First, anybody besides me have the urge to laugh uncontrollably every time you hear the name “Brad Paisley”?

OK never mind. It’s not his fault. At least I hope not. And Sam Hanna is really rapper LL Cool J, who frankly oughta know better.

On the other hand, it’s quite a gutsy move for “a white man coming to you from the southland” to even speak about race like this. And on the other other hand, the song falls so far short of what I’m sure Brad and Cool hoped that it probably just gives the racists another white sheet to hide behind, because it doesn’t seem much more than another attempt to ease white guilt by saying “everybody does it.”

Brad’s been taking a lot of heat for it, of course, so I shudder to think what kind of heat he might be taking had the song actually been better. The song’s called “Accidental Racist,” and frankly, that’s just a stupid title for a song about a guy who wore a Confederate flag into a Starbucks and expected the barista not to think he was a fucking bigoted asshole.

To the man that waited on me
At the Starbucks down on Main
I hope you understand
When I put on that t-shirt
The only thing I meant to say
Is I’m a Skynyrd fan

Really, Brad? Y’know, Lynyrd Skynyrd once stopped using that damn flag to promote themselves because they were tired of being equated with racists. But the racists got pissed and wouldn’t come to their shows anymore, so they started using it again.

I think the only thing Brad meant to say is that it’s black folks’ fault if seeing the stars and bars upsets them.

And LL Cool J. He has a rap part in this song. He raps that he won’t judge Brad’s “red flag” if Brad won’t judge his “do rag.” Seriously? Is there any kind of correlation between a do rag and the battle flag of the Confederate States of America, which seceded from the United States of America so they could continue to enslave a particular group of people? I didn’t think so.

But that’s not the worst part of LL Cool J’s rap. The worst part is his saying that if Brad will forget about his “gold chains,” he’ll forget about the “iron chains.” Really? Really? How on earth can those two things be equivocal, except that they both involve something worn by an African American?

See, here’s the thing. Brad’s part of the song is kinda whining about how he keeps getting blamed for something done in the past by people who are now dead to other people who are now dead, and it has nothing to do with him.

‘Cause I’m just a white man
Living in the Southland
Just like you, I’m more than what you see
I’m proud of where I’m from
And not everything we’ve done
And it ain’t like you and me to rewrite history
Our generation didn’t start this nation
And we’re still paying for the mistakes
Than a bunch of folks made
Long before we came
Caught somewhere between southern pride
And southern blame

LL Cool J’s part is about how a lot of white people just look at black people and think they’re out to rape and murder them, which is pretty much true. But they both say we should all just sit down, have a beer and get over it.

Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood
What the world is really like when you’re living in the hood
Just because my pants are saggin’ doesn’t mean I’m up to no good
You should try to get to know me, I really wish you would
Now my chains are gold, but I’m still misunderstood
I wasn’t there when Sherman’s March turned the south into firewood
I want you to get paid, but be a slave I never could
Feel like a new-fangled Django dogging invisible white hoods
So when I see that white cowboy hat, I’m thinking it’s not all good
I guess we’re both guilty of judging the cover, not the book
I’d love to buy you a beer, conversate and clear the air
But I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn’t here

Now, there’s some good points there, don’t get me wrong. And it’s a start. It’s just a pretty damn weak start. Do rags don’t equal Confederate flags. Gold chains don’t equal iron chains. And no, Sherman’s march (which was not conducted by African Americans, please remember) does not equal hundreds of years of enforced slavery followed by Jim Crow and institutionalized racism that did not end with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It’s not so much the past racism that bugs people as the present racism. The white south does go to great lengths to pretend that “bygones are bygones” and we’re all starting off on a clean plate, but the truth is, we ain’t. Not by a long shot. So, Brad, while you ain’t proud of everything that was done in your name by your ancestors, you are still wearing the very symbol of the crap that was done in your name by your ancestors. Quit trying to pretend it’s just the innocent symbol of a southern rock band.

Cool, man, them saggy pants just look stupid. I don’t think you’re up to no good if you’re wearing em. I just think you’re an idiot. And it doesn’t matter what color is your skin. Do rags? Gold chains? Seriously? Did you have to search down that deep into stereotypes to find something to falsely compare with the pure hatred and disrespect for human beings represented by that flag?

No matter how hard you want to believe it, guys, this is not some post-racial world. It’s still pretty damn fucked up. It’s still racist and sexist and homophobic and don’t even get me started on the Christianists who think they’re persecuted.

