Snippets of Revelation
by digby
Anderson Cooper interviewed Bill Maher tonight, playing Devil's Advocate to Maher's strong denunciation of right wing violence. It's worth watching on the rerun if you care to. This was a highlight:
Cooper: I'm reading biographies of Lincoln and Jefferson and Lincoln had horrible things said about him when he was president, really vicious, vicious stuff.
Maher: Sure, and look what happened to him.
Cooper: well...
Maher: yeah, and we saw how that ended.
I guess Cooper hasn't gotten to the last chapter yet.
In other news, Roger Ailes finally admits that his "news" network shills for conservatives, so truth-telling isn't completely out of fashion on the right:With at least two Fox News personalities taking heat over their perceived role in a mass shooting in Tucson, Ailes sought to defend them in an interview with hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.
“I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually,” he told Simmons. “You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.”
Ignore, for just a moment, the irony of the man who called NPR executives “Nazis” from “the left wing of Nazism” instructing anyone, even Glenn Beck, to drop the bombast and “tone it down.” What’s more interesting is his “I hope the other side does that.
It’s interesting because, according to the official fiction Ailes has put forth since Fox’s founding, Fox isn’t pulling for one team or the other; it only seems that way because every other media institution is so far left
(Read the whole interview and get depressed, though. Russell Simmons goes full "both sides do it." Sad.)
That brings us to this excellent, necessary article from SEK at Lawyers, Guns and Money who teaches rhetoric. Some people instinctively understand what "violent rhetoric" means, but after the last few days it's clear that not everyone does. (And I'm not talking about the flailing right wingers who know very well what they're doing.) Do yourself a favor and read it.
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