Very Stupid People
By John Cole May 6th, 2011
Hard to conclude anything else:
Hours after President Obama left ground zero yesterday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper tweeted a photo of an American flag being removed from a building there. “One minute to air and they decided to take the flag down from the live shot!” he wrote, referring to the live shot he was about to do for a news segment. Upon discovering this, conservative bloggers quickly descended into fits of hysteria, because they assumed that Tapper had meant the flag was taken down earlier in the day right before Obama had gotten there. Michelle Malkin asked, “Does flying the American flag at Ground Zero now constitute “spiking the football???” Another blogger, Doug Ross, went further off the deep end:This administration and, by extension, the Democrat Party are now so thoroughly divorced from the history, traditions and morals of America that we might as well admit the Marxist left has executed a successful coup d’état on this Republic.
Only later did they come to understand the real context of Tapper’s photo, at which point Malkin and Ross both apologized, which is nice of them.
You have to wonder how many times these folks will get things wrong before people stop paying any attention to them. These are the same folks who spent months screaming about the Chrysler re-organization dealership closures being politically motivated, basically serving as a static display for statistical ignorance and incompetence for months. But yet people still pay attention to them.
Can I get a well paying job being that stupid?
Why are these people allowed to do this and continue to be employed?
Tapper needs to get a grip.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
It’d be nice if ‘stupid’ explained it. What we have here are haters, bigots, sadists. I suppose a joke about the hazards of not taking your medication should go here, but I’m not feeling generous at the moment.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Stupid is very easy to understand. And to do. Frustrating but easy.
Thinking and using an extra 1% of the ole brain takes actual work. That’s just too much for some people.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
@Maude: Tapper didn’t do anything wrong here…
May 6th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
You had me until “Malkin apologized.”
May 6th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
“But yet people still pay attention to them.”
I don’t.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Well, seeing that even we can’t start ignoring them here @ BJ, I guess the answer is obviously never.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
@Maude:
Much as I hate to come to anyone in the WH Press Corpse’s defense, but Tapper did nothing wrong nor is his tweet in any way ambiguous. All you have to do is look at the time stamp, know when “World News Tonight” airs, and have an idea what time Obama left Ground Zero to know. It’s the kneejerk reaction of the assholes like Malkin and Ross that is ridiculous. But then, consider the sources.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
According to Media Matters, which covered this story in some detail, a blog called Fire Andrea Mitchell posted this choice comment:
I had not heard anything about Obama “turning his back on” Debra Burlingame, or on anyone else for that matter. Anybody know what that bit of fantasy is all about?
May 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Doug Ross today sounds suspiciously like Andrew Sullivan 8 years ago.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
The only apology I’m willing to entertain from scum like Malkin and Ross is a Captain Needa apology.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
They thought a POTUS running for re-election asked for an American flag to be taken down from Ground Zero?
Whatever they are infected with, we need to cordon off their island.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
No, not stupid. Dishonest and incredibly partisan.
OK, some of them are stupid. But that’s a second-order effect.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Any wingnut who tosses out the term “Marxist” is immediately written off in my book as either a moron or disingenuous.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
In the Dick Cheney tradition, Tapper should apologize for confusing them. Also Obama should apologize for being President.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
@John Cole:
...yet.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@eemom:
Of course she did, because it’s already out there serving her narrative and nothing can bring it back with an equal amount of force.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@Maude: Unfortunately, incompetence always seems to pay.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@mk3872:
BJ monitors and mocks them as needed. Time magazine reads them to declare them the Realest Americans and the Blog of the Year.
It seems to me that there’s a difference.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s just more of the increasingly insane lexicon they use to shorthand membership in the tribe.
“Obama, his back turned to Burlingame.”
May 6th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Here’s the problem:
A lie it takes a second to tell takes a week to debunk.
The only societal counterbalance is that we give proven liars no future heed, no trust.
This second step has yet to happen.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
They get on TV a lot. I don’t know if we should equate “pay attention to them” with “are forced to be exposed to them”.
Also, can we give the flag fetishism a rest yet? Just think of it like a wet suit and save wrapping yourself in it for special occasions.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
@SiubhanDuinne:
Debra Burlingame is a wingnut who founded that organization with Liz Cheney. Read into that what you will.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Is it a coup d’état if people vote for it? Discuss. Conversely, if a democratic election can really be a coup d’état, is it possible for a coup d’état (or counter-coup) to be democratic?
May 6th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Tapper tweeted about a flag being taken down. On the site where about 3,000 people died.
He wanted the visual.
