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Trump’s funeral rally

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 22, 2023

Remember the fuss over a different one?

How bored is he?

The twice-impeached, much-investigated instigator of the Jan. 6 insurrection was in North Carolina on Saturday for the memorial service of Ineitha Lynette Hardaway, a.k.a. “Diamond” of the right-wing political duo Diamond and Silk.

The memorial service at Fayetteville’s Crown Theater was not the political rally for himself that Donald Trump had hoped. Size matters to him. He didn’t get it.

The Fayetteville Observer reports that just over 150 people attended the event in the theater that holds 2,400. Donald Trump’s audience was smaller and the event took longer than he’d expected.

Still, the memorial service did resemble a Trump rally.

Yes, the pillow guy was at Hardaway’s funeral … to praise Donald Trump.

Trump’s eulogy had plenty of his usual shtick.

Those of a certain age will recall what a fuss Republicans and conservative pundits raised in 2002 over the memorial service for Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. He’d died in a plane crash along with his wife, Sheila Wellstone, his daughter, Marcia Wellstone, aides Will McLaughlin and Tom Lapic, family friend Mary McEvoy and the two pilots, Richard Conry and Michael Guess. The event was carried on CSPAN and broadcast over Minnesota Public Radio. Over 20,000 attended.

And, oh, the handwringing over the inappropriate politicalness of it all!

In studying the anatomy of a debacle, many critics have focused on the blunt-edged speech of Wellstone’s close friend Rick Kahn. But the event was designed from the start to be boisterous and, yes, political.

“The problem was the labeling,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. “The mistake was in labeling this as a memorial instead of a celebration of the lives of these individuals, which is what it was.”

She said people tuned in expecting a funeral and instead got a rally.

CNN reported:

Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota, lambasted Democrats for what he called a “complete, total absolute sham.”

“To them, Wellstone’s death, apparently, was just another campaign event,” he told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Dave Ryan, a radio talk show host in Minneapolis, said the airwaves have been full of talk about the service, which featured speeches from Wellstone family members and friends who urged the crowd to remember Wellstone when they cast their votes next week.

“I guess the local stations here were swamped with phone calls from people who were angry because they had been sold a memorial service that had turned into a political rally,” Ryan said in an interview with CNN. “And I really thought that was kind of shameful. I really did.”

The early part of the service was done beautifully, former mayor of St. Paul mayor George Latimer told the Minneapolis Post in 2008. Then Kahn, Wellstone’s campaign manager, delivered a barnburner.

Six years later they were still talking about it.

Fifteen years later they were still talking about it.

That Hardaway’s memorial turned into a pathetically small Trump rally people will forget by tomorrow.

Of course they had a hissy fit over John Lewis’s funeral

Published by digby on August 1, 2020
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They always do.

Republicans have long attacked Democrats for how they behave at the funerals of Democratic politicians. Recall the phony handwringing years ago over the funeral of Paul Wellstone. Also:

Coretta Scott King

Ted Kennedy

Even John McCain

All of this falls under the general category of Right Wing Hissy Fit

Here is the predictable meltdown over John Lewis’s funeral oratory by Barack Obama, courtesy Media Matters.

I don’t have the time left in my life to list all their Dear Leader’s grotesque disrespect for people living and dead in which he turns every last moment into a partisan death match.

And anyway, it’s a waste of breath. These people are beyond shame.

Even after three years of this monstrous barbarian in the White House they have no compunction about turning on the oozing sanctimony about proper public behavior. It’s maddening but we’re going to have to steel ourselves to it.

They have learned nothing. They will never change.

Playing that funeral card again

Published by digby on September 2, 2018

Playing that funeral card again

by digby

The wingnuts are partying like it’s 2002, policing funeral behavior. You knew somebody would drag this old trope out again:

Democrats (and some Republicans) turned John McCain’s funeral into an orgy of Trump-bashing. Evidently they though it made political sense. It reminds me of another politicized funeral, 16 years ago.

In the fall of 2002, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone was running for re-election against Norm Coleman. Tim Pawlenty was running his first race for Governor. And, of course, it was the first midterm election of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the last days of the campaign, Wellstone’s campaign airplane crashed in northern Minnesota, killing Wellstone and a number of others. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale was hurriedly recruited to replace Wellstone on the ticket.

And leading Democrats from around the country assembled in the Twin Cities for Wellstone’s funeral. The funeral was broadcast live to the nation. To the shock of most who watched, the Democrats turned Wellstone’s funeral into a partisan hate-fest. Reaction was overwhelmingly negative.

