The Double Standards Of Outrage
There is no question that the media and cultural elite have a double standard when it comes to outrage. If one conservative talk show host makes a point using language that's fine for Andrea Mitchell, TV shows and the professional left to use, then we must exploit that language and pretend to be outraged for weeks. Months if necessary.
But if a liberal talk show host uses much worse and much more vile language, no one bats an eye.
If a vaguely right of center political candidate exists, he is of course racist. And the cultural and media elite will decode and uncover that racism -- no matter how preposterous such claims may be. If the Hollywood star narrating a liberal political candidate's re-election video is featured on stage with someone in blackface, yawn.
I'll allow you to come up with the next 47,356 examples that come to mind.
The double standard is annoying. But the fake outrage is, too.
So I have two minds about this Bill Maher op-ed in the New York Times today in which he mocks people who think they have the right to avoid offense. It's full of all the cliches and lazy thinking one might expect from Maher but there are good points, too:
When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?...
Let’s have an amnesty — from the left and the right — on every made-up, fake, totally insincere, playacted hurt, insult, slight and affront. Let’s make this Sunday the National Day of No Outrage. One day a year when you will not find some tiny thing someone did or said and pretend you can barely continue functioning until they apologize.
If that doesn’t work, what about this: If you see or hear something you don’t like in the media, just go on with your life. Turn the page or flip the dial or pick up your roll of quarters and leave the booth.
The answer to whenever another human being annoys you is not “make them go away forever.” We need to learn to coexist, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. For example, I find Rush Limbaugh obnoxious, but I’ve been able to coexist comfortably with him for 20 years by using this simple method: I never listen to his program. The only time I hear him is when I’m at a stoplight next to a pickup truck.
On the one hand, three cheers for growing up, right? We're better than the professionally outraged. Americans should unite behind the idea of true and genuine tolerance for the views with which we disagree. I couldn't agree more.
But after being subjected to nightly news reports leading -- leading -- with the Rush Limbaugh story and hammering it for weeks in order to avoid covering actual outrage about the current administration's assault on religious liberty, pardon me if this cri du coeur seems a bit too perfectly timed.
So what is the proper response? Allow the right to be bashed and brutalized and run out of the public square and subjected to all the tyranny of the faux outrage but remain principled about the outrage issue after that?
Do we recognize that Maher's op-ed wouldn't have appeared in the Cowtown Quarterly, much less the New York Times, if not for the effort by some on the right to enforce a single standard? In other words, is that push for a single standard working to destroy the faux outrage better than the typical conservative response of taking it but not dishing it out?
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Oct '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Statement of the obvious can be the downfall of blogging.
Can you give us anything that we already don't know?
Dec '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
I think that we have to enforce a single standard until they agree that its childish and dumb, and then we can agree to disarmament.
Jun '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
That there is some problem with having an obvious double standard would not even occur to the Left, because you (the average conservative) are evil. And, all is fair in destroying evil. For them, the biggest outrage is that conservatives don't even admit that they're evil, selfish, bigoted, and wrong. That's just how evil they (conservatives) are--they refuse to crawl away and die in a corner somewhere.
Edited on March 22, 2012 at 3:24pmRe: The Double Standards Of Outrage
That is literally what Stanley Fish said in a highly praised NYT piece. He ended with, I'm not joking, a Might is Right argument.
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
raycon: Statement of the obvious can be the downfall of blogging.
Can you give us anything that we already don't know? · 23 minutes ago
So are you saying you have the question I posed answered? By all means, answer it then.
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
I know that the only success we've seen has been due to the single standard enforcement but I can't help but think that it's more important to be principled. Christians thrived and ultimate defeated their foes not by taking up swords, after all.
Jun '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
There are no standards. The public discourse as controlled by the left is entirely contrived, including the mock outrage, for the purpose of controlling the narrative. You can bet that lefty elites throw around the n-word, and other slurs, in private with reckless abandon. The situation is similar to what happened in the old Soviet Union. You maintain a public persona that carefully adheres to the party line. In private you can say what you like - just don't get caught.
