It’s always interesting to me how the right wing reacts to certain articles that espouse ideas that are so close to their own. Most especially when those ideas are from the most hated of enemies, the despised New York Times. Catapulting the propaganda via the right wing blogsphere. From Memeorandum:
A War We Just Might Win — VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility.
You’ll notice a few similar points repeated over and over: The two writers are “liberals” from a “liberal think tank”, Brookings Institution. Neither is really true. Anyone who thinks that Brookings is liberal hasn’t been paying attention.
This smells of a well organized propaganda campaign if ever there was one. “Liberals say the war in Iraq can be won.” Good headline that. And, it’s great fodder for the spinning masses, who can reverse the direction and turn it into something like: The War The Dems May Lose. Brilliant. But, ultimately misguided. Lies come apart. A lesson that these clowns can’t seem to quite comprehend.
And, this isn’t the first time that Kenneth Pollack, the co-writer of the NY Times article above, has carried water for the Bush White House. He did so in August of 2006 in the Washington Post:
Much as Americans may want to believe that the United States can just walk away from Iraq should it slide into all-out civil war, the threat of spillover from such a conflict throughout the Middle East means it can’t. Instead, Washington will have to devise strategies to deal with refugees, minimize terrorist attacks emanating from Iraq, dampen the anger in neighboring populations caused by the conflict, prevent secession fever and keep Iraq’s neighbors from intervening. The odds of success are poor, but, nonetheless, we have to try.
In essence: “Stay the coarse.”, which was the Cheney Administration mantra, and remains so today. I wonder who sent the e-mail to all of the right wing shills above alerting them to the NY Times article this morning? Nicely done. But, pretty obvious.
Of particular note is how the wingnuts swallow this fish whole. No calls for confirmation of the points in the article, as they’ve done with Scott Thomas Beachamp. Considering that the article is in the evil librul traitorous New York Times, you’d think that would neuter the credibility of the article, right?
Yet, there it is, in black and white and they love it. LOVE IT.
Update 3: McQ at The Qando Blog steps up and begins the spin when he writes :
The SNAFU Principle has decided reaction to this particular article today smacks of a conspiracy. The proof?
“You’ll notice a few similar points repeated over and over: The two writers are “liberals” from a “liberal think tank”, Brookings Institution.”
Huh. We’re listed with the conspiratorial cabal, but as I scan the post, the words “liberal” and “Brookings Institution” are nowhere to be found. What, did I miss the memo?
And to seal the deal, to make the conspiracy claim irrefutable, he declares breathlessly in an update:Update: Atrios agrees. So does John Cole, and Glenn Greenwald.
Oh, well run up the white flag, the big three have spoken. Yeesh.
The name of the post? Uh, “The right wing echo chamber has a party”. Yeah, I know … irony impaired. At least the blog lives up to its name.
Of course no mention of the substance of the article, not that any was expected.
Interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, McQ seems to think that simply because the words “liberal” and “Brookings Institution” aren’t in HIS posting, that I am wrong, because, you know, I MUST have been talking specifically about HIS blog. Well, no. Sorry, I don’t read it. But, if one is to, oh I don’t know, think about it for a moment, the liberal New York Times, the liberal think tank Brookings… Not a great jump in logic or facts there McQ. Click on some of the dozens of other links I provide, well, it’s pretty obvious. And, it’s quite clear that the word “Liberal” and “Brookings” and “liberal” and “New York Times” go together in the minds of many on the right. Playing childish games doesn’t alter that. But, I’ll give McQ a A for effort. A C- for execution since he falls onto the tried and true “tin foil” hat offensive attack. Poke that puppy with a stick.
