At the WSJ, James Taranto dissects the left's violent fantasies and their refusal to acknowledge or discuss actual left-wing violence or calls for violence.
America's liberal left is preoccupied with salacious fantasies of political violence. These take two forms: dreams of leftist insurrection, and nightmares of reactionary bloodshed. The "mainstream" media ignore or suppress the former type of fantasy and treat the latter as if it reflected reality. This produces a distorted narrative that further feeds the left's fantasies and disserves those who expect the media to provide truthful information.
What prompted Taranto to pen this insightful observation was the left's attacks on Glenn Beck for quoting, accurately, an old school marxist, Prof. Francis Fox Piven, who called for riots in America resembling those in Greece. Beck and others have pointed out that the riots in Greece were violent and involved the murder of several innocent people - as was well publicized prior to Piven penning her ode to Greek-style direct action. Yet now the left is pulling out the stops to present Piven as non-violent - while at the same time painting the right, and in particular the Tea Party, as the font of violence in America. The left wing media is using two means to promote its canard:
. . . The first is by seeking out the most extreme expressions by Tea Party activists and sympathetic politicians and portraying them as if they were typical. This is in sharp contrast to the way left-wing political rallies are covered. Extreme and violent rhetoric is at least as easy to find there if you look--Michael Bowers has put together a photo gallery of "Left-Wing Hatred"--but the mainstreamers seldom look. During the Bush years, "antiwar" rallies were routinely depicted as nothing more than forums for wholesome, patriotic dissent.
The second is by presenting innocuous rhetoric from the right as if it were something sinister or dangerous. The most famous example--cited by Hertzberg, naturally--is the SarahPAC map of targeted districts, including Giffords's, which many on the left hoped had incited the man who shot her. Palinoiacs denounced the map as "violent" when it first came out last March, notwithstanding that the visual metaphor of a target is about as common in political campaigns of both parties as cartoons on the pages of Hertzberg's magazine. . . .
The only thing the left hates more than the right is being called to account for their hypocritical actions.
And in the same theme, Gerard Van Der Luen at American Digest channels Dirty Harry about all these calls for civility:
My nice, reasonable right guy is all used up these days. I've got compassion fatigue. I see the left dealing, once again, from the bottom of their media marked card deck (when do they do otherwise?), and I’m not feeling too civil about them and their plans these days. I've seen enough of their "handful of 'gimme' and mouth full of 'gimme more'."
Speaking for myself -- in a calm and rational tone as I reach to upset their crooked card table and draw my metaphoric popcult pistol -- I have to say, “I know what you're thinking. ‘Did he fire six insults or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as we're playing for the future of the Republic, and being as this is a 2010 iMac, the most powerful personal computer in the world, and would blow your premise clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? ”
I. How does the global warming canard stay alive? It does so with wholly biased reporting and cynical manipulation of public opinon through programming such as:
III. At Watts Up With That, a scientist attempts to reverse engineer one of the computer models relied upon to claim that our climate will turn into a man-made inferno but a century or so into the future. He finds it simplistic indeed. But why is he having to reverse engineer a computer model being relied upon to drive public policy you might ask? Because, even a year on from Climategate, none of the entities involved in pushing climate change have taken to releasing their facts, figures, math and programming that would allow the world to actually check them. The scientific method is looked upon as a distraction to these people, who brook no interference with their narrative. This really is criminal. As I have said before, government employees who do this should be fired. Academics who do it as part of studies undertaken on the public dime should be excluded by law from receiving any more public funding.
IV. The latest apocalyptic warmie nonsense: "The Oceans Are Acidifying!!! We are D-O-O-M-E-D." David Middleton investigates, asking three questions: One, is atmospheric CO2 acidifying the oceans? Two, is there any evidence that reefs and other marine calcifers have been damaged by CO2-driven ocean acidification and/or global warming? And three, does the geological record support the oceanic acidification hypothesis? Answers: No, no and no.
V. It is always worthwhile to listen when MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen speaks, and he does so in this instance opining that the AGW theory is, in the paraphrase of Q&O, driven by money, politics and dubious science:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. . . .
