One Ring to Rule Them All...

From Driftglass:

I for one would be genuinely delighted if tonight's heartfelt pleas from Keith Olbermann for everyone to beat their verbal spears into pruning hooks blossomed into an actual movement, but the sad truth is that he could have said exactly the same thing about almost exactly the same people following the Oklahoma City bombing back in the Conservative rage-drunk, Hate-Radio-fueled militia-movements/black helicopter/Clinton-is-a-depraved-murderer/government-workers-are-parasites 1990s.

Rachel Maddow could and did say almost exactly the same thing about almost exactly the same people following the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. The sad truth is that Hate is the Right's Ring of Power. They're never going to give it up, because they know the minute they do—(that's) the minute they're no longer allowed to pretend that Liberals are evil, freedom-hating fifth-columnist monsters who are dragging America into a Marxist abyss on the secret orders of our Kenyan Usurper Overlord -- their whole ideology would implode...they would never win another election...and tens of thousands of powerful, well-remunerated insiders from Rush Limbaugh to David Gregory who depend on that hate for their daily bread would suddenly have to go out and find honest work.

This is true.

The media narrative is now revolving around the reliable fallback—the shooter is a deranged lunatic—implying that he's too nuts to be incited by right-wing rhetoric or gun culture rhetoric (same thing). Nice try.

As the reactions and debate unfold, it is clear that American journalism is entirely broken—as an institution, they do everything they can to help conceal the venality of right wing thought. The millionaires-pretending to be working class-pundits (I'm talking about you Chris Mathews, David Gregory, Howard Kurtz, etc.), need to be ridiculed...then ignored.

Updated: This works too.