Second, I never said it was a conspiracy. I simply said it was a good example of how the echo chamber worked. And, one way it works is via e-mail to a few of the bigger bloggers and it rolls from there. Same thing happens on the left. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s how propaganda is catapulted. Give it a nice kick, and the masses of true believers, like McQ, will eat it up and do all the work. The blogsphere is fantastic in this regard. But, it also shows a level of informational organization (and ideological group think) when so many link to a single article so quickly. Especially when that article is an Op-Ed in the NY Times, it being one of those places that the right loves to link to so frequently, the hub of extremist right wing thought that it is…
My further point was also quite clear: the massive linking was an example of how the right has no compunction about dismissing liberals, except when when fake liberals spout right wing talking points. (See Joe Lieberman) They get pretty gold stars when they can call people who espouse conservative ideas liberals, in some twisted exercise in proving that all liberals were wrong because a select few from the ranks disagree. The Times functions in that way as well. “Read what it says in the New York Times, of all places” is crowed. Add to it the little bit of cognitive dissonance about the NY Times being the citadel of hated liberalism except when it’s spouting right wing talking points… It’s an important observation that is shared by many.
McQ doesn’t address the fact that neither O’Hanlon or Pollack, or Brookings for that matter, are not actually liberal. It’s a misrepresentation that is used to the advantage of the right. Nor does he address the selectiveness of the right in embracing the hated NY Times when it suits their agenda. A clarly propagandistic practice in both instances.
Third, I didn’t address the “facts” in the O’Hanlon and Pollack article simply because I felt that three of the links I provided, Greenwald’s,Think Progress, and Media Matters had already covered that ground more than adequately. Perhaps McQ didn’t click on them or read them, so he was ill informed.
Finally, McQ seems to not understand exactly what the SNAFU Principle is… and gets hung up on that first word. Pretty typical. It’s a lot of syllables to be sure, and literary. Here’s a clue, McQ. Maybe you should read the book.
So, in the end, it’s rather telling that McQ decides to invoke the tinfoil hat attack, and the condescending attack, when it is plainly clear what I was saying. It must have hit pretty close to the mark to get him all riled up like that, don’t ya think? Maybe he’s just upset cause he never got an invite to the party.
(Correction: For some reason, the WaPo quote that I placed in the final draft reverted back to one I had in a prior draft. The blockquote code in the Memeorandum quote seems to be the culprit. I’ve corrected it.)
It would appear that Fox News online has seen fit to publish an AP article verbatim. So what you say?
Well, according to the ever intrepid and on top of it propaganda bozos over at Newsbusters, the AP article in question is proof of the liberal media conspiracy that “ AP Shills for MoveOn, Daily Kos Campaign Against Fox News”. It’s not possible that AP was simply reporting a story, as Fox News was…
Irony thy cut is deep. (Google cache of the Fox link, just for kicks.)
Over at the aptly named Hot Air, Bryan links to the Fox News posting of the AP story and writes:
To the simple minded ideologue, it’s fascism/communism/insert boogeyman here when the left does it. But, when the right does the very same thing? It’s perfectly fine.
The following comment from a GOPUSA forum thread on this topic sums it up:
This begining to look like communism more and more every day. Getting rid of the competition so they can have a clear field.
Frightening, isn’t it? Ideology kills brain cells. There’s the proof.
The following comment is from this post at Flopping Aces:
All an unannounced republican has to do is stay that way for a few more months. Shrillary will destroy the Islamic candidate and in the process destroy herself. Talk about no 08 candidate. the democrats have dug up ever dead dog they can find and as usual it’s a comedy. Even the soon dead MSM can help them this time (they all like to listen to themselves talk), running a criminal with a history back to the sticks of Ark and a radical Islamist who lies like all Islamist that he isn’t a radical or an Islamist. He is or he would be dead. Islam spent 8 years planning 9-11 and Islam has spent 30 years planning to get an Islamist in the white house and the democrats are too stupid to see what is in front of their eyes. BDS has already progressed to insanity, probably pushed on faster by the democrats heavy drug use. A socialist/communist and an Islamist are the leading democrats. ROFLMAO
The “unannounced candidate” would be Fred Thompson, “Islamic candidate” is apparently Barack Obama (even though-ahem- he’s not a Muslim.) Note how “Islam” has become an evil sentient being, with thoughts, and goals meant to destroy us all. Also, note the level of paranoia. It’s tickles your monkey tail, doesn’t it?
