When tragedy strikes, Fox News' first thoughts go to how to use it against its political foes. Shame on them.
I'll have more on this story a little later. Meanwhile, check out the video below, via Media Matters, from this morning's Fox & Friends:
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Bemused commented
2015-01-08 04:02:56 -0500
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Thanx Kevin. I, too, remain convinced that hate-speech is an inappropriate instrument that was never intended to be permissible under the First Amendment. Its only purpose is to stoke the fires of hatred and thereby foster violence on the part of others, namely the truly unbalanced (sane people do not walk that talk).
Four of the dead were cartoonists who had for decades been stimulating critical thinking by making fun of all sorts of silliness (political, religious, societal, you name it). They were usually too vulgar for my taste but their aim was to get a laugh (much like the kid calling out “the King has no clothes on!”).
These four are getting all the attention but we should not forget that another eight people were also killed: ordinary reporters/staff (5), policemen (2) and a visitor (1).
This was not a professional attack by any standard: one of the perps left his ID card in the car (fact!) and they left other tracks all over the place. Rather than 9/11, this is comparable to the Boston Marathon attack: two stupid individuals so hyped up by hatred that they “had to do something”. Assault weapons are not easy to get in France (or Europe) where they are rightfully the prerogative of the military. I eagerly await the facts on that detail.
I particularly detest the sort of speculation being proferred by the pundits-du-jour on all the channels, but I guess they’ve got to provide fodder to their audiences even when they’ve got nothing to report.
Four of the dead were cartoonists who had for decades been stimulating critical thinking by making fun of all sorts of silliness (political, religious, societal, you name it). They were usually too vulgar for my taste but their aim was to get a laugh (much like the kid calling out “the King has no clothes on!”).
These four are getting all the attention but we should not forget that another eight people were also killed: ordinary reporters/staff (5), policemen (2) and a visitor (1).
This was not a professional attack by any standard: one of the perps left his ID card in the car (fact!) and they left other tracks all over the place. Rather than 9/11, this is comparable to the Boston Marathon attack: two stupid individuals so hyped up by hatred that they “had to do something”. Assault weapons are not easy to get in France (or Europe) where they are rightfully the prerogative of the military. I eagerly await the facts on that detail.
I particularly detest the sort of speculation being proferred by the pundits-du-jour on all the channels, but I guess they’ve got to provide fodder to their audiences even when they’ve got nothing to report.
Kevin Koster commented
2015-01-07 14:55:31 -0500
· Flag
To most people in the civilized world, what happened in France today was shocking, to say the least. A satirical magazine, which has not spared anyone its comedy (including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, etc), is viciously attacked by terrorists who murder several of its cartoonists. No question that this was a coordinated, vicious attack by terrorists who wanted to kill as many people as they could as quickly as possible. And most people in the world are appalled.
But not Fox News or AM radio. In that alternate universe, this situation becomes a reason to attack President Obama and John Kerry, and to revisit false statements the right wing made about the “Innocence of Muslims” attack video from 2012. The situation suddenly isn’t about the deaths or about finding those responsible. It exists solely to try to pull some kind of “gotcha” comparison between the French magazine and the 2012 YouTube video. As if defending the rights to expression by the magazine meant that it was somehow hypocritical to have dealt with the obvious hate speech of the “Innocence of Muslims” video. And this incident gives the right wing a double pump – as they also play the card of “Why does Islam get offended so easily, huh?” Not to mention some fairly cheap shots at John Kerry for speaking in French.
So let’s be honest and show the actual difference between Charlie Hebdo and the work of Nakoula in 2012. Nakoula, a convicted fraudster, committed a fairly serious act of hate speech in 2011-2012, pulling together what was supposed to be a video called “Desert Warrior” and then dubbing and editing the project into something called “Innocence of Muslims”. The edited version was uploaded to YouTube in July 2012 and spread virally all over the world, particularly after Nakoula uploaded an Arabic dubbed version in early September 2012. The thirteen minute “trailer” video was advertised in Arabic at various places with verbage that indicated it was going to tell the truth about who was really responsible for things like “the killing of our children in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan”. Anyone watching it saw an outrageous video depicting Muhammad in as vicious and horrible a manner as possible. So this was obviously being set up as click bait for angry people in the Islamic world to begin with. Once the dubbed video went viral, all hell broke loose in the Middle East, and US Embassies were the targets of protests and full-on riots, particularly in Cairo, where demonstrators came over the wall and burned the US flag. Fox News of course covered these protests and riots with increasing glee, with Sean Hannity barely able to contain himself while crowing that “under President Obama’s ‘leadership’, the Middle East is ON FIRE!” This was presumably meant to support Mitt Romney’s failing presidential bid while undermining President Obama’s experience in foreign relations. The protests and riots around the Middle East resulted in over 50 people dying, nearly 700 being injured and a fair amount of property damage as well. (And in the cloak of all the unrest, Libyan terrorists launched their own attack on the US Benghazi Annex – thus scoring a big hit for themselves as they were able to continue their attack much longer than they could have had the rest of the region not been “ON FIRE!”, as Hannity put it so nicely just a few days earlier.)
