Posted on 10/01/2009 6:42:51 PM PDT by Tolsti2
I've had these thoughts for some time, but have been reluctant to express them. Now so many others have voiced them that it's pointless to remain silent. I am frightened by the climate of insane anti-Obama hatred in this country. I'm not referring to traditional conservatives or Republicans. They're part of the process. I'm speaking of the lunatic fringe, the frothers, the extremist rabble who are sweeping up the ignorant and credulous into a bewildering and fearsome tide of reckless rhetoric.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
Can Mr. Ebert point me to his columns where he worries about books and movies and articles about assassinating President Bush?
The late Gene Siskel “outed” Ebert regarding his continual claim that he’s never changed a movie review, and did it on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Instead of, “oh, that’s right, I did change my mind one time” he turned on Siskel and said, “YOU gave that to him”.
GOP won by planting seeds of deception
December 14, 2000
by Roger Ebert
Now that the adventure is over, it might be instructive to consider some of the ideas that seeped into the general consciousness. How and why, for example, did it become established in so many minds that Bush was the presumptive winner and Gore the apparent loser?
What the Republicans did, cleverly, was to establish effective “memes” in the minds of the public and the pundits. A meme, so named by the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins, is like a gene, except that instead of advancing through organisms, it moves through minds. Memes are simply ideas that demonstrate a high rate of survival and transmission.
Bush became the “winner” of a dead heat, in the midst of an incomplete recount, when a premature victory was declared on her own unnecessary deadline by his Florida campaign co-chairwoman, who also held the crucial post of secretary of state. Once this bogus “certification” was final (Ms.. Harris signing several copies on TV, including a valuable souvenir for herself), the Republicans referred to it endlessly as a valid event, even though it was clearly a shameless ploy to slam the door before the election escaped. A meme was born.
The other effective GOP meme was the mantra, “we counted, and counted again, and then a third time.” These words were chanted by Baker and the other Bush spokesmen until many Americans accepted them as a form of truth, even though it is clear that thousands of ballots were never counted at all.
Another successful meme was the assault on the honesty of election judges and the courts in general. They were often characterized by the GOP as partisan crooks, unless their findings agreed with the Bush cause, in which case they were patriots.
This led finally to the spectacle of the “states rights” party applauding the Supremes’ federal coup halting the recount because, in words that will haunt Scalia forever, a recount might cast “a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election.” Think about that. In other words, if Gore ended up with more votes, a cloud would be cast on Bush’s claims.
Three days later the Supreme Court majority overruled the Florida court’s attempt to interpret Florida law. John Paul Stevens’ dissent lamented this “lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed,” and added, in words that will long be quoted, “...the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.” The Republicans were not only more effective creators of memes but were also better at raising their voices. The Democrats were on the whole more civil in their public statements.
The GOP had no hesitation in making the dangerous charge that Democrats were “stealing” the election. This in the face of plausible evidence that Gore got more votes in Florida, as he did nationally. Right-wing pundits were stirred to a frenzy. Ann Coulter accused the Democrats of being “delusional nutcases,” called the Florida Supreme Court “power-mad lunatics,” and found that the Democrats had crossed the “fine line” between “typical Democrat lies and demonstrably psychotic behavior.”
More Americans voted for liars and psychotics than for her candidate? Really? Comments like these are an example not of opinion but of behavior. Have you ever seen Ms. Coulter on television? Even her conservative stablemates look queasy as her ideological flywheel spins.
The Democrats were just plain outshouted. And Lady Luck rolled the dice and gave them the butterfly ballot, the Jews for Buchanan, the election boards that took days off, the hired mob to stop the Dade recount, the disenfranchised black voters, the illegally franchised military and absentee voters, the Bush cousin to call the election on TV, the Bush co-chairwoman to rush it through certification, and the Bush brother to mastermind operation fail-safe by the Florida legislature to certify Bush electors no matter who won. Even in Vegas they’d be amazed by luck this rotten; the Miami Herald’s statisticians estimated that Gore probably outpolled Bush by about 23,000 votes. That’s why it was so important for the Republicans to stop the count. It is important, then, to keep in mind that Bush was not obviously the winner nor Gore obviously the loser. The GOP has captured the election but may have done itself damage in the process, leaving doubts about the fairness of its tactics and the recklessness of its rhetoric.
