Terror Porn
The N.R.A. and the current state of journalism.
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Posts
- U.S. Acknowledges Killing 4 Americans in Drone Strikes – NYTimes.com by David Feldman - No Comment
- Pritzker Understated Income by David Feldman - No Comment
- Robert Reich (Global Capital and the Nation State) by David Feldman - No Comment
- Robert Reich (Global Capital and the Nation State) by David Feldman - No Comment
Sally Hampton: Vegans Killing Flies
Buck Jones: Vegans Killing Flies
Russell Martin: Mac McClelland
About David Feldman
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The grief has become ritualized. That’s how the gun nuts can get away with the whole ‘It’s too early to talk regulations’ and ‘the blood isn’t even dry yet’ excuses for avoiding discussion of future prevention. Terror porn –> hours & hours of coverage –> viewers –> ratings.
The NRA et al have used this ritual, this sacrament-alization of grief, as a smokescreen. And the Media has helped them by treating “Guns Don’t Kill People” as an equally valid point of view, in that way that they do. But promoting the controversy is the same as Teaching The Controversy.
If there is an upside to the tragedy, it is that Americans react to crisis, the bigger the crisis the bigger the reaction. Maybe Newtown is big enough to hold our attention long enough to see radical gun control legislation all the way through to the president’s desk. Maybe this time.
A mouthpiece for ‘Responsible Gun Owners’ was a guest of Piers Morgan yesterday (I know, I know). Morgan specifically asked him for an example of an armed person intervening to stop a massacre. The best he could do was the recent Oregon mall shooting — but that was an armed person who DIDN’T intervene because he was afraid of hitting a bystander. I tweeted over the weekend about this myth of ubiquitous armed readiness, and no one could give me an example.
Actually there are many examples of armed bystanders intervening in a shooting – I’m surprised the guest on Piers Morgan didn’t provide any. Mogadishu, for example? Or perhaps Beirut in the 1980′s?
I just came across Mike Huckabee’s “remarks” (remarks may be a bit too respectful a word for the utterings of this “aw shucks, golly gee” mouth breather) in which he claims that America doesn’t have a gun problem, but a sin problem, which is why there are all of these mass shootings, gosh darnit. It’s because we took God out of the school that all of this happens, donchaknow. (ref.: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/james_dobson_blames_gays_abortion_for_shootings/).
To use his logic, a country that is completely secular such as, oh I don’t know Japan, or where I live (France), must be just riddled with mass shootings, violence, and yes, while we do have a lot of cornholers marching in the streets (I’m trying to bring that term back, btw … taking the social stigma out of it) and iphones (what-the-what?), we don’t have the pandemic of violence like the US.
So maybe it is a gun problem.
The Idiocracy is in full effect.
Now back to the shiny metal object channel.