An attempt to uncover truth would be more analytic and careful. The second chapter would still be an information gathering stage and conclusions would be drawn after the evidence has been presented. Appeals to emotion like this become a logical fallacy of their own. I believe the type would be an "ad hominem" attack. The effort is to discredit a man instead of refuting an argument. Here, the goal would be to essentially prepare the reader to reject anything said by Obama. This is particularly apparent when she references statement Obama made and then speaks of the "truth." Essentially, she seems to believe she is better qualified at telling you what Obama "really" thinks than Obama, himself, is. That seems like a bit of a stretch.
The Quote[1] she opens with is:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
~~ Barack Obama, April 2008
As Katie works for Townhall.com, let's provide a reference from this blogger site:[2]
"In the wake of a leaked Mitt Romney fundraising video that the media is using to claim that Mitt Romney has insulted a vast swathe of the American people, it's useful to reflect back on the last time a presidential candidate muttered words of disdain for Americans who he claimed were dead set against him.
This caused a small media firestorm; we'll see if the MSM can similarly restrain themselves from attempting to blow Romney's "gaffe" out of proportion. Judging from MSNBC's coverage tonight, the progressive media is not going to let that happen."
" ~~ Kevin Glass, Managing Editor Townhall.comI do so often wish I could manage an equal degree of hypocrisy. When the quote initially came out, it was taken up by conservative media in exactly the way they hoped the liberal media wouldn't take Mitt Romney's quote. A clear case of turn about not being considered fair play and that which is good for the goose not being so acceptable for the gander.
Obama did, in fact, have some political recovery to do after saying the above mentioned quote. It stirred up the angst of some people who probably did cling to their guns at the time. Thus, it would be an effective way to try to start of a chapter which serves as an attack against the man instead of actually portraying evidence of what happened and then drawing conclusions.
A fuller quote than the one Katie provides can be found. In fact, it comes from Kevin Glass.
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
~~ Kevin Glass. [2]
Compare Mitt Romney's "gaffe,"
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. ... My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." (Emphasis added)
~~ Mitt Romney, remarks at private fundraiser, Boca Raton, Florida, May 17[3]Obama's remark indicates an understanding that these people have, in some way, been failed by previous Administrations. He expresses and understanding that people would become bitter after 25 years with poor employment prospects. The citizen, unemployed or underemployed, cannot do very much directly to bring jobs back to the State. They likely don't understand the mechanisms by which the Government can help rebuild their economy. They can however, turn to some sources of comfort and control. Guns give people the illusion of empowerment and self-determination even if they are out of work or unable to find ideal work. Religion, also, serves people very well when they need to feel comfort. Perhaps they do not have control, but if they say their prayers and dutifully attend services, they can believe that God, in Heaven, can fix what man seems unable to repair.
This view seems consistent with the New York Times' article on April 13 2008.[4] "Mr. Obama cast his remarks as an expression of populist sympathy for a displaced working class." The article later continues:
“Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true,” Mr. Obama said, “which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter.”“So I said, well, you know when you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on,” he added. “So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community.”
Mitt's comments, on the other hand displays no understanding of the people he dismisses. He does not display any real understanding of people who are in need of public services. He insults them and dismisses them and essentially declares them not his concern. "My job is not to worry about those people."~~ Obama as referenced in the New York Times, "On the Defensive, Obama Calls His Words Ill-Chosen." April, 13, 2008 [4]
Both men said something which they needed to recover from politically. Both men needed to recover politically. It would be hard for Obama to realize how strongly people would take his quote negatively because he seemed to be expressing a degree of understanding. In particular, it implied that he identified a need to help these people get back jobs they had been lacking for 25 years. Still, it is a politician's job to understand these nuances of how opponents will take their words and engage in appropriate damage control. I feel, however, it is less of a stretch to have imagined Mitt Romney to have understood that his quote was dismissive and demeaning to a whole class of people. I'd say this the two are not entirely equal in their degree of wrongness.. and historically speaking one was more damaging than the other.
