Note to American Spectator: It wasn't "sheer coincidence"
June 11, 2009 11:33 am ET by Eric Boehlert
My column about right-wing vigilante violence, and how Fox News will likely have to face more uncomfortable questions about acts of domestic terror at the same time it continues to peddle its militia-style hate rhetoric, clearly touched a nerve at the American Spectator. Especially in the wake of yesterday's Holocaust Museum killing, after which the conservative movement seemed to suffer a collective nervous breakdown at the prospect of having to explain away another political assassination.
The ironies of the American Spectator screed about my column were many. The first was that it claimed that liberals would waste no time trying to score political points surrounding the killing. This, mind you, on a night when Bill O'Reilly was stilling shamelessly trying to milk political points out of a tragic killing of an Army recruiter in Arkansas last week.
Of course, the American Spectator didn't have a problem with that; it didn't think it was tasteless for O'Reilly to try to use the senseless murder as a way to shift the attention off his "baby killer" crusade. For the American Spectator, O'Reilly isn't out of bounds. Liberals, though, are hateful.
Or more specifically, I am. According to the American Spectator I'm the "left-wing hate purveyor" who had the audacity to write (yet again) about the uncomfortable connection that people can draw between Fox News' militia rhetoric and the rash of right-wing political violence.
Wrote an overexcited
By sheer coincidence, at the website of the journalistic equivalent of a roving, extremely well-funded death squad, left-wing hate purveyor Eric Boehlert put up a post last night called "O'Reilly and Fox News will have more right-wing vigilantism to explain."
Y'know what they say, denial aint just a river in Egypt. If folks at the American Spectator want to think it was all just a crazy coincidence, and if they want to pretend the conservative movement is not playing a dangerous game with the kind of unvarnished hate rhetoric that it's now dumping into the mainstream, then that's their decision. (Did you see anyone on the right denounce O'Reilly's "baby killer" rhetoric, even after a far-right fanatic allegedly assassinated Dr. George Tiller? Me neither.)
But the whole point, which Vadum blissfully missed, was that my column (and the questions it raised) appearing on the eve of the Holocaust Museum killing was pretty much the opposite of coincidental. Why? Because this is the hateful political landscape that conservatives have helped construct in 2009, and, sadly, I think the violence will continue. The killings are predictable. Media Matters is simply paying attention and asking the rather obvious questions.
There's nothing accidental about it.
UPDATE: Did we mention the Holocaust Museum killing has unleashed a new realm of looniness among right-wing pundits as they thrash around, desperately trying to explain away the latest episode of violence? (Hint: It's the Muslims' fault.)
Here are a few excerpts from this morning's email (an "INvitation to the Conservative Underground");
Join the Conservative Underground!
Dear Fellow Conservative:
During his campaign, Barack Obama often spoke of his desire to "remake" America, to be a "transformational" President.
Not "restore," mind you. Not "rebuild." "Remake" -- as in, turning America into something it wasn't before.
Transforming it...
Under color of "solving" an economic crisis that their buddies helped create and their policies will only make worse, they are engineering the most radical change in the relationship between our government and its citizens in America's 233-year history.
This is not "change" as you and I want it.
And if they succeed, the country you and I know and love will no longer exist. Everything we conservatives have fought to defend and preserve will have been lost.
...
IT WILL BE AN AMERICA where a majority of citizens receive lavish government handouts and benefits but pay no federal income taxes, meanwhile voting themselves still more benefits from the shrinking minority who do pay taxes -- at ever more "progressive" rates
.....
IT WILL BE AN AMERICA where "green" ideologues and other nanny-staters dictate what we drive, what we eat, home energy usage, the size of our houses, and even how many children we can have
...
IT WILL BE AN AMERICA where all employers will be forced to hire and promote not according to ability but according to race, gender, and ethnicity -- all in the name of "diversity"
....
IT WILL BE AN AMERICA, in short, where only politicians, government bureaucrats, and their favored constituencies are able to thrive -- and where the only "liberty" that remains is the government's unlimited freedom to control every aspect of your life
.....
We CAN stop this nightmare from coming true
But we'll have to fight. And we'll have to pull together -- as conservatives, as patriots -- as never before.
Because make no mistake: Our would-be masters in Washington will stop at nothing to secure the power they've come to think of as theirs by divine anointing. They will do everything they can to harass, intimidate, and marginalize any conservative opposition that stands in their way.
Already, they're preparing to use the full force of federal power to stifle their most influential opponents -- by reviving the "Fairness Doctrine," for instance, to silence conservative talk-radio... by enacting "card check" laws that would expose anti-union workers to intimidation and harassment... by passing the so-called Freedom of Choice Act to force pro-life medical professionals to refer patients for abortions.
And who will stop them? The "watchdog" mainstream media? The ACLU? Don't make me laugh.
...
Here in The Conservative Underground, you're free to speak your mind even if...
... you don't believe that Barack Obama is the Second Coming of J.C. (unless that J.C. is Jimmy Carter)
... you don't believe that America needs a "New New Deal" -- in the form of a trillion-dollar "stimulus package" -- to solve today's financial crisis (knowing that, in fact, it will only make things worse)
... you don't believe that bans on oil drilling in ANWR and off our coasts serve America's need for energy independence -- or that wind and solar power are better for our country than nuclear power
... you don't believe that the U.S. Constitution is a "living document" that means whatever any Supreme Court majority declares it to mean
... you do believe in all the old-fashioned virtues and principles -- such as faith, family, freedom, and self-reliance -- that made America great, and can help restore that greatness once again.
If those are the things you value most -- and that you think are still worth fighting for, no matter how bleak things may seem at the moment -- then let me be first to say...
Welcome to the
Conservative Underground
Visions of camping out in the backyard under a blanket tent. Roasting marshmellows on a stick. Telling scary stories about liberals. Comparing each others arsenal.
Ever since the Nixon administration, the Republican party has actively solicited "the base" through whatever bigotry they can exploit. Elements of society that should be marginalized in any decent society (dangerous religious nuts, misogynists, homophobes, etc) are roused up in hatred and division using sophistocated advertising techniques, "dog whistles", or through surrogates like Limbaugh and Coulter.
And most of the media lets all this go under the radar screen. The fact that Republicans get so such mileage out of reprehensible and dangerous tactics sickens me.
So why limit your criticism to O'Reilly? For once make Republicans responsible for the monster they invited to the table.