And yeah, the south gets too much of the blame for racism. Every time something happens here, every time somebody uncovers a rural Georgia town of less than 1,500 people that still has segregated proms at its high school of 70 kids, the Yankee haters go berserk with the “too much bigotry in the south” bullshit. One guy said “You wouldn’t find this in New York City!” That’s true. But you also don’t find it in Atlanta. Or Birmingham. Or Charleston. Or Charlotte. Or Nashville. Or Louisville. Or Richmond, the former capital of the CSA. Maybe not even in Jackson, but I can’t say that for sure. And there are other forms of racism to be found in places like New York City.

I could pull up links to all kinds of godawful things that have happened in the north to prove my point. I did, once, years ago, when I got offended by a New York group that call itself “Southerners in Exile.” I basically called them cowards for running off to the Big Apple and hiding in that mass of humanity instead of staying down here and fighting. And turning a blind eye to the bigotry of the north.

But I won’t do that here. It’s off topic, and I’ve strayed too far from the topic already.

Brad, Cool, nice try. Next time, though, get real.

Click here to view the embedded video.

National political diversity requires good will and intelligence to work comfortably. The new visual media are not an unmixed blessing. This new diversity causes one to hope that the good will and intelligence of the nation is sufficiently broad-based to allow it to withstand the increasing communication pressures of the future.

– Paul Baran, 1969

That’s where you’ll find the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known by journos as CPAC, which is not to be confused with C taps or even CPAP, although if you’re anything like me, you may need the latter if you tune listen much to CPAC.

Today was opening day of the annual confab. There’s the usual bunch of inane speakers. Current darling Marco Rubio, past darling Sarah Palin, Sir Filibuster Rand Paul, Palin’s male doppelganger Ted Cruz, Rick “the hair” Perry, Wayne “guns in schools” LaPierre, Newtie, Mittens, Sick Rantorum, The Donald and the king of krazy, Allen West.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t invited. Neither was Muslim hater Pamela Gellar, although she got un-uninvited by the Breitbart crew who was invited.

You remember Andrew Breitbart, don’t you? He died, you know. They had a special memorial for him at CPAC.

There was a gay rights panel too, not called by that name of course. “Rainbow on the Right: Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet” used enough gay dog whistles to get the point across.

The conserverati spent a lot of time talking about Benghazi. You remember that, don’t you? That’s the incident the Republicans used to keep Susan Rice from becoming secretary of state. Instead, she’s likely to become national security adviser, which doesn’t need Senate confirmation.

This is weird. A lot of talk about Benghazi at CPAC

March 14, 2013 2:10 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@joshtpm

Josh Marshall

Really? Weird? Considering that the main thrust of conserverati argument is that Obama is out to destroy America, I think their focus on Benghazi makes sense. They think there was some big cover-up, or some big lack of concern for the security of Americans, or something that led to the death of the ambassador. And it’s all Obama’s fault. If it doesn’t look to you like they’re looking for some reason to impeach, then maybe you need a bigger scope.

Another Republican whack job, Jim Inhofe, spelled it out, although he allowed as how the president is “charming:”

This is the same guy that is … over-regulating all of our businesses, he has a war on fossil fuels, he is keeping us from being energy independent, he is defunding the military. So he’s destroying this country, but yes he’s charming.

Isn’t that sweet?

CPAC represents everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party. The Tea Party hold-outs, the knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers sucking the very life out of everybody who wants to move forward. Hell, even Rick Perry got booed. Know why? Because he said this:

Now, the popular media narrative — is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. That is what they say. That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012. That might be true. But now we are told our party must shift appeal to the growing Hispanic demographic.

He won ‘em back though, talking about winning the Hispanic vote with a economic message and not one about immigration.

But look at what else he said there — John McCain and Mitt Romney weren’t conservative enough to win the election, because, you know, not being conservative enough causes conservatives to vote for more liberal people.

But here’s what these folks don’t seem to understand: The more conservative Republicans — and I assume he’s talking about people like himself, Mike Huckabee, Sick Rantorum, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann — they couldn’t even win a Republican primary. How the hell does he think they’d ever win a general election?

And yet, there it is, for all to see. Even Rubio knows you can’t stay at the bottom of the barrel and ever expect to get out of it. Rand Paul filibustered Obama’s CIA pick over DRONE STRIKES, which probably will guarantee he’ll never win a Republican nomination for president but almost certainly made his daddy proud.

CPAP, in case you were wondering.

For every step a young Republican makes toward progress, there’s two Jim Sensenbrunners to drag him back. But it’s not just the old white guys. When the two Sensenbrunners get tired, there’s a couple of Erick Ericksons or Allen Wests to do the job. And if that’s not good enough, then there’s three or for Marcia Blackburns and a Palin wannabe.

