Month: March 2006

Media Contortionism

by digby

I have never been much for blog triumphalism. Aside from being self-aggrandizing, it didn’t seem to me to be particularly true that blogs would replace the mainstream media. But I am actually beginning to think that what we know as the mainstream press might end up going the way of the Dodo bird after all. It’s not because we are so great or even that we are capable of doing what they do. It’s because they have been manipulated for so long that I’m not sure they can function properly anymore.

Regarding complaints about the hiring of Ben Domenech, Howard Kurtz writes:

John Amato at Crooks and Liars says: “The Washington Post continues to become more and more a mouthpiece for the GOP by hiring a rightwing blogger.”

I don’t get it. One conservative blogger? It’s not like The Post doesn’t have a left-leaning blogger, or liberal columnists. Is the New York Times a GOP mouthpiece because it employs David Brooks and John Tierney? If people don’t like what Domenech has to say, don’t click on him. It’s not like you can say “cancel my subscription!” since the Web site is free.

Of course poeple don’t have to read him. But we do have to consider the obvious fact that Kurtz and the Washington Post believe that this blatantly partisan Republican blogger “balances” an allegedly “left leaning” White House critic. That they still don’t understand the difference between the conventions of overt partisan media and mainstream online criticism like Dan Froomkin’s column is painfully clear. That this particular blogger has been exposed virtually overnight as a racist and plagiarist proves that they had no idea how the right wing media works. Still.

But then, Kurtz didn’t understand the difference between rightwing talk radio and mainstream media either, even more than a decade after it was clear to listeners all over the country:

“Sure, he aggressively pokes fun at Democrats and lionizes Republicans, but mainly about policy. He’s so mainstream that those right-wingers Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert had him on their Election Night coverage.”

Neither he, nor those vapid anchors on NBC, apparently knew that Rush Limbaugh commonly fantasizes about “policies” like kicking half the Democratic party out of the country:

LIMBAUGH: We just had Stephen Breyer saying, oh, yeah, totally appropriate, we must import what they’re doing around the world in other democracies, it will help buttress their attempt to establish the rule of law, and we might learn something, too. Well, here’s something I’d like to import. I’d like to import the ability that the Brits are doing to export and deport a bunch of hate-rhetoric filled mullahs and imams that are stoking anti-American sentiment. Wouldn’t it be great if anybody who speaks out against this country, to kick them out of the country? Anybody that threatens this country, kick ’em out. We’d get rid of Michael Moore, we’d get rid of half the Democratic Party if we would just import that law. That would be fabulous. The Supreme Court ought to look into this. Absolutely brilliant idea out there.

Apparently, the mainstream press is so enveloped in the warm, cozy womb of the DC establishment that they either don’t know what is going on around them or they’ve been willingly co-opted. I saw that same kind of wide-eyed, naive wonder on the face of Bob Woodward recently, when he realized that junkyard dog Patrick Fitzgerald wasn’t actually a slavering liberal determined to expose all of his Republican sources going back to Deep Throat. It’s in the defensive posture of Jim Brady as he recoiled in horror at unwashed liberal masses daring to criticize his ombudsman’s glaring error. It’s demonstrated by the fatuous guilelessness of the NY Times creating a “conservative beat” in the year 2005, as if they just discovered Rock and Roll or bell-bottoms.

They are like sheltered children. They do not know when they are being played. Indeed, they don’t even seem to know the game exists.

Perhaps it would be useful, then, to try to figure out how this happened, and strange as it may seem, it can be traced to a specific moment in 1968 when, after the police beat up protestors and newsmen alike at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Joseph Kraft, the Richard Cohen of his time, wrote:

“Are we merely neutral observers, seekers after truth in the public interest? Or do we, as the supporters of Mayor Daley and his Chicago police have charged, have a prejudice of our own?

“The answer, I think is that Mayor Daley and his supporters have a point. Most of us in what is called the communications field are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans–in Middle America. And the results show up not merely in occasional episodes such as the Chicago violence but more importantly in the systematic bias toward young people, minority groups, and the of presidential candidates who appeal to them.