Ironically (and sadly), in the same comment thread, directly above was this brilliant piece of propaganda inspired pablum:
It’s simply amazing how fast and far left the democrats have turned. The do nothing democrat congress is praying for a “gotchya” sentence and/or sound bite to bring home to their nutroot base.
Remember to the Democrats, battling terrorism is a mere bumper sticker.
Marvel at the idiocy that is the base of the right wing. It’s so breathtaking as to be a thing of pure beauty. Yet, remember that these are the rabid racist and moronic dogs who would have no problem with seeing “their side” take over power for good. All in the name of “democracy” no doubt.
It’s become obvious to even the most casual observer, who isn’t a Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid Kid™, that laws have been broken and continue to be broken by members of the Bush / Cheney Administration. From the Op-Ed page of the Atlanta Constitution-Journal:
In theory, President Bush is sworn to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. In reality, he has treated federal law as a menu from which he picks and chooses those laws he likes, while ignoring those that do not suit his taste.
That royalist attitude may soon inspire a constitutional confrontation unrivaled in U.S. history.
At the moment, the president’s penchant for ignoring laws he finds inconvenient is best displayed in the standoff with Congress over subpoenas. Congress has demanded the sworn testimony of White House officials as part of an investigation into the Justice Department; the White House is refusing to allow that testimony, citing executive privilege.
In itself, that conflict is hardly unusual; it continues a traditional contest of wills between presidents and Congress that goes back to the earliest days of the Republic. The conflict is so standard that federal law lays out a clear process for resolving it. If witnesses refuse to honor congressional subpoenas and are found in contempt, the matter is referred to the U.S. attorney from Washington, D.C., “whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”
The wording of that law doesn’t give the U.S. attorney any leeway. It doesn’t say that he or she “can” or “may” bring it before the grand jury. It says he or she “shall” bring the matter to the grand jury, so the courts can resolve the conflict between the other two branches of government.
Bush, however, claims the right to ignore that law. He not only refuses to allow his aides to testify, he refuses to allow the U.S. attorney to refer the matter to the grand jury, as the law says he must. In essence, Bush is denying Congress access to the courts as an impartial arbiter of their dispute.
It’s visible for all to see – a basic lack of respect for the law of the land is fostered by those two good ‘ol boys at the top. And, it most definitely trickles down. There are dozens of examples of this disrespect in action, from the use of signing statements to Gonzales most recent testimony to Cheney’s game of “Catch Me If You Can” where he was a part of the Executive Branch, then he wasn’t, then he was again. The most egregious example in my opinion is the joint appearance, not under oath, of Bush and Cheney before the 9/11 Commission. Does it make any sense that the investigation of the most devastating attack on US soil in the history of the nation did not have sworn testimony from the President and Vice President?
The back bone for this hubris is a simple game of shell; wrong doing by the Administration really doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom created by the Evil Librul Media. Even better, if such wrong doing really does exist, it’s justified, because it’s alright to break the laws and disregard constitutional process in pursuit of right wing ideology. In many ways, it’s a Mafia like existence. For decades the Mafia was a shadow organization whose very existence was questioned. “The Mafia doesn’t exist. It’s a myth.” Such went the argument, that was fostered by the Mafia itself. But, today we know that the Mafia did and does indeed exist. We know that laws were broke, people were murdered. And, today, even though there are those who would have us believe that no laws have been broken by the Cheney White House, this is not the case in reality. And, the possibility of impeachment has been brought forth a number of times in a number of different manners.
The primary problem with impeachment is actually choosing who to go after. Bush? Cheney? Gonzales? It’s a mess. Ultimately, without someone going Sammy the Bull on the White House, it will be next to impossible to get an impeachment to stick. It’s important to remember that the Clinton impeachment proceedings were not a foregone conclusion of laws broken and complicity on tape (as was the case with Watergate). The Clinton impeachment was at it’s center a well placed trap, the culmination of a smear campaign called the “Arkansas Project” funded by partisans whose primary goal was to control Clinton by intimidation and to end his presidency. It was both a political ploy meant to pressure him as well as create an atmosphere in which to launch a counter campaign. Scandals are great fodder for dirty campaigns. This goes both ways of course, and part of the current impeachment movement against the Cheney cabal is a knee jerk response to the Clinton impeachment. It’s unavoidable.
