So this is what all the gun shops around here have been looking like. Bare.
Gun buyers are acting like ninnies, I swear…
This is completely fucked up:
News media types are screaming about how, at a hearing in Hartford, one of the fathers of a Sandy Hook victim was “heckled by a pro-gun member of the crowd.”
And that would be sick and disgusting. That would be deplorable. Lowest of the low.
But that’s not what happened.
The video being passed around was edited. Very hard. Here’s the real video:
He asked a question:
“I ask if there’s anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question … why anybody in this room needs to have one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high-capacity clips. [Pause, waiting for response.] Not one person can answer that question.”
Audience members: ”[Unintelligible] Second Amendment shall not be infringed”
Public official: “Please no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. Or we’ll clear the room. Mr. Heslin please continue.”
That’s not heckling. He asked a question, and received an answer. Nobody taunted him, or heckled him. Nobody was heartless in answering his question.
The media is fucking playing us. And for those of you who want to scream “LIBERAL MEDIA,” I again remind you that I am a liberal. I am a Liberal who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. There is no left wing bias in the media. There is no right wing bias. The only bias the popular media has is one of SENSATIONALISM. They want you to be outraged, and they want you afraid. That’s what sells.
It’s only going to get worse from here, folks.
[ADD] O hay, just shakin’ the cup again. My birthday tattoo fund drive is still ongoing – if you got a dollar to spare, i’d much appreciate it.
That video is 17 minutes long and I’m lazy, could you point out the timeframe in question? I’d consider watching all of it if I actually lived in the USA.
He asks at 14:55 or so — Skip to 14:50 and you’ll catch the lead-in. You’ll also be able to miss him bloviating about “machineguns”.
Glad to hear someone be honest about the media. Slanted reporting – even CNN or FOX reporting – is just another marketing scheme. Nothing more, nothing less.
The media is bias in whatever will get them the most viewers.
It is interesting to me to see more headlines in the newspaper (don’t watch tv much here) are slanted to shock/outrage/grab attention, then the articles continue to ignore reality. In answer to the question of “who needs an assault-style rifle” I should respond with “who needs an SUV or Hummer”.
Moderate liberal literate citizens who read the Constitution have never been the problem. Liberal extremist retards – libtards – are, including the anti-gun lobby who are staging the shootings to gather ‘support’ for the proven failure and tyrant’s tool known as gun control. They’re as bad as conservative extremists like Filthy Phelps from Westboro KS or those medic-murdering filth in the anti-abortion extremist protests.
“Staging the shootings”? That’s one hell of an accusation. I’ll grant it’s plausible, but if you have any sound evidence for it, I’d be interested in seeing it.
Putting them on a stage afterward? Now that’s not even debatable. Whether it’s for ratings or political points, almost nobody seems to have a single qualm about using dead bodies for a soapbox. Yet more terrifying: that includes most of the audience!
Yeah, I always get annoyed at people just citing general “media bias”. There’s no one direction the entire media is slanting. It all depends on their audience. That being said I do remember a hilarious episode brought on by someone commenting on media bias. It was in the heyday of the recent Iraq war. I think we’d just invaded Baghdad itself. I went to a small liberal arts college in New England, so unsurprisingly the loudest voice on campus was the liberal one. They were holding an event where professors and students alike were giving (well researched and well informed) talks on various aspects of the war. One student was pointing out the entirely true economic links between certain media outlets and weapons manufacturers. The ultimate thrust of his presentation of course was suggesting that certain news media were using sensationalism to drum up further support for the war so the parent company could benefit from selling more missiles, bullets, etc. Now there was this one student at my school, guy by the name of Richard. Looking back on it, the best way to describe him physically is like Nathan Fillion with downs syndrome. He was a big guy. He was also a staunch republican. In the midst of this presentation he got up and literally stomped out of the room. I say “literally stomped” because he actually did make enough noise that everything else stopped. I was sitting in the very rear of the auditorium and got to her him say to someone outside (I have no idea who): “Make him stop saying those things!” I still chuckle whenever I think of it. I’m a liberal, but I would have had the same amused reaction to a liberal throwing a hissy fit at the logical arguments of a conservative.
As Mencken noted, the purpose of government (and these days, the media) is to keep the public in fear of the hobgoblins. There is loud, widespread, and cantankerous debate in the public square about the solution to the hobgoblins, and many points of view on hobgoblin handling are presented. What is never presented, of course, is anyone questioning if the hobgoblins exist at all. Questioning the very existence of the problem, as opposed to assorted “solutions” to the problem, is what the media won’t do — and everyone plays along, because if there aren’t problems that need solutions, who will give them money? Imagine if the NRA’s reaction was “Murder rates in America are at a nearly 50 year low, and this is part of an ongoing, downward, trend. Let’s accept we’re never going to have a murder rate of 0. The laws we have now are working — they are reducing violent crime. There’s no reason to believe any changes in the laws could produce a more significant reduction in proportion to the social, political, and economic costs of enacting them. Such laws are showmanship of the worst sort, political grandstanding that serves no productive purpose and distracts from issues that are actually addressable.”
And as long as I’m wishing, I’d like a pony.
I find it ironic that your avatar depicts a very effective solution to actual hobgoblin problems.
On a serious note, you’re definitely right, and the worst part is we’ve now gotten to the point of using government, media, or even each other as hobgoblins, which makes it impossible for an average person to question the hobgoblin “threat” without being accused of being “one of THEM!1!!!!”.
“There is no left wing bias in the media. There is no right wing bias. The only bias the popular media has is one of SENSATIONALISM. They want you to be outraged, and they want you afraid. That’s what sells. ”
Ah, well and succinctly put!
