Every moment is a teachable one
I've been hearing a lot about "teachable moments" lately. Not a phrase I was familiar with until recently.
I was thinking about it when I heard the latest conservative -- actually, the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts -- use the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings as one more opportunity to blame, yes, liberals.
B'wha?
Oh, I get it. Guns don't kill people. Liberals kill people, because Imus....halloween costumes, McCain-Feingold....can't process...shlepmtfudkcherick!
Really. It has been striking to observe the difference in the left and right side of the commentariat in the wake of the murders. When we see a horrible event that results in the death of more than 30 kids at the hands of a deranged guy looking to use them for his 15 minutes, most of us are speechless. Shocked at the horror, at the sadness, at the pointlessness of it all.
Not so the right. No, whether it's Krauthammer's mad psychoanalytical skillz, or Gingrich's incoherent screech about our "culture," or the various defenses of our right to carry concealed weapons, or their insistence that this must, somehow, be related to Islamofaschitlers, they've got plenty to say about it.
It's sad, really.
But Gingrich's idiotic comments -- in fact, his entire idiotic career -- is proof that the right is happiest when they're on the sidelines. Having political power doesn't really work for them, as the last 16 years have shown. They can't govern because they don't really have anything beyond ideology. So they're happiest when their entire responsibility is merely to throw feces at the rest of us.
I was thinking about it when I heard the latest conservative -- actually, the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts -- use the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings as one more opportunity to blame, yes, liberals.
GINGRICH: Well, who has created a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things. Let me carry another example. I strongly supported Imus being dismissed, but I also think the very thing he was dismissed for, which is the use of language which is stunningly degrading of women — the fact, for example, that one of the Halloween costumes this last year was being able to be either a prostitute or a pimp at 10, 11, 12 years of age, buying a costume, and we don't have any discussion about what's happened to our culture because while we're restricting political free speech under McCain-Feingold, we say it's impossible to restrict vulgar and vicious and anti-human speech.
B'wha?
Oh, I get it. Guns don't kill people. Liberals kill people, because Imus....halloween costumes, McCain-Feingold....can't process...shlepmtfudkcherick!
Really. It has been striking to observe the difference in the left and right side of the commentariat in the wake of the murders. When we see a horrible event that results in the death of more than 30 kids at the hands of a deranged guy looking to use them for his 15 minutes, most of us are speechless. Shocked at the horror, at the sadness, at the pointlessness of it all.
Not so the right. No, whether it's Krauthammer's mad psychoanalytical skillz, or Gingrich's incoherent screech about our "culture," or the various defenses of our right to carry concealed weapons, or their insistence that this must, somehow, be related to Islamofaschitlers, they've got plenty to say about it.
It's sad, really.
But Gingrich's idiotic comments -- in fact, his entire idiotic career -- is proof that the right is happiest when they're on the sidelines. Having political power doesn't really work for them, as the last 16 years have shown. They can't govern because they don't really have anything beyond ideology. So they're happiest when their entire responsibility is merely to throw feces at the rest of us.
posted by John at 9:08 AM
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