David Broder Wants People To "Pull The Trigger."
By kowalski Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Just a quick update this morning. In today's Washington Post you can find David Broder's most recent column, entitled "Will Voters Pull The Trigger?" The column is being run at this moment on the front page of the Washingon Post Online with this lead-in:
ยป David S. Broder | A fundamental and welcome change in the political environment is possible -- but only if voters pull the trigger.
In the past, I had considered David Broder to be one of the more levelheaded and circumspect of the Washington Post columnists. His choice of metaphor for voting in this election is ghastly and irresponsible. Here is the text of an email that I sent to him at the Washington Post, and I encourage other people here at RedState and elsewhere to do the same:
Dear Mr. Broder,
I am a Republican and I'm writing to express my dismay at your choice of metaphor in your most recent column, "Will Voters Pull The Trigger?" Until now, I had considered you one of the wiser and more circumspect Washington Post columnists. Although you have never disguised your preference for the Democratic Party, until now you have not resorted to this kind of rhetoric to argue your case. I find it deeply disturbing that you would choose such a violent metaphor for the coming election. I sincerely hope that nobody takes you literally. If a nationally syndicated Republican columnist had written a piece urging Republicans to vote with language that was even remotely similar, we can all imagine what the reaction would be. The right to vote and the obligation to do so should not be conflated with an act of violence, regardless of how deeply you may feel that it is time for a change in Washington. As a Republican who has, in the past, commented in the blogosphere that you were a voice of moderation and wisdom at the Washington Post, I feel that I can no longer do so. You owe everyone in this country an apology for using such a bloody metaphor to describe our highest civic duty.
Respectfully yours,
Alexander Kowalski
David Broder's email address at the Washington Post is listed as: davidbroder@washpost.com
At a time when avant-garde "artistes" are producing and distributing snuff films about assassinating the President and others who publish environmental magazines are calling for climate change skeptics to be prosecuted as war criminals in a Nuremburg-like trial, Broder's rhetoric is not just disturbing but deeply offensive and verges on incitement to murder. Clearly he meant it as a metaphor, and I hope nobody takes him literally, but he has really crossed the line with this piece. I hope everyone writes to the Washington Post and gives Mr. Broder, and the Washington Post's editors, a piece of their mind.
[Update: Edited to add link to the article.]
That in the last paragraph of the piece, Mr. Broder doesn't put the term in quotes, and that he uses the metaphor "Pull The Trigger" or "Fire The Gun" a total of five times in the piece, including the title:
That kind of fundamental change in the political environment is possible -- indeed, it is imminent and will be welcomed. But it will happen only if voters pull the trigger. Elections do matter, and this one matters more than most.
Is 720 words long and in that space he uses those two terms a total of five times. Clearly, it's an attractive metaphor for Mr. Broder.
As of almost 4:00 this afternoon, there's no apology forthcoming from David Broder or the Washington Post for the rhetoric he used. I take that to mean that they consider it to be perfectly acceptable campaign rhetoric this election cycle. I'm not happy that Republicans have the WaPo's license to use this kind of rhetoric in supporting their candidates and GOTV efforts, but if the WaPo says it's OK, it must be OK.
If he'd said "pull the trigger on taking out the President's policies" then that'd be one thing, but just "pull the trigger" by itself seems like a reasonable metaphor to me.
It even makes sense from the far left's perspective, in that they're CONVINCED that mainstream America for years has been "mystified out of voting for its class interests, because of religious hysteria and wartime scaremongering."
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