Michael Savage just said on KBLG that Bill Clinton, speaking in Pakistan, called for the conviction of European publishers who printed caricatures of Muhammad.
Say what? I'm guessing that Savage got his information from the notoriously unreliable World Net Daily, which printed this story. That story, in turn, probably came from this account or a similar one. But the BBC version omitted the inflammatory quote.
Whom should we believe? Consider the stories that make the claim: They are all similar in quotes and structure, which may indicate they are not independent reports. Several contain this quote or a variation: "the media should be disallowed to play with the religious sentiments of other faiths," wording awkward enough to indicate that there may have been a language barrier. One quotes Clinton as saying, "Media should avoid to publish that things which create gap among different religions." Even Clinton's bitterest enemies would have trouble believing that sentence ever escaped his lips.
Perhaps most suspect is the utter lack of any followup. If Clinton made such a remark to newsmen, wouldn't someone have asked a question? When an ex-president calls for the repeal of the First Amendment, even in other countries, you'd think somebody would ask why.
All of which would be fairly inconsequential if Savage hadn't just told millions of listeners that the story is true, without the slightest doubt or qualification. New media, indeed.
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17 comments:
Hey, if my name was michael weener, I'd probably change it to savage too! 'Cept I'd change the first, not the last. I'd call myself the Savage Weener! Poor mikey weener is simply that. A dick!
Anybody who gets his news from radio or TV gets what he deserves.
As for the print news, you must carefully read, compare, and cross-reference everything.
Funny how news get's going isn'r it? However, knowing Bill Clinton, it would not surprise me if he DID say something to that effect either!
How about the recent news story claiming Bush was making final plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities? That story ran in the “notoriously unreliable” British press for two days and was picked up by the “notoriously unreliable” wire services, who dropped the story after 24 hours when they realized the story was completely made up in Britain.
Journalism is the only business in the world that consistently turns out defective products and still has customers.
My favorite wire service con for reporting lies, rumors, and made up stories is:
"The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media."
(Uh, was that "he"? Or did you jerks mean "he or she"?)
Second favorite con:
"Critics say..." (Make up whatever you want!)
Latest case of the press being duped or deliberately working for the government: "IRS Owes Taxpayers Who Didn't File Returns" (AP, 02/21/06)
This is very likely a government pishing scam. State and federal governments have tens of thousands of arrest warrants outstanding, mostly for petty crimes and contemps of court. This "free money" program appears to be an easy way of getting some names and addresses connected.
Rooting for the Losers: Stupid and Untrue
Here is your leftwing hysterical press at work, scream headlines and no substance.
***
Oil Prices Up After Attack in Saudi Arabia
Phantom “al-Qaeda” Attacks Saudi Oil Infrastructure
Al-Qaida Claims Attack on Saudi Refinery
Gold rallies to 2-week high on Saudi blasts
***
You’d think something really awful happened, wouldn’t you? But then you discover, after a while, that the pathetic “bombers” were a mile away from the oil refinery when they were shot to death and their cars blew up.
The funniest headline of all, from the New York Times, tried to make it sound like the morons didn’t have a gate pass or something, as if the attempted attack were not a spectacular failure; indeed, as if there were no attack at all:
“Suicide Bombers Fail to Enter Saudi Oil Plant”
This is the only realistic assessment I found, from PowerLine dot Com [excerpted]:
A Feeble Attempt
Posted by John at 12:25 PM
We have noted on several occasions the success that the government of Saudi Arabia has had in fighting al Qaeda and killing its leaders in that country. What seems noteworthy is how hopeless the attack was.
Ditto Typo:
Here you have taken four quite sober and accurate headlines and characterized them as not only leftwing but hysterical. What passes for mainstream and calm in your hysterical world?
I live in an accurate and logical world, unlike the majority of journalists. Either you people are just trying to sell papers or you’re always having your period.
Look at what some hysterical editor at AP wrote for a headline today:
“Attack Shows al-Qaida Can Strike Saudis”
Oooo—scary stuff! Sounds like the terrorists are wining! But in the accurate and logical world beyond journalism, everybody knows a FAILED attack proves nothing, other than the attackers were morons.
Try these headline rewrites for accuracy and logic:
Failed Attack Shows al-Qaida Incompetence
Failed Attack Shows Saudi Security Effective
Etc.
Get the idea?
