Jonah Goldberg goes on C-SPAN and then attacks progressive callers who dared to talk to him

After sitting for a three-hour interview with C-SPAN on November 7, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote two posts on National Review Online complaining about progressives who called into C-SPAN to question him.

In one post, he complained that there “was a significant share of stupidity and asininity from some callers, but much less than I had any right to expect.” In a second post, he claimed that “a plurality of the lefty callers were simply obsessed with race,” claimed that “many liberals ... can't conceive of the idea that their ideological opponents aren't racists,” and called another progressive caller “a jerk.”

Goldberg also seemed upset that someone would mention Media Matters for America to him, writing: “I suspect that one or two of them were professionally invested in the topic (the guy who plugged FAIR and Media Matters smelled like a seminar caller to me).”

I haven't listened to the whole three-hour interview, but it's hard to think that these callers could possibly have been more defamatory to conservatives than Goldberg is to progressives. After all, Goldberg has written a book called Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, has claimed that “you can draw a line, but it's not a straight one” from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and has suggested that Hitler was a liberal.