Coleman went on to defeat Mondale handily. Pawlenty won his first term. And nationally, Republicans gained seats in both the House and the Senate. Revulsion against the Democrats’ politicized funeral was widely credited as a factor in Republicans’ success.

Scott and I started Power Line at the end of May of that year, and Paul joined us later in the Summer. It was Minnesota’s central role in the 2002 elections that gave this site its initial influx of readers from around the country.

Will the politicizing of McCain’s funeral by anti-Trumpers have a similar boomerang effect? Probably not to the same degree; standards have declined considerably since 2002. But it won’t help the anti-Trumpers’ cause, just as similar anti-Trump speeches at Aretha Franklin’s funeral won’t be helpful.

What can we conclude if there is a funeral for Person A, and the “eulogies” are mostly about Person B? For one thing, Person B is obviously a heck of a lot more important than Person A. John McCain was heroic in some ways, notoriously small-minded in others. It is perhaps a fitting coda to his career that his funeral was mostly about someone else.

That’s by the blogger formerly known as “Hindrocket” of the blog Powerline which once won “blog of the year” by Times Magazine. He’s reliving former triumphs with this post.

However, one of the people who subtweeted the hell out of Donald Trump yesterday was George W. Bush of whom Hindrocket once said:

POSTED ON JULY 28, 2005 BY JOHN HINDERAKER

A STROKE OF GENIUS?

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Hyperbolic? Well, maybe. But consider Bush’s latest master stroke: the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. The pact includes the U.S., Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea; these six countries account for most of the world’s carbon emissions. The treaty is, in essence, a technology transfer agreement. The U.S., Japan and Australia will share advanced pollution control technology, and the pact’s members will contribute to a fund that will help implement the technologies. The details are still sketchy and more countries may be admitted to the group later on. The pact’s stated goal is to cut production of “greenhouse gases” in half by the end of the century.

What distinguishes this plan from the Kyoto protocol is that it will actually lead to a major reduction in carbon emissions! This substitution of practical impact for well-crafted verbiage stunned and infuriated European observers.

I doubt that the pact will make any difference to the earth’s climate, which will be determined, as always, by variations in the energy emitted by the sun. But when the real cause of a phenomenon is inaccessible, it makes people feel better to tinker with something that they can control. Unlike Kyoto, this agreement won’t devastate the U.S. economy, and, also unlike Kyoto, the agreement will reduce carbon emissions in the countries where they are now rising most rapidly, India and China. Brilliant.

But I don’t suppose President Bush is holding his breath, waiting for the crowd to start applauding.

UPDATE: Of all the thousands of posts we have done over the years, this one seems to most outrage the Left, I suppose because it is so at odds with liberals’ cherished illusions about President Bush. The tone of the post is obviously tongue in cheek, but liberals never seem to notice. They are, to put it charitably, not big on nuance. More important, I’ve never seen a liberal respond to, let alone rebut, the point of the post: that President Bush’s proposal to share pollution control technology with the countries where carbon emissions are rising most rapidly made far more sense than the Kyoto approach, which combined ineffectiveness with economic disaster. That, too, is a sign of the intellectual vacuity of modern liberalism.

Obviously, Hindracker is one of those people who doesn’t understand the definition of irony. (“I was like being totally ironic and I don’t get why people didn’t take it seriously.”)

Either that or he’s a bit of a weasel. You decide.

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Pearl clutchers on parade

Published by digby on January 10, 2023

Lol. Brent Bozell’s far right Media Research Center is calling for the smelling salts because Never Trumper Charlie Sykes laughed at Kevin McCarthy.

Here’s Sykes (from his newsletter, subscription only):

On yesterday’s podcast with Will Saletan, I read this piece aloud, but I’m not sure I can do justice to how much I love this bit of pearl-clutching from the snowflakes at the Media Research Center, so I’ve provided some footnotes.

Here’s how it starts:

The liberal media like to depict Never Trumpers like Charlie Sykes as the voice of center-right reason and moderation. But in recent days¹, the founder of The Bulwark and MSNBC columnist has revealed a spiteful, vulgar streak.²

Believe it or not… it gets better.

Last week, we caught³ him literally laughing⁴ as he reveled in Kevin McCarthy’s sticky predicament in seeking the speakership, and pronouncing with malicious glee⁵ the names of George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as people McCarthy had to rely on⁶. But that was tame compared to his spit take⁷ on Jonathan Capehart’s Sunday Show. 

We now get to the Main Event.

Now that McCarthy has secured the Speaker’s gavel, Sykes took Sunday’s Democrat talking point about how the House Republicans will be incapable of governing and headed straight for the crotch⁸: 

“You look at the kind of concessions he’s made, putting the bomb throwers on the Rules committee, the motion to vacate. It is extremely difficult to see how Kevin McCarthy can negotiate anything, because the man has self-gelded his speakership.”

The author then felt he had to define the term for his MRC’s readers:

“Gelded” is, of course, a synonym for castrated.⁹

You might have thought that the normally proper Capehart would have been offended by Sykes’ crude metaphor¹⁰. But to the contrary, he and Michael Steele, of the disgraced Lincoln Project, could be heard laughing off-camera, with one of them saying, “that is true.”¹¹

Right-wing doilies were rumpled and tea spilled. Standards, must be upheld.

For the liberal media, rules of decency and decorum are apparently suspended when it comes to belittling Republicans.¹²

Decency and decorum. Exactly what we always expect from the right-wing media eco-system

I like Sykes and I appreciate that he’s seen the error of his ways and has come over to the light. But I can’t help but remember stuff like this from guys like Sykes. In 2018 he wrote a piece reminiscing about the Democrats’ terrible bad manners at the Paul Wellstone funeral and gave them hell for being too hysterical during the Kavanaugh hearings, saying they were succumbing to the degradation of discourse in public life or some such nonsense. He closed with this:

This raises several questions: Will it be like this if the Democrats take control of Congress? Will they realize that woke emotionalism is not a substitute for sober, substantive politics? Will they discredit their legitimate investigations with illegitimate allegations? Will they embrace Trump’s own ethos in their efforts to overthrow him? Will they overreach and propel Republicans to a 2020 victory? Can they even help themselves?

They answered that question quite handily, didn’t they? So maybe it would be good to look back at the pearl clutching we got from Sykes and all the others throughout the Bush years to assess whether they weren’t just playing the same phony games the Media Research Center is playing with Sykes today. They’ve been using this bullshit double standard for years.

Repurposing The Reverend

Published by digby on April 4, 2011

Repurposing The Reverend

by digby

It seems certain now that Republicans actually believe their own revisionist history about Martin Luther King: they are squealing like stuck pigs about the labor rallies all over the country today commemorating his last speech on the day day he was assassinated as if it’s a blight on their conservative, pro-business hero’s memory. Either that or they are just jerks.

Here’s the ad that’s caused all these self-anointed King defenders to lose their minds:

“All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper..”

Seriously folks, he was in Memphis that day to support striking santitation workers, ferchristsake. You can say a lot of things about Martin Luther King but you just can’t say that he was an anti-union, free market, social conservative. If he were, you sure wouldn’t have known it by the fire-breathing hatred he inspired among the anti-union, free market social conservatives of the time.

Just for a little perspective, here’s a little reminder, from just a few years ago, about how the rightwingers used to look at this:

August 12, 1993 Dear Editor, Salt Lake City council’s announcement that they are renaming the main boulevard, 600 South, after Martin Luther King (Daily Herald, 8/11/93, p. B-3) is yet one more example of the dangerous trend to make a hero out of one of America’s most vociferous traitors. I am not expressing opinion; but fact; based on documented evidence that Martin Luther King was vigorously promoted by the Soviet-financed CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA) in order to foment a violent polarization of Americans along racial lines (divide and conquer). The subsequent raising of Martin Luther to ever more elevated hero status is only a follow-up of that initial motive. (I do not intend to address the lie that Communism is “dead,” other than to merely note that this particular case is yet one more evidence that the subversion of our beloved country is ongoing and alarmingly successful.) Here is a sample of the documented evidence of which I speak. I am referring to an essay by Evans-Raymond Pierre, a native black of New York City who earned a degree in political science and history at the University of Vermont. In it he quotes from a member (FBI plant) of the CPUSA who testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee in 1979 that “the [communist] cells that I was associated with in Cleveland were continually being asked to raise money for Martin Luther King’s activities and to support his movement…. While I was in the Communist Party, as a loyal American Negro, I knew Martin Luther King to be closely connected with the Communist Party….” Another example of M.L. King’s Communist support and ties documented by Pierre was his close association with Stanley David Levison, who “assisted King in organization matters and political strategy, wrote some of his speeches, and advised in hiring personnel to staff King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.” At the time, Levison was “knowingly being used as a conduit for the Soviet funds” to the CPUSA, and also “assisted in managing the secret party coffers.” ‘Yet one more example of calling evil, good. Let’s see if we can’t convince the city council to reverse this decision. Anyone desiring to peruse further evidence of M.L. King’s close connections with the CPUSA is invited to request free (if you order within a month) reprints of Pierre’s essay from The New American, P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913. (January 13, 1986.) Sincerely, Sterling D. Allan, Fountain Green, UT
and Brian Gibson, Provo, Utah

That’s MLK, there in front row.

It is a perverse sign of progress that they are now claiming him rather than turning him into a communist. But it is also a sign of their sick and twisted Manichean view of the world that one can only be a communist or a right wing conservative. Even though I know it’s probably better that they appropriate him rather than vilify him I confess that it makes me livid since I lived through the time they were calling him the most vile names in the world — and applauding his death.

Indeed, it was only a five years ago they made spectacles of themselves over Coretta Scott King’s funeral:

Here’s a sampling of their cute caption contest:

“I would like another roll with dinner please.”

“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”

Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…

W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”

“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”


47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)

Ok. It’s Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the “thoughtful” right wing community. They aren’t quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:

If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.

Don’t forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.

So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don’t latch on to a myth and try to make it true.

Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.

I don’t know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn’t it be on TV?

Anyone who didn’t find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.

Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn’t going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn’t change their vote anyway.

What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late “Queen” would find offensive.

He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.

Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.

This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:

“Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?”

Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton’s cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as “brown”…unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy “sienna” and “umber” in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.

Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.

Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.

So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other “mainstream” African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful– or even polite themselves?

That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same–no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral–the memories of many are going to be long.

This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre–9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they’ll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.

blah … blah .. blah blah
It’s doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason … not anymore.

Actually, I can’t wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA… hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.

Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!

I’ll try to work on my bad attitude.

In the meantime, I’m going to check out this AFSCME page with pictures of the rallies for inspiration.

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Published by digby on August 27, 2009

Wellstoning

by digby

Yesterday, I warned everyone to gird themselves for the Wellstoning and it’s already happening:

Conservative media invoke Wellstone smear in anticipation of Kennedy’s service Hannity on Kennedy’s death: “a lot of this was the politicizing of — remember Paul Wellstone’s death?” Discussing Kennedy’s death during his radio program, Sean Hannity asserted, “We’ve got The Wall Street Journal reporting — and by the way, a lot of this was the politicizing of — remember Paul Wellstone’s death? You know, ‘Let’s do everything for Paul.’ And we’re now being implored to get behind Obamacare because it’s what Ted Kennedy would have wanted.” [The Sean Hannity Show, 8/26/09] Savage fill-in Markowski on possible naming of health care bill after Kennedy: “It’s political theater” like the “Wellstone memorial.” Chris Markowski, filling in for Michael Savage on his radio program, took a caller who said that “if Ted Kennedy had wanted his name on this health care bill, I think that he would — I would want to see where he said that in writing before he died. He had plenty of time.” Markowski responded, in part, by asserting: “I don’t think he’s requested — you got to understand, it’s a show. OK? It’s political theater. Like the Democrats thought that whole Wellstone memorial was going to — it was going to force them to — it was going to allow them to win the Senate race in Minnesota. This is political theater. It’s a show.” [The Savage Nation, 8/26/09] Lopez on Kennedy’s death: Wellstone service “turned into a political rally.” The National Review Online’s Kathyrn Jean Lopez wrote in an August 26 post to the blog The Corner titled “Re: The Politics of Ted Kennedy’s Passing”: “All politicos need to remember the Wellstone funeral when a well-known politician dies. Instead of memorializing his life, his service turned into a political rally. Some of the MSNBC coverage today I’m catching looks like a [sic] Obamacare convocation. Human life is about more than poltics. And politics isn’t American Idol. Or, even, The Lion of the Senate.” Allahpundit “sure” Kennedy “eulogies won’t be politicized at all.” Hot Air blogger Allahpundit wrote in an August 26 tweet: “Looking forward to the Democratic line-up at TK’s memorial service. I’m sure the eulogies won’t be politicized at all.” Instapundit: “A Wellstone Memorial on steroids?” An August 26 post on Instapundit.com linked to a post by JammieWearingFool with the headline “A Wellstone Memorial on steroids? And how did that work out?” JammieWearingFool asserted in the post, written the same day, “While we have no doubt the Democrats will do all they can to exploit his death and will probably have a Wellstone memorial on steroids, we’ll stay above that.” The link on the words “Wellstone memorial” were to an October 30, 2002, Slate.com article describing Wellstone’s memorial services as a “pep rally.” Noting “conservative talking point,” Politico‘s Smith says “[i]t would seem odd to bar politics” from Kennedy’s funeral. In an August 26 post, Politico‘s Ben Smith referred to the comments by Allahpundit and Instapundit as “a conservative talking point [that] is emerging to counter the the hope on the left that Kennedy’s death will advance his cause of health care reform,” and commented:

Wingnuts don’t think liberals should be allowed to have political heroes. This, despite the weeks long memorials for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan (I can still hear the keening) in recent years where I seem to recall that politics were mentioned a time or two.

I doubt seriously that the Democrats have learned how to handle these things any better than they did in the past. There’s no evidence of it anyway. In fact, if things go the way they usually do in the face of a right wing hissy fit, they will end up agreeing to scuttle health care reform altogether as penance for their bad behavior.

*Go to the link for a full debunking of the Wellstone smear from Al Franken.

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Published by digby on November 16, 2007

Standing Up For His Service

by digby

…not his comment.

Think Progress has the moving moment of the debate posted at their site:

At tonight’s CNN Democratic debate, the candidates heard a strong warning against U.S. military action against Iran from Christopher Jackson, a Marine who served three tours of duty in Iraq:

I feel that if we continue on the path we’re at, that’s where we’re going to end up — in Iran. And that’s not what our troops need. Our troops need to come home now.

The entire audience, including the candidates, stood and gave Jackson a rousing ovation.

But that’s not exactly right. The standing ovation came before he asked the question, in a spontaneous show of gratitude for his service. It was after that when he asked the question. All those Democrats in the place stood for him without knowing what he was going to say.

It’s an important distinction, sadly. Limbaugh will undoubtedly be calling him a phony soldier first thing tomorrow for having the temerity to speak out against the war and the various screamers will be freaking out about the crazed Las Vegas hippies in that stadium, (just like the Wellstone funeral.)

Update: Apparently this post is unclear. I thought it was a nice thing that everyone stood for him based on his service, not that I thought there was anything wrong with it. It would have been fine with me if they’d stood for his statement as well.

Published by digby on October 18, 2007

Hello?

by digby

Let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

Wednesday, June 22, 2005; A06

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday offered a tearful apology on the Senate floor for comparing the alleged abuse of prisoners by American troops to techniques used by the Nazis, the Soviets and the Khmer Rouge, as he sought to quell a frenzy of Republican-led criticism.

[…]

The week-long Republican campaign against Durbin shifted attention from the subject of the senator’s initial statement: allegations that terrorism suspects are being mistreated at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Critics have called for the base to be closed, but defenders, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, say there are no alternatives.

Durbin had prefaced his remarks, delivered June 14 on the Senate floor, by noting that for two years he had sought congressional hearings on the treatment of detainees. Then he cited an FBI account of how Guantanamo prisoners had been chained to their cells in extreme temperatures and deprived of food and water.

“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings,” Durbin said. “Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”

Quick to pounce were conservative Web commentators and radio talk-show hosts, followed by other media outlets with a strong conservative following, including Fox News and the Washington Times. Conservative activists who ordinarily take little interest in foreign affairs weighed in as well. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, issued a statement June 16 calling Durbin’s remarks “grossly unfair and hurtful.”

“They are extremely well organized,” Durbin said in an interview, referring to the conservative movement. “And, inevitably, they drag the mainstream media behind them.”

Comments from the White House and other elected officials helped to keep the spotlight on Durbin. Also on June 16 , White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the remarks “reprehensible” and “a real disservice to our men and women in uniform who adhere to high standards and uphold our values and our laws.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) called for a Senate censure of Durbin. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) wrote on Monday to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), urging him to “encourage” Durbin to “apologize for and withdraw his remarks.”

[…]

Late Friday, Durbin’s office issued a statement saying that the senator regretted it if his statement had been misconstrued. “I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood,” he said.

But as the days unfolded, the story continued to dominate the conservative media while cropping up repeatedly in more traditional news outlets.

