[UPDATE/CORRECTION: The comment in question was made by Steve King of Iowa, not Peter King of New York. Apologies to Peter King for the mix-up. Meanwhile, this is not the first time Steve King has said something dumb. … FWIW, Peter King has also been known to make controversial comments, but he did not make this one.]
Can you imagine the conservative reaction if a Democratic Congressman said the equivalent of this statement by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) Steve King (R-IA) about an act of Islamist terrorism?
“It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America. … I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.”
Let’s see…
“It’s sad the incidents in New York and Washington happened, but by the same token, our Middle East policies have really inflamed the Arab world, and when the day comes when we withdraw our troops from that region and we start treating Muslims with respect, it’s going to be a happy day for America. … I don’t know if the hijackers’ grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of Osama’s fatwa. I can tell you I’ve spent a lot of time in the West Bank and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is America supporting Israel in continuing this occupation.’ Why do they insist on oppressing the Palestinians. … They are oppressive and we should not provide them with unconditional support.”
Obviously — obviously — the 9/11 atrocity and the IRS attack are terrorist acts of vastly, vastly different magnitudes. I don’t mean to suggest a direct equivalence between the two, by any stretch of the imagination. However, on this point, the principle is the same. Regardless of how one feels about the substance of the criticisms being offered, the primary criticism against the above hypothetical post-9/11 rant would have been the simple fact that, in its manner of expressing opinions about root causes, it arguably appears to justify or excuse the terrorist act, or at least comes uncomfortably close to doing so. And that’s not OK.
So, to sum up… Peter Steve King is an anti-American traitor… right, conservatives?
P.S. If the differences between 9/11 and, uh, 2/18 are too distracting, how about a hypothetical Democrat delivering the same rant about the 2002 LAX airport shooting? That’d even make the Israel stuff more directly relevant. And more importantly, the incident is more in the same vein as the IRS plane crash: a one-off attack by an ideologically motivated lone individual, a death toll in the single digits, etc. Yet surely a congressional statement along the lines of King’s, seeming to pretty clearly cross the line into sorta-kinda-justifying the attack, would have been met with universal (and very loud) condemnation, no?
So I guess what I’m saying is: Where’s the outrage? Or more precisely, where’s the Outrage MachineTM? C’mon, no Drudge siren? No Fox News hysteria? No complaints about how the media isn’t covering this oh-so-important story? No demands that everyone vaguely associated with King, his party or his ideology instantly “condemn” and “distance themselves” from his statement, lest they be found guilty by association? Or do those things only happen when some fringe loudmouth liberal (or, uh, Pat Robertson) says something idiotic?
Peter King is a blowhard.
Wait, you’re talking about the SI football writer who does that lengthy MMQB column every week, right?
All seriousness aside, what Rep. King should’ve said is, “I hate the IRS; they are evil and their overbearing existence is not justified. However, flying planes into buildings is not the proper way to deal with that. Going to a flat tax, is.”
Btw, why should we be surprised that occasionally a Republican or two makes a comment worthy of Maxine Waters or Cynthia McKinnie? Gerrymandered districts means idiot-politicians-for-life on both sides of the aisle.
We shouldn’t be surprised. But if Maxine Waters made the equivalent statement, the Outrage Machine (TM) would immediately spin up into fifth gear, and the statement would be treated by Drudge and Fox and Malkin etc. like OMG THE BIGGEST NEWS STORY EVAR!!!!!!! and they’d be demanding that every Democrat and liberal and human immediately condemn it in “no uncertain terms” and “distance themselves” lest they be perceived as tacitly endorsing it.
My point isn’t really about King. I agree with you, idiot politicians abound on both sides. My point is to beware the tendency of the Outrage Machine (TM) to blow things completely out of proportion when it’s ideologically convenient… and totally ignore them when it’s not, even when what they’re ignoring is the direct one-for-one equivalent of what they’d otherwise be not just condemning, but demanding that EVERYONE condemn, immediately and loudly.
I have at times participated in the Outrage Machine, having fallen prey to its easy, lazy arguments. But I hate it.
P.S. Oh, I almost forgot, if Maxine Waters made the equivalent statement, one of the many OUTRAGEOUS OUTRAGES would be Why isn’t the liberal media paying any attention to this?!?!? If a Republican said this, they’d be all over it!!!!! Which is funny, because I don’t think Peter King’s statement is the top story on the evening news or in the New York Times right now.
Brendan, I have non-minor points to make in response:
1) The “Outrage Machine” is non-partisan, rarely worthy of the proportion of attention it seeks, and all-encompassing. A great recent example: Tiger Woods
2) You are the most guilty perpetrators of this phenomenon I personally know. Your penchant and ability to turn relatively minor partisan or ideological comments into a rant of “OH MY GOD THIS IS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING EVER SAID, WE SHOULD ALL BE OUTRAGED!” would be unparalleled, if not for the fact that the sheer number of bloggers out there virtually guarantees that, statistically, you’ll always have a set of peers who are even more unhinged.
