"There's an important general lesson here: If you want to say batsh*t-crazy stuff and still be treated as a respectable participant in the national debate, you'd better be a Republican."QOTD2, Kevin Drum:
This stuff just has to backfire on them eventually, doesn't it? Please tell me yes.QOTD3, Atrios - Shorter WaPo Ombudsman
I'll steal this from their commenter BillEPilgrim.
- The Washington Post writer was worried about offending right wing conservatives, and hoped to avoid getting hate mail from them.
- DougJ adds in Cry me a river
Anyway, reporters who cry when they get angry email really ought to find another line of work.
Update. I realize this might sound callous. But there are millions of gay Americans being demonized by Brian Brown. How on earth could Hesse not expect to get an angry reaction for writing an article that openly promoted Brown? I stand by what I said: if angry email about a biased piece on a politically and emotionally charged topic makes you cry, you really shouldn’t be a journalist.
I’m speechless.
(h/t commenter JK)
Update. Check this out too—“EXTREME INEQUALITY: Learn about the burdens of the Ultra-Rich” (one of the recommended links for people interested in this book).
It’s over, people. We had a lot of good years. I hope my wireless reaches to the make-shift bomb shelter I built this evening.
- from the comments:
The next-to-last samurai
It’s his new “book.” my elderly parents watch Fox religiously, & this masterpiece is being relentlessly promoted.
Benen: VAN JONES EXITS STAGE LEFT...
Daily Dish, Appel: Least Surprising News Of The WeekendAt various times over the last several months, conservative activists and lawmakers have called for a several leading administration officials to resign. They called for Tim Geithner's ouster, but no one cared. They demanded Janet Napolitano's head, but few took it seriously. Recently, many far-right voices even sought Eric Holder's resignation, but this was easily ignored.
But when it came to Van Jones, the White House found it difficult to come up with a compelling defense, and didn't want the distraction. So, late on a Saturday night, over Labor Day weekend, the right finally succeeded in forcing someone they hate from government service.
White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned Saturday after weeks of controversy stemming from his past activism.
"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Saturday. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."
He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."
Jones issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
Joking about Republicans being "a**holes" wasn't likely to be enough to Jones' ouster -- he wasn't in the administration at the time and he did, after all, refer to himself as an "a**hole" in the same remarks -- but it was that Truther petition that proved problematic. It also brought intense scrutiny on Jones' previous political associations.
Gawker has a very good summary of Jones' background and the smear campaign launched against him, but here's the key takeaway: "[Jones] was a bookish black kid from Tennessee who went to Yale Law and moved to San Francisco and became a radical. Then he decided to use his law degree and smarts to clean up and make things better from inside the establishment."
Right-wing critics have railed against Jones for months, but the campaign against him took a sharp turn in late July. Color of Change launched an effort targeting Glenn Beck's advertisers, so Beck targeted Van Jones, who helped create the group. At that point, Jones went from being an obscure administration official in an office few have heard of (the Council on Environmental Quality) to the most hated man on Fox News.
A few things to keep in mind going forward. First, we haven't heard the last of Van Jones, and that's a good thing. He's one of the nation's great visionaries on energy and environmental issues, and as Kate Sheppard noted, "[P]erhaps the even bigger irony here is that he's always been more effective and influential as an outside activist than as an administration official.... In all honesty, Glenn Beck may have more to worry about with Jones outside the White House than in it."
Second, Beck and other extremists will obviously be thrilled by forcing Jones' ouster, and will no doubt feel emboldened by last night's developments. Expect to see even more aggressive smear campaigns launched against other officials they hate.
And finally, Mark Kleiman reminds us of a key point that shouldn't be overlooked: "There's an important general lesson here: If you want to say batsh*t-crazy stuff and still be treated as a respectable participant in the national debate, you'd better be a Republican."
Benen: HYPOCRISY WATCH...Van Jones resigns. Background here. There was no defending the 9/11 truther petition. An e-mail from this morning:
Love it. Obama, miserable failure. Socializing clown. Von Jones, goes home. Bye, bye Von. L O EFFING L!!! I AM SO HAPPY! Miserable failure, Barak Obama. Failed utterly incompetent president.That's basically the tone of every Republican blog that I've read since the news broke. Gawker has a good time-line on how Van Jones became a target for GOP ire.