But of the three headlines you give, only the AP headline is accurate. One failed attack doesn't prove the case for either incompetence or effective security. It does demonstrate, however, the capacity to strike, no matter how futilely.
You can try to salvage your position by splitting hairs, but it will not work.
One failed attack irrefutably proves EITHER incompetence on the part of the attackers OR competence on the part of the defenders OR BOTH. That is why I gave two possible headlines.
“Attack Shows al-Qaida Can Strike Saudis” is blatantly incorrect. Given the actual facts of the incident, the use of “can” is wrong because it means “capable” or “able,” which was not the case because the “strike” never struck anything, as the facts have shown. The terrorists proved themselves incapable or unable to strike the Saudis.
Your attempt to substitute “capacity” for “can” will not work, because “capacity” in this regard can only mean “potential.”
Stories I read indicated that the attackers penetrated the outer ring of Saudi defenses, killed two security guards and wounded eight workers. I bet those folks think it was a "strike." Al-Qaeda, unsurprisingly, claims the attack was more successful than the above indicates.
The headline you criticize is important and relevant because, as is often the case with terrorists, they don't have to actually destroy their targets to be successful. They just have to get close enough to scare people into thinking it might have worked. The stories I read indicated that this attack was of concern because Saudi measures against al-Qaida had been so successful that it was uncertain whether an attack like this could even be attempted. Since newspapers are behind the curve on breaking news stories like this, they frequently try to write forward-looking headlines that point to potential and capabilities rather than to what happened yesterday. My guess is that the headline writer showed no symptoms of hysteria whatsoever.
As for your contention that one failed attack "irrefutably proves" anything, let me just point out that Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times. Totally incompetent, right?
Are you a real person, or am I getting sucked into another Don Mellon fantasy? Sorry to be so paranoid, but the man is pure poison.
So the guards shoot to death a convict as he attempts to scale the prison wall. Your “forward-looking” headline would read:
Convicts CAN Escape from Maximum Security Facility
That’s a pretty hysterical headline. And your excuse for deliberately misleading headlines is also pretty hysterical (comical): First you pretend there’s nothing wrong with the word choices; then you try to argue that the plain meaning of a word is different from what everybody thought it was; and finally you claim reporters are not reporting what happened “yesterday” but rather they are reporting what might happen in the future.
"The essential act of the [journalist] is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies, all this is indispensably necessary."
--Emmanuel Goldstein (AKA George Orwell, AKA Eric Blair)
(And Ditto Typo is a “real person,” too!)
Your hypothetical would be more on point if it described an inmate who blasted a hole in the prison wall and exited through it before he was gunned down. Then the hypothetical "Inmates can strike at prison wall" would be accurate and thoroughly nonhysterical -- just as the headlines were about the oil facility strike.
You've got all the Mellon earmarks. You accuse me of making excuses for deliberately misleading headlines. No, I made no excuses for them; I said they were accurate. They need no excuse.
You call my "excuse" "hysterical," by which you now claim to mean "comical." You adopt whatever definition fits your purposes for the moment.
You say that I try "to argue that the plain meaning of a word is different from what everybody thought it was." I have done no such thing.
You misstate my argument about forward-looking headlines. Did you not understand my point? Or is this another deliberate distortion? Are you willing to concede even the remote possibility that a nonhysterical, non-leftwing editor might someday, under some circumstances, try to write a headline for a next-day story that would interest readers who already know the bare facts of a breaking news story? Does that strike you as even hypothetically possible, perhaps in some alternative universe? Could a nonhysterical, non-leftwing editor even exist, or is that concept outside the bounds of your fevered imagination?
Finally, of course, you deny the Mellon connection -- but not really. That would require taking an actual position, something you lack the courage and intellectual honesty to do.
You wrote:
“Your hypothetical would be more on point if it described an inmate who blasted a hole in the prison wall and exited through it before he was gunned down. Then the hypothetical "Inmates can strike at prison wall" would be accurate and thoroughly nonhysterical [sic]-- just as the headlines were about the oil facility strike.”
An interesting attempt at changing the factual elements of the story to fit an erroneous and hysterical headline. There were THREE perimeter fences at the oil facility, each fence having its own gates. The terrorists blew themselves up (or were blown up) at the gates of the outer fence, about ONE MILE from the actual facility, with two more guarded gates in between. In my analogy, the convict never reached his objective—not for a moment--just as the terrorists never reached their objective—not for a moment. My analogy is fundamentally correct, even though I did not use three walls, and your analogy is fundamentally wrong.