Where is his sense of perspective?
That’s what I meant.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
@John Cole: Yes he did. He decided that a mundane aspect of reporting (that sometimes people don’t take the needs of reporters into consideration when planning events) was tweetworthy. It’s barely even “behind the scenes” worthy. Now, is this to the level of professional freak out artist Malkin, no. But shouldn’t there be something better to ask us to worry about on a Thursday?
May 6th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
My bet is Ross (apologies notwithstanding) simply cuts-and-pastes this tripe and it into his “templates” file, to trot out the next time President Obama does something he doesn’t like – like existing.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
My bet is Ross (apologies notwithstanding) simply cuts-and-pastes this tripe and saves it into his “templates” file, to trot out the next time President Obama does something he doesn’t like – like existing.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
But it’s OK for Bush to write on a flag, and even use one for a door mat AT GROUND ZERO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMxrpcghRFA
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
If you insist. Any other victories you’d like to declare on our behalf, losers?
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
who are “they” that tapper mentioned? the progenitors of the broccoli mandate????? did “they” refudiate stalin?
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
here’s the Burlingame story:
she’s mad because he wouldn’t talk about divisive political matters during the 9/11 memorial. because she’s a dimwit.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
@Trainrunner:
Depends on who you talk to. The problem with FOX’n’Friends is their ability to gain people’s trust and then address a rebuttal by doubling down.
At the end of the day, they just spew so many lies you have to swallow the whole world view if you want to stay tuned in. And if you don’t stay tuned in, your fellow GOoPers won’t be your friend anymore.
I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again. The modern GOP really is just one big personality cult.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
I know, isn’t it weird?
? I mean, some people actually spend entire blog posts debunking their ludicrous bullshit.
What a waste!
May 6th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Here’s a little something to cheer folks up:
http://www.borowitzreport.com/.....e-suicide/
May 6th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
@Suffern ACE:
You ask me, something mundane is almost by definition tweet-worthy.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
I’m sure you’ve all been stuck for miles in slow traffic that creeps along at around 10 mph in a 70 mph zone, only to find out the reason is some poor bastard has a flat tire in the left-hand breakdown lane. The only reason anyone is going so slowly is that about 4 in 10 drivers just have to slow up to see if there is any blood on the road only to find out that it’s just some poor bastard they’re not willing to help.
“You’re on your own!!” and all that rot, I guess.
What I’m trying to say is that, I think, about 4 in 10 people are hoping to see a bloody car wreck when they read Malkin, and Erick The (Not Well) Red, when in fact they just get to see a breakdown.
Rubbernecking is as American as apple pie.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
@Zifnab:
Yep, well put. There’s the initial gateway drug stage, which gets reinforced as time goes by. But eventually you reach a tipping point, where you need to either throw everything non-conservative to the winds and plunge headfirst into the cult, or make a clean break from it altogether.
I’ve done the “clean break” thing twice, and don’t regret either time.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
The easiest cure for stupid is to stop trying so hard to be a dick.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
@Sentient Puddle:
Agreed. I can’t think of anything I’d be able to say in 140 characters or less that wouldn’t be mundane.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
@Corner Stone: @Napoleon:
Thanks, both. I had honestly never heard of her before.
@cleek:
Fixed. That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Obama has been a 110% class act on this all the way. It just makes me sick to see the wingnuts ramp up their hatefulness just to, you know, be as hateful as possible in their own hateful way.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Are these people the slightest bit aware that, unless it is illuminated, you are supposed to take the flag down at the end of the day?
Jeez. Boy Scout Flag Protocol 101.
(Oh, and don’t tell them that, if a flag gets dirty or touches the ground, you’re supposed to dispose of it by respectfully—looks around—burning it.)
May 6th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Tapper was being petulant about his lost visual.
The whining three year old was bawling.
Typical of the offal that makes up the White House press corpse.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
“You have to wonder how many times these folks will get things wrong before people stop paying any attention to them.You have to wonder how many times these folks will get things wrong before people stop paying any attention to them.”
Umm, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Obviously, Obama dishonored the memorial by not allowing Ms. Burlingame to dishonor the memorial.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
The article’s conclusion was dead on:
May 6th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Best part is Malkin’s commenters, who almost universally say that it’s the President’s fault anyway, because the “taking down the American flag” story is believable.
This is some pretty deeply post-modernist stuff.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
@Villago Delenda Est:
[Like.]
