Mona Charon on the Gianforte Defenders
Writing at National Review: Stop Making Excuses for Greg Gianforte’s Assaulting a Reporter
But the age of Trump has corrupted a great many people and shattered norms. Those whose moral compass has long since been stashed in the bottom drawer defending the indefensible piled on to applaud Gianforte’s thuggishness. The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell tweeted, “Jacobs is an obnoxious, dishonest first class jerk. I’m not surprised he got smacked.” (For the record, I’ve known Bozell for decades and hope this was a momentary lapse of judgment. We’ve all experienced the itchy Twitter finger.)
Laura Ingraham chose to impugn Jacobs’s manhood: “Politicians always need to keep their cool. But what would most Montana men do if ‘body slammed’ for no reason by another man?” She followed up with “Did anyone get his lunch money stolen today and then run to tell the recess monitor?”
Dinesh D’Souza struck the same tone, calling Jacobs a “crybaby,” and also implying that the story was a “scam” perpetrated by Jacobs to swing the election to the Democrat.
I will note that that schoolyard level and macho nonsense here is amazing. Does Ingraham really think that Jacobs should have furthered the fight with Gianforte to prove he is a real man? I am certain had that been the case she would not have defended his actions. For that matter, any responsible parent would teach their children to retreat from such a situation, not to escalate (and any adult should clearly know better). And in the adult world, going to the authorities after being assaulted is not being a “crybaby.”
I will say that in the case of these individuals, I am not sure so much that they represent the corruption of “the age of Trump” as much as they were some of the agents through which that age was allowed to dawn.
She concludes:
None of this is a gray area. You either uphold certain basic standards of decency or you don’t. Some who call themselves conservatives have shown that they are nothing of the kind. To be conservative is to be honorable. These are contemptible, partisan hacks.
Indeed. (Emphasis mine).
h/t: Matthew Stinson on FB.
To Mona Charon: Physician,heal thyself.
“For that matter, any responsible parent would teach their children to retreat from such a situation, not to escalate (and any adult should clearly know better).”
Except of course in states with Stand Your Ground laws. In such a state, if Jacobs had pulled a gun out and shot Gianforte, conservatives everywhere would be praising him, right?
It was bound to happen. The Governor of Texas is joking about shooting reporters. These idiots would probably think that was okay too. It is amazing how obvious they have become.
@Terrye Cravens:
They know that they don’t have to use dog whistles any more. They’re right up front with this stuff.
@Moosebreath:
Exactly right.
I think we all know that if that was, say, a conservative media representative, getting body slammed by one of the few liberal politicians in Montana, that the conservative media would be calling for the arrest, conviction and death penalty for that politician.
@Moosebreath: Reverse the order of the two names for shooter and shootee and you’ll have it right.
Charen has known Bozell for decades and I read him for decades. No, it wasn’t a momentary lapse; it’s who he’s always been from what I can see.
If she wrote that with a straight face she’s as far gone as any of them.
Dear Mona. Please go read the comments under your article by NR readers. Notice the majority of them praising the assault, then get back to us.
Ingraham is a piece of work. She criticizes the reporter for calling the police. But if hadn’t called police, she’d be saying, “Well it clearly wasn’t that bad or he would have called the police!” Putz.
That’s … not how those laws work.
The right-wingers have a point. Liberals should not initiate violence, but they should learn how to brawl and fight back when attacked or provoked.
It’s a shame that the reporter didn’t beat the crap out of Gianforte in front of everyone. Violence is the only language that bullies understand, and they could do with some public humiliation.
Oh really?
The Trumpkins have a dandy new fashion accessory. It’s a t-shirt that reads: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.”
No, I’m not kidding.
Trump tweeted today that the Washington Post and the NY Times probably invent their anonymous sources, just to make him look bad, presumably.
We’re heading to the point where some reporter will be killed, and there will be blood on Trump’s hands.
Some of you people lead sheltered lives. I saw that “Rope. Tree. Journalist.” thing YEARS ago. Blaming Trump for any of this is like saying it was only that last straw which broke the camel’s back.
I do hope everyone who got the vapors over Gianforte remembers it if the subject of Nazi-punching comes up again.
Mike
@CSK: blood on Trump’s hands.
And what color will hands be around here if Trump gets shot or killed?
Mike
@Pch101: If the reporter had fought back they’d attack that too. Care to see the cover of this month’s national review?
It’s about how the Left is so violent.
https://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/uploaded/cover_20170529_toc.jpg
They deleted the more violent comments, but the ones they left up still have some doozies:
@MBunge:
My hands will, I assure you, be quite clean. I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I loathe Trump, but I’ve never advocated that he or any of his family members be subjected to violent physical assault or deadly force.