Perhaps no one did more this week to push the mind-numbing "controversy" about President Obama encouraging young people to do well in school more than Jim Greer, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.It was Greer who, in a striking tantrum, issued a statement condemning the president for, among other things, trying to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda." He added that Obama "has turned to American's children to spread his liberal lies." Greer's hysterical press release said the very idea of a political figure taking a political message to school children is "infuriating" and "an invasive abuse of power."
Obviously, for sane people, the claim itself is ridiculous. What we didn't know at the time was that it was also remarkably hypocritical. The Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell had an important column today.
There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
"Republicans get up and go to work," he would tell his son. "Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks."
This man not only talked to his son about Republican values, he went into public-school classrooms and talked about them as well.
That man is Jim Greer -- the same Jim Greer who, as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, just threw a nationwide hissy fit, claiming that the classroom is no place for politics and Barack Obama's "indoctrination."
One Seminole County mother, Barbara Wells, remembers the day Greer spoke to her son's sixth-grade class. "My son said he made some sort of Hillary Clinton joke," she recalled.
But you know what? Wells didn't pitch a fit. She didn't call up the local TV station to scream about Republican indoctrination. Instead, she advised her son: "Whatever you are told in life, remember there are two sides to every story."
Greer argued on Thursday, "Before anybody talks to my children from a political perspective, I want to know what they have to say." Of course, the administration is letting school districts know exactly what the president will say the day before his remarks. And how about Greer? Did he run his pro-Republican message by parents and school officials before he talked to school kids?
"That was different," Greer said.
Actually, it's not. The president of the United States wants to encourage children to work hard and do well in school. This caused Greer to have some kind of breakdown and accuse Obama of "indoctrination." But it's Greer who's taken partisan messages directly to school classrooms.
The Orlando Sentinel's Maxwell followed up on this with a sensible next step.
...I ran Greer's extremist statement by four high-profile Republicans: Gov. Charlie Crist, U.S. Rep. John Mica, State House Speaker-designate Dean Cannon and Orange County GOP leader Lew Oliver.
I chose conservative leaders whose positions I respect. And Crist, too.
I just wanted to see whether a single one had the guts to call Greer out and take a stand for mainstream values and rational debate.
Not a one of them did. And that is even scarier.
I don't doubt that grown-ups will one day help run the Republican Party. I just wish that day would hurry up.
Benen: THAT'S ONE...
Noting all of the crazed complaints about President Obama encouraging kids to do well in school, Joe Scarborough asked the other day, "Where are all the GOP leaders speaking out against this kind of hysteria?"
I haven't found any high-profile Republican officeholders willing to denounce the nonsense, but the conservative Republican governor of Utah deserves at least some credit for being a lone, sensible GOP voice.
Republican Gov. Gary Herbert supports President Barack Obama's plan to deliver a televised back-to-school speech to the nation's students on Tuesday, saying he sees "nothing but good coming out of this."
Herbert said he favors letting students listen to the speech, and he thinks it will foster a dialogue between parents and their children.
"I think it's great. To hear from the president of the United States is an important thing," he said Saturday. "I'd like to hear what he has to say.
"I hope parents will take the opportunity to discuss the issues with their children, hear what the presidents views are and what his vision is for the future of America. If they agree, then explain that. If they disagree, explain to their children why. I see nothing but good coming out of this," he said.
The governor, who has grandchildren in the Utah school system, said he can't imagine that they wouldn't watch the speech.
This sounds like a sane person. What a pleasant change of pace.
The comments help present a choice to the GOP. Do Republicans agree with Utah's Gary Herbert or Florida's Jim Greer?
Benen: 'WRITE ME A LETTER'....
In 1991, then-President Bush addressed school kids in a speech broadcast live to school classrooms nationwide. Among other things, he promoted his own administration's education policies. But before he wrapped up his remarks, H.W. Bush told students something else:
"Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter -- and I'm serious about this one -- write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address."
Wait, kids were being encouraged to send letters to the White House? To quote Minnesota's comically ridiculous governor, "There are going to be questions about -- well, what are they are going to do with those names and is that for the purpose of a mailing list?"
And what's this Bush about wanting America's children to ponder the "ways you can help us achieve our goals"? Can you even imagine what the response would be if President Obama said such a thing in his message to students this week?
