Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Soledad O'Brien: Fool or Liar?

That disturbance in the Force you just felt was the result of an awesome and momentous event: The Phantom just disagreed with Kathy Shaidle.  Doesn't happen often, but when it does, its worth talking about.

From the official web site of the dangerous short person Kathy Shaidle, aka Five Feet of Fury:

Soledad O'Brien is the reason women shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Kathy links to this interview between Soledad O'Brien and John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime".

Now, as one might imagine John Lott has done many years of research on the topic of gun control laws, and has authored many a book and scientific paper on the subject in his time. His opinion is, to put it mildly, an informed one.
Watching the interview with Ms. O'Brien is somewhat frustrating, because Lott doesn't defend himself. She spends the whole segment calling him irrational, pretty much. He just keeps laying out more and more data, which doesn't forward his side of the argument at all. It just makes him look like a Poindexter.

This is the source of my disagreement with Kathy.  She posts this O'Brien quote from the end of the interview:

 "I appreciate you talking with me this morning, but I just have to say, your position completely boggles me, honestly. I just do not understand it."

Kathy's thesis is that O'Brien is clearly an idiot who can't understand a simple exposition of fact, because she won't shut up long enough to hear the answers to her questions.

Here's the problem. Soledad O'Brien is a news reader. She doesn't interview people on the spot with questions of her own devising, she reads a teleprompter. Somebody else wrote her side of that interview, she just read it. So its entirely possible she really is an idiot, but we don't know because she doesn't give anything of herself in these segments. She reads the screen.

I think what's important here is that distinction, and the implication behind it. Since Friday last and the Sandy Hook shooting, we have seen the liberal media having a paroxysm. News readers from all the stations and shows are making huge errors of fact, talking about machine guns that fire thirty rounds a second, talking about high powered weapons that are no good for hunting, all the horseshit they always used to say back in the pre-2000 time before Algore got beat by George W. Bush in the Presidential Sweepstakes.

A major part of that Bush victory was the anger of gun owners against Clinton for the Assault Weapons ban, and the certain knowledge that Gore would pass even more gun control. Despite 9/11, the Republicans did not change the gun laws because they knew they'd be slaughtered at the Primary elections if they did. The DemocRats likewise shut up about guns for twelve years. Even after the Aurora Colorado shooting in July this year, pre-election, there wasn't much in the news except grumbling from the usual suspects, like Nancy Pelosi. But now, post election? ALL the old chestnuts are coming out.

Previous to the 2000 election I thought there was genuine ignorance in the media, and that they really didn't know the facts of the matter. Since then there has been ten years of war and ten years of mass shootings in Europe, the repeal of the Assault Weapons ban, the passage of Right to Carry laws in many US states, Stand Your Ground laws, and most recently the obscene spectacle of gang banger Trayyyyyvon Martin being held up as a victim of "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman, complete with Black Panthers, death threats and NBC falsifying 911 tapes. After all that my friends, there is no media wanker left out there who doesn't know a Bushmaster AR-15 is not a machine gun, or that .223 caliber is not a High Powered Rifle.

This is a different game now. We are not dealing with a bunch of thick-headed liberals who won't listen.

What we have here is a focus grouped, Photoshopped, airbrushed and polished propaganda campaign put on by frustrated partisans who have been sharpening their knives for twelve years.


Now the stars are in alignment for the Big Push, they think. Obama the Saviour has won his second term, the Democrats have held their Senate majority, the red states are in retreat and the Blue Liberals are in the ascendant. House Republicans are caving on the Fiscal Cliff, their voters stayed home on election day, their moral is low, and so "Now is the time for all good DemocRats to come to the aid of the party!"

And you know, I'm sure in certain circles this propaganda putsch is being quite effective. No doubt all the hipsters in Greenwich Village are texting all manner of witty Tweets to each other about those stupid Republicans clinging to their guns and religion. Soledad O'Brien won that segment against John Lott. She came off looking good, he came off looking the way CNN's producers wanted him to look. Like Poindexter.

Kathy is therefore el wrongo. Little Soledad isn't a fluffy bunny eyecandy bonehead, she's a friggin' shark in a cheap rabbit suit. She's reading focus-grouped lies and distortions off a teleprompter on purpose to get what she wants.

However, the other side of the story is the gun sales. After the Sandy Hook shooting on Friday the USA experienced the record breaking gun sales weekend of all time. In a recod breaking year they broke the record again. Sales continue sharply up this week, I surmise. So the real result that CNN, the rest of the media and all the Lefty politicians are getting is the arming of America. Exactly the opposite of what they are trying to accomplish, which is the dis-arming of America. Half the country is voting NO! at the gun shop.

The federal government can pass all the gun bans and bullshit regulations that they want, but that genie ain't going back in that bottle boys and girls. There's millions of brand new guns, hundreds of millions of old ones and billions of rounds of ammo out there. No power on Earth is going to winkle them all out of hiding. Its impossible.  All Little Soledad the Shark Babe is really doing is driving a wedge deeper between the big urban centers and Flyover Land. That would be the place where the big urban centers get all their food.

Kathy is therefore also right, Soledad "the Shark" O'Brien is a damn fool. But then sharks are known for their bite, not their wit.

The Phantom

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