Captain Ed comments on the criticism of Jill Carroll and has the right perspective I think when he notes that "Jumping to conclusions is not good exercise".
"Had people thought for a moment before committing their initial responses to their blogs, they would have understood the video and her first statement as nothing more than the ticket for her release."
I too had an unfavorable response to her reported initial statements. To be fair to Big Media in this case though, it should be noted that those initial reports, at least the ones I read, stated that when she made those comments she was not yet under US protection. That gave me enough pause to wait and see what would come further. As is too often the case these days, some blogs chose to let loose on her.
There's an old phrase, "Ready, Fire, Aim", that is used to denote someone who reacts wildly to a situation, in contrast to the more efficient "Ready, Aim, Fire" standard. It seems to me that too much of our political and event related commentary these days is more like "Aim, Fire, Ready", and the "Ready" part appears to be optional. This phenomenon is not new and it's not restricted to one media or any particular political slant. It does seem more prevalent these days and the practitioners, for the most part, are actually defiantly unrepentant. More disturbing is the zeal and hatred that goes hand-in-hand with it. Even more disturbing than that is that too often, it works.
I worry that we are turning into a nation of ninnies and hysterics, I really do. I'm not talking about simple disagreement here. People will always, hopefully, bring different perspectives to the table and disagreement is natural and should be healthy in the long run, even if people have to agree to disagree. And rational, constructive criticism isn't a bad thing, we can all use it at times. How much of our political discourse though, can be described as healthy, or rational, or constructive these days?
Not much I think. Over the years, rational discourse has taken plenty of beatings from the American public. It will in the future too. Maybe it's just my current perspective, but the situation seems more serious than it has been in the past. Perhaps that's because overreaction and outright hysteria are seeping into the mainstream. We need to speak up about that and not just when the other side does it, but our own too, if we want to maintain have civility in our political discussions.
We uh, still do want that, right?
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