In the end, the populace didn’t support the full removal of Clinton from office for lying about sex, and it went no farther than being a procedural footnote. But, it empowered the Bush campaign to run on a platform of bringing moral values back to the White House. And, it worked to a great degree.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this one unfolds. But, the important thing to remember in regard to impeachment is that the crime must be provable and rock solid. There’s the rub… Any impeachment proceedings against the current administration must be defined by the law and more than simply a political vendetta. The American people will know the difference.
Today’s roundup of wingnut wisdom in regard to the Beachamp “issue”:
Shorter Ace of Spades: “Yes, I know it’s not a big story, it’s a small story, a very small story, but damn it, it has the potential of being possibly true and a huge story, once we get all the facts, which we don’t know yet.”
Shorter Confederate Yankee: “The accused, who is guilty, has said nothing that convinces me of his guilt, which proves he’s guilty.”
Shorter Gateway Pundit: “I support the troops, as long as they think like I do, otherwise they are Liberal scum and should die cause all Liberals are guilty of treason.”
Shorter Little Green Footballs: “Beachamp may or may not be married to someone at TNR so it goes to reason that nothing in Beachamp’s article is true.”
This is the wingnut thug tactic in practice. If they don’t like what you say, even if you are a US soldier, they will tear you down and accuse you of all kinds of things, before any real facts are available. In the case of Confederate Yankee, they’ll build a massive mountain of circumstantial evidence and hearsay and assume guilt from the start. It’s breathtaking to behold isn’t it?
It’s a baby form of fascism. Childish but wildly affective with the already brainwashed masses of wingnut loyalists who crave their daily red meat.
Glenn Greenwald wrote on this fascist tactic a little over a year ago, and the post is still germane and worth reading again. Read the second paragraph of the following quote twice, just to savor it’s vision:
Openly speculating about whether journalists and politicians are guilty of treason has become unbelievably common of late. And when those accusations are paired with publication of the traitor’s home address, the intended result is both obvious and inevitable. Anyone who endorses those tactics in any way — or who plays cute, coy games in finding ways to justify or minimize them — knows exactly what they are doing.
As the Bush movement collapses, it is only to be expected that its more fevered adherents will resort to increasingly extremist rhetoric and tactics, out of frustration and anger, if for no other reason. The penetration of these thug tactics into increasingly mainstream venues on the Right is one of the more glaring, and more disturbing, developments of late.
The right is predictable to the core. Remember that. But, that doesn’t mean that they won’t resort to desperate tactics, more vicious that what we’ve seen to date.
Being the more predictable of wing nuts, this obviously applies to Falafel Bill O’Reilly’s recent attacks on Daily Kos. What is increasingly frightening is how it also applies to the primary spokesman for the White House, who traditionally has always made an effort to at least appear as if all sides were part of the larger whole of the American system. No longer.
Bill O’Reilly: [Daily Kos is] like the Ku Klux Klan. It’s like the Nazi party.
Stephen Colbert: Exactly! The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum. —The Colbert Report
Thanks to Noelle Belle over at Crooks and Liars for the link to one of my yarns. C&L does the good work so people like you and I can wake up and drink our coffee knowing that truth does indeed have a heartbeat and a nice dance floor on which to spread out and trip the night fantastic.
Speaking of Crooks & Liars (the blog) and crooks and liars (amongst us): Impeach Gonzales.
An explosive new book by David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, examines the hostility that existed between the Kennedy brothers and their own military, intelligence and enforcement agencies during the JFK administration in the early 1960s. The book also reveals that Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General during his brother’s presidency, believed that JFK was killed by an insider conspiracy of powerful players who didn’t like some of the president’s actions.
