Threats against the president? A left-wing lie. Against Glenn Beck? "We hope he has bodyguards."

[elfs]

I was struck last night by a pair of articles that, to my mind, illustrate even further the bizzaro universe in which some 20% of my country currently lives. The first article indicates that the Secret Service is strained to the breaking point by a four-fold increase in threats on the president's life.

The other was a report issued by James Carville's group, Democracy Corps, and was a firewalled collection of focus groups involving self-identified members of the Republican base entitled, "The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans."

Asking them about violence aimed at the president, they scoffed at the idea and claimed that was all part of a coordinated media campaign to discredit attacks on Obama:

Fabrication to prove the point that they want to prove that may or may not be truth. It is relative to their need to get a headline and they are stupid if they think we're not seeing this stuff. They're stupid if they think we're so stupid.

On the other hand, Carville notes of Glenn Beck:

[There is] a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend:

I fear for his life... He is heavily secured believe me.

Glenn Beck is the type of man that he has put his personal finances on the line to protect everyone of his employees. They all have... bodyguards, security, high security. He said I don't care if my business goes down or I am put out of business, this is my family, my family and, he has twelve employees in his business. That is the kind of man he is.

I can't help but giggle at this. Does anyone honestly believe that someone is going to take a shot at the rodeo clown? And more to the point, where does this impression that Beck is in any more danger than Anderson Cooper or Jon Stewart come from? This just seems like another very weird wish for some martyrdom to point at and genuflect with.

Comments

[tagryn]

Yeah...might want to be a little more skeptical about taking what Carville says about Republicans at face value. Not exactly an unbiased observer, that one is. Now, as an huckster of comforting pandering for True Believers, he's fine, same as for Beck. Would never confuse them with neutral analysis, though.

Whenever I see focus group results used to try and represent an entire aggregate population's attitudes, usually that's a flag that something's not kosher. That's not what the technique is designed to do. Using survey data is better, but attitudinal questions tend to be very dependent on how the question is worded.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind having Glenn Beck in my cross-hairs, and taking a head shot with a banana cream pie. Reality keeps me from ever being serious about it, as I'd hate to waste a good pie on a clown like Beck.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

I'm sad to say that we can lay the blame for this kind of blinkered thinking squarely on the internet. Before the Internet, you had to really go out of your way to *avoid* media that didn't pander exclusively to whatever your political beliefs were. Now, you can bury yourself in lunatic fringe blogs and "news" sites that give you exactly what you want, all in the comfort of your own home. The wackjobs that used to hide out in bunkers used to have to get out of their bunkers on occasion to meet with other wackjobs in bunkers to exchange notes. Now, they can broadcast their lunacy right from their bunkers!

[(Anonymous)]

Ditto with the 24-hour cable news channels. Back when networks only had an hour or two for news, they had to economize and show, well, actual news. People were exposed to a variety of stories even if they normally wouldn't be interested.

Now they have an entire day to fill with commentator opinions. The balance shifted away from facts and toward analysis, and that's where the partisan biases start to creep in. Fast-forward ten years, and it's not pretty. Same as with the internet, it's possible to select a news channel that lets you stay inside your ideological bubble.

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