Althouse: The dog is obviously the people who hate him, so how is he the whistler?

August 11, 2016

The dog is obviously the people who hate him, so how is he the whistler?

"Trump puts out the dog whistle knowing that some dog will hear it, even though he doesn't know which dog."

48 comments:

rhhardin said...: O body drawn to music, O darkening bog,
How can we know the whistler from the dog?; 8/11/16, 7:57 AM
Henry said...: Which dogs will hear it? Dogs without irony.; 8/11/16, 7:58 AM
MadisonMan said...: 'Stochastic Terrorism' Well, that's a new term.

I assume Rolling Stone is putting it out there so any and all violence can be linked back to Trump, regardless of cause, because you just can't predict how stochastic terrorism will evolve.; 8/11/16, 8:00 AM
rhhardin said...: Whenever there's a stink in the media about something, it's because some politician or charity wants that stink in the media. - (Vicki) Hearne's Law.; 8/11/16, 8:01 AM
David Begley said...: Yeah, Rolling Stone. And those frat boys raped that girl.

AA , Rolling Stone is completely discredited on anything other than music coverage.; 8/11/16, 8:04 AM
rhhardin said...: Fake outrage isn't dog whistle related, metaphorically speaking.

Outrage was always an etymological mistake anyway.

It comes from French outre, beyond what is proper. Making it a noun by adding -age, English notices rage appearing.

What is beyond what is proper deserves rage. The word itself says so.

This was so useful that the word was reimported back into French.

It still has the noticeable double meaning taken as one: what is beyond what is proper, and the reaction to what is beyond what is proper. Nobody bothers to take them as unrelated.; 8/11/16, 8:05 AM
Henry said...: @David Begley. They call that Stochastic Journalism.; 8/11/16, 8:05 AM
Kevin said...: All these words in an article about what Trump's actual words might have meant.

No article at all about what State Department e-mails regarding Clinton Foundation donors actually said.

What's the real "dog whistle" here?; 8/11/16, 8:06 AM
Will Cate said...: Remember, if you hear the whistle, it means you're the dog.; 8/11/16, 8:11 AM
Achilles said...: These people support Hillary Clinton. You have to be completely amoral to support Hillary Clinton. Her supporters attack trump supporters. Hillary Clinton has said flat out her biggest enemies in the world are republicans.

But they know if we actually fight back as hard as they attack us we will crush them. People who do not oppose Hillary Clinton do not deserve their freedom.

But I don't think it will come to that. The next Wikileaks will be crushing. The current polls of "adults" are not representative. The interesting thing will be how far the next AG is allowed to dig. Assange has a strange hatred for the democrats. I don't think they can kill all of the Bernie supporters in the dnc.; 8/11/16, 8:13 AM
tim in vermont said...: I so appreciate the left's indefatigable efforts to let me know what I am thinking, because, apparently, I never know myself.; 8/11/16, 8:15 AM
tim in vermont said...: Assange hates war, and by extension, Hillary.; 8/11/16, 8:16 AM
mtrobertslaw said...: It looks like Rolling Stone is engaged in some clever dog whistle/Stochastic Terrorism itself: "Trump must be stopped before he kills again."; 8/11/16, 8:17 AM
donald said...: Not for nothing, but their much coverage sucks also. I picked up a copy about 4 years ago for a flight, it had been a long time since I had read it. It was all fan boy for shitty bands I'd never heard of. Read like press releases from whichever hack they see covering.; 8/11/16, 8:18 AM
donald said...: Um, their music coverage sucks.; 8/11/16, 8:19 AM
Clayton Hennesey said...: The current leftist meme that Second Amendment supporters are actually hordes of ninjas patiently awaiting orders instead is an example of a technique I don't recall seeing as clearly in previous cycles.

The technique works like this: there must be an anchor text item, in Trump's case the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which means killing people with guns, or in Professor Althouse's case here dogs, which means setting vicious biting dogs loose on people as was done in Selma, Alabama.

