This is getting so tired now — lower the discourse, then trot out with a lame apology that doesn’t address the horror of what was said. Faux News contributor Liz Trotta doesn’t even attempt to sound sincere with this bullsh*t mea culpa:
“I am so sorry about what happened yesterday with that lame attempt at humor…I just really fell over myself in making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate for that matter. I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes in saying things we wish we hadn’t said.”
Let’s take a look at what she said that got her into hot water. I don’t see any other candidates mentioned in her assassination joke:
Please.
“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”
55 Responses to “Faux News analyst Trotta ‘apologizes’ for assassination remarks”
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/25/keith-olbermanns-idea-for_n_98557.html
I’m still waiting for you to apologize for invoking Keith Olbermann, someone who has previously advocating beating Hilary Clinton till she is incapacitated.
What Trotta said is really no worse than what Olbermann said, only it’s about someone you like. If you can’t be objective about violent rhetoric that hurts both candidates and their base, then maybe you have no place at the DNC.
Somehow I doubt that her choice of “colorful” as an adjective here was an accident either.
It not only sounds insincere, but it contains one of those “apologize to anybody I’ve offended” non-apologies quickly followed up by the “many of us are losing our heads, so it’s not really that bad” bullshit.
Why can’t they just say “I said a stupid thing, and I am sincerely sorry for my words.” Leave it there, don’t try to explain it away or nullify it with conditions.
Just take responsibility for your actions.
Also, Foucault — while I see your point (I think Olbermann’s comments absolutely crossed the line), I think Trotta’s are in a whole different league. IIRC Olbermann said “Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” While this violent language is clearly unacceptable, at least it could reasonably construed as nothing more than a euphemism.
Trotta’s remark, on the other hand, really can’t be seen as anything other than a direct expression of desire to see Obama murdered.
Both are unconscionable, but imo Trotta’s is far worse.
“Why can’t they just say “I said a stupid thing, and I am sincerely sorry for my words.” Leave it there, don’t try to explain it away or nullify it with conditions.”
…which should have been followed by “I humbly ask Barack Obama’s forgiveness. I obviously have deep-seated racial animosities that are not compatible with a job in journalism. Therefore, I am resigning immediately…”
Why does she still have that job? Shouldn’t she be detained, questioned and put in solitary confinement for several months under bureaucratic nightmare situation?
or probably be made to disappear …
(Hey, it’s fox news, they have no problem advocating that sort of punishment. So why not apply that to their own crew for exact same criminal act?)
Foucault May 27, 2008 at 7:27 am
I’m still waiting for you to apologize for invoking Keith Olbermann, someone who has previously advocating beating Hilary Clinton till she is incapacitated.
chuckle. putting them in a room and only he come out? that was from the video.
yeah, that will fly as a manufactured outrage.
Squashed, Focault has a tenuous grip on Quantum Physics, Heisenberg and Schrodinger in particular.
He’s got problems… I can’t deal with people who have no grip on reality.
I give you reality Foucault,
No Clear Map For Clinton’s Political Future
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/27/no-clear-map-for-clintons_n_103632.html
(she might face tough time the rest of her senate term. If the Clinton has no more people left in the media and party machine, they won’t have power or money. You think she can run next senate race without serious contender?)
She run unopposed against Lazio and Pirro. Think about it! one guy is a city council of some sort, the other can’t even give a speech after a page is missing mid reading.
hello?
And you wonder her presidential campaign falls apart after it requires real leadership skill? (observe her inability to anticipate future situation resulted from her tactic and strategy)
You can’t keep propping her with one manufactured outrage to another. pretty soon people gonna demand something substantive and real. Hillary has to show actual big time political skill instead of usual DC hackeries. People are tired of that.
Trotta clearly wished Obama dead. Period. Then she wanted to be nuanced, but how many personal insults on Clinton did you count in her “explanation”? The slightest of them was referring to her as “this woman”.
Typical Fox fascism.
“Trotta clearly wished Obama dead. Period. Then she wanted to be nuanced, but how many personal insults on Clinton did you count in her “explanation”? The slightest of them was referring to her as “this woman”.”