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. . . .
With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming as was seen being due in significant measure to man, disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the twentieth century a sign of intelligence.
VI. All of the malignant illnesses that plagued climate science pre-Climate Gate are still very much in evidence a year on from that scandal. William Esenbach discusses this travesty in an Open Letter To Dr. Trenberth, posted at WUWT, responding to Trenberth's recent outrageous claim that, given that the canard of man-made global warming is subject to overwhelming proof, it now falls to its critics to disprove the theory. As I stated a few weeks ago, a question that should be asked of every warmie is what evidence needs to be proven that would show that the theory of man-made global warming is false.
VII. If you think you're being fleeced by the warmies - you are more right than you know. Probably the most galling part of all of this is that they are doing it on our tax dime - billions of our tax dimes, to be precise, taken from us at the point of the IRS gun. PJM has the facts and figures.
For the past several days, the right have been savaged in the media with what is accurately described as a blood libel - a false assertion that one is responsible for murder. And in particular, no one on the right has been so savaged as Sarah Palin. So if anyone has a right to respond and push back against this morally bankrupt attempt by the left to delegitimize and silence conservative speech in America, it is and was Sarah Palin.
And she did so yesterday morning. After making a statement of condolences for the dead and injured, Palin stated that speech by the right was not responsible for mass murder in Arizona and that, "within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel."
This has lit a fire under the already energized MSM hacks:
ABC opined that "instead of trying to get beyond this controversy, Palin has put herself back in the middle of it" and that "Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story." Could those statements be anymore surreal. Palin didn't insert herself into the middle of the story, nor did she by her acts "become part of the story." All of that was forced on her by a rabid, morally bankrupt left-wing media. ABC is turning this on its head with a none too veiled criticism of her for having the temerity of defending herself.
CBS's treatment was by far and away the most outrageous, with Don Farber, EDITOR IN CHIEF of CBS News, writing a libelous screed that ends with him accusing Palin of playing the "victim card." Faber is apparently signalling his desire to take over at MSNBC if a slot opens up.
Farber starts by stipulating that which we now know, that Loughner was insane and was not motivated by Sarah Palin or anyone else on the right to commit murder. Then Farber brushes it off as meaningless - in other words, asking the reader not to confuse the issue by worrying about the facts:
Regardless of what motivated Loughner to pull the trigger, the tragedy in Tucson has put the tone of political discourse, and those who tend to inflame more than inform, in the spotlight."
After this non-sequitur, Faber focuses fully on the utterly discredited meme that Palin's use of crosshairs on a campaign map has, in and of itself, taken political discourse in America to a heretofore unseen level of militancy, concluding:
But Palin doesn't seem to think that there are any negative consequences associated with her campaign words and images."
Precisely what those consequences are, Faber never says, but he does his level best to imply that one of those consequences was Loughner's mass murder. Seizing on her defense, that the left is involved in a blood libel against her and the right, Faber states:
Blood libel is the false accusation, perhaps originating in the 12th century, that Jews murder children to use their blood for religious rituals and holidays. Palin appears to be appropriating the term to indicate that she is a victim, as a result of some groups and individuals claiming that her political rhetoric contributed to the actions of the deranged, lone gunman.
But the real victims are Rep. Giffords and the others who were wounded or killed, not Palin, . . .
Could Faber be more scurrilous, insinuating both that Palin has not been tarred with the tsunami of accusations against her and that she is trying to callously make of herself a victim on par with those shot and wounded. This is Pravda territory. That this hyper-partisan, intellectually dishonest joker is the senior editor for CBS News should indeed give everyone pause.
NBC, for its part, had Anderea Mitchell declare Palin "ignorant" for using the term "blood libel," as have many others. Why it is "ignorant" Mitchell does not explain. But indeed, the first person to call the acts of the left concerning this mass murder a "blood libel" was no one less than Robert Avrech, the deeply religious Jewish award winning screen writer, on his blog, Seraphic Secret. Moreover, famed Jewish lawyer and Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz, when asked for an opinion, stated that he found Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" wholly appropriate in this context.
