I'm not getting the point of vilifying this very educated, very experienced, many-president-serving infectious disease specialist. Are people really still trying to say there's no infection? Are they trying to say it's not hurting and killing people?
Are they trying to say the hospitals and clinics aren't overwhelmed by the illness it's causing?
Because all that is true and mocking Fauci doesn't make it untrue.
So what reason on God's green earth would Fauci have to lie that masks and immunizations do work when they really don't? What does he gain from that?
All this vehemence and nitpicking and booing of Dr. Fauci is one thing only: adolescents (who think they're smarter than their parents) rebelling against authority.
The truth is that the critics are not more well read, not more well intentioned, not more capable, not more authoritative.
They just don't want to eat their vegetables or clean up their room and they're yelling "you're not my real dad" and telling all their friends how bad their folks are while they sneak a smoke behind the garage and feel like they're getting away with something.
You have a few here who will tell you how Fauci funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, and that he is directly responsible for creating the pandemic that China intentionally released on the world. Following those comments, they'll express outrage at a lifelong bureaucrat taking away their rights and freedoms (closing things, remote learning, mask-wearing, vaccine mandates). In the next block, they'll complain that Biden has done nothing to control COVID and that his inability to handle it is driving small businesses out and fueling inflation.
Oh yeah...they're also 90% of the very sick and hospitalized right now.
Some of those arguments might be defensible, but there is zero consistency in the logic when you consider more than a single issue simultaneously. It's cultish insanity.
You're lumping every critic/skeptic/objector-to-overreach together as a single homogeneous mass. T'ain't so.
I think my opinions on vaccines, their effectiveness, and their safety are pretty obvious around here. I also don't want anyone forced to get vaxxed against their will. In the current overheated you're-with-us-or-against-us environment that makes me simultaneously an antivaxxer and a a shill for the Faucist Regime. If anyone who deviates from your orthodoxy to any extent whatsoever is The Enemy then you have very few allies.
It is possible that two things can be true at the same time: vaccines can have side effects and still be lower risk than catching a disease. Vaccines can be less than 100% effective and still be a crucial tool in stopping a pandemic. There can be a spectrum of effectiveness for masks without masks being useless theater. There also are situations where imperfect protection makes wearing a mask pointless.
Not everything is about politics. My very very blue in-laws are down with the coof as I type this, tossing our Christmas plans into a cocked hat. Donald F#cking Trump is urging his supporters to get boosted. Not every unvaccinated person wears a MAGA hat.
Your media bubble may not acknowledge any of this complexity, but life is never that simple and clear-cut. It's not about certainty, it's about risk, and risk is hard for us poor humans to understand. But we need to try.
You have a few here who will tell you how Fauci funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, and that he is directly responsible for creating the pandemic that China intentionally released on the world. Following those comments, they'll express outrage at a lifelong bureaucrat taking away their rights and freedoms (closing things, remote learning, mask-wearing, vaccine mandates). In the next block, they'll complain that Biden has done nothing to control COVID and that his inability to handle it is driving small businesses out and fueling inflation.
Oh yeah...they're also 90% of the very sick and hospitalized right now.
Some of those arguments might be defensible, but there is zero consistency in the logic when you consider more than a single issue simultaneously. It's cultish insanity.
There actually are people out there, hyped up by this rhetoric, who will make actual death threats. Who will take those seriously when every word is inflated into an act of war?
Out there?
You have a few here
who will tell you how Fauci funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, and that he is directly responsible for creating the pandemic that China intentionally released on the world. Following those comments, they'll express outrage at a lifelong bureaucrat taking away their rights and freedoms (closing things, remote learning, mask-wearing, vaccine mandates). In the next block, they'll complain that Biden has done nothing to control COVID and that his inability to handle it is driving small businesses out and fueling inflation. Oh yeah...they're also 90% of the very sick and hospitalized right now.
I guess you're referring to me, eh ?
Ain't no one else here left who is questioning St. Antony's cred or the origin of the virus. It's all natural, straight from the bat cave. Right ? And Biden ? Yeah, he's top shelf stuff. He has been so effective in dealing with CV and especially inflation.
There actually are people out there, hyped up by this rhetoric, who will make actual death threats. Who will take those seriously when every word is inflated into an act of war?
Out there?
You have a few here who will tell you how Fauci funded the gain of function research at the Wuhan lab, and that he is directly responsible for creating the pandemic that China intentionally released on the world. Following those comments, they'll express outrage at a lifelong bureaucrat taking away their rights and freedoms (closing things, remote learning, mask-wearing, vaccine mandates). In the next block, they'll complain that Biden has done nothing to control COVID and that his inability to handle it is driving small businesses out and fueling inflation.