1) This is somewhat true, as I tacitly acknowledge in a just-made edit to the post (“or, uh, Pat Robertson”)… but there’s a fifth gear to the Conservative Outrage Machine that the Liberal Outrage Machine rarely manages to muster. Liberals are just vastly inferior at organized propaganda of this sort than conservatives.
2) I plead guilty, although I think I’ve gotten better over the years. But I’m a bit like Andrew Sullivan: I often get too emotionally worked up about things at first, then realize with the benefit of taking a deep breath that I’m perhaps right but the urgency of my rightness is less than I initially thought. 🙂 In any case, I think there is a qualitative difference between one blogger getting a bit carried away, on the one hand, and a sustained, cynical campaign to generate faux outrage for ideological and/or business purposes, on the other. At its worst, the Outrage Machine most definitely meets that description, I’d say.
The Outrage Machine is in Vancouver. They need it on hand in case Canada doesn’t get the hockey gold medal. That’s going to require the full power of the machine, so it’s slowly building pressure if that event happens. Some steam was let off after the USA win over the Canadians, but that event also will factor into the Outrage mix if Canada loses the gold.
If Canada wins it all, I fear whatever event or person gets all that pent up Outrage.
LOL
1) This can be attributed almost solely to the fact that conservative media is far more popular and subscribed to than liberal media. Conservatives found channels for their opinions, which were previously blocked out by the mainstream media, and their innovative formats have flourished. Rush single-handedly revived talk radio and made it into the mega-industry it is today, and nobody complained about Fox News back when the only Fox non-black people watched was The Simpsons, because at that time Fox News didn’t exist and all anyone had was CNN, which might as well have been an endless loop of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, and Peter Jennings. Conservatives also popularized the blogging format despite the fact that the internet was this new-fangled technology dominated by young tech whizzes and porn moguls (liberals have since made serious inroads into claiming this libertine territory that was naturally theirs). The dominance of the conservative media can be explained by the same types of non-coincidental data patterns and common-sense observations that Malcom Gladwell used to show how Wall Street law firms came to be dominated by second generation Eastern European Jews born in the early 1930s in his book, Outliers. That is to say, the dominance of conservative media isn’t a coincidence or an outlier, but the very natural and predictable result of modern cultural and media trends. Wishing liberals had the same kind of megaphone that conservatives now have is akin to mourning the fact that Wall Street law firms are no longer dominated by Country Club Anglos.
I don’t begrudge conservatives their megaphones, I just wish some of them would use those megaphones in a more responsible and truthful fashion.
In all seriousness, Peter King needs to go away. Everytime he opens his mouth, it’s to make some inflammatory remarks about politics, which are always wrong, or at least are so uncivil that any point he had is drowned out in the outrage. I don’t remember him ever making a point in a way that was worth anything. He makes Republicans look really bad, and typically poisons the conversation in a way that makes the sane conservative position untenable as people run off in the other direction.
Wait, a New Yorker who makes inflammatory remarks which are always wrong? Gee, what a shock! Coming from the land of Howard Stern, Al Sharpton, Opie and Anthony, and Michael Savage, I simply cannot fathom how that part of the country can tolerate bombastic blowhard politicians like Rep. Peter King!
Gently, Andrew … our Brendan doesn’t live there … well, not yet …
(innocent grin)
Brendan, you still have the Kings’ first names mixed up in your UPDATE/CORRECTION.
*sigh*
I’m an idiot.
Thanks, Joe. Fixed. (I think.)
In other news… the Missile Defense Agency has a new logo that’s vaguely Islamic looking. OMG IT’S AN OUTRAGE!!! OBAMA’S A MUSLIM!!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
Hey, the photo of the Moon and Venus on my blog’s masthead is also vaguely Islamic! IT’S AN OUTRAGE!!!!!!!
🙂
LOL @ Comment 16. I also like how one of the articles in rotation on the MDA website is about the successful ABL test… meanwhile, in line with the administration’s priorities, DOD has recommended terminating funding for the ABL program. Hooray, we have a missile defense technology that works; let’s celebrate it and kill it simultaneously!
“…the primary criticism against the above hypothetical post-9/11 rant would have been the simple fact that, in its manner of expressing opinions about root causes, it arguably appears to justify or excuse the terrorist act, or at least comes uncomfortably close to doing so…
“…a congressional statement along the lines of King’s, seeming to pretty clearly cross the line into sorta-kinda-justifying the attack…”
Arguably Appears, my eye. Sorta-Kinda-Justifying, my arse. / Rule of Rhetorical Translation, learned way back in the past century’s Sixties, maaan: ‘While I don’t condone this violence, I understand its causes’ always means: “I condone this violence.’ :>
(BTW, are we speaking of the verysame NY Congressman King who used to chair the House IRA Caucus? Y’know, Hon. Peter King, SF-Long Island? / But I guess he decided to quit Condoning the lads after a while. 😉
Andrew: Hi. / Yeah good point about the ABL. Think I heard that Sec’y Gates lacks confidence that our airborne platforms will be in place & in range when-&-where the Enemy decides to launch. Me, I feel Very confident that they Won’t be if we don’t Have them to begin with. / Now, if the program does get killed, is Boeing screwed?