And in a sign, for those who believed the President's oh so careful phrasing in his speech last night was telling those on the left to stop the blood libel, the NYT apparently interpreted his speech differently, writing today:
The president’s words were an important contrast to the ugliness that continues to swirl in some parts of the country. The accusation by Sarah Palin that “journalists and pundits” had committed a “blood libel” when they raised questions about overheated rhetoric was especially disturbing, given the grave meaning of that phrase in the history of the Jewish people.
Note what the NYT is doing here, turning reality on its head. Seraphic Secret spoke to this well worn technique of the left the other day, preemptively accusing one's opponent of committing the sins of which the accuser is guilty. These people are deeply unethical. And Politico's take on this is no better than the NYT.
This morning on “Good Morning America,” ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield sat down with Zach Osler, a high school friend of Jared Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson massacre.
Osler says his friend wasn’t shooting at people, “he was shooting at the world.” Regarding the high-pitched talk radio and cable news political rhetoric, Osler says his friend didn’t even watch the news.
He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Winston Churchill
Almost three days removed from the horrid mass murder committed by Jared Loughner in Arizona, sufficient information now exists to bring some perspective and clarity to the acts not only of Loughner, but to the acts of the left in the wake of Loughner's killing spree. The former was caused by severe mental illness. The latter, bearing only a tangential relation to the former, arises out of the left's desire to stop conservative speech by any means possible.
As Maggie's Farm puts it, Loughner didn't accompany his killing spree with shouts of "Rush Limbaugh Akhbar!!!" There is not a shred of evidence tying him to Palin, Limbaugh, or the Tea Party movement. He appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic who went under the radar simply because he took no threatening acts in the community prior to his killing spree - or at least none that would cause the Pima County Sheriff's Dept. to react. One of Loughner's few friends, in a recent interview, speculated that Loughner's motive was just to "fuck things up to fuck shit up," adding that Loughner wanted "to watch the world burn."
The far left has not allowed the lack of evidence - or indeed, contrary evidence - to slow them down. Instead, they ascribe responsibility for the murders to the right on the grounds of creating a climate of "hate." The NYT is leading the charge in their editorial today:
It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.
Yet a look over the last decade shows conclusively that the left is light years beyond the right in terms violent rhetoric and political vitriol (See Malkin, Cupp, PJM, Rush, Wash. Examiner, Hot Air, McGuire, and the WSJ on the hisotry of our political discourse). Indeed, if political vitriol were the cause of violence, the MSNBC studios would be knee deep in blood. And as to martial metaphors, there are more examples of that from Obama than from Palin (PJM, Seraphic Secret). That said, such metaphors are, as Charles Krauthammer points out, a regular part of political speech that derive from the days when the path to political power was through military campaigns.
So just what has the right done to cause this "gale of anger." They have fought against massive deficits, over-taxation, and out-of-control spending. They have fought against Obamacare on the grounds that it is unaffordable and an unconstitutional expansion of federal power. In short, they have fought against the radical pull of our government to the left. So what do any of those things have to do with homicidal mania or, more generally, hate? Well, nothing, of course. Those are all very legitimate political arguments.
It has become a habit of the American left to equate disagreement with liberals and liberalism with hate. So convinced do they seem of the virtue of their cause that the only possible explanation for resistance to it must be hatred. In the past week, at least two prominent liberal commentators spoke of the need to resist the right, quote, ‘Obama hate machine.’
George Will in a column today, speculates that blaming the right for an act such as this is literally part of progressive DNA:
A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first. . . .
I think that both Hume and Will let the left off far too easy. Will implies unconscious action where there is clearly malice aforethought. Hume postulates what is in essence an insanity defense for the left - that they are mentally incapable of seeing their opponents as having any reasonable basis for disagreeing with them. I think that gives short shrift to the intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy of the left pushing this blood libel.
