Thursday, August 27, 2020

NOW THEY'RE EVEN GASLIGHTING US ABOUT THEIR OWN TALKING POINTS

A wheelchair-bound young man named Madison Cawthorn recently won a Republican primary runoff in a red district in North Carolina. He's likely to be in Congress soon. He spoke at the Republican convention last night, and he ended his speech by being helped out of his wheelchair and onto his feet, while making a culture-war point.

But for some reason, Fox News doesn't want you to believe he was making a culture-war point. Here, Fox News attacks a black female journalist -- you know how much right-wingers love to do that -- for saying that the culture-war point was a culture-war point:
"PBS NewsHour" correspondent Yamiche Alcindor was heavily criticized late Wednesday over a tweet describing GOP House candidate Madison Cawthorn standing at the conclusion of his Republican National Convention remarks as a "direct rebuke" to those protesting social injustice.

Cawthorn, who was partially paralyzed in a 2014 car accident and uses a wheelchair, closed his speech by urging Americans not to "cower to a mob," and to "kneel before God but stand for our flag.

"Be a radical for liberty and be a radical for our republic for which I stand, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all," Cawthorn said as he rose from his wheelchair and stood behind a walker.
Here was Alcindor's tweet:



The Fox story continues:
"How on earth could you possibly turn the rather moving act of a FREAKIN' PARAPLEGIC rising for the national anthem into some weird BLM trip?" Attorney and National Review contributor Jeff Blehar tweeted. "When someone holds the door open for you, is that a rebuke of BLM too? My patience for takes like this has reached its limit."

"The activist below found a way to turn a paraplegic standing up in his wheelchair an act of white supremacy," Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross tweeted.

"Nowhere did Cawthorn state his standing was a “direct rebuke of actions by ppl -- including black athletes who are currently sitting out games -- protesting police brutality. And Yamiche Alcindor is not a journalist," conservative commentator Stephen Miller said.
Wait -- what? They're trying to tell us that "kneel before God but stand for our flag" isn't intended as a rebuke to athletes who have knelt for the anthem to protest police brutality?

So (to take just one example) Kellyanne Conway was wrong when she said this in 2017?





Kellyanne Conway on Anthem Protests

"We have a saying in our house... take a knee for the Lord and stand for the flag."

On Fox & Friends, Kellyanne Conway slammed NFL players for taking a knee during the national anthem.

Posted by Fox News on Monday, November 20, 2017



Everyone in America knows this is the meaning of that talking point. We've known for years.

But what Masha Gessen says about Donald Trump is true of the entire conservative information sphere:
... Gessen explains the difference between an ordinary lie that may "collapse in the face of facts" and "the Trumpian lie."

The latter is "the power lie, or the bully lie ... the lie of the bigger kid who took your hat and is wearing it — while denying that he took it. There is no defense against this lie because the point of the lie is to assert power, to show 'I can say what I want when I want to.'"
Within their own information bubble, right-wingers have this power. They can attack Black Lives Matter with this talking point and then attack a journalist who states the obvious meaning of the talking point. The facts never enter into the discussion.

But they lie like this all the time.



And at least 40% of Americans agree, every time, that they never stole our hat.
Posted by Steve M. at 8:15 AM

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