More Ring Lardnerism
H/T to Powerline for this.
It seems Glenn Back, by accurately quoting Frances Fox Piven, has gored the Ruling Class ox again. Professor Piven wrote, and The Nation published, an article calling for violent, angry protest. In her piece in The Nation, Piven calls for:
An effective movement of the unemployed [that] will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union,[Emphasis mine.]
Beck and The Blaze have publicized the piece; Piven appears to have become something of a bête noire for Beck. (And yes, there’s no doubt that Beck does obsess about things sometimes.) But he’s neither misattributing the piece, nor taking it out of context; Piven is urging violence as what will be necessary to achieve her ends.
The reaction in the Times? Why obviously, to accuse Beck of fomenting threats against Piven. They quote in particular:
In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.
“Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote.
Piven’s own response:
That is not a call for violence,” Ms. Piven said Friday of the references to riots. “There is a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent.”
No one notes, apparently, that there’s no such thing as a “nonviolent riot” and the riots in Greece in particular have been deadly.
According to the Times, the Center for Constitutional Rights says (find their full web article here):
[I]t took exception to the sheer quantity of negative attention to Ms. Piven.
“We are vigorous defenders of the First Amendment,” the center said in its letter to Fox. “However, there comes a point when constant intentional repetition of provocative, incendiary, emotional misinformation and falsehoods about a person can put that person in actual physical danger of a violent response.” Mr. Beck is at that point, they said.
The puzzle, of course, is that Beck is repeating and truthfully quoting Piven — or, appears to be, unless Piven asserts the article published under her name wasn’t actually hers. The central point or the CCR’s complaint seems to be that while they’re all in favor of free speech, they don’t want too much of it.
In other words…
“Shut up he explained.”
For much of the last 150 years, leftists have controlled the means of communication and this has allowed them to conduct a two-faced political dialog. One face is the mild, reasonable sounding public face shown to non-leftists and the other is the lefts own internal dialog whose face they show only to themselves.
Priven has been caught by the exposure of the internal dialog. She assumed that her writing would be read by only by other leftist who share her beliefs about the validity of political violence in cause of leftism. Priven has the double disadvantage of being old enough to have been active back in the radical 60s when many leftists were actual Stalinist of some flavor and very outspoken about their desire to destroy liberal-democracy along with social and economic freedom.
Like most leftists, Priven can dish it out but she cant take.
“One face is the mild, reasonable sounding public face shown to non-leftists and the other is the lefts own internal dialog whose face they show only to themselves.”
Sounds like most Muslim “leaders”, the Left’s fellow travelers, one mild, reasonable sounding face for the West, and a 180 degree different face for their fellow cultists.
So urging the unemployed to emulate the strikes & riots of Greece is NOT a call for violence, but putting a crosshair or target on a state where a politician resides IS a call for violence. It”s all clear now.
That is not a call for violence,” Ms. Piven said Friday of the references to riots. “There is a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent.”
Kind of like the MSM has and the political chattering class has done to the Tea Party?
If Piven is not calling for violence despite her words, then she is being gored by her own ox. Sweet.
Hard to believe (1) she can spout this bilge with a straight face; and (2) Im supposed to consider her to be smart.
The Lefts version of the First Amendment:
I have a right to free expression and an uncritical audience.
Yet another example of an Ivory Tower professor
discovering that she is connected to earth;
Like politicians, she is shocked to find that
she may be held personally responsible for
the effects of actions she advocates.
Inciting the Mob to riot can be effective,
but is always dangerous, for all involved;
Enlisting the _honest_ unemployed to help
themselves, and the other unemployed is a
better, but still dangerous tactic.
Oh, sweet, sweet irony:
“That is not a call for violence,” Ms. Piven said Friday of the references to riots. “There is a kind of rhetorical trick that is always used to denounce movements of ordinary people, and that is to imply that the massing of people itself is violent.”
Seems to me that Ms. Piven just handed the entire Tea Party movement a Get Out Of Accusations-Of-Violence Free card here . . .
Too clever by half . . .
+1, Precisely Filbert…thats the first thing I thot of.