As we proceed into the text, the matter clearly seems to be an emphasis on gun ownership. She take some effort to point out some very convincing reasons for Obama's possible opposition to the NRA's agendas. Interestingly, she quotes a bit from Obama's memoir, "Dreams from My father." I would be very surprised to find that Katie had taken the time to read this book. It seems more likely she picked up bits and pieces of a huge chunk of material carefully sifted by NRA interests. However, if one's African Grandmother described apartheid violence as white men with guns, I think that would be a very reasonable source of negative feelings regarding men who own guns and the consequences which follow from such men. I would certainly find that very reasonable; I doubt this is what Katie intended her audience to take from it. It seems to me this portrayal might make some particularly racist gun-toting readers smile. It portrays Obama as afraid of guns and men who own guns as worthy of fear. For some people, fear is as close as they can imagine getting to the idea of respect.
The idea of Obama being afraid of them might tickle their fancy.
She goes on to gather some data about Obama's political career wherein he associated with anti-gun activists. I don't know about you, but when I see the NRA spokesmen talking.. I don't think I've ever seen one that was black. Assuming there might be some racism at work, it does not surprise me in the least that a Democratic politician might have more success looking to anti-gun activists for support than from the National Rifle Association. To the best of my knowledge the NRA is not known for funding or supporting Democratic candidates.
In other words, "well, duh!"
But, the matter does become somewhat humorous in light of one of Katie Pavlich's footnotes. On page 16-17, the Author writes, "For instance, in 1999 Obama was quoted by the Chicago Defender newspaper at an "anti-gun rally" proposing a 500 percent increase in federal taxes "on the sale of firearm ammunition." She provides a footnote reference #6.
In the Notes section at the end of the book, this footnote reads:
6. D'Angelo Gore, "four Percent Ammo Tax?" FactCheck.org, June 22, 2009; available online at http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/500-percent-ammo-tax/
This page actually says:
"Q: Is Obama planning to increase the federal tax on gun ammunition by 500 percent?
A: No such proposal has been made by the Obama administration. And nobody in Congress has introduced any bill to increase the 11 percent federal excise tax on ammo."At this point, anyone interested in reading this book should realize the poor quality of reporting. This is one clear and humorous example; using a footnote to lend false credibility to a point when the footnote actually disproves the assertion. One would have to independently double check even the most clearly stated "facts." This is entirely too much work. What is the point in buying a book when you have to error-check even the footnotes?
Oh, yeah, as a source of confirmation bias. Right. Continuing...
She does continue to provide what may very well be considered reasons for people who can become very prickly about gun ownership issues to be concerned with Obama's history on gun control. However, perhaps it bears refection at this point. Would you really want someone managing, running, or determining the direction for the ATF who was under the thumb of the NRA? The ATF is supposed to control firearms trade in the interest of public safety. Along the border with Mexico, where Agents like Brian Terry were shot, Mexican nationals come into the USA to secure firearms. It is, apparently, more difficult for them to get firearms in Mexico due to more restrictive laws.
Wait, consider that again.
The laws in Mexico are more restrictive and make it difficult for the criminals to get guns. America's laws are less restrictive and it is easier for Mexican Nationals to come here, get guns, and smuggle them back. The Mexican Drug cartels are active and armed in America because America makes access to guns easy. The presence of guns on the border, a consequence of America's lax gun control, has made the border regions unsafe for ranchers and tourists leading to large areas with signs posted warning of the dangers of Smuggling and Illegal Immigration...
It is almost as if Katie's own words speak against her own interests and love of the NRA.
So, the question again seems to be, do you want a person loyal to the NRA to be the fox watching the henhouse? I don't think that makes any more sense than promoting people connected to the financial banking industry to be the watchdogs governing it. I hope we are all well aware of how poorly that turned out for us.
Returning to the text of the book....
In his run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama tempered his rhetoric on gun rights, though he still voted to find ways to "stem the flow" of guns by "unscrupulous gun dealers." His campaign website also promised that Obama "will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns." Nonetheless, Obama's true views kept finding their way into the headlines.
This is an interesting use of very choppy quoting. We have no idea where the snippets "stem the flow" and "unscrupulous gun dealers" are pulled from. In what context were they spoke? Ah, there are footnotes. Do I really want to bother reading them? Well, let's give it a go.