“To get a feel of this bias it is first necessary to understand the antagonism that divides the middle class of this country. On the one hand there are highly educated upper-income whites sure of and brimming with ideas for doing things differently. On the other hand, there is Middle America, the large majority of low-income whites, traditional in their values and on the defensive against innovation.

“The most important organs of and television are, beyond much doubt, dominated by the outlook of the upper-income whites.

“In these circumstances, it seems to me that those of us in the media need to make a special effort to understand Middle America. Equally it seems wise to exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public.”

The “Middle America” that expressed such horror at the events in Chicago in 1968 did go on to elect Richard Nixon twice. (The Republicans have always had a direct line to the nation’s id.) But the forces that were pulling at the country then resulted forty years later in both a more conservative politics, a more liberal culture and an electorate as divided as ever. The elite media have never been able to wrap their arms around any of that. And they have never admitted that the insecurity that descended upon the establishment at that moment has been relentlessly exploited for maximum effect by the Republican party.

When the poobahs of the GOP read Kraft’s column they smelled blood and they haven’t let up since. Today, prudent restraint has become cowed submission to every republican complaint and an overweaning desire to please them with narratives of Democratic fecklessness. The Washington Post hears that Dan Froomkin, White House critic, is disliked by Republicans. Writers themselves feel uncomfortable with (and jealous of) the free-wheeling, critical tone of his online White House column, an irreverent style that is common in modern online journalism (see: sister site Slate.) They solve the “problem” by hiring the rabidly partisan 24 year old son of a Bush administration official.

This goes beyond bending over backwards. It’s gymnastic contortionism. They are as bewildered by the grassroots fervor of this modern polarized culture — and cannot see the forces creating them — today any more than they could see them in 1968.

This very day all the networks were indulging in another tiresome round of self-flagellation over this mind-numbingly predictable Republican campaign, (documented in this thorough report by Peter Daou) to convince the public that the liberal media is to blame for the country’s bad opinion of the war in Iraq. Howard Kurtz once again dutifully steps up to the plate and takes the first pitch right in the middle of the forehead:

BLITZER: …Howie, is it true, based on your observation of the news media, as the president, the vice president continue to maintain that the negative — all of our mainstream media reporting has tended to be on the negative?

HOWARD KURTZ, CNN’S RELIABLE SOURCES: Well, certainly not all of it, Wolf, and I don’t agree with that woman in West Virginia who said that journalists are doing this because they don’t agree with the Bush policy.

But I’ve look very carefully in recent weeks from the time of those mosque bombings through the third year anniversary stories of the U.S.-led invasion, and the tone of a whole lot of this coverage has been negative, has been downbeat, has been pessimistic, in part that’s because a lot of the news out of Iraq has not been good. But I think we may be reaching kind of a tipping point here that we saw in Vietnam where the press coverage seems to tilt against this war effort.

BLITZER: So you’ve seen a change in recent weeks? Is that what you’re saying?

KURTZ: Absolutely compared to say a year ago or two years ago. I think it’s not unconnected to the public opinion polls. I think journalists are finding it easier to ask aggressive questions of President Bush, to frame the stories more negatively in terms of the American presence there because they know a majority of the country now questions or disagrees with that war effort.

I do think, however, that a lot of journalists make an effort to talk to ordinary Iraqis and to report on signs of progress. But, let’s face it, in our business, the car bombing, the suicide attack, the attack on a police station, those tend to be top of the newscast, top of the front page kinds of stories. The other reconstruction efforts are less dramatic and tend to get pushed back.

BLITZER: It’s the same basically covering any story. Here in Washington, D.C., if there’s a major incident, let’s say a shooting incident, whatever. We don’t report, you know what, 99.99 percent of the kids went to school today, businesses were open, things were flourishing. But if there’s a horrible shooting incident, we’re going to report that in local media as well.

KURTZ: There certainly is a bad news bias in that sense. We cover plane crashes. We don’t cover safe plane landings.

But the additional complicating factor here, Wolf, as I know you know, is that it’s very dangerous for journalists in Baghdad. We’ve seen that with some of the deaths and injuries of journalists there. Most recently ABC’s Bob Woodruff. And so journalists are frustrated that they can’t tell more of the story of ordinary Iraqis and what they think about the U.S. presence there because they have to curtail their travels or travel with security details.

