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And One Other Bit of Ignorant Hyperbole

From the WaPo’s coverage of another Palin rally, this time for Tea Partyites:

Organizers had said up to 10,000 people might come; about 1 p.m., police estimated the crowd at 7,000.

Among them was Leonard Grimes, a retired logger and registered independent from Golden Valley, Ariz. He called the health-care bill “a joke, just another way to enslave the American public.

It occurs to me that we had what Abraham Lincoln called “the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil” in this country–you know, actual slavery. Whips, chains, manacles, beatings, hounds chasing fugitives in the night. Husbands and wives and children sold away from each other. Many died unnecessarily, many endured a fate worse than death, a life often short and torturous. Seems like it doesn’t really compare to a healthcare bill. Next they’ll be saying that Obama has made them walk a Trail of Tears or something equally ignorant and heinous.

Why, why, why can’t we can the overheated rhetoric and just talk with each other?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 8:25 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “And One Other Bit of Ignorant Hyperbole”

Ian Says:
March 27th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Steve:

Not to re-hash a conversation from below, but you did bring up the Nazis a few posts ago with regard to the Republicans. You have lost the right to complain about people using overheated rhetoric.

Ian
David in Cal Says:
March 28th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Overheated rhetoric about policy is a step up from overheated personal invective IMHO. Calling what one believes is bad policy “slavery” at least focuses the debate on policy, where it belongs. It could lead to a useful discussion of pro’s and con’s of the health bill and its impact on civil liberties.

OTOH calling Bush “Hitler” (991,000 google hits) or Palin “moron” (656,000 hits) or Tea Partiers “racists” (1,680,000 hits) prevents useful discussion and leaves the debate totally in the gutter.
andrew Says:
March 28th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
The lack of self awareness on the Left is breathtaking.
Shaun P. Says:
March 29th, 2010 at 11:09 am
And I find it refreshing that today’s leaders of the Right, who’s fore-bearers started this name-calling a couple of generations ago (e.g., “pinko commie”, “soft on crime”, and a few others I won’t repeat) have decided to call a stop to the vile invective and start talking about policy.

Oh, wait . . . that hasn’t happened, and it won’t.

You want to score points here? Don’t give me search engine hits that just highlight that there are plenty of idiots all over the political spectrum. Get back to me when Nancy Pelosi goes on Keith Olbermann and calls Sarah Palin a “racist moron”.

For now, I’ll gladly call Palin a moron, because she is. You want to equate that to calling Obama a Communist, go right ahead. I’m just another idiot on the left side of the political spectrum who comments on a blog; no one listens to me or pays attention to what I say.

Glenn Beck and Rush and Hannity and BillO and the rest - that’s another matter. And that worries the living daylights out of me.

And One Other Bit of Ignorant Hyperbole

4 Responses to “And One Other Bit of Ignorant Hyperbole”

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