At the end the Democrats were left with one meme that showed promise: That they were the ones who wanted to count the votes, while the Republicans did not. If memes work like genes in the evolution of political opinion in America, this one may be the fittest, and may survive.
I quite reading Ebert years ago because of his fatuous and ill-informed left-wing maunderings. I recommend everyone else do the same.
Someone did post a comment that he approved of the movie ‘assasination of an american president’ a few years ago. I think the comment was pulled, and he certainly didn’t respond to it.
Roger you flabby tool.
The left has more rabid frothing BS, than Doans has pills.
Can somebody tell me why we care enough about the words of this grandma phaigue to post them on FR?
Some day Roger will push himself away from the desert cart and folks might start taking him seriously.
This fat, disgusting turd Ebert is best ignored.
Well if ‘conservatives’ would quit going to and buying movies.........he wouldn’t have a job, eh?
LOL, Friedman said almost the exact same thing!
Ebert is not a well man. He is to be pitied more than anything else. His prattle means nothing.
He said “Were liberals angry about Bush? Yes. But liberals played by the rules.”
What I’m hoping is that some freepers will go on there and respectfully explain how foolish that is.
As a film critic he has lost the eye for reality and lives in the land of generalities, tropes and more tropes. And that is being overly generous.
Ebert reviews the film “Obamaland”
(plot synopsis: Obama rides a Red Unacorn to New Orleans and restores the glorious chocolate city, planting lollypop trees and gumdrop bushes along the way)
Ebert: “I loved it! The juxtaposition of Hope against the stark backdrop of GWB’s Katrina brought tears to my eyes. I ate 10 boxes of DOT’s!
Take the whole family”
“Fringe? What fringe?”
It’s like he vomited on the page. The guy is clueless.
My comment (let’s see if it makes it):
“Hello hypocrites. Please refer to the following:
http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621
(Scroll down to the mass of pictures if you’ve been educated in public schools and can’t read.)
You reap what you sow.”
Hilarious other comments have defended that, somehow. Saying something about how those don’t represent the real left or something.
The Dims know our conservative locomotive is coming down the track, they see it, they know they will be ran over, put out of office, but they still won't get off that track. hehehe.
We need someone to do a parody song of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison", make it our theme song.
They see our train a coming
It's coming round the bend
We ain't seen no sunshine since
That Obama man got in
We're stuck in Baracks nation (or Barook's)
Until Two Thousand Ten.
One little problem there Roger. The vitriolic hatred spewed forth during Bush’s tenure was propigaged by the mainstream liberals, not the fringe lunatics you accuse here. And, what word did you provide in opposition to the liberals who called for Bush’s death????? Crickets . . . Crickets . . .
Funny how the joker obama thing was made by a kucinich supporter as well. The truth is these guys’ enemy at all times.
That quote alone disqualifies him from participation in any rational discussion.
The “man” is obviously so full of scheisse he’s gonna float away.
Gay or straight, he’s an idiot. Never listened to his ramblings about movies - most of the movies he gives a thumb down to I’ve enjoyed. Ones that he’s given a thumbs up to, I’ve hated. He’s a lousy critic, and an even worse political pundit.
For the sake of correct information...that film you’re talking about did not advocate killing the President. It was a speculative account of what would happen if someone did. And it wasn’t pretty.
He used to be good though. Something happened in the last 10 years or so.
This from a man whose very critical job is telling us which movies to see.
He did work with the Soviets to undermine President Reagan. The record is out there.
Rog, you barely have 3 years left and Obamacare won't go online until after 2013. DON'T FORCE ME TO LIVE UNDER YOUR PIPEDREAM.
I'm not happy one bit about having MY own medical bills padded out to make up the shortfall that the government refuses to pay health providers for Medicare patients. It's a back door tax.
They usually say that's different because, as everyone knows, Bush/Cheney were committing REAL WAR CRIMES!!!!
The lie won't sell so revise the historical record and pretend that was NEVER uttered. Utterly Stalinist. We recall the rhetoric. See how Condi Rice was treated and tell me that the Leftists weren't RACIST in their depictions.
Jim Emerson review for Roger Ebert on his website
LEAD PARAGRAPH: "...is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush's role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history. Especially when public awareness of the facts about his administration lags so far behind what has already been documented."
