{"id":12080,"date":"2011-01-11T11:20:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T18:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slowpokecomics.com\/blog\/?p=332"},"modified":"2011-01-11T11:20:30","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T18:20:30","slug":"people-saying-intelligent-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12080","title":{"rendered":"People Saying Intelligent Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I liked Amanda Marcotte&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/pandagon.net\/index.php\/site\/comments\/the_mental_illness_gambit\/\" >recent analogy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Holding the right responsible for their paranoid, incendiary, violent rhetoric reminds me strongly of trying to put a cat in its carrier.\u00a0 You know it  has to be done, but you really don\u2019t want to do it.\u00a0 The cat is going  to lash out.\u00a0 She\u2019s going to hide under the bed.\u00a0 She\u2019s going to hiss  and scream.\u00a0 She\u2019s going to grab the sides of the carrier as you push  her in, in a pathetic final bid not to go the carrier.\u00a0 But you have the  fight anyway, because you can\u2019t just renege on your responsibilities  the second they become a problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Matt Bors also has a <a href=\"http:\/\/mattbors.com\/blog\/\" >good post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>And that\u2019s where we are at. You can\u2019t talk about the issues underneath this without being accused of \u201cpoliticizing\u201d it. The shooter is crazy and incoherent enough that we can all comfortably write him off as a \u201clone nut,\u201d America\u2019s favorite term to absolve us from looking at any of the societal problems that causes this type of behavior\u2013or, god forbid, the tools he used to kill so many so fast. Unless the shooter fits into the binary mold of a mainstream liberal or conservative, we are content to pretend his behavior took place in a vacuum. \u201cA lone nut! you\u2019ll get those.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a refreshingly nuanced take on my <a href=\"http:\/\/slowpokecomics.com\/strips\/violentspin.html\" >latest cartoon<\/a> over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystorybook.com\/comic_strip_of_the_daycom\/2011\/01\/cartoonists-strain-sorensen-scores.html\" >Comic Strip of the Day<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are a number of cartoons about the Tucson shootings, ranging  from &#8220;weepers,&#8221; which serve the important purpose of informing people  that death is sad, to those suggesting a direct, specific correlation  between the rhetoric and the action, as if the right wing had  purposefully delivered a detailed &#8220;to do&#8221; list into the hands of the  shooter. I haven&#8217;t seen many that managed to make a persuasive point, but I would count this as one&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As for countering her examples, feel free, but I want to see something  more persuasive than the time Obama explained his planned debating style  with a flippant reference to Sean Connery&#8217;s advice to Kevin Costner in  &#8220;The Untouchables,&#8221; or a DNC map that used traditional archery-style  bull&#8217;s-eyes to show the areas in which they planned special efforts.  Don&#8217;t waste my time unless you have specific examples of times  nationally-known progressives used rhetoric about &#8220;refreshing the tree  of liberty&#8221; or &#8220;reloading&#8221; or encouraged people to bring firearms to  political rallies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Predictably, I&#8217;ve been accused by others of not looking at the oh-so-incendiary rhetoric of the left, but tell me: when is the last time you heard a &#8220;mainstream&#8221; progressive pundit talk about  <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/mmtv\/200903310038\" >killing ATF agents<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I liked Amanda Marcotte&#8217;s recent analogy:<br \/>\nHolding the right responsible for their paranoid, incendiary, violent rhetoric reminds me strongly of trying to put a cat in its carrier.\u00a0 You know it  has to be done, but you really don\u2019t want to do it.\u00a0 The cat is going  to lash out.\u00a0 She\u2019s going to hide [&#8230;] <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12080\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syndicated-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}