Impolite Servants

by digby

So everybody in Hollywood hates MSNBC. (Michael Reagan gets death threats from sissy liberals every time he appears!) Whatever. But this common piece of right wing victimology is worth examining:

Actress Patricia Heaton noted that Hollywood workers too often just assume everyone they work with is a like-minded liberal. When those around her belittle John McCain or Palin, she politely reminds them that she’s a Republican.

“That’s what you have to do in our town,” she said.

The humanity. How can she bear up under it all?

She says “Hollywood workers” which would indicate to me that she’s talking about crew as well as fellow actors. And it’s true that there are more liberal “workers” in Hollywood — a lot of them are union, after all. I can easily see Patricia Heaton telling them to stop expressing their opinions around her and them having to do so since she’s a (washed up) TV star. I’ve had many a boss do the same thing. Everybody knows the score.

But poor Heaton still feels put upon because in her mind her beautiful ears should never have to hear liberals being mean to Republicans. It’s impolite. Meanwhile, liberals in this country have been subjected to conservatives slinging crap like this for years every time we turn on the radio:

LIMBAUGH: I mean, if there is a party that’s soulless, it’s the Democratic Party. If there are people by definition who are soulless, it is liberals — by definition. You know, souls come from God. You know? No. No. You can’t go there.

That guy is given awards and treated like a king among the conservative set — which includes the entire Republican establishment. Just a couple of months ago both Bush presidents called the show to shoot the breeze with its “polite” host.

For the last thirty years I have been listening to politicians run as “proud conservatives” without even the slightest acknowledgment that more than half the country identifies themselves differently. (Even the Democrats go to great lengths to assure the country they aren’t “latte sipping, New York times reading” liberals.) Conservatives have been shoving their philosophy down Americans’ throats for decades as if it were the one true American faith and anyone who doesn’t agree is a traitor.

Nonetheless, get ready to hear more of these stories of victimization, as Republicans begin to realize that conservatism is as out of fashion as mullets and padded shoulders. If they thought they were being victimized when they ran the whole government and were feted as the personification of Real America you know they are going to wallow in victimhood as if being a conservative is akin to living in the Warsaw ghetto, once they are out of power. For reasons that probably have to do with guilt and projection they seem to need to see themselves as an aggrieved minority. I say let them follow their bliss.

Update: Here’s another one right out of the Limbaugh files — this time used by Liddy Dole.

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