These are the guys Obama and Congressional Democrats have to deal with to get anything done — the ones in Congress, and the ones outside Congress running their mouths on Ayatollah Limbaugh’s radio show or Faux News. The same ones who have over and over and over again stopped any real progress from happening (See Obamacare, compromises of or Kerry, Secretary of State John). 

And yet, today I’m encouraged by one thing. Obama, speaking to Democrats today:

I’m not Charlie Brown with a football,

he said.

That may be true. One question remains, however: Are we?

I’m even sorrier to say that they still are.

It pains me to say it. It pains me to even think it. But alas, it is, sadly, so very, very true.

After its failure in the run-up to the Iraq War, percentage of the effort required that the press had actually spent on lesson learning: 3.

March 3, 2013 5:10 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jayrosen_nyu

Jay Rosen

Last week, I watched my colleagues from inside the Beltway go all a-Twitter (quite literally) over a once-respected journalist who has given that up to write pretty little prose about the people he’s supposed to be critically covering. I don’t pretend to know what happened to him, but a lot happened to journalists after Watergate and since this guy was at Ground Zero for that, I suppose it’s not surprising that he is at the head of the decline that happened to my chosen profession since then.

On the other hand, Carl Bernstein.

But I digress. My colleagues were all a-Twitter (quite literally) over this journo because he whined. He said a White House aide made a veiled threat because he had questioned the White House version of the “sequester”. OK, he didn’t actually say that. He goaded Politico into saying it, based on his hyperbolic rendition of what was actually said. Then Politico got the emails that showed it really wasn’t all that serious, but it was too late. The Inside-The-Beltway journos were off and running.

It only stopped when the president said he wasn’t a dictator and couldn’t perform a Jedi mind meld to make Congress to right. That set them all off because, as we all know, it’s a Vulcan mind meld and a Jedi mind trick, which is so much more important than noting that we’re having this sequester thing — which is a really stupid word for automatic spending cuts — because Republicans absolutely refuse to compromise.

Apparently, telling the truth about Washington is a far left position.

See, these automatic spending cuts came about because Republicans refused to pass a budget that included one iota of tax hikes on the rich. It’s a complex story, how it all came about, but Obama for some godforsaken reason thought that they would come to their senses and pass a budget once the committee that was supposed to forge a compromise failed. I think he actually thought the committee would come to a compromise. Didn’t happen, and isn’t gonna.

Sequestration represents a certain excellence in failure: they can't even design a sword of Damocles that works.

March 2, 2013 4:48 pm via TwitterrificReplyRetweetFavorite

@jdickerson

John Dickerson

But my colleagues just keep reporting that Congress and the White House can’t reach a compromise, which is true, but it’s missing a few pieces. It’s kinda like how during the 2008 election when the crazy conservatives were putting out Liberal Hunting Licenses and pictures of Obama as a witch doctor or growing watermelons on the White House lawn — and the journos searched high and low to find the one crazy liberal who hung Sarah Palin in effigy so they could say both sides do it.

Right.

Here’s the bottom line: Republicans will not vote for anything that will make rich people pay more taxes because It’s Our Money! And they’re scared. They think they need to hoard all their wealth because Scary People!

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is pretty scary for them. Support for same-sex marriage is growing. Americans put the black guy in the Oval Office again. Hillary Clinton still gets high poll numbers. The only thing they have left really is to, as Grover Norquist said back in 2005, “cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

So they stand their ground, refusing to acknowledge that the only compromise they’ll accept is if Obama drops all his demands and does just what they want.

Meanwhile, though, in Commentary, GWB White House veterans Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner set up a five-point plan to save the Republican Party, truthfully noting that the 2012 election wasn’t even close and pointing out that staking the GOP’s future on economic issues might not be really smart. While complaining that Obama has put America on a horribly “progressive” path to the future, Gerson and Wehner said that the Republicans can regain the upper hand by changing the perception that they’re in it for the rich guys, get behind good immigration reform, “demonstrate a commitment to the common good,” quit blaming gays for the decline of the American family (“It is heterosexuals, not homosexuals, who have made a hash out of marriage”) and last but certainly not least, “harness their policy views to the findings of science.”

I’m not holding my breath on any of those. As far as I can tell, all they need to do to stop the bleeding is to become progressive.

But my colleagues aren’t going to tell you any of that. Oh, you could find it for yourself. Ezra Klein writes for the Washington Post. I found the Gerson/Wehner article linked from the New York Times. But who reads those? You know where you’re not gonna hear any of that. On television, cable or otherwise. It’s bad TV, too smart.

And besides, it’s more fun to focus on Bob Woodward and Jedi mind melds. It’s almost like we haven’t had the election yet, and Obama hasn’t won.

So, on behalf of my colleagues, I am so very, very sorry. Nostra culpa.