*takes notes*
This is getting shared on my facebook page right now! 🙂
Don’t know whats going on with the website J….but when I clicked on my bookmark for ftf-comics.com, I got “No site configured at this address ” and had to port directly to today’s comic via “So It Begins.”
I can’t replicate this. What browser/OS?
Ain’t that the truth. I guess the best we can hope for is a true compromise, where nobody is happy because nobody gets what they want. On a lighter note, I shot a rifle for the first time over the weekend, and I’m in love. <3 <3 <3
Happy Birthday! I am almost finished/up to date with two lumps. started reading that when ftf got good. thanks.
“There is no left wing bias in the media.”
Still trying to figure out why when a Republican president tries to cover up a burglary at opposition headquarters, or the shipment of guns to allies in South America, it’s the end of the world, but when Obama tries to cover up running guns to international drug criminals (a de facto act of war) resulting in over a hundred actual DEATHS (including cops and kids), we get crickets.
Yeah, Fox News didn’t scream bloody fucking murder over it or anything.
Stop with the confirmation bias and look at the news overall.
So because there is no absolute blackout, no bias exists? Quoting the example of ONE broadcast news outlet that reported F&F as opposed to all the others who at best made lame excuses to justify it, sort of proves my point.
OK, if you want to play it that way:
– When Clinton got some skull and lied about it, killing NOBODY, that was all we heard about.
– When Anthony Weiner sent “sexts” to a chick last year, every goddamn news media outlet drummed him out of office for doing something absolutely inane, by modern standards.
– When Howard Dean, a liberal hot item in 2004, dared to let out a yell of “YEAH!” at a rally, he was essentially tarred and feathered by both sides of the aisle.
– Rick Perry (R-lunatic) received the most positive coverage during the election, followed by Mitt Romney, and then Herman Cain. Obama finished absolutely dead last in positive media coverage.
If you want me to go on, I can go on for DAYS on this. This is a sore point of contention for me, because every time some uber-liberal kook wants to point at a Right-leaning article talking about how “Welfare gives niggers a free ride,” there’s some bible-banging neo-Con shithead screaming about a LEFT-leaning article that says “Kids who are taught more science and less religion automatically get into Harvard and receive free blowjobs from God.” THERE IS NO DOMINANT POLITICAL LEANING IN THE NEWS.
No bias, however? I think, if you read it again, I said that there most certainly IS a bias, and it’s NOT left OR right. The bias is toward sensationalism, and the corporate masters completely driving the news media – which inherently corrupts the First Amendment. This bias is virtually ALL-pervasive now, and I fear it’s gonna be a while before anyone does anything about it.
Fine, you’ve converted me. As soon as I can figure out why the headline “Federal government sells guns to narco-terrorists in Mexico, who use them to murder over 300 people including kids and cops” is somehow not “sensational.” Well, at least not to anybody but Univision. Maybe you gotta be Mexican.
Regarding fast and furious: The main reason I think this story HASN’T taken off is because it runs completely COUNTER to the current sensational track the media’s been feeding us for 20+ years: Guns are bad, more government is good, instead of guns.
First off, it’s not easy to explain to your average Taco-Bell-slurping lower class Joe what even happened. F&F is a twisted conundrum, and explaining the situation would require rendering the story down to pablum that would take hours to feed the public. When I say Sensationalism, this is a perfect example. Which is easier to get people to watch, based only on the summary?
1. Today it was discovered that, in the Gunwalking “stings,” licensed firearms dealers were purposefully allowed to sell inordinate amounts of arms illegally to straw purchasers, so that the ATF could attempt to bring down the cartels, at the request of the Mexican govt. This halfassed plan wasn’t carefully, or even competently, overseen, and many of those guns that the ATF allowed the sale of themselves ended up in the hands of vicious Mexican murderers and thugs who, later, used them to kill Americans, not to mention their fellow countrymen, and it’s all our fault. Holder’s response was to shrug, jack off with a fistful of Benjamins, and totally duck under the radar for indictment.
2. Today, a psycho went into a movie theater and fucking gunned down a bunch of people.
I have no faith in the attention span of most Americans, when it comes to these situations. Anything that can’t be understood in the time it takes to watch a sitcom is shunted aside, either as merely “boring,” or, if it takes a little more effort to understand, as a “conspiracy theory.” (The Vince Foster “suicide” and the 2000 Election Tamperings are excellent examples of late.) The popular media outlets, ALL of them, from MSNBC, to FOX, to CNN, to Cable News, all know this as well. There is so much shit going on the world that they could have as a headline, things that actually fucking matter, but instead we’re going to serve the public up the headlines of the day that any fucking 12 year old can get, with whatever slant we want to put fear in the hearts of the viewers. No worries! It’s not all feel-bad! Fifteen minutes into the program, we’ll have a commercial break, and then we’ll bring you this heartwarming story of a three-legged dog who saved a baby from a car fire.
It’s all bullshit, and as Carlin noted, it’s bad for ya.
Gunwalker will never get national attention because it requires people to actually look into it and draw their own conclusions. That’s not modern news. The fourth branch of government is, for the most part, dead, and the First Amendment is being poked to death with sharp sticks. It’s only going to get worse from here, unless by pure chance? Something SENSATIONAL happens that the pop media can’t quash, even though it spells their own doom.
This is why any Libertarian college kid who asks me “Hey, did you ever read Orwell’s 1984? Man, that could happen” only gets a dirty look before I walk away. 1984 was a warning. We missed it totally. We are the beginning of the realization of that nightmare.