Yes, maybe Pam could save some of her outrage for the absolutely despicable treatment of Clinton at the start of Trotta’s commentary? And I think it is appalling to suggest that beating the living daylights out of someone is any less vile than joking about someone’s assassination. Both forms of discourse are absolutely inappropriate, and for Pam to drag out Olbermann as a “hero” of some sort is unimaginable.
Let’s defend black men by championing white men who advocate violence against women, right?
just because you want your case heard doesn’t mean Pam is championing anything. You are putting words in somebody else’s mouth.
But keep it up. I’ll start digging through bunch of pro Hillz blogger and demand YOU start considering and apologizing for ever single one of them.
Then I’ll go through youtube files searching for every single Hillary and Hillary related clips and demand YOU explain them and square it with your demand.
Hey, this could be useful as deep oppo search and general strategy against the last dopey hold out.
Squashed, please refrain from trying to communicate with me. I am not interested in talking to you or in witnessing you addict behavior.
squashed, you missed the point entirely. It was MSM Trotta that insulted Clinton. Look up all you want. I can find many times more misogynist references to Clinton at just a few blogs like AmericaBlog or Balloon Juice, to name but two.
But blogs are not the issue, MSM is. I know I didn’t refer to bloggers’ opinions here and I don’t think foucault did either.
bernarda May 27, 2008 at 9:45 am
squashed, you missed the point entirely. It was MSM Trotta that insulted Clinton.
no. I am hitting the point exactly. Whiny bunch of sods on pity contest, demanding spotlight. Heck I can find misogynist comment made by Hillary herself if I spend enough time. It’s not like she has been particularly smart with her words.
And I think it is appalling to suggest that beating the living daylights out of someone is any less vile than joking about someone’s assassination.
Trotta called directly for getting rid of Obama just like Osama, the Olbermann comment, while questionable, goes no where near this “beating living daylights” out of anybody, except, perhaps, in your own vividly gothic imagination.
Unless you can provide an exact link to where Olberman says any such thing directly …
squash, you are not particularly smart with your words.
Now you change, you were to talk about bloggers and now you say you will find Clinton’s words. Quit changing the subject. Hell, I will support Obama even though I haven’t encountered a single Obama supporter that I respect, especially for intellectual honesty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/25/keith-olbermanns-idea-for_n_98557.html
Kate,
Read the link.
Implicit violence is no less acceptable than explicit threats. If someone says that they would like a man to take a woman into a room until “only one man comes out,” most *intelligent* people can deduce that this is a veiled threat of rape or physical violence.
“I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended.”
I despise these non-apologies. How about, “I sincerely apologize to everyone for my offensive statement as I know that all good Americans were offended.”
Sorry, why are we talking about Pam’s alleged support , or at least failure to express sufficient outrage, re Olberman as a counterpoint to Trotta?
I suspect Trotta got a visit from the Secret Service, which investigates even ‘obviously joking’ threats, and finally realized that she wasn’t going to be able to fair-and-balanced her way out of this one.
I did read the link.
I did read the exact words.
Maybe that phrase doesn’t imply the same things for me? It certainly doesn’t live up to “the only thing that could mean” because it isn’t explicit.
For example, an ant and a roach go into a roach motel, and only one comes out. Doesn’t mean the ant had anything to do with it. You would assume the ant ate the roach?
Now where did I put that pendulum … and pit …
This is a blatant lie. He never advocated beating Hillary Clinton until she is incapacitated. Let’s look at what was really said.
So Fineman has already invoked the idea of a boxing match between Obama and Clinton that needs to be stopped. Olberman replies:
The discussion has nothing to do with actually beating Clinton physically. It has to do with the conversation which is having the super delegates end the campaign. Olberman is using the euphemism of the boxing match already mentioned by Fineman and carrying it over to the super delegates taking Clinton into a room somewhere to end this. Please explain how that turns into Olberman actually suggesting that Clinton should be beaten. Or even more insanely, raped! You would have to be a complete nut case to see this conversation as relating to an actual physical attack on Clinton.
But at this point nothing the Clinton advocates says can shock me. I am quite sure that many of them are going to yell a big “fuck you” at the world and vote for McCain because they didn’t get their way. I was a Clinton supporter when this campaign started and now I hope she resigns as my Senator after she loses this nomination. I hope she crawls into a GOP hole and collects her big corporate board positions which is exactly where I am sure she is heading.
bernarda May 27, 2008 at 10:23 am
squash, you are not particularly smart with your words.