The truly contemptible thing about Gianforte is that he probably attacked Jacobs just to prove to the troglodytes what a badass he is. Apparently his mommy never told him not to hit anyone wearing glasses.
@teve tory:
They’re a bunch of whiners, so they’ll complain, no matter what.
But they’ll be less likely to get physical if they know that it will be reciprocated and then some. They’re cowards.
@teve tory: Internet tough guys, every last lonely one of them.
Indeed…of course, back then it was being pushed by the same kind of people who support Trump now…
While not condoning violence…surely you can tell the difference between a racist pig and a journalist asking a legitimate question? Perhaps you can’t…
@MBunge:
You’re not mad at the media, you’re mad at reality. It isn’t what you want it to be. So you retreat into lies.
As Charon writes:
You are one of the corrupted.
@MBunge: How bout this? I’ll keep not getting the vapors over Gianforte AND I’ll reject “punch a Nazi” the next time is shows up. You in return can give up all your false outrage about the “hypocrisy” of others. We got a deal?
@teve tory:
These people don’t do ‘dog whistles’ any more – they don’t have to, they’re out in the open with their retrograde opinions, and white anger and resentment. I think that that’s better than wondering who they are and where they are.
These are the same people that conservatives say that we (liberals, Democrats) just don’t understand. Trust me, I understand them alright. I definitely don’t need a special focus group to better understand these people, I understand their politics all too well.
@MBunge:
Congressional candidate. Rando on the street.
Reporter. Nazi.
Good to see your belief system in action.
It’s all partisanship, folks. Both the far left and the far right do it, but right now the right is usually leading the way on making worse things publicly acceptable. Mind you these “faux-servatives” are the same people who would applaud if “their guys” shoot and kill leftists in the streets. They’re nothing more than fascists.
We’re witnessing a fight between the old right and the new right for the “right” to wear the mantle of conservatism. Does it boggle your mind that Fox News and National Review are now seen as RINO at best and even liberal bastions by some? The center of gravity in that end of the spectrum has shifted to Breitbart, leaving guys like Mankiw and Joyner forced to choose between their principles and political expediency/a paycheck. The right is sick, and nothing more than a repudiation and banishment like what Buckley did can cure it.
Bunge is involved in a deeply passionate love affair.
Unfortunately, it’s with himself.
@MBunge: I hope the guy who punched the nazi, and the guy who punched the reporter both go to jail.
I mean, the nazi deserved to get punched, but the guy who punched him wasn’t an angel either — a few months in jail might be enough for him to start considering the consequences of his actions.
And as far as Trump goes, the old flabby man in the golf cart with the terrible diet will probably die of heart failure before too long. He doesn’t have the stamina for the job.
@MBunge:
Oh, Jesus Christ, you can’t be serious. Nobody has said anything like “rope, tree, Trump, some assembly required.”
You’ve just degraded healthy political opposition to the level of desiring someone’s death. You really are utterly incapable of posting even a single comment that doesn’t contain a strawman argument.
“Some who call themselves conservatives have shown that they are nothing of the kind. To be conservative is to be honorable. These are contemptible, partisan hacks.
no true Scotsman once again — convenient, that
@Rick Zhang:
Bill Buckley purged the right of its antisemitism. But he was a segregationist who praised McCarthyism and right-wing dictatorships such as the Franco and Pinochet regimes
There is no noble tradition on the American right. What has changed is that all of that animus is now channeled through a single political party instead of being divided across the two major parties.
When Charen claims that “(t)o be conservative is to be honorable,” she’s just drinking the right-wing Koolaid. Where is this honor supposed to be exactly?
We’re exploring the question, ‘What if you had a winner-take-all voting system, and most of the A-holes concentrated in one of the two parties?’
@teve tory:
We’ve gone beyond the exploration stage. The program has been approved and is being fully implemented.
This macho stuff isn’t just from “the age of Trump.” They’ve been this way for years.
@David M:
The difference between random street guy and congressional candidate is huge; I can’t believe they elected him after that, though I hope much of that is from early voting.
But if its okay to punch a Nazi for expressing an opinion, its just as okay to punch a reporter for doing the same (I’m sure in GOP minds he’s a communist, and communists killed as many as fascists so are just as bad etc).
At that point its simply a question then of punching someone you disagree with, and that always turns out the same – lots of punches, because everyone can find a reason to hate someone enough to punch them if they put their mind to it, and when people are punched others will take their side and punch back, which leads to others taking the first punchers side and so on.
