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2013 Favs: Message to Martin Bashir: Words Hurt

2013 Favs: Message to Martin Bashir: Words Hurt

Last updated on: December 27, 2014 at 1:59 pm by Rebecca Hamilton

15 Comments

2013 Favs: Message to Martin Bashir: Words Hurt 2014-12-27T13:59:36-07:00 Rebecca Hamilton

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I am confused.

I do not understand the depth of hatred that so many people with microphones and word processors evidently feel toward Sarah Palin.

Many of them disagree with her opinions. I disagree with quite a few of her opinions.

But I don’t feel any desire to use this blog to call her names or degrade her as a human being or (God forbid) say things that would incite others to harm her in any way.

Sarah Palin seems to drive a certain segment of the trendy left right past any vestige of their civility and on into barbaric name-calling and sexist word violence that can only be described as cloaked pornography.

A case in point is the comments by MSNBC host Martin Bashir. Pretending to be talking about slavery, Mr Bashir went on to describe things that he said (I imagine this is true, btw) came from an old journal describing the treatment of slaves.

References to historic sources aside, the only times I have heard people describe that sort of treatment at the hands of other people in today’s world was gang rape victims describing the degrading, dehumanizing things done to them by their attackers. Since Mr Bashir is presumably far better acquainted with the twenty-first century than the eighteenth, I assume that he knows this.

He ended this disgusting recital by announcing that Governor Palin deserved the same treatment.

As always happens with these things, Mr Bashir has now issued an apology, which, of course, does nothing to ameliorate the harm he’s done, not only to Governor Palin, but to women everywhere.

I, for one, am tired of this.

Words hurt.

It would have been possible to discuss the remarks made by Governor Palin without calling her any names at all. In fact, the one thing Mr Bashir did not do was give me or any other viewer a reason to think that what the Governor had said was inaccurate. He never discussed that at all.

Instead, he went off immediately into a vicious string of names and then launched onto his history lesson and ended with the judgement that Sarah Palin deserved the same brutal treatment he had just described.

The thing which he, in my opinion, pretended had offended him was that the Governor used the word slavery in her discussion, as in the well-known and commonly-used phrase “economic slavery.”

Now, you may believe that Mr Bashir was so offended by the word “slavery” used in an economic context that he temporarily lost his senses. But even if that is true, it does not excuse what he said. Only insanity to the point of an active delusional psychosis in which he did not know what he was doing would excuse calling for any other person to be treated the way he called for Governor Palin to be treated, and that degree of mental illness would certainly disqualify him from his position.

Mr Bashir is a star. He is a highly-paid professional. There is, or there should be, quite a bit of responsibility in that. If he’s unable to control himself when he hears words like “slavery,” then he may be too emotionally labile for his position.

No professional newsperson who is the voice of a worldwide news organization should be calling for violence of any sort, much less violence of this type, against those they claim to cover. They should not be calling the people whose lives they report names.

What level of journalism is this that Mr Bashir operates from that he can go on the air and behave in this manner toward a woman who is the former governor of one of the fifty states, a former nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States, and the mother of five children?

What has Sarah Palin done, besides have opinions that some people disagree with and express those opinions strongly, that merits such hatred?

It has reached the point that I know that I’m going to be called a few names for saying this; which is precisely why I am saying it.

No one deserves this kind of treatment. Disagree with her positions. That is fine.

But stop trashing her as a human being, and stop singling out prominent women for pornographic viciousness.

Violence Against Women

pornographic attacks on women politicians

sarah palin

sexism and the left

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2013 Favs: Smoke Signals, Courier, Carrier Pigeons, Telegraph, Telephone, Email and Now Tomahawk Missiles? You Gotta Be Kidding Me.

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December 30, 2013 2013 Favs: The War on Girls: Sterilize Your Teen-Aged Daughter for Free (and without your consent)

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