Once the original event has been reoriented to its correct anchor text, we can then begin asking the important questions of why Professor Althouse would want to set vicious biting dogs loose on people, particularly her own commenters.; 8/11/16, 8:20 AM
Fernandinande said...: Is our dogs whistling?; 8/11/16, 8:20 AM
tcrosse said...: Trump is Hillary's Reichstag Fire, and there is an army of Goebbels'.; 8/11/16, 8:27 AM
Bob Boyd said...: http://d3819ii77zvwic.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/doggun.jpg; 8/11/16, 8:32 AM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: Rolling Stone is doing politics this week? Taylor Swift must be on vacation.; 8/11/16, 8:36 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: For those with a functional memory of 2008:

...Clinton then raised the memory of Robert F Kennedy’s assassination, and the possibility of Obama getting murdered, as the reason why she was hanging on in there.

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just don’t understand it and there’s lot of speculation about why it is,” Clinton said.; 8/11/16, 8:51 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: In one of the puppy books I read (Cummings Vet at Tufts?), they told the story of some poor dog who was going insane, and nobody had a solution, until some clever person figured out that the dog's owner had a neighbor who was big on power tools and the dog was being tortured by the frequencies nobody could hear.; 8/11/16, 8:53 AM
dreams said...: The liberal media is so dishonest, totally corrupt.; 8/11/16, 9:02 AM
Brando said...: That's what always got me about the "dog whistle" argument--that someone you don't like is secretly sending a signal to other people you don't like, but you somehow are the one who heard it. Clearly not much of a secret dog whistle if you were able to find out. Usually they use it to describe "racist appeals"--like if you oppose welfare, it must be a dog whistle to people who hate blacks. But then, considering so many people who oppose welfare do not hate blacks (and may even know that cutting back welfare is going to affect the non-black majority of welfare recipients!), and the accusing leftist is spotting the "dog whistle", it seems like that particular dog whistle is broken and only calls cats instead.

I prefer to use the "dog whistle" analogy to explain a message that someone is getting out to others that I am somehow missing--like Trump's appeal, which is real for a lot of people but is lost on me. I must not be hearing the whistle, but I figure they are seeing something appealing in him--maybe they see him as a problem solver, a straight talker, or a genius--but the fact that I don't see it is what makes it a dog whistle.; 8/11/16, 9:08 AM
mezzrow said...: Snoopy Dog Dog.; 8/11/16, 9:25 AM
Unknown said...: No, you have it backwards. The dogs he is whistling to are the ones who love him and would understand the message of the whistle, which is that it is ok with Trump to use 2nd Amendment remedies for a president who picks the wrong types of SC Justices.; 8/11/16, 9:32 AM
CWJ said...: Brando @ 9:08,

Excellent observation and example. That it's misused doesn't mean that the effect doesn't exist. Just not in the way the propagandists use it. Irony abounds.; 8/11/16, 9:44 AM
Fernandinande said...: Eric the Fruit Bat said...
the dog was being tortured by the frequencies nobody could hear.

A doofus put up a youtube video called "Sound Experiment, Dog Whistle" apparently not realizing that the audio encoding removes "dog whistle" frequencies, so the soundtrack is mostly blank (download HQ mp4 version, look at waveform). He'll appreciate my respectful comment!; 8/11/16, 9:45 AM
n.n said...: The Second Amendment does not recognize the right to commit abortion for trivial causes. The people conflating abortion rites and human rights are projecting their fear of ending their lives in an abortion chamber or Sanger's clinics of their own creation.; 8/11/16, 9:52 AM
mikeski said...: Gale: Shit! Where'd all the tellers go?
Teller's voices: We're down here, sir.
Evelle: They're on the floor as you commanded, Gale.
Gale: I told you not to use our names, Evelle!
Evelle: [pauses] You mean our code names?
Gale: Oh yeah.
Evelle: You hear that everyone? We're usin' code names.

Raising Arizona (1987); 8/11/16, 10:12 AM
Sebastian said...: Progs are magical dogs: any clown trumpet is a whistle to them. Heck, they don't need no whistles. They're ready to bark and bite and hunt without prompting; 8/11/16, 10:29 AM
Unknown said...: Trump on TV talking about his economic plans, he seems incredibly bored. Maybe he'll decide this governing stuff isn't as fun as he thought.; 8/11/16, 10:39 AM
Sam L. said...: How is it that only lefties can hear "dog whistles"?; 8/11/16, 10:40 AM
Larry J said...: Will Cate said...
Remember, if you hear the whistle, it means you're the dog.

Yes. The way I've always heard it is, "If you're constantly hearing dog whistles, odds are you're a dog."; 8/11/16, 10:48 AM
readering said...: It's a dog whistle because as Trump's apologists and he argued (and as he claimed, loads of journalists confirmed to him) no one could possibly understand his comment as advocating shooting anyone, but his dogs out there will hear just that on their special frequency.