It underscores a troubling lesson we seem to never learn: that within all power structures, and certainly within Presidential Administrations, there are often struggles for domination, competing agendas, and subterfuge. Policies and military actions can veer in dangerous directions that have little to do with normal democratic processes.
An extremely salient point. Especially since we are in the middle of such a struggle for domination now. There’s a reason members of the Bush Administration and their fanboys in the media and the blogsphere have been so comfortable accusing anyone who doesn’t believe as they believe or do as they do of being traitors.
Go read the rest of the post, which includes an interview with Talbot.
A few days back, Avedon composed a nice piece about how the right wing noise machine constructs dirty tricks by manipulating unimportant information or “mistakes” in order to create a “news story” that is then spun around the right wing echo chamber to create a “scandal”. An expensive haircut is one of the most popular “mistakes” of choice, and they’ve used it with great success for fifteen years against Clinton, KerryEdwards. An expensive haircut becomes the symbol of that candidates “phoniness”. And, once it enters the echo chamber, it gets hyped and expanded upon like any big fish story, it’s size, price and effect escalating with each telling. It goes without saying that such tall tales are swallowed whole by an eager base of right wing zealots who never question anything “their side” says and believes nothing from “the other side”. Writes Avedon: and
Something that a lot of people don’t seem to get is that when we hear about these “mistakes”, it isn’t because the candidate did something unusual or phony. There was nothing unusual about Edwards getting an expensive haircut – as presidential candidates’ haircuts go, it wasn’t even extravagant. But the press decided to write about it as if it was unusually extravagant, and just left enough facts out to leave that impression with you. An honest article would have told you what the other candidates spend on their haircuts, and why it’s more expensive to get professional grooming on the campaign trail. (It also would have been in the Style section rather than in the news pages.) But they didn’t, because it wasn’t just an amusing article about the little details of campaigning, nor were they trying to inform you – they were just trying to smear Edwards, and that was the sole purpose of making a big deal out of Edwards’ haircut.
If the price of Edwards’ haircuts hadn’t been inadvertently released, they would have found something else – rearranged his words so that they meant something else (as with the Love Canal story in 2000), or changed them (“invented the Internet”), or even fantasized his reasons for wearing a particular suit (“earth tones”).
As Avedon notes, if a “mistake” doesn’t exist, they’ll simply make one up, or use something to their advantage. “Clinton Fatigue” is an example of this. The term was introduced in April 1999 by the Pew Research Center in a poll they conducted entitled “Clinton Fatigue Undermines Gore Poll Standing”. The term and concept was thereafter used by GOP operatives, and regurgitated by the right wing media, in the effort to “convince” the voters that Al Gore was unelectable and would face “a defeat by landslide” because the nation was tired of hearing about and dealing with Clinton. It turned out to be a useful tool to rally the conservative base, as “Clinton Fatigue” is code for “Clinton Hatred”. And, as everyone knows, hate is a great motivator.
The “Clinton Fatigue” attack was, in terms of rallying the base and instilling doubt in the populace, a successful campaign effort against Gore. The mainstream media picked it up and ran with it. IMHO, since Gore mistakenly spent an overabundant amount of time reacting and allowing it to dictate his campaign, it probably cost him that sizable election margin in 2000 that would have secured his ascension to the presidency (even with GOP high jinks in Florida), since he believed the hype too and failed to properly deal with the perception of Clinton Fatigue. The thing was: Clinton had high approval ratings at the end of his presidency. Were people tired of him? Yes, but no more than any other two term president. Yet, the right wing used this to their advantage. Continues Avedon:
The truth about 2000 is that the media looked at a virtually unassailable candidate and a pathetic excuse for a candidate and simply switched the descriptions – you never would have known that it was Al Gore who’d been the captain of the team while George Bush had been a cheerleader, or that Al Gore had really worked (hard!) on the family farm while Bush was just a wastrel who only does fake work on his fake Crawford “ranch” (which would more honestly be called a villa), that Bush grew up rich but Gore did not, and that Gore had a reputation in Washington as a straight-arrow who – like him or not – could never be accused of dishonesty (while Bush was openly lying throughout his campaign about what his tax cuts would do to the national coffers). Twice, the press helped the GOP portray Bush as someone who had “served in uniform” while suggesting that Gore had very nearly sat out the war and Kerry faked his way into getting unearned Purple Hearts.
