As I go through the Spring cleaning process of removing cobwebs from my mind I find from time to time the need to question my own tribe, the political liberal. One phenomenon I have noticed is the liberal’s need to censor speech he finds offensive. I got a dose of this first hand about a year ago when I visited a liberal blog, expressed a sentiment slightly off the “talking points” and found myself ridiculed and worse, discovered some of my comments edited. But let’s not make this about me. Let’s look at a famous recent case.
Rush Limbaugh referred to Sandra Fluke, a congressional committee witness, as a slut. He was making an absurd point about her birth control testimony. It was crude and offensive. He eventually offered an apology of sorts. But what ensued after his original statement seems typical of the left. Petitions went out immediately to urge sponsors to drop his show. The goal no doubt was to either shut him up or put him off the air. Now I personally have no use for Rush Limbaugh but the far more effective strategy in my book is to argue with him. Go head to head with him. Write about his foolishness so it gets the disinfectant of media attention. But why the need to fire him? Why the need to silence him? Groups like change.org and Daily Kos spend a good amount of time trying to financially punish people with whom they disagree. Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against boycotts to encourage proper corporate behavior but to curtail free speech? To me that’s a bit much.
Contrast this with the conservative reaction to conservative commentator S.E. Cupp’s being defamed in Hustler magazine. Cupp was photo-shopped to appear as though she were fellating a disembodied penis. Accompanying the fake picture was Hustler’s political “justification” for creating it. I have not read a single article about conservatives calling for the firing of Larry Flynt or the termination of his magazine. Despite the incredibly vulgar attack against Cupp, the most I have seen conservatives do is yell loud and clear about the liberal (and feminist) double standard that keeps them from repudiating this kind of attack when a conservative is the victim.
Another example, actually the one that moved me to write this piece, occurred in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an April article, writer Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote about the topics of Black Studies theses at certain universities. Her piece was titled “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.” She found a bunch of dissertations that she considered liberal “claptrap”. She has a right to her opinion. After being attacked for the piece, she wrote a follow-up, not apologizing but defending her original article. At that point, she was summarily fired and the Chronicle issued this apology:
When we published Naomi Schaefer Riley’s blog posting on Brainstorm last week (“The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations”), several thousand of you spoke out in outrage and disappointment that The Chronicle had published an article that did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us.
We’ve heard you, and we have taken to heart what you said.
We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. As a result, we have asked Ms. Riley to leave the Brainstorm blog.
So, all it takes is several thousand whining liberals to break this magazine’s backbone and throw their employee under the bus? The Chronicle knew what they were getting when they hired Riley. What the heck does “fairness in opinion articles” mean? When is opinion ever “fair”? Opinion is by definition biased. But Riley violated the critical liberal law of “don’t criticize black people”. And so she was canned. As an aside, Riley is married to a black man.
If conservatives, on the other hand tried to silence vitriolic rhetoric from the left, Keith Olbermann’s career would have been ended by conservatives and not by …. Keith Olbermann. Ed Schulz who called Laura Ingraham a slut would have been fired long ago. (He was admonished and he did apologize but I doubt it was from any boycott campaign by conservatives.)
Bottom line, to me conservatives tend to fight fire with fire while liberals fight fire with “get him fired.”
I noticed recently that one of my conservative readers started quoting from liberal media sources, sources that he had previously derided. He helped me understand why and tonight I got a full blast of confirmation. You see, the liberal media is starting to turn on Barack Obama and conservative Obama-haters everywhere no longer need to seek refuge at Fox “News” to get their daily fix of Obama-ass-kicking. (That’s Obama being kicked, not the other way around.)
Tonight, Obama spent about 15 minutes broadcasting from the Oval Office his plan of action for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. Oh wait a minute, there was no discernible plan discussed. Forget O’Reilly, Hannity or Limbaugh. Keith Olbermann, yes the left’s answer to the Fox stable of opinion-meisters, was nearly apoplectic at the conclusion of Obama’s address tonight. He wasn’t alone. His guests, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman piled on too.