But really, that's giving him too much credit. Listen to him on Hugh Hewitt on Obama and Clinton as founders of ISIS. Yes, he is that dumb.; 8/11/16, 10:53 AM
Lloyd W. Robertson said...: Up to a point, it's an interesting analysis. Some people want to remain more or less respectable, so they want to incite violence without being held responsible for it. I don't think Trump is a particularly good example. Some anti-abortionists, unfortunately, are probably a better example.

The best recent example, a group that has already in its short existence incited plenty of violence, is Black Lives Matter. They are close to overtly preaching violence against all police officers, everywhere; yet they remain close to a line where they can say they haven't done that. They were given a position of honour at Hillary's convention.; 8/11/16, 10:53 AM
readering said...: Lefties don't hear dog whistles, but they watch as he puts it to his lips.; 8/11/16, 10:55 AM
mtrobertslaw said...: All those who are those who can hear Trump's political dog whistles are primed for violence. All Leftists tell us they can hear these dog whistles. Therefore, all leftists are primed for violence.; 8/11/16, 11:43 AM
Friedrich Engels' Barber said...: The Dog Whistle concept is so convenient when combined with standard issue progressive projection. It is so helpful to have experts not only know better than I do what I am thinking, but can also explain to me what I am really saying.; 8/11/16, 11:56 AM
Unknown said...: What I wonder is why do leftists disagree with Trump here? Let's see what Trump said: that Hillary is going to put on the Supreme Court 4 to 5 justices who will take away all of your rights. Then he said in that case, maybe the 2nd amendment people would have another solution, or words to that effect.

Interpretation: the people should violently revolt if Hillary clinton stacks the court with people who will take away constitutional rights.

George Washington and the boys revolted at Lexington and Concord when the British came to take away their guns. So I ask: why is what Trump said wrong? What is supposed to be the appropriate response if Hillary packs the court with liberal ideologues hellbent on gutting everyone's constitutional rights?

Are we supposed to stay polite and watch Hillary destroy the Constitution? When she makes it illegal to criticize her; to gather in groups, to publish critical articles, and removes the right to a jury trial or the right to counsel? When she attempts to seize our weapons?

Isn't that, you know, kind of the time to do more than just lament our fate?

--Vance; 8/11/16, 11:59 AM
Fernandinande said...: Which reminds me, Francis Galton invented statistical correlation and regression, psychometrics, fingerprinting, the weather map and the dog whistle.; 8/11/16, 12:29 PM
Unknown said...: Readering, yep, Hewitt gave him an out and he was so dumb he refused to take it and insisted on his idiotic narrative. And this man thinks he can be president?; 8/11/16, 12:30 PM
D. B. Light said...: If you can hear the dog whistle, you are the dog.; 8/11/16, 12:34 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/11/16, 12:38 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: At some steady rate US politicians are shot and sometimes successfully assassinated. It is as predictable as rain, we have a violent culture. As a consequence, you have to be a complete fucking moron to leave even the vaguest suggestion that you may have encouraged that shooting.; 8/11/16, 12:51 PM
readering said...: Patti Davis had an interesting perspective on twitter.; 8/11/16, 12:54 PM
mikee said...: From Saturday Night Live decades ago: a skit wherein prison inmates were awarded prizes for their poetry. The winner, below:

Tyrone Greene: [angrily intense, directly into camera]

Images by Tyrone Greene ...

Dark and lonely on the summer night.
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking - Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Slip in his window,
Break his neck!
Then his house
I start to wreck!
Got no reason --
What the heck!
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L ...
My land - lord ...
Def!

Way back, long ago, this was considered funny.

A simple question no reporter has yet asked Trump regarding his understanding of 2nd Amendment supporters is whether they would be justified in self defense against the violent Bernie- and Hillary-supporting protesters who have been attacking peaceful attendees at Trump rallies. You know, people who have actually used violence against their political opponents already?

Or is that something nobody is supposed to notice?; 8/12/16, 2:21 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Mikee, I tend to bless the self-control and restraint that the Trump audiences have demonstrated. We are so close to the brink. Nobody seems to understand this.

In a more humorous vein, remember also Eddie Murphy reggae skit,

Kill the white people,
But buy my record first!; 8/12/16, 3:20 PM