(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
I imagine that many of you are like me and are having trouble actually watching the RNC. Tonight I had it on in the background and was absolutely stunned to see a video that was billed as a “Tribute to 9/11 Victims.” It was anything but a tribute to the people who lost their lives that day. It was nothing but a rank appeal to fear and a politically motivated abuse of those who lost loved ones on 9/11.
Here’s what the Boston Globe says about it:
One of the most enduring taboos in American politics, the airing of graphic images from the September 11 attacks in a partisan context, died today. It was nearly seven years old.
The informal prohibition, which had been occasionally threatened by political ads in recent years, was pronounced dead at approximately 7:40 CST, when a video aired before delegates at the Republican National Convention included slow-motion footage of a plane striking the World Trade Center, the towers’ subsequent collapse, and smoke emerging from the Pentagon.
The only thing that mitigated my absolute disgust at seeing this was to hear Keith Olbermann react immediately afterwards with the fresh breath of sanity in his disgust and condemnation. You can see it all here.
If anyone can believe that those responsible for this have a shred of compassion or any view of the future that includes something other than the tyranny of fear…then the blindness has become so deep as to be impenetrable.
31 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
and done at this convention that has disgusted me. Perhaps this one just took it over the top.
they are so afraid.
Is it maybe because, to their authoritarian worldview, they’re damned if they do listen to their leaders, and damned if they don’t?
It’s almost like they are either sinners being yelled at by their god, or they are going to hell.
Or maybe not almost?
most
creepiest part…the first line of dialogue
“the first attack occurred in iran”
a structure (a form) is offered… ‘come in, come in! you will be saved! you will hang around with others who are saved! everyone here is going to heaven! (and the occassional sinner? well, they’re forgiven because they believe, not like those heathen sinners that live outside of this safe place (form, structure.)’
everything is pre-rationalized and pre-justified, everything. like bird parents feed their young pre-digested food. it is a state of prolonged infancy, imo. and damn difficult to counter, because “God” and religion are the trump card. what established form can be offered by us heathens? anything offered will be dismissed and dismissed easily as ‘foreign’ or ‘pagan’ or just a general ‘phshay, you ain’t got nuthing to put up against our 2000 years of big churches’
if Sarah Palin were running for veep on the democrat ticket, we all know what would be said about her: ‘a woman with five children, one a special needs infant, and one a pregnant teenager, needs to be home with her family! not galavanting around the county.’
That has unfortunately been the Republican way for the last 8 years. And it does a disservice to our country.
Good post NL.
. . . after hearing Sarah Palin use the words “fear,” “pain,” “suffering,” and “terror” at least 20 times during the one single minute (chosen at random) that I spent watching her speech. “These people have nothing going for them except fear,” I thought. “They have nothing else they can offer, or even say to, the American people.” They just live in a great big ol’ world of fear, 24/7, all the time. It’s their basic mode of perceiving everything.
I didn’t happen to see the 9/11 footage, because I spent almost no time watching the convention at all. But of course I’ve heard about it since. I wonder if the real purpose of that was to appeal to the TV viewing audience’s fear, or to the convention delegates’ nostalgia?