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huffington chooses den of inciteful rhetoric to complain about inciteful rhetoric

By American Girl in Italy on February 5, 2010 at 5:00 PM in Current Affairs

Monday night, Arianna Huffington appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to complain about Glenn Beck’s inciteful language?

Keith Olbermann – the unhinged man, person, human…er…talking head who spews hatred nightly. She chooses Olbermann, the purveyor of inciteful, hateful rhetoric, she chooses his show, to make her point?

What exactly is Arianna all in a huff about wrt Beck? This is a continuation of her face to face with Ailes on This Week. She accused Beck of inciting the American people, and points to these comments:

BECK: I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit — there’s one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees! Most likely, it’ll happen sometime after Christmas. You’re gonna see this economy come up — we’re already seeing it, and now it’s gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they’re doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No — we’ll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!

She called him a liar for his response:

BECK: I don’t even know if I’ve ever used the word “slaughtered.” And if I used the word “slaughtered,” if it wasn’t in a context of Mao, Stalin, or Hitler, [Ailes was referring to Beck's airing of a documentary "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free...Or Die"] it was in the idea that the truth is being slaughtered by this administration… not saying that this administration is going to slaughter anyone.

So she really thinks Beck is saying/believes that people are actually going to be slaughtered? Does she think his viewers actually believe that? When you talk about sports, and say one team slaughtered another, is the other team really dead? When you say the Saints killed the Dolphins, are the Dolphins dead? Does that scare you? Are you really worried you are going to be slaughtered?

Arianna paraphrases Beck:

“Not Stalin. Not Hitler. Not Mao. Not “the truth” being slaughtered. YOU. “They are taking YOU to a place to be slaughtered.”

He didn’t make the type of comparison like Matthews did the other night:

Chris Matthews compared Republican conservatives to the Khmer Rouge, the murderous Communist regime that racked up a body count of some two million during its reign of terror:

“What’s going on out there in the Republican Party is kind of a frightening, almost Cambodia re-education camp going on in that party, where they’re going around to people, sort of switching their minds around saying, if you’re not far right, you’re not right enough.”

Or attack millions of Americans, like Olbermann:
“folks that watch Fox News are “tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists, paranoids and racists.”

Olby has spewed hatred towards: Bush, calling him a facist; the millions of people who don’t support Obama, calling them racist; Scott Brown; Sarah Palin; Carrie Prejean Hillary Clinton; Republicans; Michelle Malkin; Limbaugh; O’Reilly; and on and on…

But Arianna selected Countdown with Olbermann to complain about Beck’s inciteful language? That is just flat out hysterical.

So, I guess words only matter when they are said by people with whom you disagree. She apparently has no issue with the hateful inciteful garbage Olbermann and msnbc toss around weekly. And she takes no responsibility for the inflammatory language on her site.

But she wants to hold Ailes responsible for something Beck said, she wants to limit the freedom of speech of her opposition? Typical. Don’t believe me? Take a look around the comment sectons on Huff Po. Well reasoned, factual comments that don’t agree with the liberal content of a post are bannned. They allow a few inflammatory comments to appear, I assume to further their screed that all conservatives and opponents of Obama are racist or whackos, but I can’t tell you how many people have complained that they were banned or moderated for stating well thought out opposing views.

(I wonder why she asked Beck to be a contributing writer on her blog last year?)

  • Cindy

    Thanks for the excellent post, AGI.
    I think I’ll have Arianna figured out about the time she loses that accent…………and according to my calculations, that should be about the “Twelfth of Never”.

  • jangles

    If the Huff Po and Cheeto faux liberals were in charge of the world, the first thing to go would be freedom of speech and the rest of the Bill of Rights.  The odd thing about it is that conservatives for all their faults so seem to hold on to those civil rights.  

  • Obama: Dubya 2 Electric Boogaloo

    It’s like what I said last week. Liberals/Progressives use the most hateful and insightful rhetoric, but it’s OK because GOPers are the evil bad guys, but in reality, I’ve been treated and called far worst things from the Dailykooks/Obamadouches in 2008/2009 than anything a GOPer ever said to me from 2000-2008.

    Olberasshat and HuffyPuffy are in the ratings dust bin. They’re hoping a little “controversy” will spark their own ratings. You see this kind of stuff all the time in the non-political shock-jock radio world. Plus it gets the cheetoe eaters all wee weed up.

  • felizarte

    Of course Arianna would choose Olberman’s show–she knows she couldn’t lose an argument there; not even have an argument; just a duet in perfect synchrony/harmony.  I stopped watching Olberman and visiting Huffpo a long time ago.  I cannot name two more vicious people in the media.

