"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser
The Coulter-Matthews-Dowd continuum
The emerging conventional wisdom about the 2008 presidential election is that Iraq will be a dominant and perhaps decisive issue and, in part as a result of that assumption, the Democratic nominee -- whoever that may be -- will have a significant advantage over his or her Republican counterpart.
A historically strong Democratic primary field, coupled with a truly bizarre Republican field -- the top three contenders are all likely to alienate large portions of the conservative base and of moderate and independent voters -- justifiably contributes to the perception that Democrats have an edge. (Writing for The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias has provided what may be the definitive big-picture explanation of the flaws of the leading Republican candidates.) Not to mention the fact that each week seems to bring further evidence that John Kerry's famous description of the GOP as "the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen" was, if anything, too kind.
We'd like to believe that the candidates' actual positions on Iraq -- along with their health care plans and economic agendas -- will be among the keys to the 2008 election; that they will be judged on their qualifications and competence.
Unfortunately, we know that the next presidential election is as likely to be decided by the same kind of breathtaking inanity that has determined the outcome of so many recent political struggles as it is to turn on policy positions and professional qualifications.
For example, the constant drone of derisive but substance-free chatter about the candidates that the media too often mistake for "analysis" or "wit."
In the wake of the latest example of Ann Coulter's mindless bigotry, some have suggested that it's best to ignore Coulter. Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox, for example, wrote this week:
I really only have one thought about her: That we should not think about her. [...] [S]he, like any bully, will go away if you ignore her.
[...]
I really believe we should ignore her. "We" meaning, I guess, the MSM [mainstream media]. Sure, she'll continue to get top billing at CPAC, but beyond the tinfoil hat brigade, her influence is limited. And if we studiously avert our eyes from her ghoulish visage -- bonus! -- she'll have to get more and more outrageous in order to get our attention, which will marginalize her further. I mean, look at the wingnuts who denounced her recently.
It seems obvious that the "wingnuts who denounced her recently" did so precisely because the "MSM" did not ignore her.
After all, at last year's CPAC, Coulter referred to Muslims as "ragheads," the MSM ignored her -- and the wingnuts didn't denounce her. And when Coulter called Al Gore a "total fag" on MSNBC in 2006, the MSM ignored her (except for Chris Matthews, on whose show Coulter made her comments. Matthews finished the interview by announcing that "[w]e'd love to have her back.") Needless to say, the wingnuts didn't denounce Coulter then, either. Nor did the wingnuts denounce her any of the various times she has suggested violence against Democrats, liberals, or journalists.
The MSM's failure to properly convey the extent of Ann Coulter's bigotry, nastiness, and irresponsibility hasn't resulted in her being "marginalized" -- it has helped her become an icon of the right without any accountability for the conservative movement that embraces her. Coulter's column, receptacle of much of her hate speech, appears in numerous newspapers across the country. Media Matters, outraged emailers -- 834 by one editor's count -- and others have begun to put a real dent in her reach. Yesterday, we posted a list of papers running her column, as well as their email addresses, and the parade of op-ed pages announcing that they are dropping her is growing almost by the hour.
All of which brings us to the first of two reasons why it is actually important that we don't ignore Ann Coulter.
If Coulter's seething hatred was hers alone, she might best be ignored. But that ugly and unthinking hatred isn't unique to Coulter.
Instead, Coulter's anger and venom are illustrative of the modern conservative movement. Her vitriol is embraced and rewarded by right-wing audiences far and wide. Her intellectual and rhetorical peers -- Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, among others -- are, like Coulter, anything but "marginalized." They unleash vicious tirades against gays, women, minorities, and liberals -- and are paid handsomely for it. And they are paid not only in cash, but in respect: Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, sometimes seems to be auditioning to be Limbaugh's co-host, while President Bush opens the Oval Office to the likes of Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity.
Ann Coulter's bigotry and hostility, her public fantasies about violence against Democrats, progressives, and journalists -- and those of countless others like her -- demand more attention, not less. They illustrate the irrational anger that has long driven and sustained the conservative movement. (Those who insist on believing, against all available evidence, that the left is driven more by anger than the right would do well to remember that, during the 2000 Florida recount fiasco, it was the Republicans who rioted, not the Democrats.) But those who applaud Coulter can't win or hold power on their own -- there just aren't enough angry, hate-filled voters in the country. They need the support of more rational and reasonable people, many of whom would be appalled -- and no longer supportive -- if the media showed them the true nature of the extremists they support.
But the most interesting -- and important -- thing about Coulter's hate speech isn't that it is representative the of attitudes of her ideological fellow travelers.
