Posted on 10/14/2018 3:52:31 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
When Shakespeare wrote, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, he may have been right then. Today, our definition of words is much more fluid and the latest debate centers around the word mob, defined by the dictionary as a crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble.
Cell phone videos proliferate of scenes such as the group chanting, We believe survivors, as they crowded around Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his wife on a dinner date, screaming and driving the couple from the restaurant. Defenders of the screamers characterize them as protestors. Lawrence Jacobs, director of the center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, is stepping up to the plate with a denial, Hardly something I would describe as a mob, creatively describing scenes such as the people clawing at the door of the U.S. Supreme Court, ostensibly to confront newly-confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as noisy democracy, echoing the words of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
Theyre certainly noisy, and theres certainly a link to leaders of the Democratic Party such as Rep. Maxine Waters. In June, at a rally, and then again in a TV interview, the California congresswoman urged participants, If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gas station, you get out and you create a crowd, adding, And you tell them theyre not welcome any more.
CNN anchors have dubbed what happens when a crowd gets together as the M word, and have told contributors to shut up when they insisted that the Cruzes had been mobbed.
Its amusing to turn the clock back to 2009 and 2010 to see how the media characterized the Tea Party. The favorite words were nut bags, radicals, extremists, hysterical, furious and dangerous. Quickly, these words were accompanied by the charge that Tea Party members were all racists who were, according to the New York Times, lighting a powder keg of nativists, separatists and militia. One columnist wrote about a tsunami of anger and compared them to Nazis. Washington Posts Eugene Robinson accused them of paranoid ravings.
Eight years ago, the medias proof for these charges was pictures of signs held by individuals, exemplified by a picture accompanying a Vox article, How Southern racism found a home in the Tea Party, of a mustached, middle-aged, overweight, T-shirted man with a sign, We dont want socialism you arrogant Kenyan. The existence of any single sign became a proxy for the entire group. Even the video was mostly people just holding signs. And there were plenty of obnoxious signs, just as there were comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler, but the anti-Bush signs and noisy democracy protestors such as the group that tried to carry out a citizens arrest of Bush adviser Karl Rove generally were ignored by the mainstream media.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, a possible presidential candidate, campaigning over the weekend, rephrased a 2016 comment of Michelle Obama, saying, When they go low, we kick em, later insisting, When I say, you know, We kick em, I dont mean we do anything inappropriate. Rand Pauls wife, Kelley, recently shared a letter she wrote to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who also urged people to harass Republicans. She told him her husband was besieged in the airport by people who screamed, inches from his face.
Most Americans would deem all these behaviors inappropriate, and since they are obviously organized, they merit the description. They smell like the M word.
Now that weve moved the boundaries on what is acceptable noisy democracy, what can we do? My children loved the popular series of childrens books created by Stan and Jan Berenstain. In The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners, Mama Bear is so annoyed by the cubs rudeness and treatment of each other that she creates a politeness plan. She creates a chart listing various penalties, sort of a grading system.
Maybe, we in the ancillary media should create something like it. The Cruz and Rand Paul scenes get an M; other scenes might rate as ND, or noisy democracy. The Berenstain cubs first mocked the politeness plan, but eventually it had an impact. It may be just childrens fiction but when people are behaving like children, its worth trying.
Merrie Spaeth, a Dallas communications consultant, was President Reagans director of media relations. Follow her on Twitter @SpaethCom.
The Dems want mob rule.
Vote and keep your powder dry, folks.
Double check your 100 yd zero.
When Shakespeare wrote about an angry mob that thought it would overturn society. The heads of the mob leader ended up at the end of pikes.
A survivor of what? Some teen trying to cop a feel of another teen's breasts? Give me a freakin' break.
“Double check your 100 yd zero.”
Check.
“Double check your 100 yd zero.”
Check.
Its voter intimidation.
We believe survivors,
The victimization of Kavanaugh had tens of millions of witnesses, and overwhelming evidence. The alleged victimization of Ford had none. So who’s the “survivor”?
He's done. NEXT!
Trump is running rings around the fake newsette.
Currently, the leftists are freaking out about a 4chan meme. It has already been banned from Twitter. It calls the mindless mob leftists “NPCs” (Non-Player Characters in video games, that are mindless programs that follow a set, limited set of actions, and say the same, repetitive things over and over.)
In any event, this is giving the leftist leaders hysteria, and they are seeking to ban these memes from the Internet. So please download them and save them. Here are five of them, in reverse order. But more are being created right now.
That’s right.
Some Freeper posted a hilarious campaign slogan the other day complete with graphics. It said, Jobs not Mobs. It was great!
Who was it that said “A mob is said to have many feet, but few heads.”
Ben Franklin?
Exactly. I believe Justice Kavanaugh.
All these women claiming to be a “survivor” of sexual molestation are full of it unless they were raped and/or threatened. Then they get to use that term because it is possible they could have been killed if the rapist was violent to the point of killing.
Two teens with over active hormones does not a survivor make. Not talking about Kavanaugh.
That sounds like a “happy” ending.
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