  • Retired

    I hope than Arianna wasn’t planning on a big audience when she appeared on Olbermann.  If she wanted viewers, she should have gone on Beck’s show.
    It must be extremely frustrating for her–all of those people who are watching Beck and, by definition, not her or her friends.  Perhaps Obama should outlaw Beck and, indeed, all of Fox News.  Yes, that’s it!  Let’s get Obama to take them off of the air.  Then all of the people watching Beck and Fox will have to watch us!  Brilliant!

  • Hokma

    “I wonder why she asked Beck to be a contributing writer on her blog last year?”
    All you need to know about Arianna Huffington is that she is blatant opportunist. When she was dating Jerry Brown she was known as a liberal Democrat.
    Then she met oil man Michael Huffington – married him and suddenly became a political conservative supporting the Gingrich revolution and Bob Dole as well as writing for the National Review.
    Then Huffington couple divorced (it came out later that Michael Huffington came of the closet – bi-sexual).
    Then she went back to being a far left liberal when conservatism seemed to be going out of fashion and she could make money on it.
    Sounds a little like Arlen Specter – no credibility.

  • candymarl

    Glenn Beck is not one of my favorites. That said, when you start advocating for shutting down those who disagree with you how are you any different from the right-wing that insists that any disagreement with their views needs to be banned?

    Of course I don’t want to hear from homophobes, racists, anti-Semites and the like.  Guess what? I don’t listen to them now because I’ve listened enough to know where they are coming from.

    Their views, as offensive as they may be to me, are protected under the Constitution unless they call for harming or killing others.

    Saying you believe there may be harm in what someone else is doing to you and advocating said harm is not the same.

    So much for unity, harmony, and the putting aside of differences. It seems we are more at odds than ever.

    This has to stop and it needs to come from the top down. Leaders set the tone. We all thought with GWB gone the fighting would stop.  Now? Not so much.

  • Cindy

    Hokma—you’re exactly right. I met her about 15 years ago, and since then she’s been all over the map, politically.

  • HARP

    If Arianna Huffington wants creepy rhetoric, she should fast forward this video to the 8:25 mark and listen to her hero explain why a woman wants to buried in an Obama T shirt.

  • felizarte

    My father always said to me:  ”Don’t be loyal to people; be loyal to ideas–to the right principles.  Because people change; the right principles are constant, e.g. The Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights, No Taxation without representation.  I will support anyone who holds these same principles and just as easily switch support to someone else when these principles are abandoned.

  • AC

    HARP, I gotta take your word for it.  It gets harder and harder/depressing to watch his pendulum head and listen his broken syntax.
    But thanks for the heads up.

  • dst

          Agree, I think it was the night before the 97′ SOU  speech and she (Huff.) and fellow Republican punitive and Kelly (now) Conway were on Hardball  busy tearing Bill Clinton up over Monica L. and both got the kicks predicting no one would watch  the speach. Next day Bill pulled in the largest audience to watch a SoU Speach to that time.

  • Guest

    For the same reason on every issue she is ‘Do As I Say and Not What I Do’ enormous hypocrite number #1.

    It’s old but my favorite excerpt : chauffered in a BIG GAS-GUZZLING, GLOBAL-WARMING SUV to a vehicle event pitching hybrid cars (gas/electric combination).

    - The ad campaign launched by Arianna’s ‘The Detroit Project’. Read The Article
    “giving up our SUVs… we can all make simple adjustments to wean our country from the foreign oil teat, even if our leaders are too dazed by the energy and auto industry lobbies to guide us.”

    - Arianna’s November 14th, 2001 column “Support Our Troops. Dump That SUV.” Read The Article

    “High-living celebs tie SUV owners to terror” Read The Article

    “Three of the four co-founders of The Detroit Project drive hybrid vehicles, and the fourth has ordered a hybrid vehicle and is waiting for it to be delivered.”

    - Letter written by Arianna to the Washington Post ‘setting the record straight that she doesn’t ride in gas guzzling SUVs.’ Read The Article
    “S.U.V. Owners Support Terrorists” Read The Article

  • jwrjr

    Huffington’s claims are the best advertising that Beck could hope for.  When deranged people like her and Oberloud oppose Beck he must be doing something right.

  • John/johnwsmart.com

    Huffington is truly pathetic. 

  • Docelder

    At the risk of sounding likea broken record google “embedded commands”. The rhythmic head motion is a part of it. He can speak without the teleprompter, but he probably can’t remember which words to emphasize. I would love to see some camera footage of what it is he is actually looking at when he is speaking.

  • FLDemFem

    Cindy, remember back in the 60′s when the FBI and others sent people into various groups as provocateurs? They were supposed to set up situations and encourage the groups to do things that the FBI could arrest them for. I think that’s what Arianna does, she incites people to incivility and from there to outright hatred of those who don’t agree with her or her agenda, whatever it happens to be. I doubt she has any real principles except for “Stir it up!!”