According to The Associated Press, “The attack was foiled when security guards fired at two vehicles laden with explosives outside the gates to Abiqaiq, which processes about two-thirds of the country's oil before it is exported.”
I imagine you will now fall back on your ultimate defensive strategy and try to convince us that “outside the gates” means something other than “outside the gates,” such as “inside the gates” or “inside the oil refinery.” But you ought to realize that others see your strategy for what it is: infantile. It is the Slick Willy Strategy, the strategy of someone who has made an error in judgment and hopes to gloss it over by claiming the plain meaning of words is different from what is normally understood.
Having now dismissed your attempt at transforming a failed attack into a successful attack, so that an erroneous and hysterical headline might qualify as being an accurate and sober description of events, I now turn to some of your other abuses of language and logic.
You write:
“You accuse me of making excuses for deliberately misleading headlines. No, I made no excuses for them; I said they were accurate. They need no excuse.”
But you wrote earlier:
“The headline you criticize is important and relevant because, as is often the case with terrorists, they don't have to actually destroy their targets to be successful.”
That sounds like an excuse to me! (That sounds like an explanation to me!) That also sounds like the same old stuff you have been trying to peddle throughout this thread, that a failed attack is actually something other than a failed attack.
And you wrote earlier:
“Since newspapers are behind the curve on breaking news stories like this, they frequently try to write forward-looking headlines that point to potential and capabilities rather than to what happened yesterday.”
That sounds like an excuse to me! (That sounds like an explanation to me!) That also sounds like the same old stuff you have been trying to peddle throughout this thread, that a failed attack is actually something other than a failed attack.
And, lest you try to claim some new meaning for the word “excuse,” I will let the American Heritage Dictionary define the word here:
Excuse (noun): 1. An explanation offered to justify or obtain forgiveness.
You wrote earlier:
“You call my ‘excuse’ ‘hysterical,’ by which you now claim to mean ‘comical.’ You adopt whatever definition fits your purposes for the moment.
You really are a hysterical guy! I mean, comical, funny, laughable, you know? Although, it is a little scary to think that you might actually take yourself seriously. Again, from the American Heritage Dictionary:
Hysterical (adjective): 3. Informal—Extremely funny: told a hysterical story.
Girls and girlie men write hysterical headlines, but guys who try to defend hysterical headlines are just hysterical. Get the idea? Or is English your second language?
You wrote earlier:
“You say that I try ‘to argue that the plain meaning of a word is different from what everybody thought it was.’ I have done no such thing.”
When you admit that “Attack Shows al-Qaida Can Strike Saudis” is an erroneous and hysterical headline, then you have returned to the plain meaning of words; otherwise, you and Slick Willy can argue over the meaning of “is” indefinitely.
You wrote earlier:
“You misstate my argument about forward-looking headlines. Did you not understand my point? Or is this another deliberate distortion?”
Where was my first deliberate distortion? Anyway, your idea of “forward-looking headlines” is just too absurd to merit any serious discussion.
(Forward-looking headline, day after Pearl Harbor) “Jap Invasion Fleet Sighted off Santa Monica!”
You wrote:
“Are you willing to concede even the remote possibility that a nonhysterical [sic], non-leftwing editor might someday, under some circumstances….” [Etc., etc., etc.]
Rhetorical nonsense and therefore undeserving of a reply.
You wrote:
“Finally, of course, you deny the Mellon connection -- but not really. That would require taking an actual position, something you lack the courage and intellectual honesty to do.”
I am not sure about this “Mellon connection” you keep referring to. You might need some professional help dealing with that obsession. As for your ad-hominem attack on my “courage” and “intellectual honesty,” what I have written in this thread adequately demonstrates that you don’t know what you are talking about.
An utterly pointless debate. You started by citing this headline, among others, as an example of leftwing hysteria:
Al-Qaida Claims Attack on Saudi Refinery
I said that neither this headline nor the others made the case you claim. And, of course, they don't.
How far has the discussion progressed since then? Not one inch. What are the odds that it will ever progress? Not one in a million.
This foolishness stops here.
Looks like you got knocked out of the ring David. Maybe you're in the wrong weight class.
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