"She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes."
By the way, has Blow walked back from his violent metaphor yet? Not only did he plant the image of shooting repeatedly at Sarah Palin in the minds of America's psychopaths and assorted young left-wing idealists, he compounded it with the suggestion that she isn't even human, that she is a monster who ought to be destroyed. Come on, Charles! Does the new civility apply to you or not?
"And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.... [I]f you're using this event to criticize the 'rhetoric' of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the 'rhetoric' and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?"
ADDED: Remember when liberal NYT columnist Charles Blow said this about Sarah Palin: "She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes." AND: Why did I add that? Just as one example of what I think are many, many expressions of violence aimed at Sarah Palin. This attempt to connect Sarah Palin to the shooting is one of the most ridiculous and despicable political arguments I have ever seen.
If a conservative columnist had come up with that image to describe a liberal politician, liberals would gasp and scold about the violence seething in the conservative brain.
People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.
So the reason for calling off the attacks is that they're not working. Whatever happened to the "restore sanity" movement that briefly bubbled up — the idea that civility was a free-standing value? I assume the idea that moderate discourse is an end in itself was always only a pose. That is, the idea that civility was an end was a means to an end. When that end wasn't achieved — liberals lost the elections — the means was abandoned. Attacks flared. But attacks failed. At least Blow isn't pretending to believe in civility as an end in itself.
Says Charles M. Blow, apparently longing for political parties with powerful leaders who tell all the little people what to do. Grassroots democracy is a monstrous thing... to Blow.
Oh, and also, per Blow, you're a big bunch of racists.
"It is the opinion of this court that the right to speak without censorship or fear of intimidation is fundamental to a healthy democracy," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.... "In short, freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers."
The decision came Monday in response to the case of a Charleston, WV theater troupe that had been sued by city officials for staging a sexually explicit play with public funds. Reversing the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the theater, an outcome free-speech advocates are calling a victory and Justice Ginsburg called "a bitch-slap in the face of all those uptight limp-dicks."...
The Onion goes after social conservatives clamping down on sexually explicit speech.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you really understand what 'abridging the freedom of speech' means at all," said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. "I'm also wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression fucked into your empty hick skulls."
Hicks.
Are hicks the threat to free speech? Maybe 20 or 30 years ago.
The Onion quotes Justice Breyer:
It likewise bears noting that, even if everyone on this court got brain damage and ruled against protected speech, we're sure as fuck not starting on some harmless bullshit play. We'd start on that ignorant-ass, Bible-thumping, Fred Phelps homophobe shit. How would those Jesus-blowing backwoods cracker motherfuckers like that?
See? The liberal urge — which is what motivates The Onion's writers — is to repress the speech it disapproves of. And that is the real threat to free speech that we experience today. At first glance this satire appears to be vigorously pro-free-speech, but I suspect that it's only pro-liberal speech. Maybe my suspicion is wrong, but I'd find The Onion a lot funnier if its satire caused its readers a little pain, instead of nudging them to laugh at people they already hold in contempt.
To test your commitment to free speech rights, think of some expression you hate and imagine protecting that. Don't think of something you love and imagine someone else repressing it. That's the test of whether you support free speech rights. The Onion doesn't test itself or its readers. And that makes The Onion's speech too bland. Come on, it's The Onion. Onion. Bland isn't true to that name.
There's a Nebraska law that bans "most abortions after 20 weeks on the theory that that’s when the fetus can feel pain." There's a Mississippi bill forbidding public financing of abortions. And there are 2 new Oklahoma laws: "One requires women, even those seeking to end a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, to have an ultrasound and have the fetus described to them. The other prevents mothers from suing doctors who withhold information about fetal birth defects." Florida also has a new law requiring ultrasound before an abortion.
Blow frets that the Supreme Court will reconsider Roe. Of course, the Court reconsidered Roe back in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and any new litigation is highly likely to be only about applying the Casey standard to new legislation.
Blow points to polls:
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Friday found that the percentage of people who think that the Supreme Court is too liberal is at its highest since they began asking the question, as is the percentage of people who say that if Roe v. Wade were to come before the court again, the next justice should vote to overturn it. They’re not the majority, but it’s still not good.
Look at the poll. The question goes back to 7/21/05, when John Roberts was first nominated. 65% of those polled wanted Roe upheld. One month later, the percentage somehow went down to 60%. When Alito was nominated, the number was 64% and then a few weeks later, down to 61%. With Sotomayor, the percentage came in at 60, and now, it's 59%. I'd say the percentage is pretty stable, and there isn't any real downward trend.
According to a Gallup report released on Wednesday, the percentage of college-educated people who favor legal abortion under any circumstances has been dropping since the early 1990s and has now reached a new low. And while the largest overall drop was among men over 65, it was closely followed by a drop among women under 30.
Note that the Gallup question isn't asking about abortion rights. If the Supreme Court stopped protecting access to abortion as a matter of constitutional law, the states could keep it legal. Read the material at the Gallup link, and you'll see that it mostly shows stability in opinion on the subject.
In the end, Blow show why he's pushing readers to think there's a big fight coming. He wants Obama to "nominate a warrior" to the Supreme Court. Instead of recognizing the stability of the case law and of public opinion and accepting the idea of a dignified Supreme Court that applies itself diligently to the task of deciding cases according to an orthodox legal methodology, Blow would like us to view the Court as a political battleground, and he wants a well armed new Justice. The metaphor here is military.
He says he'd like his Supreme Court "warrior" to be someone "who agrees with Representative Long." Here's what Blow said about Long (after noting the new state laws "enacted mostly by men, that seek legal control over women’s bodies"):
I happen to agree with Representative Janet Long of Florida, who said on Friday that you should “stand down if you don’t have ovaries.”
"Stand down." There's that military metaphor again.