Oh yeah...they're also 90% of the very sick and hospitalized right now.
Some of those arguments might be defensible, but there is zero consistency in the logic when you consider more than a single issue simultaneously. It's cultish insanity.
The news cycle began when Dr. Fauci was asked by John Berman on CNN about his reaction to Wattersâ speech advocating that people subject Fauci to a ârhetorical kill shot.â Fauci responded that he found it âhorribleâ and that he thought it was a fireable offense. He was expressing his raw frustration with a vilification campaign against him that has resulted in his having to be protected by security guards and an environment in which public statements like this directed at him are seen as ho-hum events part of todayâs political discourse. That raw statement was news and the story was picked up by media outlets across the board. It was not a manufactured story. Fauciâs outrage was not manufactured. He saw Wattersâ speech as being dangerously provocative. Can you blame him?
I have viewed the entire segment of Wattersâ speech. It is readily available and was a link in many of the online news stories. Like Fauci, I found it to be beyond the pale because of the extremely poor word choices, given that Fauci has been the recipient of numerous death threats and recently was compared on air to Dr. Mengele. It was not just the use of âkill shot.â Watters also advocated that Fauci be the subject of an âambushâ and he repeated a few times that the result of this rhetorical âambushâ would be that âheâs dead. Heâs dead.â And he said it would only take â30 seconds.â It is difficult to dismiss this as just the use of colorful but innocuous language, a tempest in a teapot nit just stirred, but conjured by the media.
The news cycle began a long time before that. This isn't the first example of this kind of behavior—of media dot-connecting to shade opposition rhetoric as something sinister. There have been some recent high-profile cases where media outlets have even had to cough up large settlements for this behavior; an extraordinarily difficult case to make in our legal system, but which their behavior warranted.
We don't know what was shown to Dr. Fauci to provoke his reaction, but I very much doubt it was the whole speech in context. He's a thoughtful guy with a pretty thick skin. It was likely the edited version highlighting the scary scary words; they wanted a colorful reaction and they provoked one.
I sympathize with Dr. Fauci and find the right-wing vilification of him appalling, as you may have read in these very pages. It's part of a pattern of take-no-prisoners rhetoric that our political and media cultures are addicted to. Returning fire against his political enemies does not in any way make this situation better. The war goes on, it escalates, and trust in the media erodes. There actually are people out there, hyped up by this rhetoric, who will make actual death threats. Who will take those seriously when every word is inflated into an act of war?
Maybe worse, what if people try to reach across the barbed wire in this environment? Clearly they can't be trusted. No one on The Other Team is ever sincere, everything they say is a coded message, that outstretched hand must have a dagger up its sleeve. So the war goes on, because war is the only metaphor our media understands anymore.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Dec 23, 2021 - 6:50am
Lazy8 wrote:
Or rather:
See how easy that was, and how dishonest?
How does one go about making sure someone else (especially a political rival) doesn't spin something into a sinister plot? Everything's a dog whistle, no one can be trusted to mean what they actually say. Everybody can edit but nobody will read.
Welcome to the media landscape.
The news cycle began when Dr. Fauci was asked by John Berman on CNN about his reaction to Wattersâ speech advocating that people subject Fauci to a ârhetorical kill shot.â Fauci responded that he found it âhorribleâ and that he thought it was a fireable offense. He was expressing his raw frustration with a vilification campaign against him that has resulted in his having to be protected by security guards and an environment in which public statements like this directed at him are seen as ho-hum events part of todayâs political discourse. That raw statement was news and the story was picked up by media outlets across the board. It was not a manufactured story. Fauciâs outrage was not manufactured. He saw Wattersâ speech as being dangerously provocative. Can you blame him?
I have viewed the entire segment of Wattersâ speech. It is readily available and was a link in many of the online news stories. Like Fauci, I found it to be beyond the pale because of the extremely poor word choices, given that Fauci has been the recipient of numerous death threats and recently was compared on air to Dr. Mengele. It was not just the use of âkill shot.â Watters also advocated that Fauci be the subject of an âambushâ and he repeated a few times that the result of this rhetorical âambushâ would be that âheâs dead. Heâs dead.â And he said it would only take â30 seconds.â It is difficult to dismiss this as just the use of colorful but innocuous language, a tempest in a teapot not just stirred, but conjured by the media.
1. Fair point, but if LWNJs can read between the lines, so can RWNJs.
2. More examples of not possibly being taken out of context and interpreted to imply actual killing. Well, Elmore Leonard probably was and Eminem probably was. Is Watters supposed to be dismissed as just another entertainer? Okay by me, but make sure everyone else knows too.