It is the similarity between what Ann Coulter was trying to do by calling John Edwards a "faggot" and what countless "respectable" members of the "MSM" do every day.
Coulter's comments, of course, weren't about convincing people that John Edwards is gay. They were about trying to strip him of his masculinity, to feminize him -- and in doing so take advantage of the cultural stereotypes that equate strength with men and weakness with women to portray Edwards as "wussy" (her word).
The use of epithets like "faggot" to feminize and weaken seems largely self-evident, but for those who desire or require further discussion of this topic, bloggers such as Digby, Bob Somerby, and Andrew Sullivan have all made excellent points this week; excerpts of their work appear below. Glenn Greenwald, meanwhile, explained a corollary principle: "As critical as it is to them to feminize Democratic and liberal males (and to masculinize the women), even more important is to create false images of masculine power and strength around their authority figures."
Again: this is nothing new for Coulter. She has long made efforts to feminize those with whom she disagrees a cornerstone of her overheated rhetoric:
- On Al Gore: "seemed kind of gay."
- On Al Gore: "total fag."
- On Bill Clinton: "latent homosexual."
- On John Kerry: "Kerry claims he will stand up to powerful interests, but he can't even stand up to his wife. ... Kerry clearly has no experience dealing with problems of typical Americans since he is a cad and a gigolo living in the lap of other men's money. ... This low-born poseur with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman's money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn't they nominate someone who hasn't been a poodle to rich women for the past 33 years?" [1/30/04]
- On John Edwards: "True, Edwards made more money than his father did. I assume strippers make more money than their alcoholic fathers who abandoned them did, too. ... Kerry picks a pretty-boy milquetoast as his running mate, narrowly edging out a puppy for the spot." [7/11/04]
- On John Edwards: "After Dick Cheney had beaten Edwards about the head for a while during the debate, Edwards waved his girlish hands and said: 'There are 60 countries who have members of al-Qaida in them. How many of those countries are we going to invade?'"
- "Fortunately for me, liberals not only argue like liberals, they also throw like girls. Liberals enjoy claiming they are intellectuals, thrilled to engage in a battle of wits." [4/17/05]
- On The New York Times: "Revenge of the queers."
But, as usual, Coulter's outbursts are most interesting for what they demonstrate about others. And Coulter's attempts to feminize progressives may be more vulgar than most, but that only makes them more obvious, not more harmful. Instead, it is likely that the frequent but (slightly) more subtle feminization of progressives by "mainstream" journalists has far greater impact than Coulter's uncontrolled braying.
Take, for example, the steady stream of journalist/pundit comments seizing on specious claims about Al Gore turning to a woman for instruction on how to be an "Alpha Male."
Or the full-court press by Fox News to convince the world that John Kerry -- unlike "most men" -- enjoys an occasional manicure.
Or the description of John Edwards as the "Breck Girl" -- a sneering, feminizing insult that first appeared attributed to an anonymous "Bush associate" in a 2003 New York Times article, but was quickly embraced by journalists and pundits who adopted it as their own.
In March 2004, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd highlighted the "Breck Girl" label as an example of the "nasty Republican habit of portraying opponents as less than fully masculine." Still, it's a habit she can't kick: She has used the phrase "Breck Girl" four times in three columns since then -- not to mention countless other occasions when she has compared Barack Obama to Scarlett O'Hara or called him "Obambi" or otherwise indulged her own "nasty habit."
Not that Dowd is alone. On election night in 2004, MSNBC viewers were treated to this exchange about Edwards between Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough:
SCARBOROUGH: But he don't play in West Virginia, though.
MATTHEWS: Pardon me?
SCARBOROUGH: I said, but he don't play in West Virginia.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
SCARBOROUGH: Look at him. He just doesn't play in West Virginia,
MATTHEWS: He is not rough-looking enough?
SCARBOROUGH: He's not -- you know what? They'd rather hang out with W. shooting guns.
[crosstalk]
MATTHEWS: He's got the Breck Girl problem, right?
[crosstalk]
SCARBOROUGH: It's the Breck Girl problem.
(One wonders what the Manly Men who inhabit Matthews' psyche, sneering at Breck Girls, must think of a television host prone to making Breakfast at Tiffany's references. But we digress ...)
Earlier in the campaign, Matthews had referred to the vice presidential debate as "Shrek versus Breck." In previewing that debate, Matthews, NBC's Andrea Mitchell, and Newsweek's Jon Meacham -- who had earlier described Edwards as "very well coifed" -- agreed that Cheney would make the Breck Girl's prettiness an issue during the debate:
MATTHEWS: He'll call him cute. He'll say I don't have the hair.