LATER HE WRITES: "The scenario is a familiar one: What would happen if a much-hated world leader was killed in office?"
AND: "Gerald Ford... was never as divisive and generally reviled as Bush Jr., whose methods and ideology have been vilified as Hitlerian in real-life speeches and demonstrations that we've all seen already. (I'm speaking only about the real-life hatred the man has evoked worldwide, not the aptness of the Nazi comparison or whether such virulence is justified by his words and actions in office.)"
WHEN HE GETS TO THE ACTUAL PLOT HE WRITES: "Everyone seems to agree that the anti-Bush demonstrations in Chicago that day were exceptionally angry. A top Chicago police official says he may disagree with the demonstrators, but that they have the right to protest. But, he claims, the key language in the First Amendment says such expressions must be 'peaceful and law-abiding.'"
The tea party protests HAVE been peaceful and law-abiding unlike the umpteen "peace protest" riots with hundreds of arrests or the RNC protests with bomb plots (Democrat activists actively caught with their weapons) and kidnapping plots (to deny some of the delegates access to their convention).
Hey now, he co-wrote 4 adult movies with Russ Meyer, 3 of which were made (Who Killed Bambi, starring the Sex Pistols fell apart after one week of filming).
Ebert and his friends are the LUNATIC FRINGE! They are just too stupid to know it.
They probably think you need a passport to flyover country!~
Two things happened. After Gene Siskel died, he no longer tempered his political rants from his MOVIE editorials and books. It was the Age of Clinton and everything needed to be political.
The other thing is he got brain disease (seriously). And it's made him a grumpy old man.
We had several active Democrats in the Senate who have serious brain disease and they get to dictate how the rest of us will live long after they have passed on.
Ebert and his friends are the LUNATIC FRINGE! They are just too stupid to know it.
They probably think you need a passport to flyover country!~
******
In a July 2001 Sun-Times general-news column, he depicted presidential daughter Barbara Bush as an ignorant “yob” whose alleged intellectual deficiencies were reminiscent of her father’s. About the President, Ebert wrote:
“That the president of the United States cannot get himself from his bulletproof Cadillac limousine to lunch with the queen without being caught in the rain is perhaps an insight into his need for a missile shield…. George W. Bush was so indifferent to the world that in the years before he became president he made only two overseas trips, both for business, neither for curiosity. No wonder he wants to beak the missile treaty, alienate NATO, ignore global warming and reinstall Russia and China as enemies: Those foreign countries scarcely exist in his imagination. Why go to Australia when you have the Outback Steakhouse right here at home?... The Times [of London] … said Bush gave a ‘pep talk’ to children about the advantages of reading over television. The children did not ask him to name the last book he had read. Just good manners, I guess.”
In the August 2003 issue of The Progressive, Ebert asserted that President Bush was a devious, unintelligent religious zealot who had stolen the 2000 Presidential election: “The Bush theory, of course, is that he has a personal dialogue with God: God talks to Bush, Bush talks to God. And Bush gets God’s message, and Bush really believes that God’s on his side. The problem with that is Bush then can’t change his mind because God isn’t going to change his mind. And so what we have here really is a rather alarming situation where religion in the White House has crossed the line between church and state.”
Ebert boasted of his affiliations with the Students for a Democratic Society in his review of the 2003 documentary The Weather Underground: “I still have my membership card in Students for a Democratic Society,” he wrote, “signed by Tom Hayden, who handed it to me at a National Student Congress in 1963, and tucked the $1 membership fee in the pocket of his flannel shirt.”
In 2004 Ebert contributed $1,000 to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Something bigger than yourself should NOT be dedication to seeing this nation go full tilt socialist (when you won't be there to spend a DAY living under it).
Go take a cruise. See the sites. Gather your memoirs. Take in a fine painting or music performance.
Spewing vitriol at people who gather peacefully to protest agenda items that were NEVER discussed in any of the debates and do NOT have the backing of the American public?
Must be a sad existence to want to spend your final years namecalling over 50% of Americans and speculate why they are “wrong” (they are too stupid to realize that the policies would be a GOOD thing, you see).
Thanks.
And he wants to talk about divisive "conspiracy theories"...
Two points:
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