See how easy that was, and how dishonest?
How does one go about making sure someone else (especially a political rival) doesn't spin something into a sinister plot? Everything's a dog whistle, no one can be trusted to mean what they actually say. Everybody can edit but nobody will read.
If anyone imagines that Watter intended anything other that inciting assassination they are seriously delusional. He knew the forum he was speaking to, and knew how his comments would be received. The man is a goddam terrorist. Period.
If anyone imagines that Watter intended anything other that inciting assassination they are seriously delusional. He knew the forum he was speaking to, and knew how his comments would be received. The man is a goddam terrorist. Period.
the irony is that it seems as though he wants people to aggressively pursue gotcha material and send it back to a preferred news outlet to pimp out ground breaking? no, just more foolish tabloid behavior i worry about the wrasslin' buy in component some people watching might believe
Since the conversation has moved to context and tactics, this behaviour is very little different from Maxine Water's famous call to go out and directly confront and harass Trump admin members and repubs in general anywhere you found them. This to reinforce the already famous confrontations of Trump Press Sec Sanders in that restaurant in Virginia along with Cruz and many others. We've all seen the video of her so there is no need to go find it.
Yeah, the other Watters should have chosen his words a little differently, but in the end, it is the other side of the same coin.
1. The kind of people you're worried about would have heard it in the original context, not surgically snipped to wind knickers.
2. BTW the first time I heard the term "killshot" was in a racquetball lesson, and a quick googling reveals that there is a racquetball gear vendor by that name. Also an Eminem diss track, an Elmore Leonard novel that was way better than the movie made out of it (true of most Elmore Leonard novels), a Nike tennis shoe, and (not making this up) a company that makes cornhole beanbags.
1. Fair point, but if LWNJs can read between the lines, so can RWNJs.
2. More examples of not possibly being taken out of context and interpreted to imply actual killing. Well, Elmore Leonard probably was and Eminem probably was. Is Watters supposed to be dismissed as just another entertainer? Okay by me, but make sure everyone else knows too.
You don't seem to disagree that Watters' language was something to be fired for. Why is that?
Is it not because it's language that could be misconstrued as a literal call for Fauci to be killed? I agree that that's exactly what it sounds like: just ever-so-slightly NOT a literal call for Fauci to be killed, knowing that someone out there will miss the nuance knowwhatImean? knowwhatImean? wink wink nudge nudge. Many many someones, but thankfully we're generally not a nation of violent crazies who take orders to kill from TV personalities. Generally. But cast a wide enough net, it's plain that he's calling for *someone, anyone* to assassinate a doctor for saying doctor stuff.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (also expressed as "troublesome priest" or "meddlesome priest") is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. While the quote was not expressed as an order, it prompted four knights to travel from Normandy to Canterbury, where they killed Becket. The phrase is commonly used in modern-day contexts to express that a ruler's wish may be interpreted as a command by his or her subordinates.
According to historical records, Henry made the outburst on Christmas 1170 at his castle at Bures, Normandy, at the height of the Becket controversy. He had just been informed that Becket had excommunicated a number of bishops supportive of the king, including the Archbishop of York.<1>Edward Grim, who was present at Becket's murder and subsequently wrote the Life of St. Thomas, quotes Henry as saying:
What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!<2>
The popular version of the phrase was first used in 1740 by the author and bookseller Robert Dodsley, in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, where he described Henry II's words as follows: "O wretched Man that I am, who shall deliver me from this turbulent Priest?" This was modelled on Romans 7:24: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"<3> A similar version of the phrase was later used in George Lyttleton's 1772 History of the Life of King Henry the Second, where the quote is rendered as " that he was very unfortunate to have maintained so many cowardly and ungrateful men in his court, none of whom would revenge him of the injuries he sustained from one turbulent priest."<4><5> In The Chronicle of the Kings of England (1821), it becomes "Will none of these lazy insignificant persons, whom I maintain, deliver me from this turbulent priest?", which is then shortened to "who shall deliver me from this turbulent priest?"<6>
This is the kind of phony controversy that makes people distrust anything that comes out of the Team Blue media.
Agree. I get the "they're doing it, so we can too" mentality - but that's for children. CNN took a serious anti-Trump position from the moment he attacked them, which made their analysis biased. Sometimes they get it right, and maybe FOX does too, but it's finding the pearl in a pile of shit, which I'm not willing to waste my time doing. No more Tucker, and - honestly - no more Rachel.
It's worth it to follow Rather's tweets, but I really wish we could see the rise of another Uncle Walter. Anyone know if there's one out there?