I don’t run for president. I just like whacking shrillz.
Now you change, you were to talk about bloggers and now you say you will find Clinton’s words.
because showing big pro-hillary bloggers making pathetic bad statement is easier and just as effective to debunk your demand. (where then I can demand the same thing out of you, to start explaining all those words) If I do it with Hillary’s word, you are in even bigger trouble, since then I can test and use it on internet wide scale.
Tom asked:
“Please explain how that turns into Olberman actually suggesting that Clinton should be beaten.”
“Right. Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.”
The logic of the boxing metaphor should already be clear to you. But let explain it if you are really that dense.
When you “take someone into a room” (which already implies the use of force or coercion) and then “only he comes out,” this is not about superdelegates or civilized discourse. This is about a man taking a woman into a room and physically (or sexually) abusing her in such a way that she is *unable* to come out. ie: she may be dead.
This is totally equivalent to Trotta’s Osama/Obama comment, except that in her fantasy, she is conscious of the fact that “we” cannot actually kill Obama. She says “both *if we could*” which acknowledges that she is not a total psychopath. This is not clear with Olbermann, who does not limit his fantasy to the hypothetical.
Anyone hear a dogwhistle in that reference to a ‘colorful political season?’
Foucault, don’t you have another blog to troll for a while? Your constant demands for attention are getting a little tiresome.
Tom, thank you for providing some much need context. Olbermann is now GUILTY OF USING PRONOUNS!
[/threadjack]
Garrity, unless McCain hits the carrot juice a bit too hard, I think you (and swarmofseals, earlier) are correct.
Mmm, the apology seems as good as any follow-up you could possibly expect after the sick original comment. This shows why I perceive demanding an apology as a poor tactic. We don’t even want to focus on this particular bit of offal, except as it illustrates the broader foul picture.
The Olberman thing seems in poor taste to me, but no rape threat there, unless Thunderdome had a very different kind of fight than I thought.
But, no, killing Obama is only hypothetical in the same way killing Osama was in that “joke”… if we get the opportunity.
I guess you’re all so complacent about the Olbermann comment because this is how men in your respective communities deal with women in your lives?
And who really cares about Osama/Obama? She just confused her nouns, silly!
Allied issue: The repeated “confusion” and commingling of the Obama and Osama names.
I don’t for a second buy that it’s just that the names are so similar—so far, I’ve never heard someone who admires Obama making that “error.” I suspect the only people who interchange the names are ones who would like to associate the two names in everyone’s minds.
The thing that annoys me the most about the Obama-Osama thing is that Osama is not how the al-Qa’idah leader spells his name!
There is no long ‘o’ sound in Arabic. His name is pronounced, and properly transliterated, as either Usamah or Usama. The US military and intelligence services refer to him in shorthand as “UBL.”
The whole confusion could have been avoided had the media not steadfastly refused to correct their transliteration error.
The Obama-Osama conflation’s prevalence on the right wing might be charitably explained by the fact that they’re less likely to care about the Arabic pronunciation and more likely to rhyme “Usamah” with “Obama.” But I don’t really buy that.
Orange, that reminds me of the time that Dick Army called Barney Frank “Barney Fag” and called it a slip of the toungue.
Frank remarked something to the effect of “I can’t recall anyone in my mother’s entire married life ever calling her “Mrs. Fag”".
In other words, Obama isn’t even an Arabic name … it is from an African language, no?
Foucault, I am not excusing Olberman. But I can’t see why you are excusing the death-to-Obama comment. BOTH things are bad. And I have to wonder what kind of racist homicidal maniac you are that you don’t have a problem with it.
Newscasters recommending violence is a bad thing, can’t we all agree on that?
Samantha,
I was kidding. I was actually trying to get someone to acknowledge exactly what you did acknowledge: that BOTH these incidents of media pundits making “jokes” about hurting minority candidates are inappropriate and revolting.
When I said that Trotta “just confused her nouns,” I was trying to parody Ms. Kate, who said that Olbermann is just guilty of “USING PRONOUNS.” If that is not the most fucked up denial of Olbermann’s sexist and misogynist bullshit, then maybe she needs a guy to smack her up the side of the head with a two-by-four before she gets it?
