While Grimm certainly wins the Oscar for drama, it’s hardly a serious threat. One can get out the pitch forks and string him up, but making him the focus of a Crusade makes him a scapegoat for the systematically corrupt system.
Everything else you said is true, of course, so maybe use a different word to convey the outrageous behavior: un-American springs to mind, as does violent felon.
Treasonous feels better to me in this regard. I already explained I don’t think he could literally be charged with treason successfully. I just consider his actions treasonous.
Some good synonyms for treasonous:
Here, I’ll even use them in a sentence:
Michael Grimm is a treacherous, wormlike, untrue, subversive, ruinous, undermining, betraying, double-crossing, recreant piece of shit.
I agree with you there. I just wish we had a more accurate term than treason that carries the same weight.
And I meant my initial statement in all honesty. I respect you, Cowicide, and I’m only disagreeing with you in terms of accuracy of use, which I guess is the same as semantics, except there’s a well-defined meaning to the crime of treason.
We Americans haven’t charged people with treason often enough to desensitize ourselves to the crime, so it seems so much worse, and stirs up emotions more effectively than saying, for instance, “Michael Grimm credibly threatens journalists with death” That’s clunky, and doesn’t have the shock value of treason.
But I maintain it would be at least legally inaccurate to say that he’s a traitor.
As Keanu said in A Scanner Darkly “Define your terms!” and as I say, “stick to them.”
I just think your initial blanket accusation of treason rubbed some of us the wrong way. Perhaps if you defined your term to mean aiding in a war against American values and ideals during your initial volley, fewer of us would have rushed in to attempt to correct you/defend the legal definition of treason.
I get that you’re angry, and I am too. It’s fucking unacceptable to threaten to kill other people. It’s a disgusting thing to do, and it’s rightfully illegal. And it’s made more disgusting and outrageous due to the venue where the threat occurred, and the fact that the perpetrator was one of our elected representatives (I use the term representative in the loosest terms possible. Most representatives only seem to represent themselves and their future career aspirations). It is also made more repulsive by the fact that Grimm was threatening the very people entrusted with making sure the public knows of his wrongdoing. But I’m pretty sure that both you and I know once we calm down a little, we can talk about this without resorting to inaccurate and unnecessary accusations.
But I’m pretty sure that both you and I know once we calm down a little, we can talk about this without resorting to inaccurate and unnecessary accusations.
I haven’t accused him of treason in the legal sense of the word and I think I’ve explained that enough times by now. He tried to viciously and underhandedly circumvent the laws of our very U.S. Constitution. His unconstitutional, despicable, undermining actions fly in the face of the values of our nation and that’s treasonous in my book.
If I thought that motherfucker could be successfully charged with treason, you’d know I’d be clamoring outright for it and not beating around the bush.
I just wish we had a more accurate term than treason that carries the same weight.
I think I’m starting to settle upon “treacherous, wormlike, untrue, subversive, ruinous, undermining, betraying, double-crossing, recreant piece of shit.”
There’s certainly disputes between politicians and the press, physically intimidating someone and explicitly threatening death is a line seldom crossed. In Florida, based on current readings of the statutes, the reporter probably would have been within his rights to shoot the congressman.
Another promising political career, shot down by the dirty traitorous lame-stream media !
Seriously: This IS the best the teabaggers can come up with - Vain thugs too stupid and easily-enraged to bother to check if a camera is rolling or a mike is hot. Which makes for entertaining theater, but miserable societal progress.
He’ll issue an empty apology today, hang around long enough to see if opinion polls say if he should stay or resign, quit and go on to manage a Sizzler, blaming “the media” for the rest of his squalid life.
Alan Grayson’s calling Enron lobbyists “whores” was discussed, though supportively. I think Grayson and Barney Frank are pretty outspoken, but I don’t know much in their rhetoric that’s risen to this level.
translation: “how dare you call me on something, i expect news media to kowtow to people in power. and after i deigned to speak to a news organization as low as you, learn your place peasant”
The GOP is full of big-talking paper tigers, coddled and protected spoiled pricks who are used to getting away with talking shit to those they deem their inferiors. What do you expect from up-and-comers in a political party still bedazzled by Reagan and who think that Dick Cheney is a man’s man ?
One of these days, one of these entitled dicks is going to lay hands on the wrong person, in public and/or on camera, and come away with multiple contusions and some missing teeth - Which I will rejoice to see.
The republican party USED to be a party of sober, adult men who had seen real combat and sacrifice, and respected it and other citizens. Now it’s just a stepping stone for career lobbyists…
That, there, is what we call a ‘life skill’, if we’re kind of a raging asshole convinced that we couldn’t possibly be anywhere but the moral high ground…