It’s not just you. It’s our whole damned profession.

My first inkling of this new revelation came during the Newtown shooting coverage, when so much false and/or speculative information was presented as the gospel truth that it could have filled its own Wiki. And now, after the Dorner manhunt in California, my eyes are open, at long last.

My colleagues, you’re a bunch of lazy-assed wannabes wanting to be first so bad that you’ve lost sight of what journalism actually is.

And don’t blame this on social media. It’s true that Twitter and Facebook can get something around the world and on the smart phones of millions before you can bat an eye. But this drive to be first, to forget the dictum “Get it fast, but get it right,” really must be laid right at the feet of the 24-hour cable news networks, who can’t bear to spend even as much as five minutes saying “We just don’t know right now,” especially if one of the other networks is grabbing some scurrilously sourced information and running with it as if their lives depended on it.

What’s missing? Critical thinking. Or, in many cases, any thinking whatsoever. I found my jaw on the floor last night watching my colleagues running each other over to report, from anonymous sources of course, that Christopher Dorner’s body had been pulled from the charred embers of the cabin where he’d taken refuge from police. This, while the damn cabin is still fully engulfed in flames. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to be skeptical of that source’s information, but apparently, it is over the heads of journalists.

THE CABIN IS STILL BURNING. I CAN SEE IT ON LIVE TV. I CAN HEAR ON THE POLICE SCANNER OFFICERS SAYING THEY’RE NOT GOING IN UNTIL THE FIRE’S OUT AND THE FIRE DEPARTMENT SAYS IT’S SAFE. But never mind, a source who wants anonymity and is in some office somewhere says they got Dorner’s body out and that’s enough to go to air.

My favorite part, of course, is that this anonymous source was universally described as being from the Los Angeles Police Department, which was not on the scene. And that is until the Riverside Police chief, also not on the scene, said the same thing, which is even dumber than trying to be anonymous and talk about things you don’t know anything about.

But never mind, those reports went on the air. And then when actual public information officer from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office on the scene said things like, “The cabin is burning. It’s too hot to go in so we haven’t gone in, and I have no idea who is telling you otherwise,” what do the so-called journalists do? Why, they say “conflicting reports!” Just wouldn’t do to admit they were being complete idiots by rushing to air, or Twitter, or the website or anywhere else with unconfirmed information that they seriously should have questioned based on simple common sense.

The cabin is burning. It’s very hot. Nobody’s going in there until the Fire Department says it’s safe, and you really don’t need a police spokeswoman to tell you that. Nor do you need a police spokeswoman to tell you that even when they get in, should they find a body, it will be a while before they can positively identify it, because, you know, fire.

I actually heard from one reporter that she’d overheard officers talking about getting dental records to do the identification at the cabin. Really? Seriously? They’re going to, what? Compare the X-rays with a charred body? It didn’t cross her mind that, oh, I don’t know — maybe she misheard?

So no, once again, just like in Newtown, this barrage of false information isn’t the fault of social media. Sure, it spreads like wildfire on social media, but these reports were first broadcast on television. Every.Single.One.Of.Them. Look at the Twitter streams. They all say “CBS is reporting,” “CNN is reporting” or whatever.

Part of the problem is depending on anonymous sources, which, once upon a time, was reserved only for the most extreme cases, like, for example, “I’d rather you didn’t use my name because if you do, I’ll probably be killed.” “Because I’m not authorized to talk about it” is a shit reason, and it really means “because I don’t know dick but you think I’m important.”

So here’s a few tips to become better journalists.

STOP USING ANONYMOUS SOURCES. If your source doesn’t want to be attached to the information, leave it out. It’s questionable, seriously questionable. And half the time it’s pure speculation, what they hope is true.

That was the case with Dorner. The cops all hoped they had him. They even felt fairly certain they did. But they didn’t know for sure. Not a single one of them. Anybody saying they did know for sure was an ass.

That means, DON’T CONFUSE WISHFUL THINKING FOR TRUTH. You know the LAPD confused enough people with Dorner before this. They even shot up a couple of pickup trucks they thought might be driven by Dorner, even though neither of the drivers looked anything like him. Make them prove it. And besides, the LAPD was waiting at an airport for San Bernardino County to call them in. SBC never did.

And finally, THINK. Take notes, make sure the story makes sense. Make sure you have the complete story. For a while yesterday, journalists thought Dorner had hostages in the cabin. He had hostages in another cabin, where yesterday’s fun started. This didn’t take too much to figure out, but for hours reporters were conflating the two. Same thing with the report that Gov. Jerry Brown was going to attend the funeral of an officer allegedly killed by Dornan. They reported that it was the SBC deputy whose funeral Brown would attend when in fact it was a Riverside deputy whose funeral was today.