And, there is an attempt afoot to do this again with Hillary Clinton. How valuable a tool is the “Clinton Fatigue” approach? Consider this: Recently, right wing shill Tom Purcell wrote that he is so “worried” that the Clinton’s ” personal life may become front-page news again.” that he writes 650 words on the topic, titling it “Pre-emptive Clinton Fatigue”, wherein he does exactly what he claims to be so worried about in the first place:: he writes about the Clinton’s personal life! Telling, no?The irony is lost on the true believers. It’s part of the tactic. Shertaugh at Is that Legal? puts it succinctly:
Clinton fatigue was about anything but policy to smear the president’s character. Hence, we get from the GOP that Gore invented the internet. Or Kerry lied about his Vietnam service. Or Edwards is a faggot. Or Obama went to an anti-American madras.
It doesn’t matter who the Democrat[ ] nominee is. For the GOP, its just about creating a storyline that changes the debate from policy to character — on the premise that voters treat character as a proxy for policy savvy and political judgment.
Clinton Fatigue is an excellent example of an essential play in the right wing noise machines dirty trick handbook of diversionary tactics meant to serve two purposes: foster the image that the candidate is “removed from the common man” (morally, financially) and to keep discussion away from the real issues. And, more often than not, Democrats fall for it. So, do many citizens. (Read the comments.) It’s all about twisting reality. “They turn the coward into a hero and the hero into a coward.” Avedon again:
It doesn’t matter how perfect a Democratic candidate is; the press will make them look pallid, phony, weak, and crazy while building up another GOP thug or Alzheimer’s sufferer to look like a bright, shiny hero to the public. The Spite Girls will call the Democrat “cute” little belittling names, Matt Drudge will post misleading headlines, and the rest of the Stepford Press will join in while ignoring much more substantive problems with the Republican. It will happen. You have to be ready to let them have it every single time they do it.(emphasis added)
Avedon is spot on. We have call them on their lies. And, entirely on cue and predictable, the right wing noise machine marches into battle with another angle on diversionary noise and derogatory spin: a new form of “fatigue”, a resurrected form of Clinton Fatigue. A 1999 article from World Nut Daily (the most reliable wingnut propaganda tool in the land) defines the malady from the wingnut point of view in regard to Hillary Clinton:
…a phrase widely used to describe how the American people feel about Bill and Hillary. It is to say that the Clintons have finally worn out their welcome. There is a prevailing sentiment that it’s time for them to go, and to take their baggage with them. This reality is self-evident and doesn’t need to be documented, but it has been. A recent Zogby survey found that “a majority of likely American voters prefer that Bill and Hillary Clinton retire from public office and take a lower public profile after the presidential term ends rather than see Hillary serve in the U.S. Senate.”
The new form of “fatigue” is to marry the general distaste amongst the true believing conservative base for Bill Clinton’s moral foibles (and thus their mistrust of his wife Hillary) with their deep suspicion of the ability of a woman to have the strength to actually be president. Hatred blurs factual distinctions. If you hate Bill, you’ll hate Hillary by proxy, and the reason given will be that she’s “not to be trusted” and the underlying subliminal message will be that she’s weak. It’s never outwardly stated as such, but you can smell the misogyny and the hatred in the air.
Did you know that the Democratic candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, suffer from “fatigue”? It must be true, Drudge is reporting it:
The article that Drudge links to is by Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post, who has a history of invoking the “Clinton Fatigue” tactic. They’re careful not to attack Hillary Clinton directly as being weak. That would be too obvious. But, it’s there nonetheless, it is simply shrouded in pundit tricks like prediction and comparing the real world to television. Two additional tricks that shills like to play.