Arguing against Nazi’s is excellent, protesting against them even better. But once the violence starts its going to be violence all around, and the people you hate enough to punch will turn out to hate you just as much in return.
Or to paraphrase Hamlet, yes, the Nazis deserve to be punched. But so does everyone else. None of us live blame free lives, and if you draw an arbitrary line saying Nazis are on the deserve to be punched line, someone else is going to put that line at the position where you deserve to be punched.
@george:
I just don’t take the concern trolling about the left being just as bad seriously. We know it’s not:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/bob-etheridge-video
This incident was not as serious as the Gianforte one, but Etheridge apologized immediately, and still lost the next election. The left agreed his actions were wrong, and there was no widespread idea that his behavior was a reason to vote for him.
@David M:
“George” is consistent. His raison d’etre is to find every opportunity to make “both sides do it” arguments, even when they don’t.
@David M:
Its not about both sides do it. I expressly said its far worse for a GOP congressman to do it than some unknown activist.
I was reacting to the statement that the Nazi deserved to be punched for expressing an opinion.
Its completely about punching someone for their opinion being wrong, period. And its not just wrong for both sides, its wrong for everyone on all sides (and there are a hell of a lot more than two sides in the world – thinking there are only two sides is one of the big problems. The world really isn’t that simple.
@Pch101:
I have that tendency. But this isn’t one of those times – punching someone for their opinion is wrong period, and that goes far beyond “both sides”. It applies in politics, and it applies in personal relationships, and it applies in business, and in every other aspect of human relationships.
“Both sides”, meaning Democrat/GOP, is a very limited arena, and this goes far beyond that, will be important long after both parties and every country now in existence is ancient history.
@george:
Yes, your difficulties with coping with legitimate differences and shades of grey are well established.
Here’s the difference: On the left, the Richard Spencer incident sparked a debate. On the right, this incident with the Guardian reporter seems to be receiving near-universal acclaim. You do understand there is a difference between those responses, right?
@george:
Dunno ’bout that. I mean, sure, I can be a dick sometimes, but I’ve never advocated genocide.
@Pch101:
I already said what the congressman did is worse. You’re responding to what you think I’d write, not what I actually wrote.
@Mikey:
I’ve never advocated genocide either. But over the decades I’ve directly caused people harm, and that’s as bad, and sometimes far worse, as advocating anything. I did more damage to an actual, living person in a high school fight than any advocation can do (the advocation only has power if someone decides to act on it, and that’s on the person acting, actually beating someone up has a direct and immediate power) – if we’re handing out free punches than I certainly deserve one for that. Most people I know have something similar in their history, some time they directly hurt someone, physically or otherwise.
Me, whether I deserve to be punched or not, I’ll punch back. So will most other people. And the violence will escalate. And the next round has direct knowledge. You punched me, so I or mine have a right to vengeance. And you or yours have a right to vengeance against my vengeance. And so on in a positive feedback loop of escalating violence. I’ve seen this play out many times in my community, and its always goes the same way.
@MBunge:
Why am I not in the least surprised that you saw that years ago…
@Rick Zhang:
I can’t really speak to this, but my impression is that Joyner might be surprised that people think this blog brings enough of a paycheck to warrant a moral crisis on his part…
@george:
Could you quote that for us? I didn’t see that anywhere in the comments, but maybe I missed it.
@David M:
George saw it on the internet once, therefore it’s an epidemic.
He’s the kind of guy who would equate a drizzle with a hurricane, only to be bewildered when someone else claims that they have little in common.. (They both involve moisture, therefore they are both the same…right?)
@george: What I’m saying is there’s a pretty huge difference between being a garden-variety dick and advocating for a few million people to get sent to their deaths, you know? And that kind of advocacy, from a person in a position of influence, can result in a great deal more real human cost than a high-school fight.
@Mikey:
And there is also a difference between feeling a bit of schadenfreude about a white supremacist getting hit even if you ultimately support his speech rights and oppose him being attacked, and a group of yahoos who are completely unapologetic about a guy getting hurt for asking about a CBO score.
Spencer’s a jerk and there is a part of me is glad that he got a taste of his own medicine. But I would ultimately defend his right to be a piece of filth and would prosecute the guy who punched him. I’m sure that I’m not alone.
In contrast, these right-wing wingnuts are not extending the same courtesy to people like me. As far as they’re concerned, we deserve to be dead. I would defend Spencer, but he would not reciprocate. Not equivalent.
I think it is AWESOME that Gianforte body-slammed that pissant little beta-male Pajama Boy reporter. The little douchebag had it coming!