May 6th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
@Corner Stone:
Corner Stone, are you thinking of that brilliant essay by (Hilzoy?) about the people from some Star Trek episode who think entirely in frozen mythic images? I remember a lot of blog discussion about how this seemed to encapsulate the ways in which the right wing were no longer able to communicate outside those who know the myths, and also the ways in which they can comunicate largely in terms of shorthand: teleprompter! Burlinghame! New Rims on the President’s vehicle (I just saw that one thrown out on a thread about the visit to ground zero). Here’s the wiki on the episode “Darmok.”
May 6th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
@Chris: twice? Wow. Must be like heroin or cigarettes.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
So, Obama is still an America-hating Muslim terrorist after locating and killing the most renowned America-hating Muslim terrorist. He could literally escort Jesus down from heaven on a winged unicorn and idiots would be complaining there wasn’t a flag pin on his lapel.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Tapper’s follow-up Tweet was pretty sweet:
May 6th, 2011 at 4:48 pm
From Ross’s site:
This is obviously a use of the word “apologize” of which I was not previously aware.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Small potatoes, Malkin et al. We have the Attorney General of the former GOP administration pimping
torture waterboardingharsh techniques, as a good thing on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Something we hung foreigners for doing in past wars.And Mr Evil Yoo, cackling about how Obama was afraid to take Osama alive and torture his murderous ass at Gitmo, which is what a real tough guy president would do. Both of these fuckers, and a number of others, deserve the same fate as OBL, they are just as sadistic and wearing a three piece suit to work will not disguise that ugly.
On days like today, It wouldn’t bother me to for Obama to drop every damn thing, including the run for a second term, and spend every minute of every day of the rest of his term trying to put these diabolical motherfuckers in prison.
Something has to give before similar asswipes get back in the WH. and repeat the horrors in this crazy country.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
But but but if media didn’t give Republicans the megaphone all the time they’d be unfairly promoting liberalism.
May 6th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
@joeyess:
Different experiences. More like heroin and then cigarettes.
1: was purely intellectual, reading a ton about politics and economics as a teenager and finding out gradually that wingnut ideas on that were completely fucking loony.
2: was personal and social, attending a church in college that seemed pretty innocuous but that I, again, gradually realized was as hardcore fundie as it got.
In both cases, being raised in an East Coast surburban liberal (and in my case international) shell was both a hurt and a help. On the one hand, it shields you from wingnuttia, and from realizing what their beliefs really are and how fucking crazy they are. On the other hand, once you realize how completely antithetical their beliefs are to every one of your values, it makes it that much easier to jump ship.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Doubly stupid because—let’s be honest, Obots—the President is milking the patriotism angle for all it’s worth this week. The celebration of the killing continues today at Fort Campbell; a couple more days of this and they’ll tie the record set by the Ronald Reagan corpse victory tour. So when you have a President doing this it beggars credulity to think that anybody, no matter how stupid or partisan, could accuse him of the opposite. But there you are.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
@General Stuck:
This
May 6th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Umm … can I have Never for $1,000, Alex?
May 6th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
@General Stuck:
Thirded. Or whatever, you got my vote.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
I’m not reading all these comments to say Malkin can go piss up a rope because she’s an idiot, and doesn’t deserve the time of day, much less media exposure. I say that because I have no granite countertops.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
@aimai: Yes, we allude to it here repeatedly. I’m not sure who started the analogy or I’d give them credit for it. I never read Hilzoy but it could’ve easily been transmogrified to a comment here.
I believe DougJ has even done a full post on it before.
But yes, essentially a large chunk of what DougJ posts on resemble the Darmok epi. His repeated invocations of “young bucks” for example. Only tribal members of the conservative branch know what the hell that means now a days. (Outside of our cloistered ingroup, natch)
All the dogwhistles and code and catch phrases signify membership. A deeper truth. They are meaningless to the general population.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:22 pm
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: @Shoemaker-Levy 9: Bravo.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
@General Stuck:
Repeat? It’s like any iteration of a virus strain. The next series will be worse and more difficult to contain.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
@Corey:
I never read Malkin, so maybe I’m selling her short on this (if that’s possible) but this is precisely the type of thing that I would have expected her so write herself to mitigate apology.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Y’know, there’s plenty of stupid shit in the world to complain about. What amazes me is that, given this wide and varied palate you complainers have to select from, you select…a fucking tweet from Jake Tapper.
Not only that, but a mundane tweet.
A mundane tweet that you have to contort into the form of a pretzel to even begin complaining about.
You guys do realize that John Yoo is a much easier and high value target, no?