    I just don’t understand why people get worked up about a bunch of empty, talking heads with very little, if any, integrity. I don’t even watch them, any of them. Total waste of time. I do read what they are saying when it comes up on various blogs, and I do comment. But why waste time watching them when their only purpose in life is to inflict their opinion on others and set people against each other.

  • Hokma

    Very profound and sage advice.
    Have to remember that.

  • Docelder

    At the risk of sounding likea broken record google “embedded commands”. The rhythmic head motion is a part of it. He can speak without the teleprompter, but he probably can’t remember which words to emphasize. It is exactly the odd wording and irregular start-stop cadence that confuses the rational mind, causing the subconscious mind to jolt into taking in the embedded commands. I would love to see some camera footage of what it is he is actually looking at when he is speaking.

  • FLDemFem

    Good advice, felizarte. My grandfather once said something similar to me. I was about ten and had just sat through a dinner where grownups were discussing principles and such. I said, “well, I don’t see why principles are so important!” My grandfather looked at me and said, “Honey, if you don’t stand on your principles, you will spend your whole life treading water, and you will end up drowning.” I understood that very well, having just passed the Red Cross Lifesaving test where I had had to tread water for 15 mins. I couldn’t imagine having to do it my whole life!

  • FLDemFem

    From what I have seen, Doc, he is looking at the teleprompters which are usually set up on either side of the lectern. He looks at them alternately, which is why his head swings back and forth like a pendulum. He rarely looks at the people he is speaking too, but seems to look over their heads. That is because the teleprompters are set up so they are right in front of him when he turns his head. He also has one that goes in front of the lectern for when he has to look into the camera, or at an audience that is directly in front of him. Whatever happened to real public speaking? You remember, the kind where the speaker has bullet points on notecards and has practiced giving the talk, but doesn’t need to read it. I have to use cards because I read a lot faster than I speak and I tend to get ahead of myself if I am trying to read a speech.
    :-P

  • PortiaElizabeth

    Sara — thank you for making the sacrifice to report on Arianna for us. I find her to be scary because she’s just so certain that what she’s preaching is the only way. How did this person ever get a podium to preach?

  • sarainitaly

    who the heck knows! 

  • Cindy

    FLDemFem—I think you’re right about Arianna not having principles; at least none that are obvious to most of us. Yes, she loves mixing it up:  A tablespoon of this, a cup of that and STIR. It’s really a cynical way to live one’s life.  When I met her, she had just written the Maria Callas book. Some people I knew back then thought she was out of her depth, shallow, and an opportunist. And years later: Voila! She still is.

  • Cindy

    p.s. FLDem—–I may have mentioned that hubby and I will be on our way to The Keys on Sunday.  West Palm was his home ( after age 10). He loves it. I’ll wave to ya as we pass by. 8-)

  • felizarte

    I could understand many who were taken in by Obama’s rhetoric during the campaign and their passionate support for him; but it is difficult for me to understand why, after all the broken promises, e.g. “all negotiations on c-span, no lobbyists in his administration, etc., there are still so many who defend/rationalize his actions.  In such a short time, he has proven how naive he really is in international affairs, unschooled in common sense protocol (bowing to other heads of state).  It has been reported that he took some time to “perfect” his salute, but did not spend enough time to know the military designations (rank) as not to know how to pronounce corpsmen. He has also amply demonstrated his lack of management skills when he intones, “there was just too many things to attend to.”  What did he think the Presidency of the U.S.A. was all about?  I did not support him in the primaries because I just did not think he had the experience to do everything he was promising or articulating, and I also did not support him in the general elections for the same reason.

  • FLDemFem

    Well, wave high, I live over near the Gulf Coast.. 8-)

  • FLDemFem

    It sounds to me like she is more interested in being with the “in crowd” than she is in finding her political philosophy and sticking to it. Wants to be the “popular girl” instead of the smart one. And she doesn’t like the smart girls because the guys respect them, and with her it’s just slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am with no follow up phone calls. She reminds me of a girl I knew in high school who said the most stunning thing at a reunion. She said she wasn’t really interested in her kids until they became sports champions..then they were interesting. Gave her bragging rights, don’t you know!! Sort of like Arianna and her blog, gives her something to brag about now that it gets her on TV and stuff. Doesn’t matter that civility went out the window, that she trashes good and decent public servants and supports an ignorant, shallow narcissist. All that matters is that she gets to be a big shot. Sort of like Obama..two peas in a pod, those two.