Sep '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
One might consider not reading the NYT!
Feb '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
The attacks on the Rush advertisers and seeing them leave the show is legitimate news and fine fodder for columnists of any stripe. Surely Maher can appreciate that.
Mar '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Paules is right: the Left doesn't care about standards or fairness because for them the issue is essential and tribal: conservatives can't have good policies or arguments because they are bigots hiding behind decorum. Liberals, on the other hand, are good people fighting for social justice who sometimes make little mistakes. So Rush's comments are ripping back the curtain on the Right's essential nastiness (which is news) and Maher's comments are just forgivable missteps, which isn't news.
Jun '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Liberals are also prone to Orwellian double-think: "I am good, noble, compassionate, and caring. But I have to lie continuously to advance my agenda."
May '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
To the many Wits and Mrs
Belong the many hits and misses,
A liberal is Miss Ingenue
A conservative "Misogyn-Who?"
It's a war they can not win
They have their own original sin,
Their logic comes across distorted
It's their future they have aborted.
Oct '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules.
What did you have in mind, here? Presumably not the likes of Martin of Tours or the Northern Crusades.
Oct '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
raycon: Statement of the obvious can be the downfall of blogging.
Can you give us anything that we already don't know? · 23 minutes ago
So are you saying you have the question I posed answered? By all means, answer it then. · 1 hour ago
No, I'm saying quite the opposite. I'm saying that, as @enoiledunord infers above, there really is no solution.
To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh; "There is no way to settle these issues except to defeat the left."
We win converts to conservatism not by eloquently parrying their thrusts, but by running their hypocrisy through with the truth. No point in showing the contrast, but by demanding that they hear the truth or cover their ears (only works with people who know you well enough to listen).
The rest simply need to be defeated if they will not convert.
Jun '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Like our VP, Maher is basically a silly man. Smarter, edgier, but just as silly. His argument here is that no one has the right to never be insulted. Hasn't that been our argument against the multi-culti crowd? Now that he feels some heat, he adopts our argument. He wants amnesty when he's on the hot seat.
Feb '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
The Liberal dogma:
"Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything."......Harry S. Truman
Dec '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
I know that the only success we've seen has been due to the single standard enforcement but I can't help but think that it's more important to be principled. Christians thrived and ultimate defeated their foes not by taking up swords, after all. · 2 hours ago
Unilateral disarmament is unilateral disarmament even when the weapon of malice are rhetorical. I dont think its productive until we have some broader agreement to end the standoff, which cannot happen until we make it clear that it is a stand off of equals. We have to believe in our legitimacy, defend it, and then convince others of it. Passively laying down denies our own cultural legitimacy.
May '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
We've become a passive-aggresive society. Liberals have mastered the art. Nothing more empowering than being offended and acheiving the ultimate public victim status. I find Maher condescending and obnoxious but in this instance he's absolutly right. This silly game of "offended" is a game I never want to participate in. I would hope after awhile the general public will start seeing thru their silly passive aggresive actions. If we don't we've turned into a nation of wussies.
Aug '10
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Maher is a vile person, no doubt. It amazes me he can garner an audience at all. But at least he doesn't pretend to be civil.
The real culprits, the folks doing the most damage, are the smiling faces on camera at NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. They have perfected the art of the journalistic Half-Truth delivered with the pitch perfect combination of charm and gravity, thus deflecting the people's attention to their pre-fab version of The Way things Ought to Be.
Apr '11
Re: The Double Standards Of Outrage
Dittos, Thelonious. Leftists take offense as a way to empower themselves and shut down all opposition as in, for example, the speech codes predominant on college campuses (campi?) these days. If we can eliminate the "right" to not be offended, that elimination will have to extend to all phases of human interaction, not just politics, as Maher would apparently have it.