Nearly everyone on the left defined tonight as Obama’s opportunity to make the Kennedy-moon-mission speech with the new mission being energy independence. It didn’t happen. At one moment it came close. You see, Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to Earth. He threw down the gauntlet and let the details take care of themselves. That is what a President is supposed to do. He is NOT supposed to tell the American people we will change our energy policy …. I don’t know how but it is going to happen. What do you mean, you don’t know how? You don’t need to say that. That is not what we want to hear from you. Then, to add insult to injury the ghosts of George W and Sarah Palin appeared as Obama told us that with God’s help everything would work out. Is God a new cabinet appointee? Is prayer a substitute for good domestic policy? Is the Holy Father going to clean up MMS?
From day 1, Obama could kiss conservative support goodbye. His only hope of political survival is a loyal base. This base is looking for boldness. We didn’t see it tonight. Obama truly could have skipped tonight’s address and he’d be no worse off.
Memo to the President: You know you are in trouble when conservatives eagerly tune to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to see you get eviscerated.
Children’s fantasies and fables are one of the most effective ways of helping us see our folly as adults. One story that I always cite is that of Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches, a band of creatures who learned that what they had in common was much more important than what separated them.
We live in a time of extremism. Political litmus tests are the rule of the day, not the exception. We see it on the right and the left. If you don’t toe the far left or far right party line you’re vulnerable to attack. Moderation cannot be tolerated. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was an example of how Republicans will start to eat their own. Even mild-mannered Tim Pawlenty felt compelled to use golf club swinging (ala Tiger Woods’ wife) analogies to make his point. From my experience following fellow liberals on Twitter the rhetoric is often just as extreme and intolerant of moderation. This movement toward the extremes carries with it a diminishing intellectual curiosity and contributes to the dumbing down of America.
Thanks to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, I’ve stumbled upon another fable that is instructive and speaks to man’s insistence on conformity to a strict set of rules. If you don’t conform, you’ll find the folks you thought were friends are your worst enemies. Olbermann read this fable by James Thurber on Monday night’s edition of “Countdown”. It resonated with me and I hope it resonates with you.
The Peacelike Mongoose
by James Thurber
In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn’t want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn’t want to fight cobras. If he didn’t want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.
‘Why’ asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went around that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.
‘He is crazy,’ cried the young mongoose’s father.
‘He is sick,’ said his mother.
‘He is a coward,’ shouted his brothers.
‘He is a mongoosexual,’ whispered his sisters.
Strangers who never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying on cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoosia.
‘I am trying to use reason and intelligence,’ said the strange new mongoose.
‘Reason is six-sevenths of treason,’ said one of his neighbours.
‘Intelligence is what the enemy uses,’ said another.
Finally, the rumour spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.
MORAL: Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if the enemy doesn’t get you your own folks may.
This week is the week for giving thanks and probably a time for a bit of introspection and humility. Of course, one of the things I’m thankful for are the folks who read my blog, the modest set of folks who follow me on Twitter and the handful of folks who listen to my Internet radio show. As I was finishing off a slice of pumpkin pie last night it occurred to me that eating a couple of slices of humble pie might be appropriate for today’s post.
The first slice involves a topic that I have never written about in the main body of the blog but I have mildly debated it within the comments section. I am one of those who champions the notion of climate change and calls climate change skeptics ignorant neanderthals. So, man did I have egg on my face earlier this week when some emails unearthed by a hacker revealed some shenanigans going on with the data supporting global warming. Apparently the following damning sentence was found in email exchanged among scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
When scientists use the words “trick” and “hide” it’s natural for us ordinary folks to become a bit concerned. Climate change advocates say the sentence was taken out of context. Climate change skeptics are ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. While I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water, this incident does make me reevaluate what government’s role should be in science. I am almost ready to say that our founding principle of separation of church and state should be extended to separation of science and state. I think it ‘s worth investigating whether science becomes contaminated when politicized. I haven’t figured out when is the proper juncture for government to act on the findings of science but I think in the case of climate change it has become uncertain who is the cart and who is the horse. Scientists have always had a problem with pride of ownership that can interfere with their objectivity, but this is doubly compounded when politicians get involved and the stakes for being wrong get too high. If you think a scientist has a problem being wrong, you haven’t seen anything until you look at politicians. Clearly the “climate change movement” has taken a bad credibility hit. We need to restore objectivity and get the politicians out of this for a while (do you hear me, Al Gore?).
The second slice of humble pie involves some intellectual dishonesty on my part. Such dishonesty usually comes back to kick one in the ass and this week I did indeed get my ass kicked. Back in September, I published an article about a census taker in Kentucky who was found hanged under mysterious circumstances. I used the event to prove that the evil right-wing was on the march. The worst offense was the following claim:
Much of the media is approaching this story with caution. Clearly, the investigation is just beginning and this could be either a very bizarre suicide or a “prank” homicide completely unrelated to any political agenda. If either case proves to be true, we should still stop and contemplate this moment. Regardless of what really happened, what are many of us thinking right now and why?
Well, I should have approached the story with much more caution, like not have written about it in the first place. It turns out that the terminally ill census taker staged his own murder so his son could get the insurance. The best part is when I say that regardless of the facts we should still contemplate what happened. This kind of reminds me of when my buddy Rush Limbaugh found out that an Obama thesis story he had covered was a hoax and then said the fiction was consistent with fact and therefore didn’t deserve a retraction.
Well friends, sometimes emotional fervor interferes with clear thinking. When the facts of the case dictate that some right-wing looney tune has gone off the deep end, then and only then is it appropriate to get one’s bowels in an uproar about it. You probably won’t see Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow say “my bad” about this one, but you will see me say it.
MY BAD and I hope you all had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!
It’s kind of a shame. I’m a nice liberal. I feel for my conservative brethren and I’ve warned them repeatedly that their behavior will get them nowhere fast. Yet they persist in childish obstructionism, total lack of original thought and at times downright nasty rhetoric. The Whigs managed to get two Presidents elected in the mid 19th century. They actually got four for their trouble since both elected Presidents (Harrison and Taylor) died in office leaving two VP’s to step into the Oval Office. When Millard Fillmore finished his term, that was the last we heard of the Whigs. In 1860, the Republicans got their first electoral victory and a fine victory it was too, none other than Abraham Lincoln. The Republican track record has been considerably better than the Whigs. Alas, I think the show is almost over. Look what happens, conservative ladies and gentlemen when you ignore my advice.
Who Would You Vote for Today?
The Washington Post and ABC News asked a random sample of about 1000 adults which party they would put in the House of Representatives if the election was today. The GOP gets whupped by a whopping 12 points. The news doesn’t get much better with the next question.
Who do you have confidence in? Obama, Democratic Congressmen or Republican Congressmen?
Who Inspires Your Confidence?
Congress as a whole doesn’t come out looking too good here. Obama does not crack 50 but even among the sad Congressional numbers, the GOP is pathetic. The GOP’s decision making ability inspires the confidence of not even 20% of those polled.
You might suspect from these numbers that not too many people even want to be called Republicans anymore. You would be right.
Folks who call themselves GOP'ers
As Keith Olbermann correctly pointed out tonight on MSNBC’s “Countdown”, this is worse than a five percent drop since August (at the peak of Tea Party mania). It actually says that one in five folks since August have disassociated themselves from the Republican party.
So what happens when a party becomes irrelevant? One thing that happens is that serious people start to simply ignore them. Since they now have no one outside the party with which to engage, they are left to talk amongst themselves and this can get pretty ugly. I wrote a short time ago that the Republican party was starting to eat itself as town hall rowdy’s attacked one of their own, Lindsay Graham. Yet another example occurred a few days ago at the Western Conservative Political Action Conference. John Ziegler, a radio talk show host with a major hard-on for Sarah Palin (he made a documentary about how she was abused by the media) interviewed the head of the CPAC, David Keene. Keene had made the grave mistake of accusing Palin of “whining” and other behavior unbecoming of a Presidential hopeful.
Now, if you haven’t noticed, you have to search far and wide to find any leading conservative who will call out Ms. Palin for her amateur hour audition for a place in national politics. Keene violated this rule. (Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign adviser violated it also but backed off his comments a few days later.) So Sarah’s valiant defender, Mr. Ziegler went up one side of Keene and down the other. The following two part video is long but instructive to Republicans who might want to stop internal bickering and start providing real leadership. For liberals, it’s just a hoot to watch! In part 1, the “interview” between Ziegler and Keene starts out well enough, but soon deteriorates.
As part 2 gets underway, Keene is now thoroughly irritated and suggests that Ziegler is deserving of physical violence.
Democrats fight among themselves all the time. That is one reason health care reform is so long in coming this year. The Democrats can’t get out of each other’s way (can you spell bluedogs?). Usually Republicans are an efficient single minded by the book voting machine. That is why these bursting seams are so unexpected and so symptomatic of a party in self destruct mode.
OK, let me try this one more time. My Republican friends, please follow my prescription:
1. Kick Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint and various other loony tunes to the side.
2. Try coming up with some original ideas, some alternatives that people can get behind. Right now we have a one party system.
3. Turn the other cheek and show Obama more respect than your man Bush got during his terms. This will buy you truck loads of good will.
If you don’t heed my warning this time, I can assure you that your grandchildren’s history books will read:
The first great Republican President was Abraham Lincoln and the last one was Ronald Reagan. After the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, the GOP never won another election and ceased to exist altogether in 2011.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson’s words kick started this great experiment we call the United States of America. Our country is founded on the notion that we have a right to live. Tonight I watched MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” in which he devoted the entire hour to a “special comment” on the health care debate raging right now in our country. He presented the issue in stark and easy to understand terms. We are talking about life and death.
The truth is that Barack Obama has made a mistake. He has framed the health care debate in dollars and cents. Reform will lower our deficit. Baloney. Maybe reform, done properly, will lower costs down the line but that is NOT the reason to pursue health care reform. This is a moral issue. By focusing on finances we obscure the fact that it is morally criminal to let people die because they cannot afford to get well. Quite frankly if we double the deficit, so what? Isn’t it time that we stepped up and ensured people their unalienable right to live?
A close friend made an observation tonight that really resonated with me. She asked about our military spending. She pointed out Conservative’s eagerness to throw more money and more bodies into Afghanistan. Why do we fight wars? Ultimately, we fight wars because we do not want to die. We fight wars to preserve life in America as we know it. Yet these same hawks do not want to spend a dime of government money to fight the enemy right here at home, namely disease.
Near the end of Keith Olbermann’s impassioned plea for empathy among his fellow Americans, he told a heart breaking story. On the way out of the hospital visiting his father, he ran into an old childhood friend whom he had not seen in some time. The friend said that his daughter was in ICU with a case of Lyme disease that had gone from bad to worse. He would now have to sell his farm to pay her medical bills. Olbermann contrasted that with his own case where he could afford the best medicine money could buy for his father. This brought to the fore a question plain as day. What is wrong with a country that decides who lives or dies based on one’s position in society? That is India with its caste system. That is not America.
There is a small amount of momentum building toward changing this shameful state of the American health care system. We can only hope that the momentum continues to grow and that our politicians forget about the deep pockets of the insurance industry and do what is right for our country.
Liberty and the pursuit of happiness may be lofty goals but is it too much to ask that we just get a chance to stay alive?
