All Quotes are Not Alike
[posted by Callimachus]
The only Muslim serving in the U.S. Congress stirred up some controversy in this newspaper graph:
People are tearing into each other over what exactly he meant by that. Whether he's "not saying X because, though I believe X, if I say it they'll call me a nut," or "I'm talking about the similarities between the effects of two events, but not saying their origins were at all alike, and I want to make that distinction clear here."
But what I really want to know is the context of this comment. Did Ellison bring this up on his own? Or was he answering a question from the audience? (The story has alluded to the presence of at least one "Truther" in the crowd.) That makes all the difference to me in how I perceive the quote. Is he going there on his own? Or did some kook start out there, and is he, as a public servant duty-bound to answer the question, doing so while trying to keep his distance?
And this, typically, is something the reporting fails to tell me.
The only Muslim serving in the U.S. Congress stirred up some controversy in this newspaper graph:
On comparing Sept. 11 to the burning of the Reichstag building in Nazi Germany: "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box -- dismiss you."
People are tearing into each other over what exactly he meant by that. Whether he's "not saying X because, though I believe X, if I say it they'll call me a nut," or "I'm talking about the similarities between the effects of two events, but not saying their origins were at all alike, and I want to make that distinction clear here."
But what I really want to know is the context of this comment. Did Ellison bring this up on his own? Or was he answering a question from the audience? (The story has alluded to the presence of at least one "Truther" in the crowd.) That makes all the difference to me in how I perceive the quote. Is he going there on his own? Or did some kook start out there, and is he, as a public servant duty-bound to answer the question, doing so while trying to keep his distance?
And this, typically, is something the reporting fails to tell me.
Labels: Bushitler