I just cringe anymore when any big story like this kicks off because I know what’s gonna happen. My chosen profession will fall several more notches down the list of “trusted people.” And why not? By and large, we just ain’t very trustworthy anymore. Because we’ve got to be first.

Some of us belong to an organization called the Society of Professional Journalists. The SPJ has a code of ethics, and the main headings are these: Seek truth and report it. Minimize harm. Act independently. Be accountable. 

Far too many of us don’t even approach those standards, and frankly, nobody’s holding our feet to the fire. But then, we shouldn’t need anybody to do that, because that’s what journalism really is.

Common sense. It’s really not that hard.

But I have some pretty words, some strong words, that I’m just dying to see in the stark black of computer print on white, so you’ll have to bear with me. Or just pass this little diatribe on by.

But whatever you do, don’t try to say I’m just jealous of the name Andy Carvin has had made for himself. I’m not the least bit jealous of him. Arwa Damon, maybe. Or Harry Fear even. But Andy Carvin? Hardly.

Why do I have so much vitriol for a man I’ve never met? It’s easy really. It’s because he’s a pretender, a fake. He’s Walter Mitty with a boring job at National Public Radio that has nothing to do with journalism. But he retreated to a life on Twitter and became a fake superhero.

He even wrote a book, Distant Witness, and that’s as good a reason as any for my dislike. The title, not the writing of the book. He called it that because he believes he witnessed the Arab spring from his desk in Washington. He didn’t, any more than I did from my desk in Atlanta.

What he did was stay up till all hours retweeting all the tweets he could find out of the various Arab spring protests, adding his own indignation and outrage at what he “witnessed.” Of course, not all that much of what he retweeted was true, but Carvin thinks it best to throw it out there and let the “crowd” settle it.

Doesn’t work that way. Whenever somebody starts retweeting everything, then the real journalists have to work that much harder to find out what’s real and what’s not. As some of my relatives would say, “If you throw enough shit at the barn door, some of it’s gonna stick.” But most of it’s gonna leave a big pile of shit on the ground, and either way, somebody’s gonna have to clean the whole mess up.

That somebody will never be Andy Carvin, because that would get in the way of his being a hero to the poor downtrodden activists fighting for freedom in Arab countries and elsewhere. Honestly, I cannot understand why NPR, normally a bastion of decent journalism, allows it.

It’s why so many people have such a hard time trusting what’s found on the Interwebs. How could you blame em? If somebody who’s supposed to be the be-all-and-end-all of the Arab spring is tossing everything out there — even if he’s adding a cute little “is this true?” on the end — it’s just gonna confuse the matter. Especially when he adds his own unsupported speculation. Then he’s no better than any other “citizen journalist” out there with a viewpoint.

Ah, but what do I know. I haven’t even been a journalist for a quarter century (next year I will reach that milestone). And my current job is to separate the wheat from the chaff that pretenders like Andy Carvin throw out there. My colleagues and I painstakingly go through all those tweets, all those videos, all those Facebook posts to figure out what’s real and what isn’t, what is the truth and what might be even a well-intentioned lie.

Carvin finally got to go to Egypt, to Cairo. He went down to Tahrir, but when the tear gas came out, he retreated to the safety of his hotel room to check his Twitter stream, where, he said, he understood what was going on much better.

Maybe.

I’ve never been to Cairo, to Benghazi, to Aleppo, to Gaza. I’m pretty sure, though, if I ever were, I wouldn’t be there to meet my Twitter friends. I’d be there to report, because that’s what I do. And if that meant walking into a cloud of tear gas, then give me a wet rag and get out of my way.

Looking at videos from Syria is painful, but it’s necessary. It’s our job to verify them, to know that they were shot where the uploader says they were shot and that they show what the uploader says they show. That means seeing bodies, destroyed homes, lost children, everything, in detail, gory detail. We don’t watch them once and pass them on. We watch them trying to glean everything we can out of them so that we can say with authority if it’s real. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it is hard on every level imaginable.

I’m not a witness to the horrors in Syria, though. I’m a curator, a documentarian. A fact-checker. I’m not superhero, or even a not-so-superhero. I’m just doing a journalist doing a job with a slew of pretty nifty technological tools that help me do that job with more confidence than before. I don’t have to be there, but there’s a lot I miss by being here.

But it’s a good job and I’m proud of it, proud of my colleagues, one of whom once used Google maps to plot where in a particular Syrian city a video of an explosion might have been shot based on the speed of sound and line of site. It was a thing to behold. That’s verification.

It’s easy to fake things on the internet. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube — they can all be gamed. It takes hard, precise work to make sense of it all, to get at the real story. Any less is a disservice to readers, viewers, other journalists and especially the story.