MEACHAM: There'll be a hair joke.
MATTHEWS: Will he do that?
MEACHAM: There will definitely be a hair moment.
MATTHEWS: A hair moment.
MITCHELL: And pretty.
MATTHEWS: And pretty. The Breck Girls. Breck vs. [unintelligible].
During the 2004 Democratic National Convention, after playing a clip of Edwards declaring that a Kerry-Edwards administration would "destroy" Al Qaeda, Mitchell told viewers: "He's too pretty to say that."
No, really. She did. And right on cue, as if to make Pavlov proud, Joe Scarborough chimed in with a Breck Girl reference, while Chris Matthews compared Edwards to Pee Wee Herman.
They do it ever so slightly less offensively than Ann Coulter does, but Matthews and Dowd and Mitchell and countless others have been calling John Edwards a girl for years.
On Thursday, The New York Sun chimed in with a headline: "Could Edwards Become First Woman President?"
Rush Limbaugh immediately used the headline on his radio show. In case anyone doubts the connection between the Dowd/Matthews/Mitchell Axis of Inanity's constant invocation of the "Breck Girl" sobriquet, The New York Sun's "first woman president" headline, and Ann Coulter's use of the word "faggot," Limbaugh made it clear:
LIMBAUGH: Try this headline. Ann Coulter, if you're out there listening, listen to this heading from The New York Sun today, "Could John Edwards become the first woman president?" It's by Josh Gerstien in The New York Sun: "Toni Morrison famously dubbed Bill Clinton 'America's First black President.' With that barrier broken" -- Obama, you hear that? The first black president barrier has been broken -- "With that barrier broken, the comments of a prominent feminist are provoking debate about who may lay a similar claim to the title of America's first woman president. The candidate being touted as a torchbearer for women is not" Mrs. Bill Clinton, but one of her former colleagues, John Edwards the Breck Girl.
At a rally near the University of California-Berkeley campus this week, a veteran of the abortion-rights movement, Kate Michelman, asked and answered the question she gets most frequently about her decision to back the Breck girl. Why John Edwards, given the historic nature of our extraordinary campaign for the presidency this year with Mrs. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and all the others? "Well, I've gotten to know a lot of political leaders over the years, I've been an advocate for women's rights, and I know the difference between those who advocate as a political position and those who understand the reality of women's lives." Compared to Mrs. Bill Clinton, the Breck girl is short an X chromosome -- is this not absurd? - "but listening to Ms. Michelman, that's easy to forget. As a lawyer, as a senator, as a husband, as a father of two daughters, he understands the reality of women's lives. He understands the centrality of women's lives and experience in the health and well-being of society as a whole. He understands that on an extremely personal level. ... She did acknowledge recently to an online magazine Salon.com that touting the Breck Girl did necessarily mean criticzing his opponents. Pressed for how the Breck Girl could have a feel for women's problems" -- this is too ripe. I'm practicing restrain like you can't believe here. "Pressed for how the Breck Girl could have a feel for women's problems that is even comparable to someone like Mrs. Bill Clinton, Ms. Michelman said her concerns go beyond identifying the issues.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Now Ms. Michelman's decision after a career in the women's movement" -- which by the way as I say, I love the women's movement, don't get confused here I love the women's movement, especially walking behind it.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: So John Edwards, on tap now, according to one of the nation's largest abortion-rights supporters, to become the first woman president in the United States, and of course the barriers down, the first black president Bill Clinton, that barrier's broken [laughs]. Sometimes all you can do is laugh at these people.
Why pay attention to Ann Coulter? Because she and Limbaugh and their ilk speak for the conservative movement. And because Maureen Dowd and Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell speak in much the same way -- except that nobody denounces them, and they do more damage. And that, as much as Iraq or health care or the economy, is likely to define the 2008 presidential campaign.
Why pay attention to Ann Coulter? Because her description of John Edwards as a "faggot" may finally be what it takes for people to get mad about Dowd using more polite words to call a long line of Democrats the same thing.
Digby explains:
A lot of the shrieking aversion to the dirty hippie came from all that "feminine" hair on men's heads and "masculine" hair on women's bodies, if you'll recall. My brother was constantly harrassed about "looking like a girl" in 1966 Mississippi for having hair below his collar. In those days, hair was a political statement and even though forty years have passed and most of those people can only dream about all that hair they no longer have, the right successfully parlayed that gender role anxiety into a political narrative that continues to powerfully effect politics today.
