Ethan Allen Institute’s popular monthly newsletter features a quote that is raising eyebrows and law enforcement officers are looking at it according to the Vermont Press Bureau. Here is the quote referred to from the Ethan Allen newsletter online;
Debate report: In a December 1 cable TV debate with EAI's Energy Education Project team (Meredith Angwin and Howard Shaffer), VPIRG energy spokesperson James Moore emphatically declared that the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant "hasn't killed anyone YET".
One unnamed viewer observed that "I also haven't killed anyone YET,but I am thinking of James Moore as a candidate.”[added emphasis]
Vice President of Ethan Allen Institute John McClaughry reacted with surprisingly little sensitivity to this given the recent shootings in Arizona. Showing little consideration that this quote might be troublesome to others.“Lighten up, fellas, Talk it over with your shrink is what I say.”
A far cry from his faux-folksy “Thanks for listening” which is McClaughry’s trade mark signoff on his VPR commentaries.
Tension and emotions must be running high with the pro VY crowd. Earlier this month in a Vermont pro-nuclear blog, Meredith Angwin’s YesVY, the author recommends a new blog supporting nuclear power whose argument claims to demolish the "views" of an anti-nuclear writer. She recommends, oddly, that the pro-nuclear blog be read and followed to their source with a gun and a camera.
Read Charles Barton's posts. Follow Barton with gun and camera, as he tracks Jacobson's errors to their source.
I will be writing to the news outlets that routinely publish John McLaughry’s commentaries and ask them to please stop giving him ink. While I hardly ever agree with him, I value the right to free speech and like to hear alternative viewpoints, so my stance is not to try and censor him. But he has shown poor judgment at a time that our society cannot afford to make light of threats to people’s lives. This is exactly the sort of thing that led to the shooting of the congresswoman. I hope you will join me in asking news outlets to drop him.
They are enabling the lunatics. In McClaughry’s case, only by making light of the threat; but in Angwin’s remark is the actual encouragement of threat!
I love that you can tell from McL’s “talk to a shrink” quote that he is lashing out because he knows he did a very stupid thing here. Go to your timeout corner now McL, think about what you did and apologize like a big boy.
Note to McL, maybe it’s you who should be talking with a shrink, judging by your toxic musings about opposition lobbyists who don’t march to your drummer.
McLaughry says:
In that sentence, McLaughry admitted that a deranged person could take that so-called “joke” the wrong way.
Well, a deranged person just killed and wounded a parking lot full of innocent people in response to the misinterpretation of eliminationist speech. Another deranged person opened fire and killed a man during a church worship service not so long ago, also as a result of deranged misinterpretation. Another deranged man shot and killed police in PA, again as a result of deranged misinterpretation. There’s a very, very obvious pattern here.
Mr. Laughry – if you know those people exist, you know they can misinterpret such speech, and know they use deadly force as a result of their derangement, please tell us how you plan to keep any deranged people from reading the eliminationist threats you print? If you don’t have a foolproof plan to do so, then how do you plan to protect those whose lives are endangered because you provided a platform for those whose words feed deranged minds?
Mr. McLaughry, you have been among those denouncing others for their eliminationist speech, which has been known to spur their deranged followers to extraordinary evil (for example: Osama bin Laden and other fanatics). And yet you claim that the exact same kinds of speech from people you support cannot have the same effect?
I don’t believe for a moment that you do not understand the potential deadly effect of such speech.
Your unwillingness to renounce this eliminationist speech, and your refusal behave responsibly by issuing a simple apology in light of the recent massacre in Arizona makes one wonder if you are, perhaps, hoping to stir up the deranged.
Sure your newsletter went to press before the massacre, but yet, you are standing by the hate speech AFTER the massacre. And you printed it after we’ve witnessed dozens of other examples of deranged people taking the words of others as a clarion call to violence.
… it has to be funny. McLaughry’s comment isn’t funny. Therefore it is not a joke.
“Joke,” is, of course, a defense often deployed by Beck, Limbaugh, and other self-described comedians of the far right. It’s a weasel word. They say any outrageous thing that crosses their minds, and if anybody objects, they claim it was a “joke.”
Sorry, no. It might be a desperate attempt to get attention. It might be a bully overcompensating for his own cowardice. It might be the intemperate ravings of someone incapable of civil discourse. But whatever it is, it’s definitely not a joke.
The said something, in print, that he thought was funny that was, obviously, in extremely poor taste and not very funny. The appropriate response is to apologize and say “had I thought about it more carefully, I would most likely not have made the comment and I regret having done so.”
At that point, it probably would have created a brief flurry of attention, and then just faded into nothing.
The longer it is before he does this, the longer it will take for this to extinguish.
So, McLaughry, please, in the interest of watching your readership and the media that cover you completely drop any interest whatsoever in your commentary, do continue.
As I posted over at VT Digger, right-wing chatterboxes love to do this – aim threatening or violent language at a liberal/progressive and then claim, aw, c’mon guys, it was a joke. I wonder if McClaughry would think it’s so funny if somebody did that to him; for example, posting pictures of him with a target superimposed over his face and something like “this guy deserves to die” as a caption.
Imagine the outrage from the Echo Chamber if some basket case who obtained a gun popped off Glenn Beck or Limbaugh or somebody. It would be open season on us.
I grew up on the Right, in the lower Midwest about halfway between where McClaughry and Limbaugh were raised. I owned guns. I was an ROTC cadet and vice-president of my college Republicans. I’m more than familiar with the violent language that is common over there. (And the racism as well, I should add.) I also know that behind the joking is a deeply-embedded, John-Wayne-chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that narrows the gap between the jokes and tragedy.
Make no mistake, the steady drumbeat of extreme rhetoric from the Right helps create an atmosphere of permission for violence. The NYT reported on the case of scholar and poverty activist Frances Fox Piven, who now fears for her life as a result of Glenn Beck’s unhinged tirades. The Crooks and Liars blog has a disturbing map of incidents since 2008 – http://crooksandliars.com/davi…
Let’s go out on a limb and grant McClaughry was “joking.” At the very least, in the current environment, that was incredibly stupid and potentially dangerous for James Moore.
And while Mr. McClaughry enjoys the First Amendment freedom of speech we all have, speech that incites violence or panic is not, traditionally, given the same level of protection as other speech.
Harken back to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous observation in Schenck v. United States, that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic . . . . The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”
“Joking,” if it is that, when spoken or written in an atmosphere where political violence – an example, I would submit, of “substantive evil” – is becoming increasingly common, is irresponsible.
YesVY blog, one of the participants in debate has long bit about McClaughry’s death joke. In her lengthy post is this explanation of how she viewed the joke:
I guess it’s about who the joke was aimed at.
http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2011…