That is indeed the same Peter King I initially thought we were talking about, but I was wrong: as stated in my “UPDATE/CORRECTION,” we’re actually talking about Steve King of Iowa.
ABL is a significant but not a huge program for Boeing, but combined with the fact that we are the biggest MDA contractor by far, we’re getting hammered by the related cuts in that sense.
On the bright side, although I’m not close to the program or technologies, ABL seems like a program that could be restarted and reconstituted fairly easily if a future administration had a change of heart. I’d assume they’d store the assets for a period of time and maintain some ongoing level of component and systems testing to continually further the proof of concept, but when we’re talking about political interventions in military procurements, just about anything can happen.
Elder Joe – do you think there’s any chance that the Palestine situation will go the way of the Irish Question eventually ?
So I guess what I’m saying is: Where’s the outrage? Or more precisely, where’s the Outrage MachineTM? C’mon, no Drudge siren? No Fox News hysteria? No complaints about how the media isn’t covering this oh-so-important story? No demands that everyone vaguely associated with King, his party or his ideology instantly “condemn” and “distance themselves” from his statement, lest they be found guilty by association? Or do those things only happen when some fringe loudmouth liberal (or, uh, Pat Robertson) says something idiotic?
I’d like to know what tarring-and-feathering of some liberal you have in mind when compared to what’s not happening to a member of Congress so obscure that you don’t even know who he is (that’s pretty obscure).
Ask Trent Lott if there’s a fifth gear on the Leftwing Noise Machine. Ask Rush Limbaugh, about whom awful quotes had to be made up because the stuff he really said just wasn’t inflammatory enough.
Brendan (#21) ~ I know, I know. I always read all your Updated Corrections and Corrected Updates and So forth; I learned the importance of doing this long long ago. 🙂 Mine (#19) was merely a Rhetorical question, re the Repooblichaun Congressman King whom we aren’t talking about, slipped in for the sole purpose of getting a Rise out of Alasdair — which as you’ll note, it Did. :} No, Steve King of Iowa is naught but a boring run-of-the-mill rightwing whackjob; whereas Pete King of Queensborough, Nassau County, and West Belfast is a rather more interesting, albeit often Troubling, character. (Who still cight, not inconceivably, become the next US Senator from New York. / Saints presairrve us. 😉
Alasdair (#23): Yes. Some chance. Very eventually. / Of course there are Analogies; but they are (of course) all flawed. Parallels, but imperfect. Symmetries — but, they are Broken. / One example: in order to lay down Arms and enter into democratic Politics, Sinn Fein/IRA was not obligated to first recognize England’s right to exist as an English state on some English portion (exact borders to be negotiated) of the so-called British Isles. By virtue of their own claims, however, Hamas/Hezbollah and the rest of the crew have set themselves a much harder task.
“…although I’m not close to the program or technologies, ABL seems like a program that could be restarted and reconstituted fairly easily if a future administration had a change of heart.”
Andrew: right. IOW if you told us More, you’d have to Kill us. :} Good On ya. I say, Go Boeing! ;>
Venerable Joe – close – except that Sinn Fein *did* already recognise that, historically, the British Isles *did* exist, and they (mostly) didn’t give a rodent’s fundament what went on outside the island of Ireland …
I was actually thinking more that, as the young folk in the area became better informed, they started to realise that Grandpa was fighting a war of decades and centuries ago, based upon prejudices and hatred that no longer needed to apply … and they wised up and said enough is enough … (yeah, yeah, simpifying a tad, but isn’t that largely what happened, when the kids realised that they (the kids) were dying and the “adults” sending them off to die somehow weren’t) …
And, interestingly enough, the terrorism side was gradually drying up the US donations, if I understand things correctly …
I do know that, as friends over here realised that they (the friends here) didn’t want to live under the laws of the Republic of Ireland, they became much less supportive of the IRA … things like, in 1975, the Dail passing laws that finally made the possesion of contraceptives in the Republic legal, but not the commercial use … so – you could own a contraceptive in the South, but couldn’t legally buy or sell one … how many of even *your* generation would have wanted to live under those laws ? Or where divorce was illegal ? Or abortion *strictly* under any and all circumstances illegal ?
Yet that was what the IRA wanted to happen to those who lived in Northern Ireland (as a part of the United Kingdom) if/when the north would become part of the Republic of Ireland …
And the more folk that realised the practicalities of what it would mean, the more the IRA lost ground until, once the old folk inculcated intot he sectarian hate had died off, the young ones *knew* better – and the terrorism witherd away and vanished …
Now, when that can/will happen in the Palestinian Mandate ? Dunno … I suspect it will depend upon the followers of the Hidden Imam … if they can be prevented from bringing “fire over Jerusalem”, there’s hope …
(grin) Sometime, I would like to offer you a strupach in Glendale … if you ever get out to this coast … a face-to-face discussion could be remarkably entertaining !