I do hate to beat a dead horse — or a live one, for that matter — but there was a shooting today at Lone Star College, a community college near Houston.

That’s in Texas, in case you didn’t catch the “Lone Star” bit.

This wasn’t your typical “crazy guy with an AR-15 walks onto campus and starts shooting” kind of shooting. This was two idiots getting into some kind of idiotic argument and at least one of them deciding shooting was the best way to resolve it. One bystander, a school maintenance man, was wounded, as well as one of the arguers. Another person apparently had a heart attack.

Nevertheless, Rep. Ted, Poe, RWNJ-Texas, immediately hit the airwaves to explain how “defenseless” the poor students at LSC were and how students should be allowed to carry concealed weapons so they can defend themselves.

But apparently, that’s exactly what happened.

Reports now indicate that at least one of the two idiots arguing was a student, and at least one was illegally carrying an concealed weapon. By Rep. Poe’s reasoning, if other students had been carrying concealed weapons … well, I don’t know. If more students had been carrying concealed weapons and started shooting, I’d guess more people would have been hit, maybe even killed. But that’s just a guess, y’know. Has no basis whatsoever in reality and is probably just a bunch of fallacious reasoning to boot. Because it’s certainly not logical to think that if two idiots arguing equals three wounded people, then, say, four people shooting at each other might equal six wounded people. And how many wounded people before you get one dead? Two dead?

Of course, maybe ole Ted is right. Say there was only one guy with a gun, and the guy he started shooting at was a student. But the student didn’t have a gun, so he got shot, along with the maintenance man, who also didn’t have a gun, while the shooter ran off into the woods, where he was later found by police.

If only that student and the maintenance guy had had guns! Then it woulda been the OK Corral all over again … well, maybe not. Some of those guys were law enforcement, hired to back the businessmen of Tombstone, Arizona, against the Evil Rancher Cowboys and … oh, never mind. That’s more than 100 years ago. The only reason I brought it up at all is that those nine guys who’d been feuding with each other for a very long time back in 1881 fired about 30 shots in about 30 seconds, and in the end three were dead, and three were wounded. Of course, they were all shooting at each other, and in a narrow lot between a couple of buildings (not the OK Corral at all), which probably prevented any bystanders from being hit.

These guys at Lone Star College were out in an open courtyard.

My point, and I do have one, is just this: Think it through, people. We don’t live in Deadwood. We don’t live in the Tombstone of the 19th Century. There’s a reason they called it the Wild West. And the Earps and Clantons didn’t have AR-15s.

Once upon a time, in a whole ‘nother life, I owned a gun and frankly wasn’t a bad shot. But I’ve grown up some since then, and my owning a gun just isn’t something I want for myself or for anyone who comes in contact with me.

But in case you’ve not heard me say it before, I don’t favor banning guns. I favor humanity willingly putting down the damn things because we finally understand that killing people is a bad thing to do, whatever the reason. And no, I’m not some whacked out idealist who actually expects this to happen anytime soon — but it will, eventually, provided we don’t blow up the planet first.

There are no good reasons, however, to block some kind of regulation. If you want to own a gun, you do not need to own an AR-15 or armor-piercing bullets unless you plan to kill people wearing armor, and if you plan to do that, I’d suggest psychiatric help. Oh, and NRA, children in elementary schools aren’t usually wearing Kevlar, although I suppose that is something you think would be a good idea.

And one more thing. Some folks like to blame violent video games for the crazy people who go out shooting other poeple, but I think they’ve got it backwards. It’s the whackos who think that arming everybody on the planet will end gun violence are the ones inspired by video games. Think about that one for while, until I find another dead horse, possibly in the OK Corral.

Sadly, no, but British news had to remind its viewers of that tonight as they played clips from Wayne LaPierre’s news conference, if by news conference, you mean “insane ramble about turning our schools into armed fortresses because the world is a scary place filled with bad guys just waiting to kill all our children.” Or something like that.

British news is covering the NRA response to Newtown and has had to clarify twice that what they're showing is not a spoof.

December 21, 2012 3:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@HelenLOHara

Helen O'Hara

And why would they need to do that? Read it here, if you like. Or, if you’ve the stomach for it, watch it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

By the way, the National Rifle Association has more web sites than the US government. OK, that’s an exaggeration. But their web site is really confusing, and finding any one particular piece of information is next to impossible without Google. Just sayin.

And if you’ve tried to read and/or watch some of LaPierre’s nonsense by now, you can go ahead and stop. Just read this instead.

I suppose the irony of all this is that the news conference was held today, of all days — December 21, the supposed end of the world. Obviously that didn’t happen, since I’m sitting here typing, and I never expected that it would.