Coulter is somewhat desperate so she's articulating this stuff in a crude and obvious fashion in order to keep her stale schtick going. But this concept is so ingrained in the political culture by now that the only thing that really stands out about it is the fact that she used an obvious epithet that is out of public fashion, even at a rightwing event. Suppose she had used the silly word "girlyman"? Nobody would be calling for the smelling salts. In fact, I would imagine the press corps would have told us all to "get over it."
But then, why should pundits criticize Coulter when she describes Dem males as big "f*ggots?" It's very similar to the gender-based "analysis" their dauphine, the Comptesse Maureen Dowd, has long offered. In Dowd's work, John Edwards is routinely "the Breck Girl"(five times so far -- and counting), and Gore is "so feminized that he's practically lactating." Indeed, two days before we voted in November 2000, Dowd devoted her entire column, for the sixth time, to an imaginary conversation between Gore and his bald spot. "I feel pretty," her headline said (pretending to quote Gore's inner thoughts).That was the image this idiot wanted you carrying off to the voting booth with you! Such is the state of Maureen Dowd's broken soul. And such is the state of her cohort.
And now, in the spirit of fair play and brotherhood, she is extending this type of "analysis" to Barack Obama. In the past few weeks, she has described Obama as "legally blonde" (in her headline); as "Scarlett O'Hara" (in her next column); as a "Dreamboy," as "Obambi," and now, in her latest absurd piece, as a "schoolboy" (text below). Do you get the feeling that Dowd may have a few race-and-gender issues floating around in her inane, tortured mind? But this sort of thing is nothing new for the comptesse. Indeed, such imagery almost defines the work of this loathsome, inane Antoinette.
Coulter has been visibly disturbed ever since hitting cable in the mid-90s. But Dowd is a borderline nutcase too -- a slightly cleaned up version of Coulter. (Ah, we Irish! Yes, each had an Irish Catholic dad.) Coulter comes right out and calls Dem men "f*ggots" -- but Maureen Dowd has always come close. Just as Chris Matthews is a slightly cleaned-up [Catholic League president] William Donohue, Dowd is a more presentable Coulter. For mainstream voters, Maureen is easier to take. For that reason, she has done us more harm.
Coulter teaches contempt for gays, and tries to extend that contempt to Dem pols. But that's what Dowd has done all these years! And we liberals and Dems have been too weak to understand and address the problem.
Coulter has an actual argument in self-defense and it's worth addressing. Her argument is that it was a joke and that since it was directed at a straight man, it wasn't homophobic. It was, in her words, a "school-yard taunt," directed at a straight man, meaning a "wuss" and a "sissy". Why would gays care? She is "pro-gay," after all. Apart from backing a party that wants to strip gay couples of all legal rights by amending the federal constitution, kick them out of the military where they are putting their lives on the line, put them into "reparative therapy" to "cure" them, keep it legal to fire them in many states, and refusing to include them in hate crime laws, Coulter is very pro-gay. As evidence of how pro-gay she is, check out all the gay men and women in America now defending her.
[...]
Coulter's defense of the slur is that it was directed at an obviously straight man and so could not be a real slur. The premise of this argument is that the word faggot is only used to describe gay men and is only effective and derogatory when used against a gay man. But it isn't. In fact, in the schoolyard she cites, the primary targets of the f-word are straight boys or teens or men. The word "faggot" is used for two reasons: to identify and demonize a gay man; and to threaten a straight man with being reduced to the social pariah status of a gay man. Coulter chose the latter use of the slur, its most potent and common form. She knew why Edwards qualified. He's pretty, he has flowing locks, he's young-looking. He is exactly the kind of straight guy who is targeted as a "faggot" by his straight peers. This, Ms Coulter, is real social policing by speech. And that's what she was doing: trying to delegitimize and feminize a man by calling him a faggot. It happens every day. It's how insecure or bigoted straight men police their world to keep the homos out.
And for the slur to work, it must logically accept the premise that gay men are weak, effeminate, wusses, sissies, and the rest. A sane gay man has two responses to this, I think. The first is that there is nothing wrong with effeminacy or effeminate gay men - and certainly nothing weak about many of them. In the plague years, I saw countless nelly sissies face HIV and AIDS with as much courage and steel as any warrior on earth. You want to meet someone with balls? Find a drag queen. The courage of many gay men every day in facing down hatred and scorn and derision to live lives of dignity and integrity is not a sign of being a wuss or somehow weak. We have as much and maybe more courage than many -- because we have had to acquire it to survive. And that is especially true of gay men whose effeminacy may not make them able to pass as straight -- the very people Coulter seeks to demonize. The conflation of effeminacy with weakness, and of gayness with weakness, is what Coulter calculatedly asserted. This was not a joke. It was an attack.