It’s even more awesome that he can body slam him and still win. It’s nice to see a conservative fighting back for a change – this time literally. Trump has been kicking your ass and now Gianforte is kicking your ass literally.
There have been a few setbacks but there has been one major victory – he’s sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
When the immigration and travel ban cases reach the Supreme Court we know which way Gorsuch will rule and president Trump will get his Muslim ban.
@Pch101: Exactly. Certainly it’s right and proper to leave prosecution and punishment to the legal processes of the state, when appropriate, and at the same time to use those processes to protect even that speech we find abhorrent. We can’t have people randomly showing up as self-declared judge and jury, even for Nazi scum like Spencer. As pleasing as it might be to see a turd like him get punched in the face, doing so is still wrong.
Find me a so-called modern conservative who would say the same about what Gianforte did to Ben Jacobs. I won’t be holding my breath. And Gianforte isn’t some random “black bloc” anarchist, he’s a congressman, sworn to uphold the Constitution.
The appropriate response isn’t to defend Gianforte, it’s to just ignore it. That’s the precedent set by all the leftists who refuse to acknowledge the epidemic of left-wing violence going on right now, and how it’s ignored, minimized, or downplayed.
At Berkeley, at a gathering, a masked Antifa leftist split open the head of a Trump supporter with a bike lock. The leftist lunged out of the crowd, hit the guy, and ran away. The assailant got away, but it took 4Chan very little time to identify him as a philosophy professor from Diablo Valley College.
On Middlebury College, Charles Murray was invited to speak. The students rioted, and one Middlebury professor was sent to the hospital. The students involved got a slap on the wrist.
In Portland, a deranged guy on a train started haranguing two Muslim women. Two guys intervened to defend them, and the deranged guy killed them both. This story was heading nationally until a little investigation showed the guy had been a die-hard Jill Stein fan, a Bernie supporter, and had been thrown out of a Trump event for disrupting it. That’s when it died a quick death.
In the Texas legislature, a large group of self-proclaimed illegal aliens took over the gallery and demanded to be exempted from the law. One Republican announced he’d called ICE to come and round them up. A Democratic legislator came up to him, grabbed him, and threatened him. When pulled off the Republican, he said they’d “get” the Republican when he went to his car. The Republican replied that he carried a gun. That incident got reported as a Republican threatening a Democrat’s life.
Those are just four examples from the recent news. There are plenty more.
You’re not upset about Republicans getting violent. You’re upset about Republicans getting violent back.
Here’s a little life lesson, cupcakes: you don’t get to throw away the rules, then whine that the other side isn’t following the rules either.
Gosh darn it, I forgot one more thing. Ben Jacobs? Here’s him Tweeting back in 2014:
Benji Backer was 16 at that time.
I wonder what Jacobs’ opinion about politically-motivated violence is now.
@Bob The Arqubusier:
That is not even remotely what happened. They didn’t proclaim themselves illegals (they were a mix of latino/black/white people). They were protesting the recently signed law that allows police to harass anyone detained over their immigration status. Keep in mind that you’re technically detained when your car is pulled over or a cop walks up to you and talks to you. So the way the law is written a cop can just walk up to anyone and demand proof of citizenship. It’s a stupid law wasting time that should be focused on solving very real problems that we have down here. Our legislative body only meets for 140 days every other year. The way the body works that time is barely enough to properly pass the bills needed to keep the state running. Anyway back to the protestors. It was a republican who decided to label them as illegal immigrants and called ICE on the protestors. After proclaiming he made the call he then threatened to put a bullet in a Democratic lawmaker who dared to argue with him.
Granted I wasn’t there for the bullet comment so that probably was just a heat of the moment thing. Rinaldi is a big talking asshole so I wouldn’t put it past him though.
@Matt There are various accounts of just what happened (here’s one report that gives both sides), but a few elements are common. Even ThinkProgress stated that “The mass of chanting, sign-waving voters forced legislative proceedings to a halt late Monday morning before state troopers cleared the gallery.”
That’s not democracy, that’s attempted mob rule. And it’s not speech, it’s a show of force. (See the anti-Walker efforts in Wisconsin.)
So you’re quibbling with one example. Fair enough. That’s why I cited several examples. BTW, Middlebury College’s Professor Stanger is still suffering the consequences of being beaten by the mob last March. Her assailants? They got scolded.
@Matt: Oh, and on Texas: Democrat Poncho Nevarez stated that ““I got in his face and I put my hands on the guy.”
From the Texas laws, that sounds like an assault: