Comparing The Crazies

by digby

I have been traveling the past few days, hence the scant attention to the hysteria over Joe Wilson. I confess that this is the kind of thing I have a really hard time getting too upset about because it just isn’t a federal offense to call the president a liar. The problem is when the press and the party fail to correct the record. Indeed, I wish more people had called Bush a liar when he was actually lying.The world would be a better place today.

But Glenn Greenwald writes today of the utter vapidity of the he said/ she said nonsense coming from the media around this Wilson flap and that does make me want to call for the smelling salts. Dear God, these people are daft:

Needless to say, no establishment media outlet is permitted to write an article that includes criticisms of “one side” without emphasizing that the criticisms apply just the same to “the other side” — regardless of whether that’s actually true. That’s what “balance” means. Thus, Politico publishes an article discussing the fact that the Right is dominated by crackpots and it is therefore required to claim that the Left is, too. Here are their examples to provide the balance needed so as to not upset Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh:

Nor are Democrats strangers to having their crazy uncles take center stage. During the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and David Bonior (D-Mich.) famously flew to Baghdad, where McDermott asserted that he believed the president would “mislead the American public” to justify the war. The trip made it a cakewalk for critics to describe the Democratic Party as chock-a-block with traitorous radicals.

That’s one of the most amazing passages I can recall reading. Even now — when everyone knows that the President did exactly that which Rep. McDermott, in 2002, said he was doing: “misleading the American public to justify the war” — those who pointed out that truth are deemed “crazy.” Here’s what that “crazy traitorous uncle” McDermott actually said, as reported back then by The New York Times

In that one passage they reveal that it’s all about the Miss Manners police to these people, not about the substance of the claims at all. To them it really doesn’t matter at all whether or not the president is lying. It only matters if someone says he’s lying. What kind of journalism is that?

In a political world populated by normal people instead of high school kewl kidz, Wilson’s outburst would have prompted endless stories about whether or not the president was lying. Since he wasn’t that should have been one of those “teachable moments” about how ridiculous the Republican criticisms are, and how health care reform is actually going to work. But no, we are talking about whether it’s appropriate to say that the president is a liar.

The next time a lazy reporter wants to find a “balance” between left and right when it comes to acting crazy, they should look to the obvious: teabaggers like Joe Wilson vs Code Pink. The main difference is that our practitioners of political theatre don’t pack heat and they aren’t members of congress or Democratic candidates for vice president. That certainly doesn’t make the teabagger Reps and Senators any less crazy. The opposite, in fact.

Unfortunately, we can’t even get our own Senate lackeys to put this in the proper perspective since they have decided to further validate Wilson’s ravings. (Why don’t we just bar code ourselves and be done with it? Of course, then the Big Bad Socialists will be able to steal our brains, which in the case of the right wing and Kent Conrad is only petty theft.)

Update:

From Media Matters:

Of course, whenever reporters like Dana Milbank note such boorish behavior by a Republican, they must quickly include something some Democrat did so they seem “balanced,” even if the Democrat’s actions aren’t even remotely comparable. Sure enough, here’s Milbank:

And, in truth, there were provocations from the Democratic side. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), sitting on the Republican side, insisted on making a victory sign with his hand and waving it at Obama.

Yeah. That’s the same. (And “insisted upon”? Really? Was there some effort to prevent Pascrell from doing so?) Milbank, continuing directly:

Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), also on the GOP side of the aisle, felt the need to pound his fist in the air and make what looked, awkwardly, like a fascist salute.

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