Secondly, gay men are not all effeminate. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen a leading NBA player and a Marine come out to tell their stories. I'd like to hear Coulter tell Amaechi and Alva that they are sissies and wusses. A man in uniform who just lost a leg for his country is a sissy? The first American serviceman to be wounded in Iraq is a wuss? What Coulter did, in her callow, empty way, was to accuse John Edwards of not being a real man. To do so, she asserted that gay men are not real men either. The emasculation of men in minority groups is an ancient trope of the vilest bigotry. Why was it wrong, after all, for white men to call African-American men "boys"? Because it robbed them of the dignity of their masculinity. And that's what Coulter did last Friday to gays. She said -- and conservatives applauded -- that I and so many others are not men. We are men, Ann.
Washington Post editorial page still can't handle the truth of CIA leak investigation
Last week, we touted the groundbreaking work the weblog Firedoglake.com has done covering the Libby case. Next week, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert will examine some coverage of the trial we could have done without: that of the Washington Post editorial pages.
The newspaper that once called for a special counsel to investigate the Clintons even while acknowledging that "there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong" -- and that treated Clinton probes that ended without criminal charges as evidence of their guilt -- reacted to this week's conviction of Scooter Libby by ... declaring his innocence.
Boehlert will have all the gory details on Tuesday.
i agree. in spite of one commenter on here who insists everything should be ignored, i say turn on the light and watch the roaches like coulter scatter. she is lock stock and barrel owned by the republican party. she was given a warm introduction by mitt romney before she made her remark about edwards.
Not only should these sort of comments NOT be ignored, but Democrats appearing on these programs should force the talking heads who spawned them to have the guts to utter them to the very faces of the people they are slandering, instead of being allowed to get away with the inside the Beltway tee-hee behind their backs. How long do you think Chris Matthews would continue to throw "Breck Girl" comments around if John Edwards appeared in front of him to tell him that was beneath the level of civil discourse most everyone (Matthews included) claims they want in politics? How long would Maureen Dowd be able to continue that thinly disguised therapy session she calls a column if she was challenged on her lies face-to-face by those about whom she has lied? Any show that insists upon scheduling Ann Coulter should have its advertisers inundated with mail from Democrats (and other rational souls) threatening to boycott their products. Even blue state and red state citizens can agree that most of us don't want to live in a country where creditable political commentary is made up completely of a playground insult, right?
For anyone about to conjure up the magic of free speech at this point, well of course all these people have the right to say what they wish, but there are also consequences in life for shooting your mouth off sometimes. How about we remind them of the consequences? If Governor Dean taught us anything it was that it's time to step up and be proud to be Democrats; we don't need to take this swill sitting down.
One final note -- I think it's about time that MMA start detailing the horror known as Imus in the Morning with the same zeal with which they catalog the ramblings of that idiot Glen Beck. I suspect that the "I-Man", his Calvin Klein cowboy wear which is stored so carefully in his Connecticut Mansion and his upper east side penthouse, his drooling sycophantic co-stars, and the idiots from the MSM who appear on his show as if it's serious news, will all disappear as soon as his advertisers start pulling out.
Please know that I don't want to get rid of these people because they are ignorant and spiteful. I want to get rid of them so we can elevate the level of public discourse in this country as behooves a nation who has thousands of people a year being killed and maimed for its public policy. It's time to grow up.
Well roared, YDD.
Now, of course, were Dems to paint the right wing so-called "leaders" with the same brush the extremists use on Democrats, OMFG! It would be impossible to contain the faked outrage and shock of Howard Kurtz and David Broder.
Still, as we learned from the SWISH Boating of John Kerry, to let these wild-eyed fringers' charges go unanswered is to invite defeat. We must teach the right wing mouthpieces that, in the words of that very strange and odd fellow, Frank Gaffney, "You're free to say what you like, but WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES." Oddly, that's the only thing that social misfit ever said that sort-of/maybe/in a way made sense.
Yellowdog Democrat
Congratulations, I agree 100% with your statement as shown below
One final note -- I think it's about time that MMA start detailing the horror known as Imus in the Morning with the same zeal with which they catalog the ramblings of that idiot Glen Beck. I suspect that the "I-Man", his Calvin Klein cowboy wear which is stored so carefully in his Connecticut Mansion and his upper east side penthouse, his drooling sycophantic co-stars, and the idiots from the MSM who appear on his show as if it's serious news, will all disappear as soon as his advertisers start pulling out.
Lynn this week tipped of MMFA on some disgusting hate speech from the Imus show. He and Ann Coulter should NEVER be ignored. Hate speech is Hate Speech and needs to be dealt with right away.
Doris was was even more depolrable was Imus treatment of Senator Schumer yesterday morning on his show. I was so disgusted watching this yesterday morning. I know Newsmax is biased but its an accurate transcript.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/3/9/124531.shtml?s=ic
I'm of two minds.
First, I agree with the previous poster who said these rightwingers who are haters should be noticed, and held accountable ... and either purged from public forums, or made to change their vocal ways. And that this will improve and mature our political atmosphere in this nation, a healthy thing.
But second, as a partisan of the left, I'm morbidly fascinated with the sheer volumn and audacity of the growing chorus of rightwing hatemongering. It gets shriller and more outrageous the farther the Bush Administration slides into the abyss. It's like a massive abandonment of any pretense at decency, with anger and frustration driving these people to ACTUALLY SPEAK THEIR MINDS, instead of couching everyting in "acceptable" language.
In short, it is GREAT to see the rightwing self-defining and self-destructing, exposing their true essence across the spectrum of the media. Coulter, the New York Times, MSNBC, ALL are in league and in tandem with their coordinated attack tactics.
They show the desperation of being losers who see that their leaking ship has also caught fire. They have pulled out all stops and are openly engaging in their smearmongering in an ever-tightening loop of repetition which leaves out a vital aspect of successful propaganda: There must be a GROWING uncertainty about an opposition candidate, which is then elaborated on to exploit that concern. Without that "gestation" time, the attacks are abrupt and seem uncalled for.
In today's media, the smear springs from nowhere, and is echoed so fast into a screaching feedback, there is no hint that these people are reflecting any kind of "conventional wisdom" ... which would arguably be effective. Instead, these people are yelling at each other in real time, and everyone else is an outsider.
Hannity quotes Drudge and Dowd, and guests Coulter and "Democrat" Pat Caddell underscore Hannity's take on the day's talking point. It's all to abrupt and shrill to be taken seriously.
They have left the American People behind as they pursue their attack politics, and it is as clear as the realization that the great Wizard of OZ was not spouting truths from lofty and omnipotent power, but instead was a balding elderly con man working the gears as fast as he could.
So, in conclusion, I say let them speak their minds, and let them do so from the perches purchased for them by the power brokers. They had the rope bought and paid for, exclusively FOR them to advocate for their masters ... and they are now hanging themselves with zeal.
"But wait! We hired you to make people LIKE Republicans and HATE Democrats! Yet, the more and louder you talk, the more people ARE ABANDONING the right. This isn't working out as planned. Maybe if you talked more and louder and made more outrageous claims??!?" ..."
Hey Jamison:
You are exactly on point, as usual. The right loves to trot out the anonymous bloggers as being hate-filled, etc. Have you even seen what the right wing blog commenters are all about? Ann Coulter is the mouthpiece of a hate-filled fear-mongering authoritarian movement that will not rest until a single-party GOP majority rules this nation. Until January 2007 this hate-filled GOP majority did rule America with catastrophic results. The people of this country are gradually waking up to the travesty we inherited as a result of Bush V Gore 2000. This angry mob will continue to rise up until a Democratic majority is reestablished in this country. They have tasted Republican rule and they are spitting it out as fast as they can.
Keep up the good work with Media Matters-you are a "must read" every week.
You've made a good start as well on part two: recognize that the incessant drumbeat of anti-liberal lies from the more "respectable" punditry is even more lethal than Coulter's outrage. We acknowledge that space may limit how many of these cases may be addressed here - but perhaps periodic summaries, or "other notable stories we just could not fit in" - some direct reiteration of the sentiments you have expressed, and recitation of the causus belli from that week's media.
Reading: Casus Belli
Sigh . . .
I'm glad to see these items. I cringe every time I see posters here calling to take Coulter (or other righty nuts) off the air. Let them talk, and let the Neocons be the advocates of censorship and stifling opinions.I can only see good, in the long term, coming from shining the light on the clowns.
The Libby case mirrors the right wing maniac pundit syndrome.Just as I feel that Coulter and her kind fire up a small, uninformed and insignificant minority at the expense of the merely lazy supporters, I think the more publicity that the actual facts of the Libby/Plame case get, the more likely that moderate people will come out of the darkness.
Of course, this will require the media reporting some facts, but against all odds, I'm optimistic about Americans.The freepers will continue to think that the entire Plame case is a partisan Bush-hating vendetta, but I think the truth will do nothing but help to get rid of the current scumbags in power.