The video was traced back to Nakoula, who was using multiple aliases to both produce and distribute the video, which was a direct violation of his probation for earlier fraudulent activity. YouTube tried to block the video where it could, and there were orders to actually pull the video down. But it was a bit late – the video had already spread virally and the horse was long out of the barn. Given that the video was perceived as a US production, it was more than appropriate for US officials, including the President, to condemn it as hate speech and as nothing that reflected the actual thoughts or feelings of Americans toward the Islamic people of the rest of the world. What happened here was a deliberate act of hate speech, intended to provoke people into violence, and it succeeded. Nakoula’s actions were intended to cause unrest and presumably notoriety for himself, and he succeeded. He also sparked the deaths of over 50 people. This was not an act of Nakoula just trying to write a poem or a book or make a personal statement of his artistry. This was a YouTube video literally being used as a weapon. There is a huge difference between Salman Rushdie writing a book called “The Satanic Verses” where he dealt with the issue of Muhammad as a man on Earth (much like Nikos Kazantzakis did with “The Last Temptation of Christ”) and Nakoula throwing this video at the world and lighting the match. Given that Nakoula couldn’t be directly prosecuted for the deaths of all those people, there is at least some justice in that the US was able to get him for what they could –he pled guilty to four counts, was imprisoned for a year in federal prison and is still considered under supervised release today.
Contrary to what the right wing wants you to believe, Nakoula’s video was seen by millions of people when it went viral, and those who had seen it told millions more people about it – that it was an American video deliberately attacking Islamic culture. It was not a “YouTube video that NOBODY EVER SAW”. (The right wing may be mistaking that idea from a comment by one person who said that “the full version of the movie” was only shown once to an audience of 10 people in Hollywood. We don’t know that a “full version” of the movie ever existed – we only know that the thirteen minute version exists, and that it was seen by a LOT more people than ten.)
Now, contrast that with Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in France that has existed for several decades. They are known for being unabashedly left wing and for being anti-religious. They do not discriminate against any one religion. They have posted cartoons critical of Islam, of Catholicism, of Judaism, etc. They are not considered hate speech by any means, as their cartoons are not intended to provoke anyone into violence or anger. They are poking fun. If you’re reading Charlie Hebdo, you know what you’re getting into. It’s like reading The Onion here. Launching an attack against Charlie Hebdo meant literally gunning down cartoonists at their desks.
There is a difference between exercising your right to free speech, and exercising hate speech. The former involves expressing a point of view and debating others with it. The latter involves using speech as a weapon – such as yelling FIRE in a crowded theater and triggering a stampede. It’s not hard to understand the distinction. And the right wing is fully aware of it. Which makes their latest statements even harder to stomach.
But not Fox News or AM radio. In that alternate universe, this situation becomes a reason to attack President Obama and John Kerry, and to revisit false statements the right wing made about the “Innocence of Muslims” attack video from 2012. The situation suddenly isn’t about the deaths or about finding those responsible. It exists solely to try to pull some kind of “gotcha” comparison between the French magazine and the 2012 YouTube video. As if defending the rights to expression by the magazine meant that it was somehow hypocritical to have dealt with the obvious hate speech of the “Innocence of Muslims” video. And this incident gives the right wing a double pump – as they also play the card of “Why does Islam get offended so easily, huh?” Not to mention some fairly cheap shots at John Kerry for speaking in French.
