After three weeks, still no sign of Horowitz's and Poe's "exhaustive" rebuttals to Media Matters' debunking of The Shadow Party
SUMMARY: Three weeks after promising an "exhaustive" and "full-blown" response to Media Matters' extensive critique of their new book, The Shadow Party, David Horowitz and Richard Poe have yet to issue one. Meanwhile, Horowitz and Poe wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal containing a straw man argument to attack Democrats.
On August 2, Media Matters for America posted an extensive critique of David Horowitz's and Richard Poe's new book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (Nelson Current, 2006), exposing the book's "doctored quotes, shoddy scholarship, factual errors, and baseless insinuations on matters both small and large." Responding to Media Matters, Horowitz and Poe both promised "exhaustive" and "full-blown" rebuttals. One week later, the promised refutations were nowhere to be found, though Poe updated his original post in response to an August 9 Media Matters item noting the absence to date of the promised rebuttal, claiming that they were taking so long because he and Horowitz were "preparing an effective rebuttal -- that is, a rebuttal which is concise, well-crafted, copiously documented and intellectually honest -- rather than one which is verbose, rambling, confusing, digressive, sloppily composed and filled with cheap sophistry, as was Media Matters' original Bill of Particulars." Poe added: "Let me assure our friends at Media Matters that, when they finally receive our rebuttal, they will regret having asked for it."
Three weeks after Media Matters' original critique, there is still no sign of the "concise, well-crafted, copiously documented and intellectually honest" rebuttal from Horowitz or Poe for which Media Matters would "regret having asked."
On August 10, one day after declaring that Media Matters would "regret" its pursuit of their promised response, Poe posted yet another update to his ShadowParty.com blog, claiming: "We are attempting to carry on a rational discussion with the folks at Media Matters, that is, a discussion which proceeds step by step, one issue at a time. Evidently, they are not interested in having such a discussion." First they promised to respond in one fell swoop; then they claimed to be engaging in a "step by step" discussion to address "one issue at a time." Which is it?
Since that time, Horowitz and Poe have popped up in the media to continue their smear campaign against George Soros and Media Matters. Most recently, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from Horowitz and Poe written in response to Soros's August 15 Journal op-ed (subscription required) on the "counterproductive and self-defeating policies" inspired by the "war on terror." Horowitz and Poe wrote:
Has the Democratic Party become a cult? And is left-wing billionaire George Soros its guru? ("A Self-Defeating War," editorial page, Aug. 15). The chorus of hosannas with which left-wing bloggers now greet Mr. Soros's silliest utterances -- and the faithfulness with which Democratic leaders repeat them -- suggests that the answer to both questions is yes.
Take the current Democratic mantra that if there are terrorists in the world, George Bush has created them. This is a familiar Soros-ism. As he has done many times before, Mr. Soros decries President Bush's characterization of the global conflict as a "war on terror" as "a misleading figure of speech applied literally [which] has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts -- Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia -- a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world ... we can escape it only if we Americans repudiate the war on terror as a false metaphor."
The Islamic jihad was on the march -- and killing Americans -- for 20 years before George Bush employed the metaphor. Back in 1979, the streets of Tehran were already filled with a million frenzied Muslims chanting "Death to America," and the 9/11 attacks were themselves hardly in response to anything the American president had said.
But because this judgment is the considered wisdom of a billionaire whose network controls the purse strings of the Democratic Party, this is now the foreign policy of the liberal opposition. When George Soros speaks, Democrats listen.
Horowitz and Poe's claim is a straw man -- neither Soros nor the Democratic Party has argued that President Bush has created all the terrorists in the world, much less made the argument a "Democratic mantra." Indeed, the portion of Soros's op-ed they quoted in their letter in no way supports their claim that this argument "is a familiar Soros-ism."
"...What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it..."
[link to www.amconmag.com]
Read this and see if it helps put things together. And the neo-cons will always label someone anti-jewish who questions the U.S. support of Israel.
bexter, Thanks for the link!
It pretty much CONFIRMS a lot of what I've thought all along.
The eeriest part of THIS article [written in 2003] is how it CLEARY predicted "current events" and ALL the "players" involved.
Please everyone take the time to read it, AND IF you need MORE proof take a gander at this article [start with THIS snippet]:
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**"The Iranians know the world will do nothing," he said. "This is similar to the world's attempts to appease Hitler in the 1930s - they are trying to feed the beast."
He said there was a need to understand that "when push comes to shove," Israel would have to be prepared to "slow down" the Iranian nuclear threat by itself.
Having said this, he did not rule out the possibility of US military action, but said that if this were to take place, it would probably not occur until the spring or summer of 2008, a few months before President George W. Bush leaves the international stage. The US presidential elections, which Bush cannot contest because of term limits, are in November 2008.**
[link to www.jpost.com]
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Mmmmmm, does anyone else HERE think Israel KNOWS something???
THE TRUTH !
I think we've heard as much from them as we ever will.
They'll rear their ugly heads again, like Coulter, to spit vemon and then shrink back into the shadows when the light of truth strikes them.
Horowitz was a guest last week when Thom Hartmann subbed for Randi Rhodes on Air America. Hartmann is one of smartest talk show hosts on either side of the spectrum and Horowitz was certainly no match for him. Hartmann asked specifically when Horowitz would release his thorough rebuttal of Media Matters critque. Howowitz answer: he dodged the question several times and then finally blurted out he was working on it then quickly changed the subject to something else. Hartmann usually lets his guests and callers make their points without interruption, but as a right wing pundit, Horowitz knows the rule is don't let the host or other guests complete a single sentence. It was great fun listening to Hartmann adopt that style with Horowitz. I am sure David was expecting to bully this host. In this case, the bully was bested.
i wish aa could find room for him somewhere. he is incredibly informed. i like to think i have a good grasp of history and politics, but he comes up with things i never knew. supreme court decisions in the 1870's, etc. he's entertaining too.
You'd think if Media Matter's item was "verbose, rambling, confusing, digressive, sloppily composed and filled with cheap sophistry" it would be easy to debunk rather QUICKLY.
3 weeks later, they're still in their neocon lab making crap up.
Non-denial-denial. He is saying MMFA's column was wordy. hard to follow and immature what he was NOT saying was it was wrong or false. One of the really helpful tools in following political debates is to recognize a non-denial-denial when you see one. I can, this is one.
In Horowitz' mind, the threat of a rebuttal is stronger than the actual rebuttal.
When we were little kids, we used to say, "I'm gonna get you! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I will get you back!"
Horowitz's argument seems derivative of playground banter. At least a little more transparently so than the usual rhetoric we read and hear these days.
Since like just about everything Poe and Horowitz write, they simply make up stuff and then run away.
[link to conwebwatch.tripod.com]
[link to conwebwatch.tripod.com]
to try and argue with the facts. poe and horowitz are just plumb wore out.
The posited lie is the right wing's favorite debate technique. In debate, a posited truth is a truth which people on both sides of a debate accept as true as a jumping off point for the debate. The right wing has perfected this technique but replacing it with a posited lie. The posited lie, if accepted, almost always leads to concensus conclusion.
In the 2000 campaign, right wingers asserted that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. This was a lie, but if you accepted the lie, then the aimed-for conclusion (that Al Gore was a liar/exagerator) was, logically, correct. Another classic example of a posited lie is the assertion that Joe Wilson had claimed that Vice President Cheney had commissioned his trip to Niger. Again, this is false, but has been widely accepted in the media and is used to justify Cheney's efforts to "set the record straight" concerning Wilson's motives and conclusions as well as to attack his honesty.
Most recently, Republicans have been circulating the posited lies that a desire to withdraw from Iraq equals a desire to abandon the "war" on terrorism and that those who support Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling on warrantless wiretapping are against wiretapping terrorists altogether.
These posited lies are insidious and obvious, but there is a grave danger in not responding to them every time they are used. All too often the media picks them up and the debate begins from an unwinnable possition. My great thanks to Media Matters for its work in this area.
Excellent analysis! The "posited lie" is different from mere "spin", because it assumes the premise. It is different from a mere "talking point", because it assumes a status beyond partisanship; i.e. a "FACT".
We must continue to forward, with reasoned presentation of course, that the rightwing ABSOLUTELY HAS TO LIE in order to try to make their policy points.
It's almost an unfair advantage to the Liberals, since telling the actual TRUTH (i.e. "Bush invaded Iraq to combat the threat of WMDs; Saddam HAD NO WMDs.") is sufficient to prove the Republicans both wrong and dangerous to the nation.