Here is what her footnote to Issues2000.org provides for Obama's quote on Gun Control:[5]
I don’t think that we can get that done. But what we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. As president, I intend to make it happen. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You’ve got the tradition of lawful gun ownership. It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. Then you’ve got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago. We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.
~~ Barack Obama, 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Jan. 15, 2008 [6]
Her use of the footnote at the end of the sentence about "unscrupulous gun dealers" makes it seem as if "stem the flow" was also found there as well. Yet, it isn't. The internet can be assume. I don't even have to read the whole page, I can just try to find text in the page before me. So if Katie read the answer Obama gave on gun control, doesn't it seem odd that she only pulled out two tiny snippets and of those two one didn't actually appear there?
Obama's words seem to recognize a need to respect the rights of lawful gun ownership, but the manner in which she portrays him in her book (see quoted paragraph) doesn't seem to recognize this at all. She needn't even have bothered with the quote from the campaign website, because a more accurate and truthful use of Obama's actual words would have expressed the same sentiment. But let's look at her footnote: wait, it doesn't reference his campaign website at all. [7] For crying out loud, the page is a refutation of a NRA ad. "The Verdict: Misleading. While Obama has supported some measures to limit gun rights, he has backed nothing on the scale suggested in the ad." Well, at least the page does contain and validate the text where it is inserted as a footnote. ("will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns.") Unfortunately for Katie, the website is a validation of Obama against an ad by the NRA.
Ok, continuing...
She continues by drawing attention to a campaign mailer ad against Obama by the Clinton campaign. Reference made to a FactCheck.org report. No footnote provided, but I can find that myself. [8] The FactCheck.org result is a refutation of the mailer ad. The summary says:
"A mailer sent from Clinton’s campaign to the homes of selected Indiana voters just before the Democratic primary goes after Obama for allegedly shifting his position on guns to suit his audience. The mailer’s not outright wrong in any of its statements. But the facts muddy the picture."
~~ FactCheck.org "Gunning for Obama" [8]
We can find the text Katie quotes this time, but again the matter is less clear than she makes it out to be. The official response of the FactCheck.org site taken in context includes:
He was wrong about that — his handwriting appears on a small part of the document — but he has continued to maintain that a campaign aide filled out the bulk of it, including the multipart question asking if he supported state legislation to ban assault weapons; ban manufacture, sale and possession of handguns; and require waiting periods and background checks before gun purchases. He answered "Yes" on all counts.
Obama says the answers misrepresent his position. "I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns," he said at the Philadelphia debate.
We can’t say for sure if he did or not. We haven’t been able to find any evidence that he acted on it if he did. In the Illinois Senate, he voted for gun control, including limiting handgun purchases to one a month, but no attempts at a ban that we are aware of. And he didn’t advocate a handgun ban when he was running for U.S. Senate.
~~ FactCheck.org "Gunning for Obama" [8]So, he says an aide filled out the bulk of the form. This doesn't seem like a stretch of the imagination. It might also be an evasion. That remains a possibility. Politicians do change their stances on issues. As I recall, during the Iran Contra Affair, Regan said he didn't remember authorizing the deal. This might equally be an evasion. Strange how conveniently the memory of some people works.
But as to the issue of what Obama "really" believes, I would say that actions speak clearer than words and words more clearly than a checkmark on a form that might have been filled out by an aide.
This again brings us back up to the paragraph quoted from Katie's book above. "Nonetheless, Obama's true views kept finding their way into the headlines." I find it odd that she is so certain that she knows the truth of Obama's intent if dismissing his words and the context in which they are found can be done is so sloppy and off-handed fashion. I think it's that word "true" again, like in the dedication.
Truth is not an idea that occurs in your head and you then twist all available evidence to serve the sole agenda of validating your notion. This is not truth; it is is pretty reliably a recipe for self-deception.
Ok, I have to admit fatigue. I cannot possibly fact-check and error correct all her many assertions. This exemplifies what I said earlier about the book not being good reporting. It is not good reporting if I cannot reasonably trust your reporting to be responsible. Period.
No comments:
Post a Comment