So when you add that to the natural tendency to play up violence, the dramatic pictures that television, of course, loves, I do think we are seeing more negative coverage now. And, obviously, it’s in the political self-interest of George Bush and Dick Cheney to highlight that because they are trying to make the case that things are not as bad as they seem in Iraq and the media are a handy target.

BLITZER: Very briefly, is there any sign of a backlash against the mainstream media because of our coverage of what’s happening in Iraq?

KURTZ: Yes, among conservatives, among military family members and others. A lot of people, as we saw that woman from West Virginia, blaming us for the situation there.

You can smell panic coming off the media in waves today. In 2006, there is nothing that screams “Middle America” (or perhaps the more accurate “Real America”) than the phrase “military families.” (Watch this video at Crooks and Liars of the modern Mencken, Jack Cafferty, having none of it and exposing Kurtz’s analysis for the sophistry it is by pointing out the obvious: the news is getting worse because the war is getting worse.)

Those journalists who haven’t taken the easy way out and simply adopted the GOP worldview (and there are many of them) are so paranoid that they can’t trust their own eyes and ears. They are perpetually vulnerable to the manipulations of a cynical Republican establishment that has been pounding the trope for forty years that if a journalist tells a story that is critical of conservatives, he or she is a liberal who is out of touch with the people.

The country is in the middle of several “wars” in both the literal and metaphorical sense. If it was ever called for, the time to “exercise a certain caution, a prudent restraint, in pressing a claim for a plenary indulgence to be in all places at all times the agent of the sovereign public” is long past. The public isn’t crying out for “balance,” particularly when those who claim to provide it have no earthly idea even how to define it. They are looking for truth. Plain, simple truth.

If the mainstream media hope to even be relevant, much less pressing a claim of plenary indulgence to be agents of the sovereign republic, they must wise up quickly and stop being agents of the right wing propaganda mills. If they don’t, they will finally lose the patience of their readers who will turn to the many alternative means of finding information.

I have very mixed feelings about how our country will fare with such a system. I think a thriving democracy needs a vital mainstream press. But since the mainstream press keeps getting punked over and over again by the right wing machine, you have to wonder if it really makes any difference anymore.

Hat Tip to Rick Perlstein for the Kraft column.

.

Right Wing Values

by tristero

Turns out the Washington Post’s new blogger, a product of the rightwing homeschooling movement, has some moral problems. As in plagiarising other people’s work. And if you scroll through Atrios’ posts today, you’ll learn it wasn’t just once or twice. Hoo boy.

Well, that was fast.

[UPDATE: Joe Conason weighs in and it’s worth clicking through the ads just to read the last line of his column.]

Religious Discrimination

by digby

American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past-they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy-and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.

Excuse me while I run down to Walmart and shoplift a copy of “Huck Finn.” (That is, if they have it. Twain was one of those degenerate unAmerican “A” words you know.)

.

Feel The Hum

by digby

March, 23rd. New York City – Today Sean Patrick Maloney, former senior Clinton White House official and investigative attorney running for the Democratic nomination for New York Attorney General, revealed a fresh idea to “legalize” the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program using a complaint that can be filed in federal court.

The complaint would seek a federal court order requiring the Bush Administration to comply with the law. The plan does not stop, compromise or hamper ongoing operations but instead compels the Bush Administration to appear in federal court, in secret session, to show cause for wiretapping any citizens of New York.

It is against New York state law to monitor communications over the phone without consent of the parties or without a court order. The benefit to New Yorkers, who cannot sue on their own behalf because the wiretapping is secret, is to initiate judicial oversight of the Bush Administration’s program.

Maloney said, “As a New Yorker, I am committed to stopping, capturing, punishing or killing the terrorists who target America for attack, but I am also committed to the rule of law in this country, or at least this state. George Bush is not above the law.

“My plan both fights terrorism and protects New Yorkers’ privacy from unauthorized or unconstitutional government intrusion. It does not compromise or halt ongoing anti-terror operations. It legalizes them. It’s clear the Bush Administration is operating outside of New York law without legal federal authority.”

