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Sunday, August 17, 2003 |
The right wing's summer of hate. Sidney Blumenthal: "Sure, Michael Savage lost his MSNBC show for going too far, but Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Coulter show bullying and humiliation are still a big business." Salon An extraordinary observation of Blumenthal's is this:
The rhetoric of abuse is not a sudden outburst, but has been well-designed for years. Republicans use these words and pursue these strategies consciously. In 1990, then Republican House Whip Newt Gingrich (later Speaker of the House) hired a pollster to devise a lexicon of demonization. In a memo that Gingrich circulated, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," Republicans were instructed that "words and phrases are powerful" and that the list that had been test-marketed should be "memorized."
They were urged to apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party:
"decay ... failure (fail) ... collapse(ing) ... deeper ... crisis ... urgent(cy) ... destructive ... destroy ... sick ... pathetic ... lie ... liberal ... they/them ... unionized bureaucracy ... "compassion" is not enough ... betray ... consequences ... limit(s) ... shallow ... traitors ... sensationalists ...
"endanger ... coercion ... hypocrisy ... radical ... threaten ... devour ... waste ... corruption ... incompetent ... permissive attitudes ... destructive ... impose ... self- serving ... greed ... ideological ... insecure ... anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs ... pessimistic ... excuses ... intolerant ...
"stagnation ... welfare ... corrupt ... selfish ... insensitive ... status quo ... mandate(s) ... taxes ... spend(ing) ... shame ... disgrace ... punish (poor ... ) ... bizarre ... cynicism ... cheat ... steal ... abuse of power ... machine ... bosses ... obsolete ... criminal rights ... red tape ... patronage." The Gingrich memo is online here. [Follow Me Here...]
11:13:18 AM Permalink
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Shut up or get out. The Observer newspaper has obtained a Vatican document from 1962, instructing bishops to cover up allegations of sexual abuse by clergy or face excommunication. The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication. They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in... [The Pagan Prattle Online]
And this Vatican now presumes to have the moral authority to fight gay marriage.
8:21:55 AM Permalink
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Astrology is bunk. After forty years of study, researchers have concluded that astrology is a load of rubbish. Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading - all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts. The research was conducted on over 2000 people born within minutes of each other in 1958, in test conditions which could hardly have been more conducive to success... but the results are uniformly negative: (Geoffrey Dean, a scientist and former astrologer ) said that the consistency... [The Pagan Prattle Online]
Won't matter. The morons who pay attention to astrology don't pay any attention to any studies that debunk if. After all, if they don't pay any attention to all of life's experience and any smidgen of logic shows astrology to be hokum, why pay attention to real thought and research?
8:16:46 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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