In a New York Times article entitled “The Ascent of a Woman”, Kornblut lays the groundwork and gives support to the idea that the American public simply isn’t ready for a woman president:
No matter how singular a figure she may be, Mrs. Clinton, if she runs for president, will do so in a country that trails behind a growing list of others in electing women to the highest office, a country that recently dumped its Hollywood version (“Commander in Chief” was suspended from the ABC lineup last fall, then canceled outright last month). Although polls show most Americans say they are willing to vote for a woman — more than 90 percent of those surveyed would do so for the right candidate — far fewer, about 55 percent, believe the country as a whole is ready for a female president. Broadly, the data suggest that there is a lingering awkwardness toward women at the tip-top of political power, both on screen and off.
The pertinent idea within that paragraph (and the article) is that since American’s reject a woman president on TV that they will do so in a real life election as well. Not only a dangerous idea, but a false one. Television is full of strong and politically powerful women. Comparing fantasy to reality as if they are one and the same is the game that is afoot here. In a county that is increasingly losing it’s grasp upon it’s ability to maintain a steady economy, a strong military, a positive world image, and a diplomatic edge, such theories damage the democratic process. David Paul Kahn at The Politico takes a similar path in an article titled“TV provides poor signal for Hillary”, an overt attempt at shaping the perception that Hillary’s destiny in the run for president is as ordained as a failed TV show about a female president.
Did it ever occur to these shills that “Commander in Chief” wasn’t that great of a show? Or that it went head to head with both American Idol and Criminal Minds, two consistently top five shows, and that ABC reacted to muddled ratings by changing creative direction and creator (Rod Lurie for Steven Bocchc0) mid season? Or that people simply didn’t buy Geena Davis as the president? Her star had begun to wain years prior on the big screen.
The attack documented is a twofold attempt at placing a wedge between the people and the candidates as well as instilling seeds of doubt about whether she has the “strength” to be president. The new “Clinton Fatigue” trick is about defining the candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, as weak. “If the rigors of the campaign trail are too much for her, how can she be president?” Debates are the forum by which the “lofty” candidates talk about the issues of concern to the “lowly” people. And, implying that the candidates are “tired” of this process insinuates that they are slso tired of dealing with the issues, and thus tired of dealing with the people as well. It’s a well thought out dirty trick. But, it goes deeper.
Hillary Clinton has long been feared and considered as the sure shot candidate for president in 2008. But, you can’t go after her as being weak, or you open yourself up to charges of misogyny and sexual chauvinism. So, you hide behind ambiguous attacks on her ability to be elected. And, it works.
This is why the debates are so important, and why it’s important that we make sure that our elected officials do their duty in regard to oversight. It is why we must vote and support our candidates. There are those amongst us who would insert roadblocks to our democratic process in order to ensure their own grasp on power.
It’s important that we use the media available to us to reply to these attacks and keep the truth out there. Those who don’t want to see the truth are lost. But, there are many others who are watching, and understand that games are afoot. They look to us for answers.
Consider this: You’re a member of an ideological group that controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006 and the Presidency for 19 of the past 27 years. The past six years were the first time you controlled both Congress and the Presidency in generations and it’s all been a triumphant disaster. A total washout that has resulted in the loss of that control of Congress and the earliest start in a presidential election in the history of the nation. Your team is a bottom feeder. A loser. What would you do? Focus on mundane gossip and try to turn it into propaganda and get that wrong too! Seems wingnuts these days are so filled with hatred for anything and everything, they get the facts screwed up a bit. But, hey… hate is hate, right?
A right wing shill “reports” (regurgitates gossip from People magazine actually) that the fish served at Al Gore’s daughters wedding is on the endangered species list, and thus that proves that Gore (and by proxy all Liberals) is a hypocrit. This of course, is spread around the right wing nut sphere like a Paris Hilton neddid video and it’s fact in mere moments. Now, in the world of adults, such a “story” should be confirmed, right? Right. As any intrepid reporter could find out with a phone call…. and did:
… the fish enjoyed by the Gores were not endangered or illegally caught.
