After describing the movement as dangerous Parker then said she wasn’t saying that it was dangerous:
“I’m
not saying the tea party people are violent or racist or any of
that…I’m not saying that the tea partiers are bad people or dangerous,
I just think we have to be very vigilant…and be extremely careful,
because I do think there is a lot of anger and it could become
something else.”Schieffer then injected the talking point of the internet as a source of such “danger”:
“Some
of this really nasty rhetoric that shows up on the Internet…the only
vehicle to deliver news that has no editor…And that is the added
factor to the volatility of this stuff and where it goes.”To which Parker replied“It’s,
sort of, like terrorism. You know, we don’t know where to aim our
bombs, so we can’t go after a country because there are — you know,
there’s no one place to focus on it. And it’s the same thing with —
with the Internet. You can’t really — you don’t know who to go after.”
In order of magnitude of bullshit:
1. Cops can trace violent Internet postings all over the place via those things known as IP ADDRESSES. “I am an idiot about the Internet” does not equal “the Internet is utterly lawless.” Please take an afternoon to sit down with your local PD if you are being threatened in any way by some jackhole online.
2. It is also fairly easy to suss out someone’s identity on the Internet as lots of us here are total attention whores. I was sort of careful when I was anonymous, but not really, because a former co-worker read the same blogs I did and once IM’d me with “Are you Athenae?” because something I’d ranted to him about on the way in to work showed up at the Crack Den. Also, again, IP address, and e-mail tracing, and simple fucking Google can often turn up someone’s ID if you spend an afternoon doing amateur detective work Trixie Belden would turn down because it’s too goddamn boring.
3. So far as I know, First Draft has killed exactly nobody.
4. What blogs would Katie like to bomb? Is she taking requests? Can we start with the blogs hosted by fine newspapers which employ her syndicated nonsense? Those are on the Internet.
5. Speaking of terrorism, bombing terrorists is about the stupidest way one can go about fighting them, as we’ve proven conclusively over the last nine years. Generally we miss, and kill moms and kids, which tends to piss dad off, and make him less likely to tell us which of his cheesed-off cousins is holing up with grenade launchers and shit. So before we launch Operation Nerd Herder against the Internet, we may want to think about whether napalm is really necessary, or if the Anonymous Al Qaeda can be lured from their lairs with promises of MILF porn and Coco Puffs.
6. Bob Schieffer is OLD AS FUCK, and in all likelihood his grandkids have convinced him the computer is possessed by the devil.
7. Paper can still deliver news that has no editor, if someone prints and distributes his own paper. The Internet just makes it cheaper, so fuck off. Jesus Goddamn Christ, it is 20Goddamn10, and we are still having this argument about how completely invented constructs don’t apply everywhere? Well no fucking shit, they don’t. What Katie and people like her really mean is that nobody but them should get to contribute to the conversation, which is what they’ve always meant, which is so completely transparent that anybody who mouths this horseshit should be automatically disqualified from talking and put into some kind of Media Time Out.
8. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go hire an editor for this blog. After I stock up on ammo for the midday bombing raids.
9. JESUS GOD.
A.