A study in contrasts.
The grassroots Twitter campaign to call attention to the mainstream media blackout on the Kermit Gosnell trial was a huge success, 166,800 #Gosnell tweets in 12 hours (h/t @rsmcain):
The Gosnell “tweetfest” on Friday proved to be a massive success, inspiring critical reflections by liberal journalists, mainstream media coverage, and an unprecedented groundswell of citizen action aimed at breaking through a media blackout.
Between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, more than 166,800 tweets had been posted on Twitter using the #Gosnell hashtag….
The activity impacted new and old media.
Self-described “pro-choice” reporter Megan McArdle wrote in the Daily Beast that she regretted not reporting on the “trial of the century.” Salon magazine insisted there was no blackout.
But the campaign had its intended effect.
Jake Tapper did the last segment of his CNN program The Lead on the capital murder trial. It lasted less than five minutes. The topic was scheduled to come up again Friday evening on Anderson Cooper 360.
Political figures including a former Senator, two Congressmen, and a Republican presidential hopeful took part in the grassroots campaign.
Activism peaked at 11 a.m., when 23,600 messages contained those characters.
Compare to White House Plans Anti-Gun Twitterbomb:
The White House is asking people to support their call for greater government power via a massive anti-gun twitterbomb.
The White House is using a third-party system called “Thunderclap“. Thunderclap is a system by which people log in with a Twitter or FB account, then decide to share a message, and the system holds their message until a threshold is met.
When the threshold is met, all of their messages are sent at once, creating a “thunderclap” twitterbomb that dominates discussion by effectively generating an artificial viral meme. It’s very collectivist, and quite sinister to see the White House orchestrating and agitating for greater government power by becoming the puppeteers of an engineered outcry….
People power versus the Machine.
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Comments
Shouldn’t the White House have some governing to do?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But they are WAY TOO BUSY campaigning to actually govern, you see.
Leave it to this White House to find a way to astroturf just about anything. I think the most amazing part of the #Gosnell episode was how spontaneous it felt. The right is absolutely at its best at times like that.
Between his artificial twitterbomb and handing his weekly address to a grieving Newtown parent, Obama’s gun wrangling is really getting an air of desperation about it. No mother could fail to feel sympathy for those parents but nothing being proposed would have prevented their pain. Sad but true, the American people have a limited attention span. The window on Newtown is closing and the White House knows it.
It’s because we have the clear moral ground, both with respect to elective abortion and gun control. They have made the wrong choice and cannot defend it, which is why they prefer progressive change capable of overcoming people’s resistance.
We need to develop arguments which are internally, externally, and mutually consistent. This will facilitate confrontation of opposing interests and defense of our principles. We cannot afford charges of hypocrisy.
One problem with gun control is that there is a presumption of guilt. This assertion of guilt is not supported by reality. There is no evidence that gun control would have prevented the deaths which are now exploited by Obama and company for their ends. There is a genuine hypocrisy when Obama’s administration sells automatic weapons to arm a criminal cartel, which has resulted in hundreds, and perhaps thousands of dead Mexicans, men, women, and children, and at least one dead American.
The problem is also that disarming law-abiding citizens, or manufacturing obstacles to prevent people from defending themselves, reduces risk and lowers opportunity cost to criminal minorities and unscrupulous government agents. These criminal interests are encouraged to commit progressive involuntary exploitation of men, women, and children; and they are not constrained by proscriptive measures.
As for pro-choice… They did not oppose slavery. They did not support slavery. They were pro-choice.
That said, premeditated murder is a far greater crime against the individual, society, and humanity.
Majdanek: Discovery of Concentration Camps
History has a way of repeating itself. Today we have discovered the abortion clinic.
Unlike other genocides, this one is elective. The causes and motivations for women and men to make the choice need to be addressed.
Obama needs to get his priorities right.
Found the link to the Grand Jury report for the Gosnell case:
http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/GrandJuryWomensMedical.pdf
Warning, graphic descriptions, read with caution, should you decide to peruse it.
Not a word about Gosnell on either Meet The Press or This Week. They were too busy advocating for ineffective legislation that will restrict Second Amendment liberty and an amnesty law designed to create several million new Democrats to report on the death penalty trial of a man who may be the worst serial killer of children in American history.
Just 10 minutes ago on a local radio station WILK …. host was talking about the media bias on the coverage of the Ashley Judd senate thing …. I was the first caller steared it right to Gosnell and the media bias there …. * GRIN * … guess what every single caller but one since then has been about it … I own it
How is it that a dot gov website is being used in support of a partisan political activity?