But maybe, just maybe, this blatant display of pure mind-boggling insanity will help push us toward an end of the world as we know it — an end to the fear-based, insular ideology that so much of the fearful right insists that we all live under.

Oh, I know, plenty of people will buy such clever lines as “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” hook, line and sinker. Or maybe the correct analogy in this case is “lock, stock and barrel.”

LaPierre blames the media and the “political class” for all these shootings, and I’d actually agree with him, at least partly, if he didn’t say it’s because journalists and politcians are “so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners.” And right after that he notes that “a lone, unarmed school principal” died to protect the children of Sandy Hook School from “evil monsters.”

See, that’s another thing. Adam Lanza wasn’t an evil monster. Adam Lanza was a sick kid, living in a gun-obsessed house in a gun-obsessed community. It’s not his mom’s fault either, although she really shoulda been thinking about having all those guns in a house with a son like that. But she was a single mom who probably really didn’t know how to deal with the situation — because as a culture, we stigmatize mental illness to the point that we’re all at least a little bit mentally ill.

But to Wayne LaPierre, the mentally ill are evil monsters, and it’s horrible that we don’t have a national database of mentally ill people because, you know, all mentally ill people are potential killers.

Think about that for a minute. And then think about Wayne LaPierre’s little speech. I have to give it to his speech writer. It was calculated to reach the most unevolved and fearful of us, to strike terror into our hearts, much in the same way George W. Bush et al did after 9/11, and, of course, using a lot of the same kind of lies, exaggerations, debunked theories, misquoted statistics and outright fabrications Bush et al used back then too.

“Incomprehensible loss.” “Unspeakable crime.” “For the safety fo our nations children.” “Insane killer.” “Utterly defenseless.” “Monsters and predators.” “Genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day.” “Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.” “Copycats.” “Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community.” “Vicious, violent video games.” “Blood-soaked slasher films.” “Ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty.” “Moral failings.” “Demonize lawful gun owners.” “If we cherish our kids more than our money or celebrities.”

And then, he said, because you’re terrified and can’t be bothered to actually think and discuss whether or not anything he actually said is true or even makes any sense whatsoever:

There’ll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action.

We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work. We mustn’t allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now.

People, being this scared just isn’t necessary. We don’t live in Deadwood. But if you think we do, by all means, arm yourselves to the teeth. But please, stay out of our schools, our malls, our churches, synagogues, mosques and temples, our doctors’ offices, our post offices and anywhere else sentient beings go.

Because you’re not one, and you haven’t been for a very long time.

More than 60 people have been killed this year by “deranged” gunmen in America — nearly half of them today — and there’s still a couple weeks left to raise that number. I’m talking the kind of shootings where someone walks into, say, a school, and starts shooting. Not counting the deranged assholes who decide to shoot their whole family up because, I don’t know, maybe they lost their jobs and are about to lose their houses. Or the ones who get the bright idea to rob a store, then freak out and start shooting when it doesn’t go the way they think it ought to. Or the ones who just thought it was a good idea to shoot somebody to death.

If I were counting those, the number would be well over 10,000. The number of firearm related homicides comes to about 3 for every 100,000 in population, which ranks the United States behind such peaceful countries as El Salvador, Jamaica, Swaziland, Colombia and Mexico but well ahead of such uncivilized countries as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, Qatar and Chile.

Of course, what makes today’s senseless bullshit more painful is that 20 of the victims were children. Actual children, in elementary school. None older than 10. But ultimately, that won’t mean a thing. Because it was just some crazy guy, y’know. A crazy evil guy.

An evil clearly mentally unstable man killed such innocent little souls today.

December 14, 2012 7:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Lydkid

Kyle Lyddy

And besides, and former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee reminded us, if you take away all the guns, somebody will just use a bomb.

If only those teachers had been carrying. Then it wouldn’t have happened. Just like in Aurora, Colorado, where if only theatre-goers had been armed, they could have shot down the black-clad, semi-automatic weapon carrying, kelvar dressed whack-job who opened fire on them in the dark. I can see teachers whipping out their guns in a classroom, can’t you?

Unfortunately, owning guns didn’t help Nancy Lanza. She owned three. The three her son Adam used to kill her and then go to Sandy Hook Elementary, where he killed those kids and a few more adults.

There oughta be a law.

I’m not stupid enough to say we should outright ban all guns, although I do agree with the sentiment. I’d rather we as a species would realize the futility of living in an armed culture and just.plain.stop. But that’s not gonna happen. Sadly. We’re just too enamored of our guns, and too scared to live without them, not realizing we’re scared because it’s too damn easy to get a gun.

