The courts have long used a legal term known as "chilling effect" to describe official or governmental actions taken to intimidate, harass or otherwise keep the news media from reporting on issues that might be damaging to governmental actions or policies. Boss Ellen Moyer does this nearly every day. Alderwoman Classie Hoyle's recent statement at a public event where she suggested that "bloggers" have taken the place of the KKK and "hoses" (meaning fire hoses turned on civil rights demonstrators) was offensive, inexcusable and indeed can have a "chilling effect" on the media. It gives a "green light" to some to take things further.
See my post about this from October 7.
NOW HERE IS THE "SPIN"--Do you remember when Republican Women of Anne Arundel County President Joyce Thomann compared President Obama to Hitler? I broke the story about that outrageous comment here on CP and within a day or two, it made it to national news attention, resulting in great embarrassment to the GOP and much anger on the part of Democrats. See my post:
Democratic demagogue and attack-dog Chuck Weikel publicly expressed outrage about that comment. Weikel is now, unfortunately, chair of the ADCC. He of course, has said nothing about Hoyle's statement. While some Republicans, notably Greg Stiverson and Scott Bowling expressed outrage and condemned the RWAAC and Thomann, how come no Democrats have done the same to Hoyle? How come Cohen and Busch are campaigning with her tomorrow? Hoyle deserves to be censured for that outrageous and divisive remark. Josh Cohen and Mike Busch--how can you let this go unanswered and now reward Hoyle? Did you forget what she did a couple of years ago when she threw her support to Republican Rene Swafford when she ran against Cohen? She supported a Republican, a most unqualified candidate who was soundly defeated by Cohen, and opposed Cohen--presumably and simply because Swafford is a Black woman. Has all that been forgotten?
C'mon Democratic voters and leaders such as Cohen and Busch--speak out! How dare you let Hoyle compare "bloggers" either as individuals or as an entire class to the Ku Klux Klan and suggest that bloggers as a class are somehow suppressing civil rights! We are waiting...
We can't allow one thing to go on with Democrats that we otherwise condemn when Republicans do it.
As Malcom X said, "We're neither this or that. This or that. If you're right, you're right and if you're wrong, you're wrong."
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5 Comments:
There's clearly too much Political Patronage that needs to happen between these politicians for any of them to willingly condemn each other. So close to an election, someone is bound to lose and then they'll need a job. And the Demachine continues to run, all previous sprockets still in place!
Politicians only do things based on what THEY get out of it.
It appears that some Democrats will only condemn racism and divisiveness and hatred when it comes from Republicans. If they turn their backs on what Hoyle said, one can only think that it is duplicitous. There are many ways to play the disgusting race card. Hoyle's comments are not as despicable as were Thomann's, but considering how I soundly condemned Thomann and broke the story on her on THIS BLOG, is it not odd that Hoyle would label bloggers along with the KKK and hoses as a vehicle for fighting equality?
I don't know what Hoyle meant by her statement but I think she is referring more to the posters of blog sites, especially the anonymous type, who write racist statements behind the shield of their PC monitor.
One thing that's nice about your blog is that you do not permit anonymous msg's and all msg's must be approved by the moderator (you) before being permitted to be published.
If Hoyle is referring to blog "POSTERS" then yes I would agree with her. Perhaps she sees the "posters" as "followers" or "members" of the blog site and if the negative comments--especially the heated racist comments--are being permitted on those blogs, maybe Hoyle interprets that as the site agreeing with the comments. Do you understand what I mean by that? That if the racists comments on a blog are posted, the blog site is basically endorsing the comment?
I could be wrong but maybe Hoyle sees it basically as guilt by association. If a blog site permits disgusting comments then by default they must support those disgusting comments.
When you have no other case to make, call your nemesis Hitler or the KKK.
I agree with you entirely. There are blogs who allow such posts and they claim it's okay because the readers can make up their minds. They even post anonymous co ments atacking me--which I would never let anyone do to them. When I complained, they said I was censoring them.
One other Annapolis blogger actually posted a piece saying that one "theory" about the Zina Pierre episode was that The Capital and I are racists. Now, he did not say it's what he thought, but he said it was a theory others had made up, so he posted it as a legitimate comment. Go figure.
NOW..as to Classie Hoyle, who knew what she meant? She refused to respond to my repeated requests for clarification, so we can only guess. Do we give her the benefit of the doubt? By the way, if readers wanted to post racist remarks here, and they were to clearly identify themselves, do you think I should post their thoughts or tell them to start their own blog?
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