There is recent case law and precedent for state attorneys general to act against federal actors who break state law and are acting outside of congressional authority. The Oregon Attorney General successfully sued then-United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, stopping him from undermining that state’s assisted suicide law (analogous to New York’s wiretapping law) without Congressional authorization to do so (as with the NSA’s actions here).

The Maloney campaign is supporting this idea with the first paid television ads of the campaign for Attorney General. Entitled “Good Question” the 30-second spot, which airs statewide starting today, makes the charge that the President is outside his authority in using warrantless wiretaps and is violating New York state law. In the ad, Sean Patrick Maloney asks, “The founding fathers didn’t trust George Washington with unlimited power, so why would we trust George Bush?”

Some Democrats are getting the idea that they might win by challenging the unpopular Bush’s assertions that the only way to deal with terrorism is to undermine the constitution. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s good politics.

Remember, Brit Hume didn’t have an aneurysm about this on Fox News Sunday because he’s confident that the issue is a winner. He had an aneurysm because he’s afraid that it will turn out the Democratic base and lose his pals the congress.

Update: Nobody is going to believe this, but I actually wrote this post before I got the ad that is now appearing on the left sidebar. However, I honestly believe this is a great trend and I encourage New Yorkers and others to click through the ad and take a look.

People from all over the country, in different ways and using different approaches are challenging this adminstration’s lawlessness and abuse of power. It’s not enough to just win at the ballot box. A requirement that our leaders must adhere to the rule of law must be affirmed in no uncertain terms, and the specifics of Bush’s power grab must be repudiated.

Members of the Bush adminstration who were around in the 70’s and 80’s (the “grown-ups”) waited for many years to gain power and re-assert these principles of executive authority which we thought were succesfully legally proscribed (with laws such as FISA) after Nixon. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. These radical, undemocratic, unAmerican ideas need to have a final stake driven through them. This is not a monarchy, even at war.

.

Jeffies

by tristero

What are “jeffies?” – Jeffies comprise a sub-category of the strawman argument which either explicitly use the construction, “There are some who…” or an obvious variation thereof. They describe a ridiculous position that no one seriously holds and include a firm, if obviously banal and vacuous, assertion of disagreement from the “jeffer” (the person who uses the jeffy; the audience upon which jeffies are used are said to have been “jeffed”).

Jeffies are, by definition, limited to members of the Bush administration and their propagandists. Other people can, and have, used the same language on occasion, but only statements by the Bushies using this construction will be considered authentic jeffies. Just as the Bush administration’s lawyers have concocted an exclusive set laws that apply to them and them only, I have determined (for reasosn I cannot divulge) that jeffies are unique to the Bush goverment and their cronies.

What if a strawman argument does not quite pass the litmus test of being a pure jeffie? – Such arguments are called “geoffies,” and their designation as such will be determined on a case by case basis. As Darwin demonstrated, categorization by species is inherently ambiguous and I believe that insight also applies here.

Why are they called jeffies? – No particular reason, they had to be called something. It has no bearing on recent kerfuffles in the blogosphere and those who think so will soon need to reckon with the wrath of the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Future posts which report the latest jeffies will refer back to this one so that I needn’t redefine it over and over. The definition may be updated from time to time.

Today’s jeffies come courtesy of The Carpetbagger Report and were discovered in in yesterday morning’s White House press conference emanating from the maw of George W. Bush:

“Our foreign policy up to now was to kind of tolerate what appeared to be calm. And underneath the surface was this swelling sense of anxiety and resentment, out of which came this totalitarian movement that is willing to spread its propaganda through death and destruction, to spread its philosophy. Now, some in this country don’t — I can understand — don’t view the enemy that way. I guess they kind of view it as an isolated group of people that occasionally kill. I just don’t see it that way.”

…”The enemy has said that it’s just a matter of time before the United States loses its nerve and withdraws from Iraq. That’s what they have said. And their objective for driving us out of Iraq is to have a place from which to launch their campaign to overthrow modern governments — moderate governments — in the Middle East, as well as to continue attacking places like the United States. Now, maybe some discount those words as kind of meaningless propaganda. I don’t, Jim. I take them really seriously.”