It's worth noting, there was, at the time, no public backlash. The right didn't complain about Bush "abusing his power," and the left didn't throw a fit. Some Democratic leaders on the Hill complained about the president using the speech as some kind of pre-election campaign ad, but they didn't push the issue and it barely registered as a story at all. Even after 11 years of Reagan-Bush, and in the midst of a recession, the left had better things to do with their time than throw a tantrum over a presidential pitch to kids.
Politics in 2009 is very silly.
- Drum: Quote of the Day
From Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, wondering just what President Obama is going to do with all those letters that schoolkids send him after his classroom speech on Tuesday:
There are going to be questions about — well, what are they are going to do with those names and is that for the purpose of a mailing list?
Sometimes the classics are best, you know? Fox News prepared the ground for this with its suggestion a couple of weeks ago that Obama was trying to create an enemies list when it asked for examples of healthcare myths, but now the Obama team is apparently creating an enemies list for future Democratic presidents. Or a true believers list. Or something. Clever!
You know, this whole first-day-of-school-presidential-speech thing might not have been the greatest idea in the world, but the reaction to it makes death panels look practically sane by comparison. Socialism! Cult worship! Jedi mind control! And the worst part of it, just as it was with the death panels, is how eager party leaders have been to fan the flames of this stuff. If it was just talk radio, that would be bad enough. But Tim Pawlenty is a governor. And he's even reputed to be a fairly boring sort of governor. But he knows the drill: if you want to survive in the Republican Party today, you have to prove that you can't be out-crazied. Consequences be damned.
This stuff just has to backfire on them eventually, doesn't it? Please tell me yes.
C&L: Max Blumenthal on how the fanatical religious right has destroyed movement conservatism
By David Neiwert Saturday Sep 05, 2009 5:00pmOur friend Max Blumenthal has a great new book out titled Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party that explores the toxic effects that the religious right has had not just on the national discourse, but on movement conservatism itself.
Max discussed some of this in New York Times op-ed. Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! has a terrific interview with Max that explores the matter in some depth:
Blumenthal: [James] Dobson is a fascinating figure, because although he’s leading what is widely considered a religious movement, he’s not a religious leader. He has no theological credentials. He’s not a preacher. What is he? He’s a child psychologist. And the way that he’s won so many followers is by, you know, doing radio shows about common, mundane problems, like bedwetting, for example, or dealing with a child that has, you know, issues with their sexuality, something like that. And he has a correspondence department in Focus on the Family that’s so large it occupies an entire zip code in Colorado Springs. People write in with their personal problems. He sends them—his workers send them Dobson-approved advice. After they get into the database that Dobson maintains, he bombards them with political mailings and slowly cultivates them into Republican shock troops. So Dobson has, you know, turned personal crisis into political resentment.
Where did Dobson’s fortune come from? How did he erect this empire? It came mainly from one book, which I quote from extensively in my book, Republican Gomorrah—Dare to Discipline, which is essentially a manual for corporal punishment, for beating your child. In this book, he says pain is a marvelous purifier that a child should be—that pain goes a long way with a child, that pain should be dispensed sufficiently enough to make a child cry, but then the child will crumple to your breast, and you should welcome the child with warm, open arms. This is a recipe for sadomasochism. And sadomasochism, as I discovered in—
JUAN GONZALEZ: And he saw himself originally as the antithesis to Benjamin—Dr. Benjamin Spock.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Dr. Benjamin Spock, who tells you to basically pick your child up and cradle it. And, you know, I mean, I was—you know, for whatever it’s worth, I was raised along those guidelines. When your child’s crying, you pick up the child.
By creating a belt-wielding army of millions, Dobson created the next generation of Republican shock troops, who are more radical than before. And sadomasochism—I know this sounds a little strange—is what defines the essential character, you know, that—this is what—at least what I’ve discovered—of the Republican follower of today. They’re sadistic in that they want to lash out at deviants, at people who are weaker than them, homosexuals, immigrants, foreigners, socialists. At the same time, they’re masochistic. They are followers of a higher cause, of a strong leader, a magic helper like Dobson or George W. Bush or the macho Jesus archetype that they worship. And this is what defines this movement.
So many of the people that Dobson has been able to get close to and work with in the Republican Congress and in American culture have been viciously abused as children. And he understood that by advocating violence against children, deliberate violence, he was creating this sensibility, which would produce a radical generation of political followers.
Be sure to get your copy. It's a fascinating and enlightening read.
No comments:
Post a Comment