‘We’re Going to Fisk the New York Times’ the NRA Spokesperson Says. Can You Blame People for Hearing Something Else?
The NRA is at it again.
Back in April NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch recorded what many felt was a threatening ad for the gun lobbying group. The essence of the ad was Loesch talking about “they.” Many saw it an “open call to violence,” which Loesch later denied. In June the video got noticed. ThinkProgress reported it “stops just short of calling for violence against anti-Trump progressives.”
The video’s transcript didn’t help her denial:
“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance.
“All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.
“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place.”
Loesch and the NRA are now back with a new ad, this one attacking The New York Times, in more or less similarily violent rhetoric. (This one, also, was released in April but didn’t get noticed much until today.)
“We the people? We’ve had it. We’ve had it with your narratives, your propaganda, your fake news,” Loesch says, addressing The New York Times.
“We’ve had it with your constant protection of your Democrat overlords, your refusal to acknowledge any truth that upsets the fragile construct that you believe is real life,” she continues, sneering.Â
“And we’ve had it with your pretentious, tone-deaf assertion that you are in any way truth or fact-based journalism,” Loesch, a former Breitbart News editor, charges.
“Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow. We’re going to fisk the New York Times and find out just what deep and rich means to this old gray hag, this untrustworthy, dishonest rag that has subsisted on the welfare of mediocrity for one, two, three more decades? We’re going to laser-focus on your so-called honest pursuit of truth,” she says.
It was that point, when Loesch says “fisk,” that many thought they might have heard something else.Â
“In short, we’re coming for you,” she threatened.
But this time, the video is making a lot of people on social media asking if she is using the word “fisk” – which is a journalism term, meaning to analyze, dissect, and refute, point by point – or “fist,” which in this case would be describing a sex act, presumably.
The “#ClenchedFistofTruth” hashtag in the tweet didn’t help viewers make up their minds, either.
Loesch herself took to Twitter to attack one well-known journalist who had tweeted out her video, questioning which word she used. Let’s just say she wasn’t very nice:
Meanwhile, many openly mocked or angrily attacked the NRA for producing yet another totally-not-violent-or-threatening (sarcasm) video:
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