What the left has done here is seize on the Arizona mass murder, not because they believe the right somehow created the environment for homicide by their political arguments, but because the left sees it as an opportunity to delegitimize the right. The goal for the left is to create a situation where they won't have to engage in those political arguments that go to the heart of the direction of our country. They are losing those arguments on an epic scale, and they will do anything at all, including using the dead and injured from a psychotic's attack, to try and turn their fortunes around. They are shameless beyond words.
This is, in many ways, nothing more than an extension of throwing the race card, something that the left has relied upon for decades to end debate. Thus it is wholly appropriate that the left's most veteran race card aficionado, Rep. Clyburn (D-SC), would use the mass murder as justification for imposing the Fairness Doctrine, a law that would effectively silence conservative talk radio:
The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'
'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.' . . .
For its part, Soros mouthpiece Media Matters is calling on Fox to fire both Glen Beck and Sarah Palin. Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has sent out a fund raising letter asking for donations to allow him to "fight Republicans and other 'right-wing reactionaries' responsible for the climate that led to the shooting." Chris Matthews has cited Mark Levin and Mark Savage as talk radio personalities for particular note in his discussion of the Arizona mass murder.
All of this is despicable. It is intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy on a grand scale. As Michelle Malkin says today,
The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
Update: Legal Insurrection has one ridiculous example of how the left is trying to mine the climate of hate meme . They quote Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Me) writing at HuffPo, who claims that the Obamacare repeal bill must be renamed in the wake for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting:
A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend -- but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don't think that word is in there by accident -- my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation's history, it's not the message we should be sending.
(emphasis added)
A final thought. In essence, the left now wants to make paranoid schizophrenics the arbiter of appropriate speech in America - at least for those who oppose the left. How's that for an insane idea?
Update: Hot Air brings good news for America, bad news for the left wing slime machine doing their best to use the mass murder to delegitimize its political opposition:
CBS polled almost 700 adults in the wake of the mass murder in Tucson committed by Jared Lee Loughner to determine whether the media spin that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six others was a political act had resonated with the public. Perhaps surprisingly, the spin machine seems to have failed. A majority of 57% say that politics had nothing to do with the shooting, and even a plurality of 49% of Democrats agree.
This means our nation is firmly in the "you can't fool all of the people all of the time" leg of Lincoln's tripart theorem. What that likely means is that ever more discordant attempts to delegitimize the right will have a rebound effect. The Krugmaniacal left wing slime machine should proceed with caution.
Just how dysfunctional is the mainstream media (MSM)? Today we have the answer to that question in the left-wing MSM's own words. They are a fifth column, conspiring to effect political change by twisting the news, burying stories, and attacking the right with baseless charges of racism, sexism, etc..
The right has known this for years. except that none of it has been proven by admissions of these left wing journalists. But today, those charges are given substance in an expose by Johnathan Strong in the Daily Caller. Someone leaked at least a portion of Journolist e-mails to Strong - those that occurred during the time frame that tapes of Rev. Jerimiah Wright surfaced. Journolist, for those of you that have lived in a cave for the past several months or been receiving your news only from the MSM, was Ezra Klein's invitation only internet site for left wing reporters, pundits and academics.
Obama's association with Rev. Wright for 20 years was a huge story that flared on Fox then died in the left wing press. It went directly to issues of Obama's honesty and character. Johnathan Strong today in the Daily Caller exposes how many in the left wing media conspired to kill the story and delegitimize those on the right who followed up on the story. You really need to read the entire article to understand the full extent of coordinated efforts by the Journolist members to kill the Wright story. That said, several points made plain in the story deserve particular attention.
One is how these members of the media plotted to use baseless charges of racism against the right in order to deflect attention away from Wright and end any debate on the topic:
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” . . .
[Ackerman would later write] . . . What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
Using baseless charges of racism to delegitimize opponents of the left wing's agenda and shut down debate has for decades been an indispensable tactic for the left. But when the journalists who are supposed to objectively inform us of the news practice the same tactic, it shows a complete lack of ethics and intellecutal honesty. And on a related note, I sincerely hope that someone with an ounce of honor provides the Journolist correspondence relating to the rise of the Tea Party movement and the outrageous - and at least partially effective - efforts to smear the movement as racist, violent and as an outgrowth of extreme right wing militias. There is no doubt in my mind that there has been a coordinated effort by members of the MSM to do precisely that.