It’s also too easy to decide that killing people is the answer to our problems, and too easy to pretend we don’t have any problems that might lead us to make that decision. Or that our neighbors don’t. Or our friends. Or our children.

We’ve got quite a volatile mix here. Mental illness is a stigma (or evil), getting decent medical care for it is next to impossible and guns are for sale at Wal-mart, while our politicians pretend that the National Rifle Association isn’t a bunch of crackpots with thick ties to gun manufacturers and regressive racists who fear we’re headed toward a New World Order. Hell, the NRA opposes legislation to require gun owners to report it if their weapons are lost or stolen.

Meanwhile, our children are targets in their schools, teenagers going to the movies are targets in their theater seats and mothers who own semi-automatic weapons are the first ones to go down.

I’m sure we’ll see a rash of metal detectors and armed guards in schools now, because that’s such a better answer than actually looking at the very real problems we have in this country. We’re awfully good at the bandaid method of problem solving, which is to say we never actually solve the problem because we never actually address it. That would require much deeper thinking, much more painful soul-searching than we’re willing to do.

Like, for example, why the United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s people, owns nearly 50 percent of its guns. And to what “well-regulated militia” Nancy Lanza belonged that she had those guns her son so easily confiscated for his own use.

Now there’s a culture war at which we really should be taking a closer look.

Here’s why Republican pollster Glen Bolger says Mitt Romney lost the elections:

Mitt Romney put together a coalition that just eight years ago would have won the presidential election (hence the data comparisons to George W. Bush). However, instead of whites being 77% of the electorate, they were 72% of the electorate. Instead of Republicans and Democrats being equal, Democrats far outnumbered Republicans, and washed out Romney’s advantage among Independents. Bush kept it close with younger voters (under age 40), while Obama won them decisively….Underscoring that there are considerably more Democrats than Republicans, Romney was the first national candidate in exit polling history to decisively win Independents and lose the election (John Kerry won Independents, but by just one point).

…

Thus, to have a chance, Republicans have to appeal to Hispanics. It’s simple math, but it’s hard to do. We have to start today.

The Fix’s Chris Cillizza says he’s right. But they’re both wrong.

They’re both stuck in what I like to call “Dualistic Thinking.” Either/or. It’s doomed as an advanced society since Adam and Eve. Either Adam, or Eve.

It’s just not about demographics, which is the only thing pollsters understand, or think they understand. It’s the only thing politicians understand. Saying the right thing to get the right group of people to touch the box by your name on the electronic voting machines.

I have a better idea. How about we get our dualistic, either Republicans or Democrats to think about saying the right thing to get a human being to vote for them.

I know, I know. Wishful thinking. But focusing on demographics is so short term. What’s changing right along with the make-up of the electorate is how that electorate thinks. And THAT, my friends, is something Republicans have absolutely no clue about (and Democrats have only a slightly better clue about).

I will give you that both sides do it. But there’s a difference. Just to give you an example, here’s a little sampling of a political disagreement between a conservative and a liberal, from the comments section of an article on Politico.

E Be Rose · Top Commenter
Isn’t it interesting, how easily everyone over on Fox lies? As if people will not call them out on it, especially a real journalist like Ricks? Not an “on-air personality.” Right now, Baier, Celmente, Klinghoffer, Ailes & Murdock are all working on a response. It will be brilliant, for sure. It will somehow blame Ricks for making Fox lie in the first place. It’s never their fault.

Brett Richard · Top Commenter
ROFL! Like it’s NEVER obama’s fault!! His little, pointy blame finger must be getting worn down to a NUB by now!!!

E Be Rose · Top Commenter
People like you amuse me

Brett Richard · Top Commenter
Glad to be of service!
People like you disgust me…

Just so you know, the conversation was about a journo who was on Fox who said that Fox was an arm of the Republican Party and the Fox exec who said that said journo apologized for saying it, except the journo said he didn’t.

My point is found in the last two comments. “People like you amuse me” and “People like you disgust me.” If you see no difference in those two comments, you might be a Republican. I’m just sayin.

Or you might be like the dumbest of dumb Republicans, Erick Erickson — who runs RedState and sometimes spouts his idiocy on CNN — who wrote an entire column about how Republicans just needed to convince 6 percent or so of the population to vote for them in order to win. Of course, he used the wrong figures, beginning with the population of the United States.

Excuses, excuses. These guys all thought Mitt Romney was gonna win in a landslide. He didn’t. It wasn’t even close, and he even ended up with 47 percent of the vote. How’s that for a sign?

What these guys really need to understand is that they’re being left behind by the steady march of progress. Get on the clue bus, boys, or think long and hard about Neanderthals.