We’ve been seeing how hard the righties are trying to rewrite history but the stories have mainly been about the Texas Board of Education. It’s expanding.
This particular laff riot comes from James Taranto’s “Best of the Web” column. His “Riot Is the Voice of the Unheard” combines two of the far right’s favorite pastimes: rewriting history and defending the outrages of the ‘conservatives’ under the banner of, “BUT…THE DEMOCRATS/LIBERALS/LEFT DO IT TOO!”
What re-writing of history? Thanks to Mr. Taranto, we learn that the riots following the not guilty verdict in the Rodney King beating in April of 1992 had nothing to do with black Los Angelinos’ anger at police getting away with another mistreatment (read: “beating the crap out of”) of an African-American but was a political riot.
Ummm, ok. Taranto fails to mention what political event sparked this riot – perhaps it was the fact that Bill Clinton was looking to be the Democratic nominee for President that year. Yeah, black people HATED that.
Wait, it gets better. Taranto claims that new-at-the-time Democratic Representative Maxine Waters defended the rioters and even egged them on – not unlike what several far right hate radio shows and even some Republican congress people are doing now when it comes to the Tea Partiers:
But a look further back into Waters’s history reveals her hypocrisy to be far worse than is typical. The last time America experienced political mob violence–the Los Angeles riots of 1992–Waters was there offering excuses and justifications.
He then takes several quotes from statements Waters made at the time that were clearly meant to defuse and calm the situation down in L.A. and tries his darndest to twist them around to look like she was not only excusing the riots, she supported their rioting.
“I accept the responsibility of asking people not to endanger their lives,” the Associated Press quoted
as saying on April 30. “I’m not asking people not to be angry. . . . I have a right to be angry.”
And there’s your, ‘BUT…DEMOCRATS DID IT TOO!!” defense of the violent rhetoric and actions of the stealth Republican Tea Party “movement.”
There are some similarities between the events that triggered the L.A. riots of 1992 and the anti-ObamaCare protests of 2010. Both were triggered by governmental decisions that struck a significant proportion of the population as unjust. And in both cases, the procedures that led to those decisions seemed to the dissenters to have been rigged.
What’s the most hilarious thing about all of this is that anyone with a working memory who paid attention to the riots and who did what can easily shoot these claims down. Then again, this isn’t directed to those people. This is a bit of fancy pageant walking for the right’s True Believers who’ll buy anything as long as it’s against the liberals and the Democrats.
And they wonder why we don’t take them seriously.
http://www.alan.com/
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