Most of the communications on Journolist dealt with coordinating efforts to bury the Wright story. For instance, the Daily Caller reports that "Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to 'particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media' who were members of the list":
Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.
One journalist who responded to Hayes pointed out, perhaps unintentionally, the utter hypocrisy of the left's defense of their favored politicians:
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
No kidding? At any rate, it was left to Spencer Ackerman both to acknowledge the fact that what these Journolist members were doing was unethical - but in his mind, justified. Responding to Ms. Pollitt, Ackerman wrote:
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”
So, for the left wing media, the ends - electing their favored politician - justifies a complete abdication of journalistic ethics and a descent into the worst kinds of hypocrisy and outrageous attacks. They truly are a fifth column in America today.
This is perhaps the most important story to be reported in years since it goes to the very trustworthiness of a MSM that asks the nation to trust the honesty and objectivity of their reporting. A story such as this should be making the biggest of headlines. Yet, as one would expect, the MSM has buried this story in a vault miles below ground. For instance, the web-site Memorandum carries the major stories of the day and links to sites, including MSM sites, that have weighed in on the story. Here is the Memorandum entry for the Daily Caller's story as of 12:15 today:
Jonathan Strong / The Daily Caller: It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama's political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. . . .
Discussion: Politics Daily, Another Black Conservative, Left Coast Rebel, Hit & Run, Instapundit, Sweetness & Light, Right Wing News, Stop The ACLU, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Weasel Zippers, theblogprof, Hot Air, Breitbart.tv, Mediaite, Althouse, NewsBusters.org, NewsReal Blog, Moe Lane, The Corner on National Review, Real Clear Politics, sisu, Gateway Pundit, Big Journalism, Say Anything, Pajamas Media, The Future of Capitalism, The Right Scoop and JustOneMinute
Who don't you see there? How about the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC News, and NBC News among others. Bastards.
Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.
American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do.
Phil Bronstein, posting at SF Gate, hits the nail on his head with his post, "Love or lust, Obama and the fawning press need to get a room." He ticks off example after example of the ridiculously favorable treatment Obama is receiving from virtually the entire MSM. As he likens it, the press is acting like an infatuated woman of little virtue. Calling for a reality check, he notes:
So far, this is all about image and character and press "opportunities." But with what CNN financial reporter Elizabeth Cohen called this morning "gazillions of dollars" of our money at stake and crazy people with nukes bristling from around the edges of the world, we can't afford not to keep a closer eye on the substance thing.
True. Unfortunately, Bronstein is like a street corner preacher in a red light district - his message is falling on very deaf ears indeed.
Update: It seems that Victor Davis Hanson is likewise having a crisis of confidence when it comes to our media. As he calls it, there is a "new groupspeak in which basic words and ideas—from terrorism to war itself—have been reformulated according to political dictates."
Newsweek's cover story this week could easilly have come from Kos, Moveon.org or the DNC. Objectivity and intellectual honesty have been tossed out the window at Newsweek as the writers and editors go absolutely over the top in an effort to delegitimize all criticism of Obama and frame the terms of acceptable debate between now and November.
Obama is incredibly weak on national security, he is an elitist who looks down on traditional American values, his choice of associates (Wright, Rezko, Ayers) is wholly at odds with his carefully crafted public persona and, particularly as to Rev. Wright, put very much at issue Obama's character, judgment and veracity. To the left, this is now the "politics of fear," "painting," "sliming," and that always popular, "swift boating." The NYT has been fighting a rearguard action for Obama for some weeks. And now Newsweek, with their cover story, joins the NYT and goes one better. (The delineation into numbered paragraphs is my own):
1. Republican Victories Are Based On The Politics of Fear
[Newsweek:]. . . The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities.