She is of course an old CUNY professor who is guaranteed a very generous pension, minimal working hours, great benefits and all paid by the same government she pretends to loathe. The city is too broke to remove snow properly but can fund a massive educational bureaucracy which does not even provide jobs or investment to the city it supposedly serves. If you want to improve lives mass against Piven.
I’m just a garden-variety lumpenprole, but it’s almost as if she’s part of the very bourgeoisie that would find itself dangling from lampposts the first day of her own revolution.
Its a good article, but you should fix the spelling in the first line of Glenn Beck’s name.
Thanks for spotting it!
The editor of The Nation is a frequent guest on MSNBC.
Obviously, Ms. Piven was using the fourth definition of “riot.” As in, “a riot of color,” you racist.
Of course Piven is retreating from her prior words, she’s become aware of the fact that not only is she, and her progressive/fascist fellow travelers, outnumbered, but that we real Americans are armed and know how to use our arms.
At some point, someone will show up without warning at the doors of Piven, Ayres, and Dohrn (and like scum) and send them where they should have been sent decades ago.
Moby much?
Sounds like an accurate prediction. Read what happened to the Tories during and after our Revolution.
Far better if they suffer the proper scorn they deserve and die in complete obscurity
Actually, most of us real Americans figure this brainless tax-eater Piven has the same right to shoot her mouth off as the rest of us.
Well, no doubt the Center for Constitutional Rights has also taken exception to the “sheer quantity of negative attention” devoted to Sarah Palin, so I don’t see any problem here.
I hope you’re not holding your breath, Swen.
Touche.
Piven’s first name is actually spelled Frances.
Thanks. I’m usually the spelling Nazi around here, so I’m sure this piece is offering some sweet revenge.
And thanks to whoever picked these up while I was in bed.
Shannon Love is on to something. Take a Maalox–make that two — then spend about ten minutes reading the threads at The Daily Kos.
Frances Piven seems blissfully unaware of the Advances In Modern Communication which make it unlikely that her past contributions to the echo chamber will henceforward go unnoticed.
Ain’t no hidin place down here no mo. Keep yappin, kids.
I am not a racist. I’m a conservative so therefore I am accused of being a racist. So what then is the downside of my actually becoming a racist since I am already condemned as being one?
I am not violent. I’m a conservative so therefore I am accused of being violent. So what then is the downside of my actually becoming violent since I am already condemned as being violent?
I’m a conservative who owns guns so therefore I must be either a) a crazy gun toting anti-government militia fanatic or b) a racist bigot out to suppress all minorities. So what is the downside to my actually becoming a crazy gun toting anti-government militia fanatic since I am already condemned as one?
They say one must be careful what one wishes for, it may come true.
Exactly. Works on the nation level, too. If the US is going to be accused of stealing the oil, steal it. At least youll have the oil as well as the bad rep.
Oh it is going to get worse for the lefties. Since the US is not allowed to drill for oil or gas, or mine coal at home we will of course use (steal?) everyone elses. But when that runs out well still have energy stocks, which we will use and sell at a great profit. The US will still be the leader of the world, all because the lefties would not let us drill/mine now. In the end they cant win. The lefties biggest problem is unintended consequences, a command economy can not adjust to deviations from the plan, but the market economy automatically adjusts.
Somewhat reminiscent of Journolist: a great tool for the left as long as only a few people knew about it. When conservatives started to catch on it lost its usefulness and disappeared. As with cockroaches, the left does not tolerate light. F
Mr.G, did you mean and old CUNY professor or an old Commie professor? I get them confused.
Liberal civility:
Step one: Call for riots like ones where innocent people were murdered to make a point.
Step two: Let’s sit boy-girl-boy-girl at the State of the Union!
First: @DJ: “…no doubt the Center for Constitutional Rights has also taken exception to the “sheer quantity of negative attention” devoted to Sarah Palin…”. Bingo.
Second: @M. Report: “Yet another example of an Ivory Tower professor
discovering that she is connected to earth;
… shocked to find that
she may be held personally responsible for
the effects of actions she advocates.”
