The Gateway Pundit, for instance: a website that still as of this morning still blares the lurid, inflammatory but absolutely fake story about an Obama supporter beating and robbing a McCain supporter, is insisting on a very important "link" between Barak Obama, "Jew-hater" Rashid Khalidi, and "terrorist" Bill Ayers. A film clip exists, they say. The existence of a film clip is "confirmed" says the Blog; a clip that shows Obama engaged in Jew-bashing at a dinner in Khalidi's honor in 2003.
It must be true, right? Obama must hate Jews if someone at that dinner read a poem criticizing Israel. Indeed all the Israeli Jews must hate themselves if they oppose their government's policies - and of course all Jews are Israelis, right?
Well forgive me if I automatically discount the kind of article that is designed to be bantered back and forth between people trying hard to maintain a belief; the kind of article that insists a major newspaper is sitting on a scoop of monstrous proportions because they're "Liberal."
"Khalidi and the Obamas were great friends in Chicago and often shared meals together." The quote oozes like pus from a chancre. "By the way, Khalidi was also best friends with Bill Ayers."
continues the writer, suppurating like a bedsore.
It's tempting to correct the flawed grammar and very tempting to note that the entire diatribe hinges upon the crapulous credibility of the writer, but I really don't care about who Obama knows, about who may have said what at some dinner he attended, and I'm certainly not going to inflate this pastiche of fragments to the level of "confirmation" of anything but the desperate need to demonize the Democrat in order to disguise the failure of the Republican. It's the kind of need that prompts a writer to make a jewelled elephant out of a fake police report made by a mentally deranged young woman, painting it up like a cheap whore, decked out with gems of outrage, smug condemnations of the perfidy of Democrats in general and stepping in its own excrement.
That the people who write for this blog really care about whether someone hates Jews is remarkable, but then of course, Obama, by associating with Jew haters, partying with Jew haters, eating dinner with Jew haters, is also part of a great conspiracy against the US and everything this country holds dear - why should I disbelieve? It's all "confirmed!"
Fogg, it seems like a conspiracy-theory mindset: you're "connected to" everybody you've ever met and therefore insidiously responsible for their every action and utterance. Failure to denounce them through a loudspeaker proves you're complicit with them; everybody must be always declaring his or her allegiances and ideology. Fortunately, it just seems to be generating derision this time around--I don't see that many people buying it, even if (perhaps) only because they're too worried about other things.
ReplyDeleteAyers is at the U. of Chicago - right? Are his colleagues in his dept. shunning him out of fear that a promotion committee may withold tenure because by assoc. they must be a terrorists? Somehow I doubt it. Though I'd be curious to know how loudly the U of Ch. is laughing - or not.
ReplyDeleteAs for being a Jew hater because one criticizes the zionists of Israel - oh good heavens.
Idiocy does reign.
Captain, I think there are actually two rhetorical abuses at work here, i.e. the six degrees fallacy, and the hyperbole fallacy. Of the two, it is hard to know which is the worst offender but I will make the perverse love and marriage argument that “you can’t have one without the other.” The names Bill Ayers and Rashad Khalidi are meaningless to blokes like Joe Sixpack until you add the second fallacy. With the right association … KABOOM ... the rhetoric explodes:
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, Bill Ayers = domestic terrorist. Ah, yes, Rashad Khalidi = Anti-Semite.
As far as hyperboles go, the term “Anti-Semite” packs as much mega-tonnage as reductio ad Hitlerum, also known in the Internet community as Godwin’s Law. Regrettably, wingnut pundits do not fully comprehend the implications of Godwin:
“[That] once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress.”
I would not raise the Anti-Semitism hyperbole to the same level as reductio ad Hitlerum because there are still Anti-Semites among us. However, when raised to the level of farce by wingnuttia, there is a valid argument for making this a subset of Godwin.
My own mother once ridiculed me in such a manner. We were discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I had expressed too much Chomsky-like sympathy when she said: “Son, I always knew you were a closet Anti-Semite.”
About a month later, my foreskin grew back.
I think they're just throwing what garbage than can find without a thought to credibility or coherence. Most of these people hate everyone anyway. With an audience that's grasping at turds, there's not need to determine whether any particular one might float.
ReplyDeleteAn e-mail I got this morning insisted that not only was Obama's birth certificate fake, even though the State of Hawaii says it isn't, but that Obama has gone back there to murder his grandmother before she spills the beans that he's really a Malaysian.
Can anyone blame me for asking why Sodom got blasted and Alaska is still here?