Fox News explains why the London bombings were a good thing.KILMEADE: And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.
VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.
KILMEADE: Yeah.
Yeah, we should let terrorists prevent us from fighting global warming and worldwide poverty. That'll show 'em.
Happily, the
early news is that the G8 is moving forward to do good things.
"We speak today in the shadow of terrorism, but it will not obscure what we came here to achieve," British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the summit host, said to close the three-day gathering.
And he backed it up by delivering a pledge to double aid to Africa to $50 billion by 2010. (America is pledging less than Blair had hoped, but Europe seems to be on board.)
This statement pretty much says it's good that the world's leaders were all together during this event, because they were able to give a united response, and they were able to discuss it as part of their meeting. I'm curious why you take that to be a sign that Fox News (as opposed to the host they employ) considers the attacks themselves (as opposed to the fact that western nations' leaders were together during them) to be good.
ReplyDeleteJeremy, I'm curious as to whether you think the remarks were appropriate?
ReplyDeleteI generally tend to be sufficiently cynical that these kinds of things don't really importantly resonate with me; it's just 'politics as usual.'
ReplyDeleteThe use of "terrorists" and "terrorism" in some broad, undefined and Orwellian sense in order to refocus attention on the things that Bush polls best with is an exception.
These kind of rhetorical tricks (that don't actually suggest meaningful action, oh no; there's only one thing to do with "terrorists" and that's hunt them down and shoot them, because obviously, nothing else can be a rational response to "terrorism"), particularly when used to distract from actual suffering like what is currently occurring in sub-Saharan Africa (I hope I barely need to mention that our protectionist trade policies share some causal responsibility for that suffering), pretty much seriously piss me off.
So to speak.