I was of a conviction that most of the truly talented smearing came from the left, with those on the right being caught out with the perfectly timed “Do you still torture kittens to death?”, followed by the fumbled response “Huh? What are you talking about?” and continued with media talking heads trumpeting “Senator MacNackers denies years of ritually slaughtering neighborhood pets on Satanic alter in his basement.”
Or some right wing politician says something like “Bean burritos give me gas” and the headline becomes “Congressman Brightfuller's racist commentary” followed by a lead like “Career politician says 'Beaners are always up my ass.'”
Some could take the scenario of an elderly Mother Teresa peacefully taking a nap under a tree and turn it into some sort of evil adventure, maybe racist oppression or maybe throwing random children over a cliff.
I'm seeing it more now on the right against people who aren't on the left, and there could be some confusion over which side of center it's coming from. It's pretty much the same stuff.
There can be a 2000 word screamer rant about how this or that politician hates the little people and is planning with malice of forethought to yank what's left of the economy out from underneath Main Street. However, the gigantic piece is built around a single quote, or maybe two quotes – the link's right there. Sometimes, whenever I'm inclined to concerning any internet page about any subject, I'll click on the link and often find that the quote is clearly out of context with the rest of the paragraph and the politician isn't planning to do what the screamer rant says he's fixin' to do next – watch out.
Or, a quote could be lifted from an English translation of The Pyongyang Yeller, The Beijing Berater, something like The White Night Rider, The James Crow Herald, Media Matters, moveon.org, Huffington Post or some other “reliable source” on the internet.
Or let's say another lengthy screamer rant says that another (perpetually targeted) politician has rallied a multitude of deluded sycophants to his cause by pointing out some decades old, glaring issue
about illegal immigration no one in Congress has been willing to address. The rant goes on to say that since the politician is rumored to be planning to talk with some unidentified persons within the
stereotyped “Latino Community” about the issue, the politician is now pissing all over his sycophant followers. What the author of the screamer rant isn't going to relate is that there are people within that
so called “Latino Community”, no zip code provided, who have a view of illegal aliens which may be nearly as harsh as that of sheet wearing cross burners. They're not all the same person in any of those
artificially constructed “communities”.
Many years ago, there was a reporter and a photographer who cornered and goaded me into commenting on an issue I had some strong feelings about at the time. Of course they managed to capture me after a post work session with some coworkers which happened to involve adult beverages. They seemed smugly satisfied when they were done with the interview.
The next day's paper related a nearly incoherent rant, with the accompanying picture portraying a glaring lunatic figure, mouth wide open in mid rant and arms waving about. The only thing missing to complete the image was visual evidence of spit flying out my mouth.
I looked like a colossal idiot, and I got a lesson that sometimes maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and shuffle on. Sometimes it's been really hard for me to do so.
However, a few days later I found in my mailbox an unsolicited white supremacist newspaper delivered via the Postal Service. It had a front page article which quoted that epically stupid rant from the published interview in addition to also printing that lunatic picture. I was depicted as agreeing with their twisted supremacist cause.
So, I had to write a letter to the editor of the local paper from which the reporter had bagged me describing the whole thing, including the fact that I did not agree with those white supremacists who incorrectly thought I did, as well as trying to clear up the idiocy which came through via the reporter and his photographer.
Can you imagine having an internet complete with twitter and all sorts of other media combined with someone who really was out to destroy me at the time?
And just think of all the bandwidth that can now be clogged over something as trivial as a silly, discordant, even ignorant suck up move with a taco bowl as a prop. Cultural appropriation, “we Mexicans don't eat that crap”, sleeping with the enemy, traitor to the nation, racist, “He was all about the Schlachtplatte before – he's turned on Germany”…etcetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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