A Cupp full of nonsense
by digby
S.E. Cupp is on a tear. She’s offended that editor of the Nation Richard Kim tweeted that nurse Kaci Hickock a badass and a political prisoner. She says this is so absurd he might as well have been speaking in tongues. Or something. Because she isn’t a badass, she’s a very disobedient little subject who refuses to blindly obey cretinous politicians who are acting like we live in the 14th century. Whatever. Fear is their name and panic’s their game …
She explains why this is wrong:
[P]olitical prisoners are imprisoned for their political beliefs. She is being (unsuccessfully) quarantined because she may have a deadly infectious disease. A political prisoner is a real thing. It’s serious. Think North Korea or Tibet. Not Maine.
Equating Hickox to a political prisoner is like calling Paris Hilton a POW because of that one time she was placed under house arrest for drunk driving and that’s sort of like the war on drugs or something.
Hookay. Except drunk driving is a crime. Going to West Africa to treat Ebola, unless things have changed in the last couple of hours, is not. She has no symptoms. Epidemiologists know for a fact that she’s not contagious if she’s not symptomatic. Therefore, this quarantine is bullshit on a scientific level and they’re doing it to appease pants-wetters who would burn her at the stake if given half an excuse.
Moreover, political prisoners are imprisoned because of their beliefs, period, and especially so when it’s done to people who are critical of the government’s behavior. Hickox’s belief is that we should follow the scientific protocols instead of letting Tea bagging morons and blustering misogynists make them up for political gain and she challenged that. Considering the commentary we’ve seen in recent days from Cupp’s right wing cohorts about jailing her (and presumably anyone else who refuses to comply with nonsensical orders designed to appease a bunch of panic artists for no good reason) she certainly qualifies as political at this point.
But for some reason Cupp also seems very concerned about the state of liberalism which she goes on about for more than half the screed:
I’m sure Kim is a smart man. I bet he knows many words. Why he chose these specific ones speaks to the dire straits of the liberal movement’s current political status. It’s a few days before midterm elections, Republicans are poised to take the Senate, Democrats are running away from President Obama’s record like it’s, well, Ebola, and all the usual lefty tactics are sinking with a thud.
A Democratic House candidate in New York named Martha Robertson was booed during a debate in which she tried to accuse her opponent of being a part of the “war on women.” Loud groans were audible.
In New Hampshire, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was booed for interrupting her opponent during a debate to make a snarky comment about the Koch Brothers.
In Massachusetts, the Boston Globe endorsed the Republican candidate for Governor for the first time in 20 years.
And in Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall has run a campaign so narrowly focused on women’s issues, his Republican opponent Cory Gardner is up a whopping 21 points among men. And for all of Udall’s efforts, he is only 6 points ahead among women. He has been nicknamed “Mark Uterus” on the campaign trail.
And that’s just the bad news in blue states. Over in Kentucky the Democrats’ candidate for Senate won’t admit she voted for the President and current leader of her party. In Texas the Democratic gubernatorial candidate ran an attack ad highlighting her opponent’s disability.
The left is not well.
Mr. Kim’s unhinged tweet is a perfect encapsulation of the desperate unraveling of a once pretty together group of people who managed to win not one but two Presidential elections with a guy who had no experience the first time and a pretty questionable record the second time.
This is a fairly commonplace mode of thought among members of both parties when they win an election. There will be a “we have engineered a total victory for all time” celebration on Fox Tuesday night and on through the lame duck if it goes as predicted. They will pat each other on the back and sing and dance on the grave of liberalism for weeks. And frankly, if the shoe were on the other foot, the liberals would do the same thing.
And it’s pretty much always wrong. No, liberalism is not dead if the Republicans win seats in a midterm of the 6th year of a Democratic presidency. It would be a huge upset if they didn’t. And no, it will not spell the final fiery demise of the Tea Party if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and the Democrats take back one or both Houses in two years. These are permanent factions in American politics and power shifts between them. To say that any single election “proves” the other side is finished is just plain dumb.
Dumb like this:
[D]esperate times call for desperate measures. And so the editor of the left’s flagship magazine has decided to make this nurse the next Gandhi, the next Vaclav Havel, the next Nelson Mandela.
If it weren’t so offensive, it would just be funny. And kind of sad. But at the very least, it finally answers the age-old question: What’s the dumbest metaphor ever?
Uhm, it wasn’t a metaphor.
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