The following I would also characterize as a jeffy as “some” is clearly implied before “people”:

“[T]he United States of America must take this threat seriously and must not — must never forget the natural rights that formed our country. And for people to say, well, the natural rights only exist for one group of people, I would call them — I would say that they’re denying the basic rights to others.”

[Update: Jeffies were recently described, but not named as a specific sub-category by Jennifer Loven of the AP. While I have enormous respect for Ms. Loven’s work, the fact remains that I have priority on the discovery of the jeffy by over three years and therefore claim the right to name them.]

Born Again Nihilist

by digby

In an interesting exchange on the Lehrer News Hour Wednesday night (in which David Frum proved again that he is an inveterate GOP shill who cares more for the party than the country) David Gergen mentioned several times that thre Bush administration saw Bush as Truman, in the sense that he would be vindicated by history. He said:

The surprise to me has been that, when you talk to people around the president, the model they cite is often that of Harry Truman. Truman was someone whose polls fell down into the 20s in the final year in office. And, indeed, he could not run in 1952 because he was so low because of the Korean War.

And as time went on, historians would look back and said he’s a wonderful president. And if that’s your model, then, you know, you just keep on keeping on, which is what this president is doing.

He’s not changing course; he’s not changing people; he’s not making any serious adjusts. He’s simply coming out, and keep talking, keep talking. “And, ultimately, history will vindicate me.” That’s the theory.

I think he’s probably right about how the administration is rationalizing its actions. Bush is temperamentaly incapable of changing course. He can’t allow any doubts because to admit that his “gut” is fallible leaves him with no way to make decisions. He certainly is incapable of analyzing a situation and making a decision based upon information and advice. But in his mind that’s ok, because he’s been convinced that his “gut” knows what his mind doesn’t.

But as I listened to Gergen I couldn’t help but be reminded of another famous line of Bush’s, recorded by Bob Woodward:

In his interview with Woodward, conducted over two days in December of last year, Bush displayed no second thoughts about Iraq’s postwar miseries or the failure to turn up any WMD. “I haven’t suffered doubt,” he told Woodward. When the author – quoting Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove – suggested that “all history gets measured by outcomes,” Bush “smiled,” reports Woodward. ” ‘History,’ he said, shrugging, taking his hands out of his pockets, extending his arms out and suggesting with his body language that it was so far off. ‘We won’t know. We’ll all be dead’.”

Bush doesn’t care if history will vindicate him. He’s not comforting himself that someday he’ll be judged as a Truman who successfully guided the world through the immediate post war period. Maybe Karl Rove thinks that but Bush could not care less how history will judge him because “we’ll all be dead.”

He’s refusing to change course because he refuses to admit he’s wrong. There’s nothing complicated about it. He’s an arrogant, stupid man. And he’s the most powerful man in the world.

Gergen concluded:

And it’s just remarkable to me, to go back to the Truman analogy, that he’s just walking a straight line. And we’ve always appreciated the fact that he was resolute. Now he appears stubborn.

You know, “I’m going to walk a straight. I’m not listening. I believe I’m on the right course. I believe history will vindicate me.”

Well, Mr. President, you may believe that. But, you know, you could put all the rest of us in one hell of a mess if your gamble doesn’t pay off.

He doesn’t care. After all, we’ll all be dead someday anyway. President Bush, the alleged born again Christian, is a nihilist.

.

Archbishop Of Canterbury Defends Christianity From Cheapening By Creationists.

by tristero

You read that right:

Williams described creationism as ”a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories.”

”And for most of the history of Christianity … there’s been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time,” Williams said.

Asked if creationism should be taught in schools, Williams said: ”I don’t think it should, actually. No, no.”

Williams’ office confirmed that he had been quoted accurately in The Guardian, and said he was not scheduling further interviews immediately.

I can find plenty to snark about in this, if I want to. Like somehow, the good Archbishop seems to have forgotten that it took, what, 350 plus years for the Vatican to cut Galileo some slack? And does “creative act of God” leave a hole wide open for “intelligent design” creationism? I really don’t know what the Archbishop was thinking about regarding the first, but I’m pretty sure he’s too smart to fall for IDiocy. In any event, as important as they may be to clarify sometime in the future, I really don’t think those are the main issues. What’s important is that the Archbishop has irrevocably recast the debate within the Christian community. The question has become this:

Now that a widely respected religious leader has bluntly declared creationism bad theology, why do the Dobsons and the LaHayes of the world continue to demand that all good Christians foolishly believe that the Bible is a scientifically accurate textbook?

