Well, you could try selling them to Tom Chick - do they have her picture on them? I am sure he could ‘make use’ of them!
Dejin
3682
That’s probably an accurate description, although my main complaint is it’s a professional website and it’s completely misrepresenting that bible quote. If it were a random blogger, I wouldn’t think anything of it. But for a real journalist to take a quote completely out of context and misapply it like that just to attack her provides proof that the mainstream media is out to get her. There’s no need for that. There’s lots of legitimate reasons to attack her without taking stuff out of context.
It provides proof of nothing. That dude probably doesn’t care for her politics. Doesn’t mean the “mainstream media” (really, all of it?) is out to get her.
Dejin
3684
You don’t need all of “mainstream media” doing it to reinforce her narrative. It’s the same way you don’t need all judges to be corrupt to prove that the justice system is screwed or all police to be idiots ala our taser thread to undermine the public’s confidence in the police.
This professional journalist’s blog was an unwarranted attack based on a false interpretation of a bible verse. It was unprofessional.
Fox news does this type of stuff all the time, but we should be better than that. We shouldn’t accept this type of bullshit, it undermines us, the same way the conservatives not calling out Fox News or Rush Limbaugh diminishes them and highlights their hypocrisy.
That’s pretty much the whole story, although it’s gaining momentum as he repeats mainstream media over and over again and then goes for the false equivalence to Fox. “We” indeed.
You need to prove that a substantial number of journalists/judges/police officers commit unprofessional/corrupt/idiotic acts in order to have those assertions taken seriously.
Dejin
3687
Just a few high-profile instances of corruption on a police force has a significant impact on a community’s relationship with the police. This is particularly true in a minority community. A few racists cops can quickly turn the population against the police force.
One corrupt cop or one racist cop is one too many.
The Guardian is a UK paper. UK papers explicitly are not run on the grounds of “objective journalism” like US papers are.
So for both those reasons, it has no relevance whatsoever to the media being “out to get her.”
Dejin
3689
Okay, that’s a fair criticism of my post. I also don’t know my UK newspapers very well, but I’ve always assumed the Guardian is pretty reliable (i.e., not full of Fox-news fabrications).
They still shouldn’t be taking a bible verse so clearly out of context though. That just makes them look ignorant or stupid and desperate to attack her.
JM1
3690
Well, no. They’re making fun of her. It’s what people over here do.
Hunty
3691
The Guardian is by no means full of Fox News-style fabrications. It’s a decent enough source, but like any UK newspaper, you have to be aware of the bias. It has a commitment to honest reporting but it very definitely has an agenda. The Guardian is the most left-leaning broadsheet by some distance, so saying that they’re not going to go out of their way to be charitable to Palin is an understatement.
For what it’s worth, The Guardian is probably my newspaper of choice, but I don’t think its handling of the Palin emails has been particularly edifying. As much as I personally disdain the woman, it’s not particularly substantive and there’s no real smoking gun. I find the gleeful muckraking a bit distasteful. They could have quietly analysed the content for anything of note, rather than liveblogging about sunbed receipts like it was the fall of the fucking Berlin Wall.
Nellie
3692
Agree with Hunty.
Think there is also an element of how we view religion going on here as well. You can be religious, you can say that your religious beliefs shape your moral decision making, you absolutely cannot say that you prayed to the almighty beret god to help you make a decision.
So it doesn’t surprise me that they picked up on that and took the piss out of it.
Cake or death and all that.
Worth noting that what makes it into The Guardian print edition is often different from what appears on the website. The Guardian is somewhat of a pioneer in the ‘newspaper going onto the internet’ field and things like the ‘live blogs’ are at the far end of gossipy but immediate style of stuff that they do. That live blog would never appear in the main serious business part of the paper for example and many of the other popular stories on the website come from sillier slanted subsections (like G2) as well.
I would guess that things like the live blogs and absurd comment pieces get the clicks and thus pay for the website but, by their very nature, they are not going to be subject to the usual editorial control that you will get with a full normal story. Newspapers have to be more like blogs and twitter if they want to be timely basically.
Dejin
3694
I don’t have a problem with him making fun of her, even if he is a journalist. There are times when it’s okay for a journalist to show their bias, a blog can reasonably be thought of as similar to an opinion page.
My concern is that the bible verse which he’s using is pretty well known and used even in secular literature, and it doesn’t at all mean what he thinks it means. So basically he’s showing that he’s ignorant. For a random blogger, that’s an embarrassment, but whatever. For a professional journalist to use a quote like that, not know what it means, and not bother to do their homework and look up the meaning before using it is just pathetic.
Attacks on Palin are all fine and good. But if you’re going to attack her don’t do it in a way that makes you look like an illiterate idiot.
Dejin
3695
Thanks for all the Guardian information.
Spam
3696
Palin to declare total victory?
For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.
And the bit where Jesus says, “if someone asks for your coat, give him your cloak also” means that only garment-based charity is necessary?
My understanding of the context of the “render unto Caesar” line is that one of his followers is asking Jesus, in effect, “when are we going to start the revolution?”. When are we going to kick the Romans out, overthrow the corrupt temporal order that’s dominating us right now, and establish His kingdom here on earth? And Jesus’ answer is, in short: you can’t make Heaven on earth. Nothing we do will make the political realm answerable to spiritual values. So do what you can to accommodate yourself to the evils of this world, the inevitable corruption of it, and meanwhile, focus on doing everything you can to live your life the way God would want you to. Of course, on this understanding, being a Christian politician is pretty much already a contradiction in terms, but this is hardly something that Palin can be blamed for.
Dejin
3698
See the Wikipedia article on this topic. The question was specifically brought up in regard to taxes. Jesus was specifically asked whether or not Jews should pay the poll tax or should act as tax resisters. This is not part of a speech where Christ is using allegories, it’s a response to a specific question.
Your understanding of the context is incorrect. Jesus is responding to a question from the Pharisees, his adversaries, not from his followers.
That wikipedia article is mostly composed of discussions of the varied interpretations of that phrase, essentially because it was a ambiguous response that could be interpreted as a call to resistance to earthly authority or an instruction to submit to it depending on what you wanted to do with it. That’s why it’s clever and deep at the same time. The interpretation used by the Guardian blogger is fine. I don’t understand how you see this as a place where you can proclaim absolute certainty about the meaning of the passage.
Dejin
3700
Well duh, because it’s Qt3 P&R. I’m not seeing a lot of shading or acceptance of the real ambiguities in life or politics in most of the posts here either, so yes I do proclaim with absolute certainty that I know the meaning of the passage, and that the Blogger clearly does not have a good understanding of where the phrase comes from.
Well, I guess there’s no arguing with you guys, or trying to present a point-of-view or some background from someone with a bit more Biblical background than a lot of you guys. If you are so hot to take a shot at Sarah Palin be my guest.