So let’s be honest and show the actual difference between Charlie Hebdo and the work of Nakoula in 2012. Nakoula, a convicted fraudster, committed a fairly serious act of hate speech in 2011-2012, pulling together what was supposed to be a video called “Desert Warrior” and then dubbing and editing the project into something called “Innocence of Muslims”. The edited version was uploaded to YouTube in July 2012 and spread virally all over the world, particularly after Nakoula uploaded an Arabic dubbed version in early September 2012. The thirteen minute “trailer” video was advertised in Arabic at various places with verbage that indicated it was going to tell the truth about who was really responsible for things like “the killing of our children in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan”. Anyone watching it saw an outrageous video depicting Muhammad in as vicious and horrible a manner as possible. So this was obviously being set up as click bait for angry people in the Islamic world to begin with. Once the dubbed video went viral, all hell broke loose in the Middle East, and US Embassies were the targets of protests and full-on riots, particularly in Cairo, where demonstrators came over the wall and burned the US flag. Fox News of course covered these protests and riots with increasing glee, with Sean Hannity barely able to contain himself while crowing that “under President Obama’s ‘leadership’, the Middle East is ON FIRE!” This was presumably meant to support Mitt Romney’s failing presidential bid while undermining President Obama’s experience in foreign relations. The protests and riots around the Middle East resulted in over 50 people dying, nearly 700 being injured and a fair amount of property damage as well. (And in the cloak of all the unrest, Libyan terrorists launched their own attack on the US Benghazi Annex – thus scoring a big hit for themselves as they were able to continue their attack much longer than they could have had the rest of the region not been “ON FIRE!”, as Hannity put it so nicely just a few days earlier.)
The video was traced back to Nakoula, who was using multiple aliases to both produce and distribute the video, which was a direct violation of his probation for earlier fraudulent activity. YouTube tried to block the video where it could, and there were orders to actually pull the video down. But it was a bit late – the video had already spread virally and the horse was long out of the barn. Given that the video was perceived as a US production, it was more than appropriate for US officials, including the President, to condemn it as hate speech and as nothing that reflected the actual thoughts or feelings of Americans toward the Islamic people of the rest of the world. What happened here was a deliberate act of hate speech, intended to provoke people into violence, and it succeeded. Nakoula’s actions were intended to cause unrest and presumably notoriety for himself, and he succeeded. He also sparked the deaths of over 50 people. This was not an act of Nakoula just trying to write a poem or a book or make a personal statement of his artistry. This was a YouTube video literally being used as a weapon. There is a huge difference between Salman Rushdie writing a book called “The Satanic Verses” where he dealt with the issue of Muhammad as a man on Earth (much like Nikos Kazantzakis did with “The Last Temptation of Christ”) and Nakoula throwing this video at the world and lighting the match. Given that Nakoula couldn’t be directly prosecuted for the deaths of all those people, there is at least some justice in that the US was able to get him for what they could –he pled guilty to four counts, was imprisoned for a year in federal prison and is still considered under supervised release today.
Contrary to what the right wing wants you to believe, Nakoula’s video was seen by millions of people when it went viral, and those who had seen it told millions more people about it – that it was an American video deliberately attacking Islamic culture. It was not a “YouTube video that NOBODY EVER SAW”. (The right wing may be mistaking that idea from a comment by one person who said that “the full version of the movie” was only shown once to an audience of 10 people in Hollywood. We don’t know that a “full version” of the movie ever existed – we only know that the thirteen minute version exists, and that it was seen by a LOT more people than ten.)
Now, contrast that with Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in France that has existed for several decades. They are known for being unabashedly left wing and for being anti-religious. They do not discriminate against any one religion. They have posted cartoons critical of Islam, of Catholicism, of Judaism, etc. They are not considered hate speech by any means, as their cartoons are not intended to provoke anyone into violence or anger. They are poking fun. If you’re reading Charlie Hebdo, you know what you’re getting into. It’s like reading The Onion here. Launching an attack against Charlie Hebdo meant literally gunning down cartoonists at their desks.
There is a difference between exercising your right to free speech, and exercising hate speech. The former involves expressing a point of view and debating others with it. The latter involves using speech as a weapon – such as yelling FIRE in a crowded theater and triggering a stampede. It’s not hard to understand the distinction. And the right wing is fully aware of it. Which makes their latest statements even harder to stomach.
Erich Pomfret commented
2015-01-07 13:59:56 -0500
· Flag
Ellen, I honestly don’t know how you can watch this trash every day and remain sane. I caught about 10-15 minutes of Outnumbered on XM radio in the car today, and feel soiled.
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2015-01-07 12:56:00 -0500