  • FLDemFem

    What I will never understand is why anyone would believe him..he lied during the primary. Said he was against FISA, and then went back to Washington and voted FOR IT. Then he said he was for public financing and then declined it since he found out could get more money by not using it. After that, it’s a wonder to me anyone believes a word he says. He broke promises during the primary, and no one seemed to notice. Did they think he would change once he was in office?? And if so, why did they think that??

    I am a race tracker, or was for decades, and one thing I learned. When you are running a horse, and you want to find the right race for him, you check the past performances. That tells you where the horse should be running in terms of length of race and type of course. I went to look at Obama’s past performances, just to be fair since I was a Hillary supporter right out of the gate, and couldn’t find any to speak of.

    While in the Senate, he had voted 1/3 as many times as Hillary in the same time frame, had not held any committee meetings for his committee on Afghanistan, and had spent more time traveling to Kenya and “writing” “Audacity of Hope” than he had working. There were also a couple of articles in the Washington Post that reported that other Senators were annoyed with him because they would do all the work on the bill, get it passed and he would show up for the press conference to take credit for it. This was in the US Senate, mind you, not the Illinois state senate. In Illinois, he had his name put on 23 bills by Emil Jones, to give him credibility. To this day, Obama claims they couldn’t have passed without him. It simply isn’t true. It’s a flat out lie. And his fellow state senators weren’t happy about it either.

    So if I could find out all that information, why couldn’t the other voters?  It was out there, available if you just looked. Obama may not have kept records in the Illinois state senate, but the state senate did. So does the US Senate, it’s called the Congressional Record. So it’s easy to find out what he has done, which is not much. And don’t get me started on his walk-over elections where he got rid of the competition..it just sends me into a rant. Well, a longer one.

  • FLDemFem

    Harp, what is even creepier is that his audience laughed when he said the woman wanted to be buried in an Obama tee-shirt. Laughed at a dying woman’s words…now to me that is creepy and very disturbing. An “awwww” would have been understandable, and not creepy, but the laugh, and how Obama handled it was just ick.

  • PizzaDriver

    exactly, jangles; i have long said the same thing.  when you see how they censor all dissenting opinions, no matter how civilly expressed, it makes you want to make absolutely certain that those people never get their hands on the Bill of Rights. 

  • Glennmcgahee

    As a formerly banned commenter over there, I can say that she trully does twist with the wind. She needs to be on the winner’s side so expect her to do a 180 as soon as the country finally wakes up to the Obama bushit. Its happening, thats why she’s all over NBC/MSNBC, they are trying tp prop him and themselves up but people have stopped listening.

  • FLDemFem

    Was that the SOTU where the teleprompter malfunctioned and Bill didn’t miss a beat, just went right on with the speech because he KNEW it? He had written it himself, and had put the finishing touches on it on the way over to the Capitol. God, I miss Bill Clinton!! It was so nice having an intelligent, well-spoken, concerned person in the presidency. Now we have a narcissist who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself who can’t string a coherent sentence together, or read well enough to properly pronounce what comes up on his teleprompter.

  • Guest

    I prefer to look at the feasability of each policy and position in isolation. Principles are all well and good except when the Ten Commandments fail to support (in some cases even contracts) most of the Bill of Rights etc and human reasoning is still all we’re left with for final authority over their interpretation…

  • mountainaires

    Arianna wants Beck on her site, so she’s attacking him so he’ll feel compelled to start blogging at her site. It’s all about the advertising revenues she’ll generate to line her own pockets if Beck shows up. I hope he continues to reject her. He certainly doesn’t need Arianna; she needs Beck.

    Meanwhile, Arianna looks increasingly desperate and pathetic with this shrieking about the word “slaughter” and this ridiculous inflammatory argument of hers. Olbermann’s down to about 200,000 people per night, a bottom-dweller if ever there was one. 

    They are screaming, but few hear them. Think about that. 

  • mountainaires

    Addition: They’re like Air America…Rest in Peace. 

  • mountainaires

    Oh, I think this is much ado about nothing, too, Harp, sorry. I’m not an Obama fan, but when you watch the speech a minute before and a minute after that comment, you can see that it’s not creepy or unusual. Seems perfectly normal for him to say it…

  • mountainaires

    That is EXACTLY the way Beck sees it, believe me. You’re so right. Beck is nothing if not an experienced marketer, and he knows that he’s going to benefit from this. Maybe Arianna is using Beck’s own formula for ginning up controversy, huh? And, Olbermanns’ so desperate these days, he’s linking up with Arianna for help for his bottoming ratings. He’s not talking to many these days.  :-D

  • mountainaires
  • PortiaElizabeth

    Mountainaires — that LA Times story is hilarious! Thanks for linking.

  • Doc99

    Zsa Zsa’s just now realizing that she’s the rube.