I was really appalled by her refusal to acknowledge that Olbermann’s remarks are equally sick and equally worthy of censure. But thanks: your post made me fell a lot better, like I still read a feminist blog.
Sexist? If it had been John Edwards instead of Clinton, the exact same statement would apply. Trying to compare the metaphor of the “back room” (which is an extremely common metaphor in NY) and actually killing a presidential candidate (unless you think Trotta’s idea of killing bin Laden was only a metaphor) is absurd.
Tom, we are dealing with a person who thinks that it is a laudible feminist act of independence to lie to and cheat on the man she married and who was financially supporting her without first negotiating an open agreement.
Given such earlier delusionally selfish rantings by Foolcault, her extraordinary lack of theory of mind may very well lead her to translate her belief that Olbermann *absolutely must* be advocating violence against her favored candidate into *absolute unassailable truth* just because she thinks it is.
In other words, consider the source.
“Tom, we are dealing with a person who thinks that it is a laudible feminist act of independence to lie to and cheat on the man she married and who was financially supporting her without first negotiating an open agreement.”
Oh fuk off. You need to justify your inexcusable defense of Olbermann, and you are such an ignorant lowlife that you think attacks against the poster defend your vile and anti-feminist views.
Oh, and I am sure that you’re the victim of a bitter cheating scandal, but don’t take your frustrations over being dumped out on me.
If I were dating a piece of sleaze like you, I would cheat on you, too!
Ms Kate, just let the baby have her bottle and rave to herself. It’s not like anyone here actually takes her opinions seriously at this point.
Translating from Foulish to English: Feminism is a convenient philosophy to superficially apply whenever I want to justify, validate or “truthify” anything that I want to say, believe, or do.
Monogamy doesn’t necessarily hold a relationship together, and nor is it a prerequisite for feminist.
However, the refusal to tolerate women’s oppression is a requirement, and it seems you both fail in that respect if you support Olbermann’’s statements. I am sure that this is wholly consistent with your moralistic brand of feminism, which is basically about worrying what your boyfriend or husband is screwing behind your back.
I am sorry you are so insecure that someone else’s relationships are so important to you!
Uh, yeah, if my husband was screwing a “what” and not a “who” behind my back, I sure as hell would be concerned. That shit’s illegal in my state. But, hey, if you don’t care if your husband would rather fuck a cow than a human, that’s your kink, not mine.
I meant that you are the “what,” as opposed to a “who.” I don’t view you as a “who.” Take those knitting needles and stick them where they really belong.
I’m sure you and cows have a lot in common, anyhow. Only they are probably a lot more sexy and fun than you.
Foucault
May 28, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I meant that you are the “what,” as opposed to a “who.” I don’t view you as a “who.” Take those knitting needles and stick them where they really belong.
That is one HELL of a statement to come from a self-proclaimed feminist. Or do you not actually believe that all women are people?
This is true BUT deceiving your partner into thinking you are monogamous when you are not is not feminism. It is just being a liar. And sleeping around doesn’t make you a feminist.
Ah, but Foucault is so much more mature and sophistimacated than all the rest of us provincial, narrow-minded Pandagon commenters. After all, she says so herself, so it must be true!
“That is one HELL of a statement to come from a self-proclaimed feminist. Or do you not actually believe that all women are people?”
Most women are people, but not mnemosyne or Ms. Kate. They are just walking cesspools of slime.
“This is true BUT deceiving your partner into thinking you are monogamous when you are not is not feminism. It is just being a liar. And sleeping around doesn’t make you a feminist.”
And Tom, mind your own business, please. I don’t think you’re in a position to judge other peoples’ relationships, or to decide what is or is not feminist behavior. Who says that sleeping around makes you a feminist? i never argued that position. I simply said that feminism and monogamy do not necessarily go hand in hand.
A lot of sluts are feminists, you know. And feminism respects women’s rights to be sluts, to boot!
Most women are people,
That is utterly appalling, and NOT something an actual feminist would say about ANY woman.
You are no feminist, support for the rights of the slutty or no.
Wow. Now I really want to vote for Hillary. That’s some truly effective activism there.
I’m sorry if I offended your sensibilities, GreyLadyBeast.