

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

BetterToRuleInHell posted:

You seem to be ignoring completely the video in the post you quoted.

This just in: minorities and oppressed people can do lovely things too, and it doesn't invalidate the legitimate issues they face or critiques about how society at large treats them.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 02:54

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Amergin posted:

BUT! the folks who are trying to convince society to fix those legitimate issues are doing themselves a disservice by doing lovely things and not listening to any critique themselves.

Again, how do you have a successful civil rights movement that is not inclusive?

I don't dispute any of this, but digging up incidents of black people being lovely to other minorities and using that to dispute the entire idea that anti-black racism is more severe, widespread, and impactful than anti-white racism is obtuse in the extreme.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 02:58

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

this_is_hard posted:

more or less, but things such as

basically amount to "send the entire College Republican student body through the disciplinary system"

I mean....

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 21:59

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Gravel Gravy posted:

At least one was confirmed to be a refugee that entered through Greece wasn't there?

As I understand it: they confirmed that a Syrian passport was found, that someone had passed through Greece with that passport, and that the fingerprints of one of the dead gunman matched those of the person that had passed through Greece.

However they haven't confirmed that person is an actual Syrian national, I don't think - there's some speculation they could have gotten a fake passport and purposefully checked in in Greece to make it look like the attack was carried out by someone who came in with the refugees.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 21:06

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Mitt Romney posted:

I don't understand why this has to be some kind of massive complex operation with a huge organization behind it. It doesn't take a lot of money or organization for one guy to organize 4-5 crazies with some ak-47s in populated centers.

It doesn't have to be, but we know that one of ISIS' goals is to spur Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that they'd set one guy up with a fake Syrian passport in pursuit of that goal.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 21:15

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

BI NOW GAY LATER posted:

This is incredible. Bringing back the empty chair meme - because it worked so well the first time.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 16:01

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

zoux posted:

What are we going to end up calling the Paris attacks? 11/13? 13/11? Anyway, post "Paris attacks" polling shows that Americans are predictably turning to Trump in the wake of this.

quote:

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn�t rule it out.

Perhaps some kind of badge?

Hulk Krogan fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Nov 19, 2015

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 16:17

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

JT Jag posted:

I think I've stumbled upon an argument that makes the refugee panickers think twice if nothing else.

The "America is a nation of immigrants argument." Specifically, the "we have seen all of this before and we will see it again" strain.

"This is a country where the Irish were denigrated as drunkards and feared for their secret loyalty to the Pope, where the Chinese were hated for stealing good honest jobs, where the Japanese were loathed and kept in internment camps. Now these people are productive parts of American society. The Syrian refugees would be no different. The American melting pot is undefeated."

"Nice try, but they weren't bloodthirsty religious fanatics bent on destroying our way of life" - terrified racists.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 21:04

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Greatbacon posted:

I need to stop reading about politics while at work, I don't usually want a drink this early in the day...

This last week has been murder on my productivity.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 21:42

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Bash the Fash.

Edit: Actually it would be rad if people started crashing Donald Trump rallies and blasting this and Nazi Punks gently caress Off.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2015 19:48

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Joementum posted:

Someone in Amazon's marketing department thought this would be a totally chill and cool ad design for NYC subways.

Correction: someone in Amazon's marketing department thought this would get a lot of free press for their show.

Seriously though, that's pretty hosed up.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 20:29

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

Yeah I've seen a fair amount of local media coverage. The mayor and I think one or two other politicians came out and said they shouldn't have done it/should take it down.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 20:31

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

All I can think about now when I see Harris or Dawkins running their traps is that episode of Always Sunny when the gang goes around chanting REASON WILL PREVAIL!

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 17:44

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 05:01

Hulk Krogan: Mar 25, 2005

DaveWoo posted:

Rubio: Religion supersedes the rule of law

"If we're ordered to do things that no one has ever ordered us to do and which would be blatantly unconstitutional if they did, we can ignore that. But also somehow that means we don't have to sell gay wedding cakes."

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 21:00

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL Nov: I would've preferred Huckabee have said nothing at all