News Corp. Has a Tablet for Schools – NYTimes.com.
Disturbing. My desire to editorialize on this development in educational technology marketing is being held in check by my fear of News Corp.’s lack of sneakiness. This says: “We don’t care about hiding the fact that we’re brainwashing you anymore.”
Wear your hoodie all week in support of Trayvon.
Great rant power over at brutish and short if you follow the link above. The low point of this video for me was when Geraldo pulls out the Johnny Cash Song, “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town.”
Gerhaldo’s mentioning Cash is the great example of the rhetorical strategy Rachel Maddow mentioned on her program at the end of last week– basically spinning an issue by framing it in exactly the same way that you imagine your opponents, being reasonable people, would frame the argument against you except invert it in some way so that you’re actually placing the criticism elsewhere– usually at least in part on your opponent or political challenger.
What’s so sick about Geraldo’s invoking Cash here is that the song he quotes is about a young boy named Billie Joe who gets drunk and is gunned down after threatening a stranger. You may say: sure, it’s gun violence on trial here, right? Wrong. Ironically, when Geraldo’s hoodie metaphor is extended by his comparison to “Don’t Take Your Guns To Town,” it’s Trayvon getting gunned down, just like the gun-toting Billie Joe. What’s the main difference here– the point where the metaphor Geraldo tries to draw fails so utterly? You guessed it! The answer lies in the fact that Trayvon was UNARMED.
Geraldo does nothing if not confuse the issue with his broken metaphors and victim-blaming spin.