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Not THE biggest deal in the world, but the left went all kinds of nuts when Sarah Palin used crosshairs on her Facebook site to illustrate which Democratic candidates were vulnerable during the last Congressional elections. I’d also like to point out, apropos of nothing gun-related, that presidential candidate Obama flew around the midwest in Archer Daniels Midland’s corporate jet when he was pimping ethanol subsidies. Just sayin’ . . .
C’mon you can’t compare crosshairs over candidates’ pictures with the metaphor Obama used. That’s a stretch, man.
The crosshairs were not over candidates’ pictures. They were over a map of the U.S.
Would you be so quick to cut the Prez slack if he’d said the same thing the week after Jared Lee Loughner opened fire? Are you saying that it’s open season on firearms metaphors now? So to speak.
One big difference: Palin uses the gun metaphors in positive capacity: we’ll point our guns at them. The Prez used the gun metaphor in negative capacity: you shouldn’t point your guns at them. So you can ‘t charge the Prez with threatening real, veiled, or metaphorical violence. He’s doing the opposite.
Now, whether Palin was threatening real violence, as opposed to metaphorical violence, is a kinda silly argument and people really should have better things to do with their time. In the wake of the Giffords shooting, she was really only guilty of incredibly bad taste.
How can she be guilty of bad taste “in the wake of the Giffords shooting” for something she did before the Gifford’s shooting?
But once again (surprise, surprise) you completely miss the point, which has nothing to do with Palin’s map. The actual noteworthy thing here is that politicians of all stripes have used military and gun related metaphors since about 30 seconds after politics was invented. The map used by Palin’s PAC wasn’t unique, it wasn’t even original. In fact the Democrats had identically themed maps they distributed to their supporters for the very same election cycle.
But, as with so many other things, the media takes something that’s perfectly commonplace on both sides of the aisle and attaches ominous meaning to it only when done by Republicans/Conservatives/Libertatians. The object of this post is to imagine the brouhaha that would have resulted had Palin, Romney, Bachman or Pawlenty used the same metaphor in the same context that Obama did. If you’re imagining that it would be no big deal and it would pass without comment you’re either foolish, not paying attention or flat out lying.
What difference is there?
The left said extreme rhetoric is bad. The POTUS is knowingly lying about what is happening in these talks and acting like things are so dire they must get things done today and is using his stature to promote this idea and is using gun analogies.
Any form of demonization of someone is considered bad by the left(unless they are right wing). Maddow was blaming O’Reilly for Tiller’s death because he was pointing out that Tiller was illegally performing partial birth abortions.
I don’t care if Palin or Obama uses gun metaphors. They are METAPHORS and are presented as such. People aren’t so easily influenced by rhetoric like that. Frankly, I think all of the congress critters are indeed holding us hostage for political reasons. A few months ago they held us hostage over a tiny fraction of the budget and it hurt business really bad. Now they’re going to hold us all hostage over the debt limit and it will hurt us again. All they care about is their jobs. I’d like to see ever single one of them fired and start from scratch with a new congress full of practical people with a nice Gaussian distribution consisting mostly of moderates, and some liberals and conservatives in the tails.
-D
OMG he used a metaphor, he’s a terrible President! <–Sarcasm 🙂 Really he used a common metaphor, to illustrate a point no harm done, not a big little or even a figurative deal at all. Now if he ever uses a gun simile, then we can call to impeach him!
If he uses a reflexive pronoun when an objective pronoun is called for, I will support impeachment.
As far as metaphors are concerned, “in the crosshairs” or “in the sights” seem to be a dead metaphors, where the images could never be.
Well, whaddaya know — an empty suit that actually speaks. Where’s the Amazing Randi when we need him?