Word To The Wise

by digby

Golly, I sure hope the kids who did this video actually are all virgins, because the Republicans are so upset about politicians using kids to send political messages (about kids) that they are digging around in their personal lives and stalking their families to turn up evidence that they are lying.

(They call it “fair game.”)

Update: Ezra brings up the “Ashley Story” ad (that I mentioned last week when Fox first started flogging this story) and writes this:

And here’s another question: Does anyone remember DailyKos launching a feeding frenzy trying to smear or discredit Ashley? Anyone hear of Markos Moulitsas camping out outside her house to see if Ashley was really grieving? His readers interviewing her teachers to see if her academic performance had actually improved as a result of the President’s hug? Did any of that happen? Or did the Left raise some questions about the political appropriateness of the ad without trying to destroy the family’s name and reputation?

For all I know there were some lefties out there trying to discredit that family. But there was no concerted smear led by Kos or Jane Hamsher or Atrios driving by Ashley’s home and talking to her neighbors and questioning her family’s integrity on the front pages of their highly trafficked, much-ballyhood-by-Howie-Kurtz’s blogs. I wouldn’t have even thought of it. And I doubt seriously that if we had done something like that that the Democratic leadership in the congress would have passed around our posts to the press, begging them to get on board the swiftboat.

Update II: Also be sure to read this by John Cole and this by Joe Gandelman, neither of whom are bleeding heart liberals. But they both have beating hearts, which seems to be something these right wingers are missing.

Cole runs down some of the apalling self-righteousness that’s pouring out of the right today and says:

I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.

And I’m sure many of them call themselves Christians too.

I do hope that Howard Kurtz is being apprised of his favorite blogger’s (“charming one moment and pugnacious the next”) activities these past couple of days. I’m sure he’d hate to be left out of the loop on all the great work she’s doing for America: kurtzh@washpost.com

Update III: Don’t miss this piece on Sadly No called “Let Them Eat Ayn Rand Novels” about the latest noxious muse of the santimonious right. She’s the one who memorably said:

Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor. Dying-on-the-sidewalks-with-open-sores poor?

You aren’t poor unless you’re dying on the sidewalks with open sores. I wonder if this qualifies?

Update Again: or as someone mentioned in the comments, does this?

Or this?

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