If we're lucky and don't have a large number of buxom blonds dying or teen pop stars going into rehab, the media may run out of crap to report, and be forced to start talking about what's really happening.
As disappointed as I've been in my fellow Americans living in fear and denial, I have a gut feeling that huge numbers are starting to open their eyes.Put Ann Coulter on TV for as long as the idiots will pay her, and let the Repugs make enough trouble for themselves that even the dimmest Americans can't ignore it.
I'm feeling good,maybe it's just Friday, but that "MOrning in America" BS I heard from the first candidate I voted against might be coming around for real.
If the Dems can just NOT ACT AS STOOPID AS REPUBLICANS.
HBL, I used to believe that, too. Unfortunately, I've seen even more emphasis on the trivial and less on the political from the news media. A quick comparison of the BBC news from BBC America and any of the US morning shows will show you that trivia reigns. The 10th graders I teach know two things about Barrack Obama, for example: his name sounds like Osama, and they think he's a Muslim because his father was one. Now these are teenagers who (despite the fact that they can vote in two years) were unable to tell me the name of the vice-president. The US public has been trained to think in soundbites. We have to address those sound bites. There's very little appetite out there for anything else.
If, however, as you maintain (and I'm sure the rest of us hope0, the US public and the MSM do eventually come around and stop their fascination with celebrity as opposed to what actually impacts our lives, do we want to wait for that to happen and risk losing another important election? I don't.
YDD, I think we're in agreement more than you think. I wasn't implying that I thought the media was suddenly becoming responsible or more focused. I only mean that, even with a steady stream of sensational tabloid non-news,the emphasis on far-right talking heads of the crazy type will at some point bring more sane people around to the opposite side.
I wasn't very clear in expressing what others have here, that the responses from the liberal side can only benefit from exposure to the light.
I didn't mean to give the impression that I think the media has improved lately.I think it's gotten bad enough that a pendulum effect may force the media to improve, and my optimism was in thinking that there are more Americans ready to see what's really going on.And I want the looniest representatives of the conservatives present and accounted for in the debate.
The proposal that we welcome Coulter and her ilk appearing on big media stages must come with a caveat: that every liberal with an audience must declare that she and the others represent mainstream conservatism and speak for the republican party.
Force conservative politicians to denounce them, and soon we'll have freepers wailing to get them off the air because they make conservatives look bad.
Without explicit and repeated links from the kooks to all repulicans (along with debunkings of their lies), having the kooks on TV will only help the repulicans.
Agreed 100%!
NOW IF ONLY JOHN EDWARDS WERE GETTING AS MUCH FREE PUBLICITY AS THE COULTERGEIST.
Odd how the airwaves seem to be reinforcing the Coulter attack of "wuss" and "sissy" by not giving voice to the victim. Makes him seem kind of weak, huh?
YELLOWDOGDEMOCRAT has made the case for candidates to get in the faces of rabid talking heads . Chris Matthews deserves special attention because he needs a "get" interview for ratings. Until now, he's fake- fawning in face to face interviews, and lethal behind their backs. Every Democrat should call him on the air about his psycho problems. He's a fire engine chasing bigot, attempting to hide in his "Catholic" vestments. As a Catholic, Bill Donohue and Matthews feed off each other. I'm the embarassed Catholic holding her nose. Fighting back for Dems is the best revenge. You have the power. Even Republicans and Moderates are tired of this vitriol. MSM has to answer for this maddness. Be careful what you wish for. The last 6 years break my heart.
So John Edwards is the Breck Girl in the eyes of conservatives. I suppose that makes Jesus Rula Lenska.
Ignoring Coulter and the Swift Boaters is what cost Kerry the election in 2004. Take them head on. In fact, I'd like some of them to challenge these talking head do-nothings to run for office. Al Franken is doing it.
Anybody can be a talking head. You don't have to make actual decisions.
One recurring rightwing theme is that "Hillary LIES". It is said matter-of-fact, as a statement so well known that it need not be bolstered with any proof. Almost NEVER is any example given.
I Googled "Hillary lies", and found many sites that claim to point out specific lies Hillary has told (most based on Dick Morris' book), and in every instance, the ACCUSATION has been rebutted clearly. In fact, in most instances, the authors are forced to use "weasel words" in their so-called "solid evidence" of Hillary lying, such as "Hillary ALMOST CERTAINLY knew ..." or, for another example, suggests as evidence that Hillary could not have been on a soccer team because her school at the time didn't have a team (uh, there are tens of thousands of NON-SCHOOL soccer teams!). So such evidence is both incomplete and anecdotal, not to mention trivial.
