The right-wing Media Research Center has once again dug up Scott Brown’s obsenity-laced high school assembly presentation at the King Philip High School in the context of refuting MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s rants against Brown (“absurd” I called Olbermann’s tirade a few days ago, just for the record), and dragged us into the whole thing for good measure. Affiliated website Newsrealblog then passed on their findings:
The Countdown host repeated a myth promoted by the liberal blog bluemassgroup.com that, in February 2007, then-State Senator Scott “swore at a hall full of high school students” as he appeared before a group at King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham, Massachusetts. In reality, Scott was not alleged to have “sworn at” the students, but rather, he angrily responded to and complained about vulgar comments that some students had written about him and one of his daughters – comments which had been posted on the Facebook page of a pro-gay rights teacher at the school – as Scott read the uncensored comments from the site, naming some of the students, in front of the assembly. His actions sparked criticism because he read aloud the profane words as they appeared on the Facebook page, but he was not alleged to have “sworn at” the students.
Sadly for MRC’s credibility, neither David’s 2007 post to discuss the story, nor scout’s follow-up on 13 January (the piece MRC links to as the evidence for their “promoted by” claim), allege that Brown “swore at a hall full of high school students.” In fact, that phrase does not appear ever to have been used at BMG until today, according to Google, despite MRC’s quotation marks (the more specific phrase “swore at” has been used in three comments about Brown, one of which employed it only to refute it). Scout did ask rhetorically, “What kind of demented mind thinks that a school teaching sex ed justifies him to walk in and start swearing at a room full of students?” in their final paragraph, but only after first linking to David’s piece and the 2007 Globe article that reported the story. I agree with MRC that this question is an inaccurate use of the word “at,” but it hardly rises to an effort by BMG as an institution to promote the phrase. The bulk of scout’s post consisted of YouTube videos of Brown himself.
If anyone is promoting myths, for example by making up quotations, it appears to be the MRC and Newsreal. The “nation’s largest and most sophisticated television and monitoring operation, now employing 60 professional staff with a $10 million annual budget,” should do better.
Including the Editors, have referred to him as Scott “hey kids, go f&#% yourselves” Brown. I would think that is an institutional promotion of the idea that he swore “at” the students.
As pointed out in an earlier discussion, Scott’s story changed as the outrage built. He originally reported one entry which used the “F word” to describe his daughter. In later accounts in became him and his daughter, then him and his family.
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p>The real issue remains Mr. Brown’s bad judgement and abuse of power.
From someone looking from the outside but wants this blog to have credibility let me just say to you Bob, and also Charley and David, “Please Stop.”
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p>The race was over 3 days ago. There will be plenty of time to bring all this up, if you think it helps.
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p>But it does not help BMG or any cause you support by this constant let’s find flaws in this guy approach.
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p>Do you realize how transparent and self-serving you guys have become since Tuesday night.
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p>This is nothing you can write that will make them change the results or have a new election.
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p>Enough with the overkill.
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p>And Charley, there is nothing you can do about the health care vote. But it should live to see another day.
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p>So just calm down. You’re like the drunken hysterical wife causing a scene when her husband did not win the Insurance Broker of the Year Award ant the annual regional dinner.
These Media Research guys started this, and linked us as an example of how “the left” is mistreating Scottie over this incident. Bob is just setting the record straight. Nothing wrong with that.
A few days of post-mortem was useful, but I wouldn’t keep going on about all this. I’m just setting the record straight. BMG absolutely has publicized Brown’s obscenity-laced tirade, which is a useful indication of his character and judgment in my opinion, but we have not “promoted” the different idea that he “swore at” students. The truth speaks for itself.
Whether he swore “at” high school students or “in front of” — he still used his power as state senator to gain a platform he used to read swears. The vast majority of the students in that room weren’t involved at all.
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p>Calling the “at” part a myth and singling out BMG is just bizarre.
You can’t call the attacks “doing a post-mortem” when you a slinging mud at the State’s new Senator.
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p>AS my kids say… “I won you lose now you have a big bruise!” You lost, we won. I had my days of fun shoving it in your face but you guys have to “let it go”. Let’s talk less about Scott’s daughters and more about Healthcare being dead.
keep dreaming!
THIS healthcare bill is dead.
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p>I want healthcare to be reformed, just not in the sneaky way this one was.
đŸ™‚
Bob is just setting the record straight.
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p>You and eb3 are the ones demeaning people.
The people I talked to that say they voted Republican, tell me it wasn’t for Scott Brown or against Martha Coakley. It was against the national Democrats. Many tell me they voted for Barry in ’08 and feel suckered. Change and hope became status quo and dystopian reality. They see the continuation of the Republican agenda from the previous administration. Words change – “bailout: becomes “stimulus”; “deepening recession” becomes “jobless recovery” but the same government goes on.
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p>I’m sure that any candidate the Democrats find that can fog a mirror will beat Senator Brown in two years. The new senator and the Republicans will no doubt show themselves “Hope-less” as the Democrats. More “musical chairs” than government.
if their predictions about Brown from 4 days ago weren’t so sucky! I always wonder why people with terrible prediction records seem to think they can then go out and make a good one.
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p>Brown wins in reelection by a long shot. He’s the real thing.
People on this site have correctly predicted elections wins for years. Obama? Patrick? All the other Democrats who’ve won elective office at multiple levels since this site became operational? There is no “terrible prediction record” to even address. Besides, the notion is silly. Your comment suggests this place is a monolithic entity speaking in lockstepjaw. You would have more credibility if you didn’t make shit up out of thin air like a 4th grader on the playground. So you guys won an election. Like that’s never happened before. Get a grip.