The Worm Turns

by digby

Greg Sargent at TAPPED sees what’s important about the emerging new and improved conventional wisdom about the Feingold resolution:

Lockhart speaks out in an interview with Chris Lehmann in his entertaining piece on Feingold in this week’s New York Observer. Lehmann writes:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold’s proposal – and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, “is complete nonsense.”

He said: “One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position – that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.”

Whatever you think of censure, Lockhart’s hitting on a really critical point that can’t be emphasized enough. Reporters and commentators have grown conditioned to believe Republicans when they say an issue’s a political winner for them — mainly because Democrats too often act as if they’re convinced they’re going to lose. When Karl Rove threw down the gauntlet in that speech about NSA wiretapping, few if any commentators even thought to imagine that Rove might be bluffing, even though it was perfectly likely that he was trying to psych out moderate Dems and get them to break ranks. And of course, some moderate Dem thinkers immediately followed Rove’s script.

This is exactly right. They’ve been conditioned over the course of many years. During the Clinton era the Republicans ruled the discourse with non-stop scandalmongering which the press eagerly aided and abetted. During the 2000 campaign the press trivialized and derided Al Gore despite George W. Bush’s clear lack of qualifications and helped the GOP character assassination squad at every turn. Since 9/11 the Republicans have held the line with brute intimidation tactics accusing anyone who disagreed with lack of patriotism or cowardice. I know it’s been tough and I salute the Democrats for taking the amount of invective that’s been hurled at them all through these dark years. Nobody who faces Republican thuggishness day after day can be called cowards.

But times have changed. The Republicans are being hoist on their own hubris and it’s time to recognise that people are sick of their tired cant and want to hear from us again. Listening to George W. Bush’s speeches for the last five years, particularly after 9/11, is like having someone sing “It’s a small world after all” over and over and over again. It was bad the first time. Now it makes you want to stab your ears with a letter opener. The press, forced to listen more often than anyone else, seems to have reached its limit as well.

Make the argument, Dems. People are ready to listen.

Read all of Chris Lehman’s article if you haven’t had the chance. It’s great.

.

Oh, You Mean that Freedom

by digby

Oh my goodness, the Fox All-Stars have discovered that religious freedom is hard to guarantee in a theocracy. Seems this Christian who has been sentenced to death by an Afghan court for converting from Islam has opened their tired little eyes to the fact that “democracy” isn’t easy to impose on a nation that’s following strict Islamic law. Yah think?

They agree that this kind of thing has implications for Iraq too, can you believe it? Mort Kondrake says that he’s been hearing that women in Basra are all having to cover themselves up in burkas now!(No kidding) Fred Barnes is concerned about Iraqi Christians too.

Evidently, the wingnuts are up in arms about this story. Someone in the handpicked military family audience even brought it up during Bush’s Q&A today. (And here I thought everything was going great over there but the press isn’t reporting it.) The whole place can go to hell in a handbasket but if Christians are persecuted then there’s a problem.

Oh wait, that’s only certain Christians. Some deserve what they get for “putting their heads into the mouth of the alligator.”

.

Animal Magnetism

by digby

Since this is shaping up to be bloggy fun day, I can’t help but weigh in on this delicious little dust-up over at Jeff Goldstein’s dog house pertaining to none other than my pal and blogging companion, tristero.

Tristero already wrote about it, as you all probably know. But he failed to properly highlight Goldstein’s bizarrre and freakish dog-fantasy comment, which I feel is important for posterity. I suspect it was because he felt that its exceedingly disturbing images of bestiality might have been too vile and odious for discerning readers. He is right. But I believe that there should be a record of right wing insanity and I think people should be forced to look at it so they know that when these same people claim the left is unhinged, they are merely projecting their own incredibly fucked up psyches on to others.