Newsweek just deligimitimzed every election since 1968 that was won by a Republican and did so on the grounds that Republicans are not being truthful with America. The bit here about Nixon might have been more complete if they had added in that the still unrepentant William Ayers and the Weather Underground were attempting at that time to violently overthrow the government. Here and elsewhere, Newsweek all but explicitly states that any highlighting of threats to our society by the right, from the internal upheavals of 1968 to the terrorists of today who seek WMD to use against us, are simply a political strategy with no basis in fact.
2. False "Painting"
[Newsweek:] The 2008 race may turn on which party will win the lower- and middle-class whites in industrial and border states—the Democrats' base from the New Deal to the 1960s, but "Reagan Democrats" in most presidential elections since then. It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as "the other"—as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.
Neither McCain nor any mainstream conservative organization is raising the issue of Obama's Muslim roots. That is a Newseek strawman. As to the rest, Obama says guns and religion are the opiates of the masses, he spent twenty years in a church that spews racisim, anti-semitism, and fantasies of an evil white government attacking blacks with weapons of genocide, and he associates with and launched his political carrer with William Ayers. To point to any of that isn't unfairly "painting" Obama - it's spraying him with clear-coat.
3. Conservative 527's are "Merchants of Slime"
[Newsweek:] . . . Refusing to concede defeat last week, [Hillary Clinton] cited an Associated Press poll "that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again." . . . A top Clinton adviser, speaking anonymously so he could be more frank, says the Clinton campaign has actually been holding back, for fear of alienating other Democrats. The Republicans "won't suffer from such scruples," this adviser says. . . . [McCain] may not be able to resist casting doubt on Obama's patriotism. And the real question is whether he can—or really wants to—rein in the merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet and fund the "independent expenditure" groups who exercise their freedom in ways that give a bad name to free speech.
Whoa. Your kidding. Merchants of slime? Sellers of hate? This from the folk who:
- refuse to acknowledge reality in Iraq, spin the news from Iraq far outside the bounds of reason, and are doing their damndest to legislate an American defeat for their own partisan gain;
- have no respect for free speech or reasonable debate, but rather demonize anyone who disagrees with them and have long since abandoned any pretext of intellectual honesty, let alone rationality;
- are the last bastions where racism and hatred are accepted and, indeed, encouraged
- are spending hundreds of millions through "independent expenditure" groups while at the same time trying to shut down Republican efforts in the courts.
Bottom line, for the left to label conservatives "merchants of slime" and "sellers of hate" is nothing more than sheer projection.
4. Raising Obama's 20 Year Relationship To The Racist Rev. Wright Is White Racism And Makes McCain Unfit To Be Commander In Chief
[Newsweek:] Recently, when a reporter asked McCain, "Does it bother you at all that you might actually benefit from latent prejudice in the country?" he answered: "That would bother me a lot. That would bother me a great deal." And last week his wife, Cindy, told NBC News, "My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all." So if McCain's camp does try to exploit Obama's ties to the fiery Reverend Wright, the Obama-ites can question his sincerity—is he really the "Straight Talk" candidate? And if McCain can't stop others from the sort of innuendo and code that Republicans have learned to frighten voters, Obama can cast doubt on McCain's credentials as a commander in chief. . . .
Racism has no place in our society and when it raises its head, it should be dealt with ruthlessly. Indeed, there would be no question that a white politician who had a close 20 year association with a vile racist would rightly have been knocked from the race in a matter of days. But not only does Newsweek want to forestall any questioning of the Obama-Wright relationship, their logic is that simply raising the issue is itself an appeal to, if not evidence of, white racism. To call this outragous obfuscation is an understatement. And then to assert that anyone on the right raising the issue calls into question McCain's qualifications to be Commander in Chief is, to put it tactfully, an equally fatuous premise.
5. Raising The Hamas Endorsement Of Obama Is Mud-Slinging and The Endorsement Itself Is Meaningless
[Newsweek:] . . . At the time of the Pennsylvania primary, the McCain campaign sent out a letter suggesting that Obama was the candidate of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group ("Barack Obama's foreign policy plans have even won him praise from Hamas leaders," read the letter). McCain, by contrast, portrayed himself as "Hamas's worst nightmare." (In fact, Obama and McCain have the same position on Hamas —no talks, no recognition, no outreach.) . . .