OK. I know this is not of any great significance but it gets under my skin all the same.
Back in May, Rachel Maddow was subbing for host Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s “Countdown” when she was discussing precedents for presidential impeachment. Along the way she made a remark about the impeachment of “Andrew Jackson”. Ehhhhhh, no. The president in question was Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln’s successor. At least Rachel corrected herself after the commercial break.
Last night, when David Shuster was subbing for Keith Olbermann it was deja vu all over again. This time the trivia tidbit was that “Andrew Jackson” had pardoned the entire Confederacy in an act of reconciliation. Yikes! There was no Confederacy to pardon when Jackson was president (waaaay before the Civil War). Again, the president in question was Andrew Johnson.
Could it be that Keith Olbermann is more careful about what he is reading off the teleprompter so he catches these dumb mistakes before they leave his lips while his substitute hosts can’t seem to keep up? I don’t know what the problem is but I wish the “Countdown” research staff and the substitute hosts would get their act together, at least for the sake of the kids who might be watching and may want to learn something.
Needless to say I’ll be paying close attention to “Countdown” on Friday, November 21 when whoever is hosting the show that night makes the following faux pas:
Tomorrow marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Approximately two hours after the shooting, Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.
Why Do Liberals Censor?
Rush Limbaugh referred to Sandra Fluke, a congressional committee witness, as a slut. He was making an absurd point about her birth control testimony. It was crude and offensive. He eventually offered an apology of sorts. But what ensued after his original statement seems typical of the left. Petitions went out immediately to urge sponsors to drop his show. The goal no doubt was to either shut him up or put him off the air. Now I personally have no use for Rush Limbaugh but the far more effective strategy in my book is to argue with him. Go head to head with him. Write about his foolishness so it gets the disinfectant of media attention. But why the need to fire him? Why the need to silence him? Groups like change.org and Daily Kos spend a good amount of time trying to financially punish people with whom they disagree. Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against boycotts to encourage proper corporate behavior but to curtail free speech? To me that’s a bit much.
Contrast this with the conservative reaction to conservative commentator S.E. Cupp’s being defamed in Hustler magazine. Cupp was photo-shopped to appear as though she were fellating a disembodied penis. Accompanying the fake picture was Hustler’s political “justification” for creating it. I have not read a single article about conservatives calling for the firing of Larry Flynt or the termination of his magazine. Despite the incredibly vulgar attack against Cupp, the most I have seen conservatives do is yell loud and clear about the liberal (and feminist) double standard that keeps them from repudiating this kind of attack when a conservative is the victim.
Another example, actually the one that moved me to write this piece, occurred in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an April article, writer Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote about the topics of Black Studies theses at certain universities. Her piece was titled “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations.” She found a bunch of dissertations that she considered liberal “claptrap”. She has a right to her opinion. After being attacked for the piece, she wrote a follow-up, not apologizing but defending her original article. At that point, she was summarily fired and the Chronicle issued this apology:
So, all it takes is several thousand whining liberals to break this magazine’s backbone and throw their employee under the bus? The Chronicle knew what they were getting when they hired Riley. What the heck does “fairness in opinion articles” mean? When is opinion ever “fair”? Opinion is by definition biased. But Riley violated the critical liberal law of “don’t criticize black people”. And so she was canned. As an aside, Riley is married to a black man.
If conservatives, on the other hand tried to silence vitriolic rhetoric from the left, Keith Olbermann’s career would have been ended by conservatives and not by …. Keith Olbermann. Ed Schulz who called Laura Ingraham a slut would have been fired long ago. (He was admonished and he did apologize but I doubt it was from any boycott campaign by conservatives.)
Bottom line, to me conservatives tend to fight fire with fire while liberals fight fire with “get him fired.”
Respectfully,
Rutherford
Art by Ian Marsden from Montpellier (Rush Limbaugh by Ian Marsden) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
June 1, 2012 at 5:41 pm Rutherford 118 comments