If Hillary lies, the rightwing has failed to chronicle a credible record of such. In scratching and stretching to "discover" such lies, the rightwing has instead shown their own desperation, and a decided LACK of any real evidence to support their claim.
Yet, the claim is made easily and often. Was it David Broder who declared Hillary a "congenital liar", meaning a liar since birth and implying that EVERYTHING SHE SAYS is a lie? Wouldn't one think he could back up such a claim with credible evidence? He cannot. He DID not. Yet, in the MEDIA ECHO CHAMBER, his contemptable and baseless claim spread across the land, helping the rightwing establish their "conventional wisdom" of a smear that could then be repeated without any elaboration, explanation, or examples.
Here's a TRUE FACT: George W. Bush LIES, and Dick Cheney LIES, and lie often about very big things indeed (not about youth soccer teams, but about issues that cost tens of thousands of lives). THESE are the lies that bear constant attention and deep scrutiny, yet our pundit class are invested in tearing down Hillary with smear and innuendo.
If they had any balls, the rightwing who have actual ENTIRE SHOWS would do a special on Hillary's lies, putting forward what they beleive to be examples of these lies, and having guests familiar with the events to give Hillary's side. Let the viewer decide, AFTER hearing the whole story. Ah, but the rightwing media cannot afford to do such a fair and in-depth investigation; at the conclusion, they would no longer be able to spout their favorite toss-out catch-phrase, "Hillary lies". The People would then know they are just SMEARING, and in obvious character-assassination partisan fashion.
To be fair to our rightwing friends, let's try this: If you think Hillary lies, WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE? Somehow, she must have lied about the Travel Office situation? Uh, that was investigated in depth and under oath. If Hillary had lied, it would have been indicted. Try something else. Named after Sir Edmund (despite his having climbed Everest 5 years after Hillary was born)? Uh, is this under the theory that NOBODY could have possibly HEARD of Sir Edmund BEFORE he climbed Everest? Or that it is just "unlikely"? Or that as a child, Hillary may well have been told this explanation of her name, and simply believed it unquestioningly (as children do)? That's a non-starter.
So how about it, rightwingers. Document a LIE Hillary has told. Show us how you back up such a damning claim. Is it more such silliness?
Tex:
I hope your "day job" is writing: you do such a powerful piece of argument, here and in the previous posting on this thread, that it would be a shame to apply the evident talent only on brief postings to another's blog!
Of course no wingnut, nor any S.C.U.M.* editorialist, will step forth to confront this challenge, for truth is an undiscovered territory for them, and need not even be considered in pursuit and attainment of their Corporate goals. They need only vaguely link the concepts "liberal" and "lies" in the minds of distracted or unconcerned masses to effect the undermining of the democratic ideals.
*So-Called Unbiased Media, acronym courtesy of Easy To Refute Wingnuts
Not everyone likes it, but generally it is accepted that black people can use the N word without causing nearly as much offense as if a nonblack person used it.
I don't want to defend "her", but why the double standard when a tranny whore (no disrespect to trannies, whores, or tranny whores intended) uses the F word? And who else but a tranny whore shows up on the Today show in last night's skimpy little black cocktail dress - with an unconfirmed rumor of a stain from leaked santorum left on the seat?
Stop hating!
Ah yes - using fggot even when refering to people who aren't gay is a vile slur - but using T-wh is perfectly acceptable. Even when used against someone who isn't trasgender - next you'll start referring to stereotypes about our appearance, I'm sure. I'd say it was another high on the unintended irony meter if it wasn't so damn hateful. And it's not like there isn't a hypocrite who is transgender to discuss - Rudi.
Thanks for making my life easier as I walk down the street later today.
I believe I "appreciated", if not "admire" the humor here. It WAS intended as humor, wasn't it?
I've thought for a long time that Maureen Dowd's prime usefulness is that she has an amusing way of packaging the conventional wisdom of the Beltway crowd. If you want to be forewarned about just what it is they are trying to con us into believing, the Dowd's column is the best place to find out.
But I never before thought of her as the female Ann Coulter.
I tend to agree. While Maureen Dowd may not be any more factual than Coulter at times, her writing style displays a talent and wit that Coulter could only dream of. Coulter is a ham-handed bigot and shameless bomb-thrower. It is also only fair to point out that Dowd spreads it around...she's been very critical of people on both sides of the isle. The only negative thing Coulter ever says about Republicans is that they aren't Regressive enough to suit her.