May 6th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
@aimai:
The Star Trek franchise did several episodes and movies where they travel back in time to the contemporary United States. Which one are you talking about?
May 6th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
@geg6: Tapper is a douche bag full stop. So even though he didn’t do anything wrong this time I am quite happy pretending he did. Why not. These are the sorts of games the white wing plays all the time.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: She linked to it in her comment. Stop being a ‘bag.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
@Corner Stone: FTW, at Tanagra.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
@Sentient Puddle:
This reminds me. I am seriously craving some big, soft doughy pretzels with salt crystals baked in.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
sorry, all the supercomputers are busy computing pi to the trillionth digit.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
I won’t believe this isn’t true until I see a video shot and edited by Andrew Breitbart. Then Bill Maher can have him on his show again on his panel and pretend Breitbart is a real journalist.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
@Corner Stone:
Malkin. Malkin and Beck. Malkin and Beck and Shoemaker-Levy. The Tiger’s stripes. The Zebra’s stripes. Malkin and Beck and Shoemaker-Levy and the tiger’s stripes and the zebra’s stripes.
May 6th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: Actually, your post sounds more like Jeff Goldblum.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
I can totally see why a Kenyan-born Muslim soshulist would take down the American flag at ground zero before giving a victory lap grandstanding speech claiming undeserved credit for getting Bin Laden. Him and his America-hating elitist wife probably use American-flag designed toilet paper in the east wing.
lol…I love that one of the commenters at MM says that it’s soooo scary that they would actually believe such a story. Is that a teensy bit of introspection maybe? This combined with halving of the birther population has me almost afraid to even type this but…is it possible? Could this be a fleeting glance at post wingnut?
Edit: Ugh…moderation.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
@Corner Stone:
[puzzled look]
The tiger’s stripes! The zebra’s stripes!
[activating transporter]
May 6th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
@HyperIon:
Nice to know we’ll all have something to bitch about in 2019.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
Conservative pundits and bloggers are just showing how desperate they are for something, anything, that can be used to criticize the President.
I’m surprised that Malkin didn’t move right from her apology to “Only one American flag??
?
?!”
May 6th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
This is pretty hilarious considering you still haven’t moved Andrew Sullivan to the “Blogs We Monitor And Mock As Needed” category.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
@Corey:
Agreed.
It is all Obama’s fault.
He hates “America” so much, that any story that illustrates how he hates “America” must be true.
He shows how extremely much he hates “America” by doing such things as killing Osama Bin Laden. “America” couldn’t do that in 8 years of trying, so to have a him do it hurts “America’s” feelings really, really badly. No-one has ever hated “America” as much as Obama.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
What kind of apologies? The honest kind, or the kind that Republicans usually pull: “I apologize if anyone misunderstood me” or “I apologize if anyone was offended”—anything but “I apologize because I was wrong.”
May 6th, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Malkin’s niece has been missing for two months now. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s just embarrassed and hiding…
May 6th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
@Suffern ACE: The problem is, “tweetworthy” is an oxymoron.
May 6th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
You know that’s not how it works. They fail upward (cf. McArdle).
I recall back when Fake Capt. Ed Morrissey blogged about a story where some American flags were set on fire under a person’s car. He jumped to the conclusion that it was Leftist Provocateurs! setting the stage for a Neo-Bolshevik revolution!
Turns out it was a couple teenagers on a vandalism spree. Whoops! Then Malkin hired him to blog at Hot Air.
May 6th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
That’ll be bitch #2. Bitch #1 will be “Hey, Cole! When are you going to move Sully to BWMAMAN?”
May 6th, 2011 at 10:38 pm
@Chris:
Let’s ask coup engineer Henry Kissinger and his best buddy, mass murderer and war criminal Augusto Pinochet.
May 6th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
@Tractarian:
Well, we could just make the assumption that the American polity couldn’t possibly fall for such a thin tissue of lies and purest bullshit, and that we don’t want to give them any credibility by acknowledging the foolishness.
After all, that worked really well for Dukakis and Kerry, didn’t it?
May 6th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
@Maude: I agree with you. Tapper knows that Obama and the flag is a hot wingnut topic, and his tweet did not make it clear that it was one minute before ABC’s evening news (as opposed to one minute before an Obana-at-WTC-site event). Yes, Malkin and other maniacs are insane, but Tapper should have written something clearer.
May 7th, 2011 at 12:27 am
OFGS
Just the dripping drippiness of the whole non-issue demonstrates how serious is the lack of civic maturity by the supposed smartest people in the room.
Ugh
May 7th, 2011 at 5:51 pm