Hamas, as well as Iran, Castro, Daniel Ortega, FARC, Ghadaffi and other's whose goals are antithetical to the U.S., democracy, capitalism and freedom have all endorsed Obama. It doesn't take an i.q. above 90 to work out that this is because Obama articulates a weak and permissive foreign policy and he embraces soft power politics as a panacea. A weak U.S. creates a happy hunting ground for all of those opposed to America and all it represents. Obama and his virulent apologists can crow til the cows come home about how he does not support these people or institutions, that has no bearing on the the fact that, across the board, those opposed to America support him. The only thing of importance - and McCain's point - is why our enemies support Obama in the first place. Newseek is being so transparently disingenuous in trying to twist this as to be laughable.
6. While Hamas Is Out As An Issue, Wholly Unjustified Suggestions That McCain Is Senile Are Apparently Fair Game
[Newsweek:] . . . Last week Obama told CNN: "This is offensive. And I think it's disappointing because John McCain always says, 'Well, I'm not going to run that kind of politics' … For him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination."
To raise questions about Obama's foreign and national security policy is improper and immoral, but cheap shots aimed at McCain's age are apparently within the bounds of reasonable political discourse for Newsweek. The magazine reports Obama's remarks without batting an eye. As an aside, Newseek, fails to mention Obama's own, frankly incredible problems with early on-set loss of bearings.
7. Calling Obama A Liberal Is Mudslinging
[Newsweek:] Then there's David Bossie, already deep into a mudslinging campaign against Obama through a political organization called Citizens United. Bossie is planning a widespread DVD release of a documentary that will portray Obama as a "limousine, out-of-control leftist liberal … more liberal than [Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders, who is a socialist," . . .
How is pointing out that Obama has a more liberal voting record in the Senate than Sanders, mudslinging? Indeed, it is a fact that goes to the center of how Obama will govern and whether his promise to heal all divides and create a utopia of bi-partisan unity is just so much feel good smoke being blown up our collective asses. Pointing to unambiguous reality is not mudslinging. Newsweek only labels it as such to disingenuously frame it as an illegitimate argument that should not be considered by the electorate.
Update: Juan Williams summed up the combined arguments of the NYT, News Week and Obama on Fox News this evening. To paraphrase, to criticize Obama on national security, on Hamas, or to raise Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers makes you a "racist pig."
Why all this frankly outragous bit of agenda journalism now? It is because Obama is a very weak candidate and because he has long and deep associations with racism and anti-Americanism that would rightfully disqualify a white candidate from any elected post above dog catcher. That he survives til today is a function of a grossly biased MSM that has abandoned any pretense of intellectual honesty or objectivitiy. That they are publishing this utter tripe now is a mark of how worried the MSM is that they won't be able to stem the bleeding on all of Obama's weaknesses come November. When it becomes acceptable within polite society to ponder such things as why Hamas endorsed Obama or how Obama can claim to be a post racial candidate when he spent twenty years in a close relationship with a vile racist, Obama's slow bleeding of today will progress into a fatal arterial spray. You can read this whole Newseek cover story here.
Update: Mark Salter, from McCain's campaign, has responded in an e-mail to Newsweek that the magazine has linked:
In an email to Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham on Sunday, McCain adviser Mark Salter responds to this week's cover story:
Dear Jon,
A useful way to read the piece would be to try to imagine you were a Republican reading it. The characterization of Republican presidential campaigns as nothing more than attack machines that use 527s and other means to smear opponents strikes us as pretty offensive. Is that how Ronald Reagan won two terms? . . . From the beginning of their article, Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe offered a biased implication that Republicans have won elections and will try to win this one simply by tearing down through disreputable means their opponents. . .
Suggesting that that we can expect a whispering campaign from the McCain campaign or the Republican Party about Senator Obama's race and the false charge that he is a Muslim is scurrilous. Has John McCain ever campaigned that way? On the contrary, he has on numerous occasions denounced tactics offensive tactics from campaigns, 527s and others, both Democratic and Republican. By the way, which party had more 527 and other independent expenditure ads made on its behalf in 2004? It wasn't us.