These are the people, remember, who claim to have better values than you:

Today’s subject: tristero, who (let’s face it) has the intellect of a gibbon, though he clearly fancies himself a brilliant debunker of lockstep winguttery. In fact, his post
(as seen on Digbysblog) – Loven stole HIS idea about the strawmans, we’re told / and Atrios was exactly right that I’m an idiot who doesn’t realize my own idiocy (a pronouncement, incidentally, that can only be made by one who assumes he is far more intelligent than the object of his scorn, which position essentially deconstructs the study in the Atrios post tristero fellates, or else proves it to his detriment, I’m not sure which) – is par for the course with these bandwidth sucking cocklords. You allow them to stay and say their piece, and they interpret that as a “right” that you now owe them, and they then take that as an invitation to start helping themselves to things in the fridge, or slipping a finger up your dog’s asshole, etc.

Well, sorry, but that ain’t my thang. These fucktards want to take shots at me on their own sites, they can have at it. But from now on, they can keep it there, or they can bitch about me on sites I don’t give a shit about anyway.

What they can’t do is take pot shots at me on other sites, then slather some peanut butter on their joints and show up here hoping to help themselves to a quick hummer from my dog.

So goodbye to tristero. And there will be others, as well. I won’t let this place turn into the cesspole Cole nurtures.

And seriously, what did tristero offer here? He’s a mouthpiece for lib-Dem talking points, from the few posts of his I read, and I have more interesting conversations with beets and sea monkeys than I ever could with someone who is so bent on getting noticed by Atrios that he’s already committed to sing a Katrina and the Waves cover at the next Eschacon – while wearing nothing but one of those bitchin’ Che berets.

Keep in mind that tristero’s post on Goldstein’s blog was inoffensive. It was the post on this blog that got him banned. The offensive line?: “Hat tip to Jeff at Protein Wisdom who really is exactly as Atrios describes him.”

That’s it. That’s what brought on this gut-wrenching, noxious screed. Somebody appears to have a very, very thin skin.

But let’s talk about the rather, shall we say, hallucinatory imagery we see in that post. I’m beginning to think that someone needs to do a serious psychological study of the effects of bestiality on conservative politics (or is it the effects of conservative politics on bestiality?) There are just too many instances of this for it to be a coincidence. Lil’ Benji and his box turtles, Santorum and his man-on-dog action, Rush and his fantasies of women and german shepards, Laura Bush and the horse cocks — the list goes on. (Oh boy, here comes another round of freaky google hits. Hello Abu, howya doin?)

Here’s Rush:

“…the trend toward more new mothers leaving the workforce. Yes, it’s a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds. You know. So that’s — well, it’s true. You go to the right airports and you can see it.”

What is it about these people that makes them constantly think of animal sex? (In Rush’s case it’s also an obsession with being tortured by women, but that’s another story.) When you think about how to insult a political rival, does your mind automatically turn to bestiality? Mine doesn’t. The idea of someone slathering their joint and asking the dog for a hummer has literally never entered my mind. (And I have a dirty mind.) But this goes way beyond any pornographic visual I have ever entertained. Ever. In fact, it makes me sick. Sticking your finger up a dog’s ass is something that I would think only occurs to veterinarians and perverts.

This imagery is not exactly well … mainstream. And yet, right wingers seem to come up with it all the time. I know that pets are part of the family and all, but I don’t this is what most Americans have in mind when they hear the wingnuts lecturing everyone about family values. And, just because it’s a dog doesn’t mean it isn’t sodomy, you know. Even if your dog’s a girl.

ugh

Now, I’ve got a picture of Jeff Goldstein wearing nothing but an “Uncle Sam Wants You” t-shirt, his joint slathered from top to bottom with a 1/4 teaspoon of peanut butter, singing “How much is that doggie in the window?” If you’ll excuse me, I have to go puke and then get my brain dry-cleaned.

Oh, not just because of the synapse frying revulsion of that image. Sorry. As bad as that is, I can take it. It’s this, featuring even more disturbing bestial images — and even worse writing.

Thanks to Hilzoy at Obsidion Wings for that coup de grace. She shall burn in hell for making me read that.

Update: Oh. My. Dear. God. This peanut butter thing is part of the whole Abu Ghraib horror. Read Jeanne D’Arc.

.