Rather, the restaurant later confirmed, they had come from one of the world’s few well-managed, sustainable populations of toothfish, and caught and documented in compliance with Marine Stewardship Council regulations.
Smelling something fishy about this fish story, Tim Lambert at Deltoid nails this one to the floor with the hammer of truth:
How did the story get from People into an Australian tabloid? And how did it get from there to Jake Tapper?
I did a Factiva search and found that this was the first time that the Daily Telegraph had ever printed an opinion piece from the Humane Society International, so I called Rebecca Keeble and asked her about the genesis of the piece. It seems that the first she heard about the matter was when she was contacted by the Daily Telegraph, told that Gore had served Chilean sea bass, and was invited to write an opinion piece. She didn’t want to tell me who it was who commissioned the piece, but it’s not hard to figure out. You see, the opinion editor of the Daily Telegraph is Gore-hater Tim Blair. He first blogged about the story here. Then he contacted Keeble and put her opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph. Next he put up a post linking to Keeble’s piece. Then it was picked by Glenn Reynolds and Matt Drudge who can be relied upon to run with any anti-Gore story they come across. Once Drudge had linked it, Tapper knew it was OK for him to run with the story. And that’s how it’s done.
This isn’t the first time that Blair has used his position as opinion editor at the Daily Telegraph to advance his own personal agenda. See this post from Irfan Yusuf, on how Blair told Yusuf that the Telegraph would no longer publish him because Blair felt that he had been criticised on Yusuf’s blog.
And, if you head over to the comments sections of Free Republic and other assorted factually devoid places, you’ll see simply outstanding statements in reaction to these new facts such as this:
However, I’d still expect a guy on an environmental high-horse to have a bit more discretion, menu-wise.
Yes, because there’s no difference between eating a fish caught on a fish farm where the breeding is controlled and specially monitored solely for the point of EATING IT, (you know, like we do with chickens and cattle) and a fish caught in the ocean where the breeding in not controlled and the species is over fished and is considered to be endangered.
Good logic that.
And, this nonsense propaganda movement continues, this time the genius at Little Green Footballs goes after Kirsten Dunst for wearing a Kaffyeh. The good folks over at Poor Man put this one to bed.
It’s just patently stupid. But, when you’re team is the biggest loser in a generation… it’s the little things that make you happy. Facts schmacts. The important thing is that this story will be swallowed whole by the wingnut faithful. And, repeated ad nauseum as gospel. One more false reason to hate, one amongst many.
This guy makes me laugh so hard my sides hurt. Then the laughter gives way to the realization that he actually believes what he says:
“I contend [abortion] affects you in immigration,” DeLay told the Washington-area gathering. “If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years, we wouldn’t need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today. Think about it.”
Okay. I’ll play along. So, those 40 million, were they around, would be perfectly willing to:
Clean peoples houses, stand on a street corner and sell fruit, work in a restaurant, for five dollars an hour or less?
DeLay seems to think that these unborn American’s, if they were born, would have no problem doing the low paying jobs that immigrants have done in established economic societies for centuries. He also seems to think that immigrants are here because there are too few American’s to fill those jobs. It’s essential hyperbole that attempts to establish the idea that immigrants bring down American wages, take jobs from American’s, and cost taxpayers money, etc.
To the extent that the incomes of low-skilled native workers may be reduced because of immigration, a wide range of policy options are available to help them, including tax reductions, subsidies, wage supports, training, job placement, the earned income tax credit, and relocation programs. In addition, the federal government could do more to relieve the states and localities of the financial burdens associated with immigration.
From an economic standpoint, the evidence seems clear that draconian measures such as massive deportations or major reductions in legal immigration levels would be counterproductive to the United States and its citizens. However, a great deal more can and should be done to help offset the costs to native workers, especially those with low skills, that the inclusion of foreign-born workers imposes on them.
DeLay is simply making an overt and pretty blatant attempt to provoke the emotional aspects of the issue, and in typical conservative manner, the facts will be dismissed.
(Updated below)
