Whatever you think about the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you have to admit that U.S. media picks and chooses its obsessions, and that dwelling on those stories stirs the deranged to action. Which is how you end up with a landlord stabbing a Palestinian woman’s 6-year-old child to death in that hotbed of ethnic strife that is Plainfield, Ill.
It doesn’t help that the propaganda machine has cranked up to deafening levels. For example, the report of Hamas beheading babies seems to fall into that category.
My evidence for the media’s selective interest is that the conflict in Azerbaijan briefly made the news last month before sinking without a trace. On the other hand, nobody stabbed any children over it, either.
Josh Marshall made an interesting point about the Republicans’ inability to choose a new Speaker of the House: They have internalized the strategy of refusing to honor the results of a vote when they lose. People like to go on and on about what prompted the American Civil War, but that’s really what it was about – the South lost an election and refused to abide by the results.
That’s enough to get you started. The floor’s yours.