Benghazi smackdown. Thank you Mrs. Murray.

[Not Me]

One of my favorite teachers when I was younger was my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Murray. She was a social studies and geography wonk like me. Every Wednesday afternoon at 1:30pm, she would roll a TV into the classroom and we would watch a 15 minute PBS program called "In The News." It was a world current events program geared at elementary and middle school aged kids. After the program, we would discuss some of the events, and she would have students come up to the big world map in the classroom and stick a push-pin into the map to mark the location of the news events.

Fast forward to 2012.
I have a RW friend who gets most of her information from Fox. Lately, every third word out of her mouth is Benghazi. Yesterday she was at the house and I asked her why she is so fixated on this. She claims that Obama is responsible, yada, yada, yada.
So I remembered Mrs. Murray and excused myself for a moment and went to my computer and printed out a world map without the country annotations. I then gave her the map and a pencil and asked her to point out where Benghazi is on the map. She looked petrified for a minute, and then sheepishly put a dot in Saudi Arabia. NOT EVEN THE CORRECT CONTINENT.

I asked her if she knew where Africa was, and she pointed it out. Then showed her where Libya is.
I didn't have to say much more...she knew she got the smackdown.

Thank you Mrs. Murray.

[Marr]

1. That is really hilarious.

And very illustrative of just how phony is conservative rage over issues like this one. All they know are the talking points Sean Hannity have them, and that it's an "outrage".

[VWolf]

2. I remember watching "In The News" at school too

Wonder if they do anything like that these days.

[Schema Thing]

3. beautiful. I'm going to use this.

[bongbong]

4. Wonderful trick

That's a great thing to do to the sheep, but I don't know if I want to waste expen$ive ink on a repig.

It would take maybe $0.10 worth of ink to print out a map, and no repig is worth that.

[rusty fender]

5. This reminds me of a call to a local pm radio show

in ABQ. The host is a right-leaning Libertarian. Post-election a caller said that she was irritated that Obama went around masquerading as an African-American when he was really an Arab-American. The host, in a berating manner, asked how a guy, whose father was a Kenyan, and whose mother was from Kansas, could not be an African-American. He said that they don't come more African-American than that. He then asked the caller what her reasoning was and why she was bringing this crap up. She sheepishly reiterated that the media should be referring to Obama as an Arab-American. The host asked her if she knew that Kenya was in Africa. No response. The exasperated host then remarked that he didn't know where these people(his callers) come from.

[maxsolomon]

14. Lots of Arabs live in Africa. Maybe most.

But, point taken.

[Patiod]

6. It's all they've got

Their world crashed down around them on Tuesday, and they're grasping for any little stick to hang onto.

One of my friends from childhood went on a rant Saturday night about Benghazi this and Benghazi that, and the whole Patreaus thing was to cover-up Benghazi...

They're convinced they have a Whitewater on their hands, and they do - there was no "there there" in that "scandal" either. I think they believe this could be their Monica Lewinsky moment with which to distract the administration for the next 4 years.

[Javaman]

7. I do something similar when people call Obama a socialist.

I ask them to define socialism.

They never can and usually spiral into an incoherent rant.

[JHB]

16. What they call "socialism" and "Marxism" are what we spent about 40 years calling "the free world".

I've practically memorized the 1955 inflation-adjusted tax table in the course of fighting this idiocy.

Should we tax income above $250K differently? Sure! In '55 there were 24 tax brackets. 16 of them affected incomes above the equivalent of $250K. So why is it "Marxist" to do that now?

[Doctor_J]

8. I predict Issa will begin impeachment hearings over Benghazi

Take it to the bank

[AtheistCrusader]

10. Over his revealing a CIA outpost?

I can only hope.

[ffr]

11. I was thinking the same thing, only

over the fact that Obama didn't prevent Patraeus from getting a blow**b. That's an impeachable offense and worthy of $60M of wasted congressional time and effort.

Someone get Ken Starr on the phone immediately!!!

[BlueMan Votes]

12. I don't think so...

the pugs got burned by the voters the last time they did it- and the voters are in even less of a mood for that kind of repug bullshit.

let him try.

[speedoo]

9. Nicely done.

A smack down combined with a geography lesson.

Sweet!

[thesquanderer]

13. Honestly, seems a bit irrelevant to me

I didn't have to be able to find abu ghraib on a map to be horrified at what happened there.

[maxsolomon]

15. Abu Graib is a building.

Benghazi is a city.

If you are going to accuse Obama/his administration/the State Dept. of criminal incompetence, know the context.

[Not Me]

17. I dare say I could have asked her to name the ambassador by name

And gotten the same response.

[thesquanderer]

18. Actually, Abu Ghraib is a city

It is the city that housed the prison, as Benghazi was the city that housed the embassy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib

Context may be important, but being able to locate something on a map is often a very small and even insignificant part of that context. There are times where the geography is important to know, where the location is very relevant to events because of terrain or access to resources or proximity to allies, etc. But often, the geographic location of an event is pretty much irrelevant... its location is not going to have an impact on your position. You don't have to be able to locate Iran on a map to take issue with Ahmadinejad, or be able to locate Cuba to have an opinion about Guantanamo, or to be able to locate Pakistan to discuss the moral implications of drone attacks, or to be able to locate the city of Abu Ghraib (or even the country of Iraq) to have an opinion about torture, waterboarding, etc.

[maxsolomon]

19. Point taken, since I didn't know that!

[Not Me]

20. Not to nit pick, but

There is no embassy in Benghazi. It was a consulate office. An embassy has a higher level of security in most cases.