I disagree. Piven is not “discovering” anything. She is exhibiting the standard behavior of a leftist when there words prove the inviability of their beliefs: Issue what may seem like a rhetorical retreat that isn’t anything of the like.
Piven speaks not to the greater public, but to her fellow hard-core leftists and especially the teeming masses of leftist drones. Her words are designed to give the drones a way to (in their own minds and in their discourse) weasel out of dealing with the reality her words revealed. Nothing more.
Piven and her ilk her give no quarter – period. They are incapable of understanding, much less admitting, that much of their belief system is wrong, unjust and immoral.
In her article, Piven calls for something like the Greek strikes and riots or like the British student protests, and she states that these protests have to be large, angry and and disruptive enough to have a political impact. In other words, she wants to scare the politicians. But now she’s the one who’s scared–or something like it.
Piven wants to motivate change with a threat of violence but the rebound of threat, (which is wrong when applied against her), that has come back to her has only motivated her to change the meaning of the word riot.
Beck should lay off cuz you can never pin down a liberal using the English language or any form of logic known to mankind for that matter.
It’s not about pinning down the liberals who say stupid things; it’s about bringing their words to light so that the rest of the population can see them for what they are.
I have faith that most people are smart enough to know what Piven meant in her original statements, regardless of how she tries to spin it…
Have you ever noticed that when the “Progressives or Liberals” are speaking of a political system that is or has been murderous to its own citizen’s its always Hitler that is always used for an example. National Socialism [Nazi] which is just another leftist group murdered many, some say 10 or 20 million but the real killers are the Marxists, the Communists like Stalin, Mao and all the rest of political thugs [can you name some?] The history of Communism or Marxism has been whitewashed to a point where most in this country don’t know that these thugs have murdered over 200 million of their own citizens. Here is one name, a Marxist that you’ll never forget, Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin. Ms. Pliven has said that she is a apparatchiki of this thuggery; shame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin Blokhin holds a record, he could be in the Guiness Book of Marxism.
Hahaha…the old bitch gets her rhetoric turned back on her, and she doesnt like it. Tough, I say, if you cant stand the heat…or, in her case, dont make death threats unless you want to receive them. As far as Im concerned, its karma.
Any minute now Whoopi will explain that professor Piven didnt mean *riot* riot.
The fact that no one walked out of that audiance in disgust frankly amazes me. Mother, father, sibling, etc- to hear someone, a woman no less, say that the drugged sodimization of a 13 yr old girl isnt rape rape, how could they not leave? or at least stand up and start an argument? I was saddened that day, and disappointed beyond the pale.
This is a classic case of how to use revolutionary logic. Piven calls for violence and then is opposed to violence when it doesn’t suit her. They’re all for the First Amendment in order to gain power and then they’re opposed to it once they have the power.
Why hasn’t anyone called on Piven to produce the threatening e-mails. My guess is that either she’s lying or the threatening e-mails were sent by her revolutionary comrades.
Being on the unpleasant receiving end of more than several death threats himself, I think its fairly plain that Beck hasn’t been calling on any for Piven or anyone else.
To be clear here, Beck has been on the receiving end of more than a few death threats himself from angry leftists.
So I can’t see him calling for any directed at anyone else, Piven included.
So in her article, Piven lays out a method for stoking the flames of discontentment among the unemployed, reinforcing the idea that they’re merely victims of some greedy capitalist or inept politician, and then remarks how great it’d be if those angry unemployed would start rioting like they did recently in Greece and England.
Yeah, that’s all about a grassroots, popular uprising, isn’t it? Nothing like the poor and unemployed being used by “intellectual” leftists for the purpose of fighting their new revolution.
Sorry, Fran. Beck has your number, and we all can see you for what you are. You’re just a sad radical revolutionary whose beliefs will never reflect the majority of Americans.
a liberal nonprofit group
This is,of course, reactionary leftistspeak for an organization of leftist barking moonbats.
The part I like the most about the George Soros sponsored group is that they call themselves the Center for Constitutional Rights, but it really is the Center to try and deny Constitutional Rights.
George Orwell would have loved George Soros. Such a sense of humor.