You guys are the ones that need to get a grip.
It’s easy to make the easy predictions BTW…
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p>How many people predicted a Brown win on BMG? How many people think we should go forward with the healthcare bill? How many people here think the Brown victory had nothing to do with voter anger? How many people here think voters who vote against BMG wishes are stupid? How many people on BMG still don’t GET IT?
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p>Sorry I thought this place was an echo chamber. The diversity of the answers for the former questions in staggery…
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p>What shit did I make up? And why insult 4th graders around the state? So if Scot Brown was dressed as Batman and Martha Coakley was dressed as Superwoman, who would win a fight?
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p>PS I have a grip… now what?
doesn’t work quite as well for your narrative.
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p>Few people actually predicted, in any meaningful way, that Brown would win until rather late in the race. Anyone claiming otherwise is full of shit or spit-in-the-wind bravado. Muffy was going to win, too, last time around, as I recall, and so was McCain/Palin. So you might want a little dose of chillin’ yourself.
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p>I think Brown’s victory was a confluence of events that turned out to be in Brown’s favor. Had the Dem nominee been someone other than Martha Coakley, I don’t think we’d be having this discussion. Why? Because Coakley’s chemistry and modus operandi were all wrong for this election cycle. Your boy would have been languishing in the 20 percent basin all along had the Dems had a better, more responsive and savvy candidate. To the extent that Brown exploited The Anger of the Middle Class White Guy to his advantage, good for him. That’s how elections are won. To the extent that Coakley didn’t see that her flank was increasingly uncovered and she was ill-equipped to respond, well, bad on her. Terrible candidate; terrible campaign. Your guy wins.
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p>As to your question about people here who “think voters who vote against BMG wishes are stupid,” well, I imagine that number looks a lot like the numbers of people at RMG who think liberals are stupid.
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p>See how that works?
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p>And, lastly, what shit did you make up?
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p>This shit:
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p>This is patently ridiculous, as I already pointed out.
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p>I guess my remark here is we should do better. It may be hard to have meaningful discussions at either location (BTW, I don’t blog over at RMG) if we think our opponents are “stupid”.
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p>I still think you are puling stuff out of your ass. I didn’t make this up. I see people on Wall ST, on sports shows, in the newspaper and yes, here on BMG who make terrible predictions and have a piss-poor record of picking things but are reading with their next pick like they are Jimmy the Greek.
different predictions. I don’t follow sports or Wall Street much, so I’m not sure that I can speak to the prediction quality on those topics from BMG participants. As far as elections go, however, I do know that we’re batting fairly decently here, so I stand by my statement in that respect.
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p>Is that fair enough?
We have 2010 to see how well we predict things. Obviously we have to seperate the partisan support for an individual and the “can do” attiude from the honest assessment of the possible results… which is hard (as in my remark to BMG, “McCain is going to kick Obama’s ass”… wink, wink… and then my confidants… “McCain is really going to get his ass kicked by Obama”).
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p>Enjoy the weekend.
The guy with four exclamation points in his sig is telling some to take a chill pill and pontificating on credibility.
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p>Well, gosh, we’d better listen to that!
That’s exactly the problem. I know a broken clock is right twice a day, and occassionally our differently-winged friends can make some cogent points, and I even agree with them sometimes. However, just when you think they’ve made a decent point, though you don’t agree with them, the spittle hits the screen with the typical right-wing frothing-at-the-mouth talking points and insults worthy of a Fox News message board. At least most of our wingnuts here can spell, but that’s probably a credit to the Massachusetts educational system. They still failed Critical Thinking 101 in college.
This article from the Rumpus is as good an explanation for JohnD’s post-election behavior as any. It also contains some good insights into the election. Here’s a sample:
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because it was like a non-stop infomercial for Scott Brown, complete with really sexist, offensive remarks about Coakley.
I was telling intimates that it was likely that Brown would win and that those who’d be more upset than I would be should get prepared emotionally for a Republican victory.
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p>On the other hand, that’s not a prediction I’m going to share on a Democratic blog. I was not going to contradict those who predicted a Coakley win no matter how thin their hopes, unempirical their arguments, or wishful their thinking. That’s because morale is important. If a big GOTV push could have pulled off a Coakley win, I wasn’t going to mess it up.
This seems of a piece with JohnD’s typically imagining that BMG is a Pretend Newspaper or News Hour.
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p>It’s not.
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p>Drawing conclusions from silence is a kind of mind-reading super-toxic to relationships. It’s typical, for example, of those who’ve had horrible first marriage break-ups. It also does not help the dialog here.
and apply zeros.
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p>It just takes 8 you know.
Your “according to google” link is both broken, and broken in a way that’s messing up some browsers and RSS readers. You’ve got literal quotes inside a quoted string, that aren’t URL-escaped. Fix that?
The whole question of what is the best word to describe the relationship between Scott Brown and the children who were in the same room as him when he was angrily reading the swears seems to me to be a made-up point. If we must get into it, the most accurate way to put it would be that Brown swore with the kids who had sworn in facebook and at the majority of kids in the room who had nothing to do with it. Anyway, I’m glad the estimable MRC is getting educated about Scott Brown, but my whole point was the whatever happened in that room between Scott Brown and the children- the even weirder thing was Senator Brown’s bizarre justification for the incident.