By accepting the Obama campaign construct as if it were objective, Evan and Richard framed this race exactly as Senator Obama wants it to be framed—every issue that raises doubts about his policy views and judgment is part of a smear campaign intended to distract voters from the real issues at stake in the election, and, thus, illegitimate. And even if Senator McCain might not be inclined to support such advertising, if he can't stop them from occurring then he will have succumbed to the temptation to put ambition before principle. How this notion could appear credible after MoveOn, the AFL-CIO and the DNC launched negative ad campaigns weeks ago, and after leaks from the Obama campaign that they would soon start running negative ads against McCain, is mystifying. When a conservative talk show host emphasized Senator Obama's middle name, Senator McCain immediately denounced it himself in the strongest possible terms. When a left wing radio host called Senator McCain a "warmonger;" when Senator Rockefeller disparaged Senator McCain's war record; and when Howard Dean consistently accused Senator McCain of corruption, dishonesty and various other smears, the response from the Obama campaign has been either silence or a spokesperson releases an anodyne statement saying they don't agree with the characterization.
To see how completely Evan and Richard have accepted the Obama campaign spin look at the example of an illegitimate smear they cite: Senator McCain raising the Hamas spokesman's comments welcoming Obama's election. The Senator has never said that Senator Obama shares Hamas' goals or values or proposed a relationship with Hamas different than the one he would propose. On the contrary, he publicly acknowledged that he doesn't believe Senator Obama. He did note that there must be something about Obama's positions, particularly his repeated insistence that he would meet with the President of Iran (Hamas's chief state sponsor), that was welcomed by Hamas. Imagine if a right wing death squad spokesman announced that they welcomed McCain's election. Would Evan or Richard treat that as an illegitimate issue or would they examine which of McCain's stated positions might have found favor with the terrorists? That seems obvious on its face to me. Rather than argue that his position on Iran is the right one and has no bearing on how Hamas views him, Senator Obama makes a false charge that we accused him of advocating a different relationship with Hamas than Senator McCain's supports. His false characterization of Senator McCain's statement was accepted uncritically by Evan and Richard.
Democratic Party allied third parties have announced negative ad campaigns, which distort McCain's statements and positions, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They are already running them. Senator Obama himself and Democrats generally have taken out of context and distorted Senator McCain's statements on a post war military presence in Iraq and his views on the economy. Our townhalls are now routinely salted with Obama supporters who are there to raise embarrassing questions for the Senator (we don't screen people at our events). An Obama supporter asked him in Iowa if he called his wife a very vulgar name. . . .
. . . Without a trace of skepticism, your reporters embraced the primary communications strategy the Obama campaign intends to follow: any criticism of their candidate is a below the belt, Republican attack machine distortion that should discredit the authors. And any attempt by our campaign to counter that suggestion will be dismissed as a rant. The other day, Senator Obama noted that Representative DeFazio's accusation that Senator McCain was up to his neck in the Keating Five scandal was a legitimate line of attack, despite the fact the Senator was largely exonerated by the Senate Ethics Committee, whose special counsel declared he had been kept in the investigation only because of his party affiliation. Were we to raise the Rezko matter, their campaign would accuse us of distracting voters with a low blow by making more of a "flimsy relationship" than the facts warranted. Evan and Richard, I feel certain, would agree.
The McCain campaign will keep to the high standards of political debate Senator McCain demands of us. The Senator will not tolerate unfair attacks by anyone on our campaign. We won't, however, abide by rules imposed on us by our opponents, and which pertain only to our campaign and not theirs, even if they manage to get reporters to call the deal fair.
Read the entire response. It is accurate and articulate. To describe Newsweek as in the tank for Obama is a gross understatement. This is nothing more than an all out push to get Obama in the White House, irrespective of how unqualified he is or how dangerous his policies may be for America. Further, it is a push being made at the cost of Newsweeks journalistic ethics and objectivity. I thought something like this far below the standards of Newsweek. Obviously I couldn't have been more wrong.
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