The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday joined lawmakers and other groups in calling for an apology for comparing the activities of U.S. troops to those of Nazis. Then, Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Richard M. Daley, declared: “I think it’s a disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that.”

That was one of the all-time best hissy kabukis ever. Brilliant. Wellstone funeral level brilliant. The people who had taken to the floor of the congress just a few years before calling FBI agents “jack booted thugs” forced Durbin to grovel and even cry. What else could he do? The right wing slime machine and the political establishment were all over him like a bunch of rabid dogs.

Here’s the adorable cartoon the Limbaugh Letter ran at the time:

So, what are we going to do about this?

Wednesday, October 17, 2007; 5:41 PM

Mukasey also sharply criticized a Justice Department legal opinion issued early in the Bush administration, and since rescinded, that narrowly defined the acts that constitute torture and laid the legal groundwork for the use of harsh interrogation techniques on U.S. detainees.

Calling the memo “a mistake” and “unnecessary,” Mukasey said torture violates U.S. laws and pointed to the role of American troops in liberating Nazi concentration camps during World War II. “We didn’t do that so we could then duplicate it ourselves,” he said.

Anybody?

Chirp, chirp???

Update: Heh. John Cole’s trip down memory lane on this one is much more colorful.

Update II: Speaking of Nazis and Pol Pot, whah???

“If nations concert to impose antiwarming measures commensurate with the hyperbole about the danger, the damage to global economic growth could cause in this century more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Nobel Peace Prize, indeed.”

How big is that fainting couch anyway?

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Published by digby on February 8, 2006

Political Outliers

by digby

Matt Stoller nicely deconstructs this Red State post about the King funeral that is perfectly illustrative of right wing comportment vapors and thinly veiled racism. Here’s just one little bit to give you the flavor:

I also think I have a clearer understanding of why the culture of so many black Americans in this country is below what it should be and is capable of being.

One expects this kind of thing over in Freeperland. They pride themsleves on being crude and thuggish, after all. Via pandagon, here’s a sampling of their cute caption contest:

“I would like another roll with dinner please.”

“Two classy people sitting behind a pile of trash.”

Lowery: And yesim, we’s be black and we’s be proud. We’s for the gubmit but not Bush’s gubmit. Bush’s gubmit is against us black peoples…

W: “What’s that old saying, ‘Better to be thought a complete race baiting moron than open your mouth and remove all doubt.’”

“Psst…Laura, you sure that ain’t Looter Guy?”


47 posted on 02/07/2006 2:56:13 PM PST by Horatio Gates (Go Seah….uh…Mariners! Congrats to the Steelers. Well done.)

Ok. It’s Freeperland. But here we have Red State, commonly thought of as the “thoughtful” right wing community. They aren’t quite as crude, to be sure. But they share many of the same impulses:

You evidently did live during the civil right era. There was nothing peaceful about it.

If the truth be told, it was an extortion scam to enrich themselves. Mrs. King carried on this tradition. Anytime you wanted to use anything that was MLK, Jr. you had to pay Mrs. King.

Don’t forget who the pupils were of this scam; Jesse Jackson, Joesph Lowery, and Hosea Williams. They practiced this extortion of Corporations all of their lives and some are still doing it.

So lets be honest, praise Mrs. King for the loss of a husband and who had to raise her children by herself, but don’t latch on to a myth and try to make it true.

—-

Bush should take back New Orleans money and force these aholes to come begging for it.

—–

I don’t know the makeup of the King funeral attendees but you can bet a large portion were high profile Dems with an even higher concentration of race hustling poverty pimps. It was their show and if they want to defile the King legacy with no-class antics, why shouldn’t it be on TV?

Whether anyone in the audience walked out in protest or not, Bush #41 and #43 were class acts and that won’t be lost on reasonable viewers — including many black families watching at home.

—-

Anyone who didn’t find that, or the Wellstone funeral, offensive, lacks a sense of decorum. If the Afro-American community applauds this funeral, they will make a statement about no one but themselves. And that is just what that group did at the funeral.

——

Back during the Bush/NAACP speech flap, I thought Bush should have sent in a third-tier official to give a speech explaigning that Bush wasn’t going to cater specifically to them since he could win elections without their vote, and catering to them wouldn’t change their vote anyway.

Simple fact it, Dems must have the black vote to win, and even with it they loose more often than not. Yet the Dems are quite capable of taking the black vote for granted.

What is worse political messages at a funeral about a great civil rights leader or people trying to turn those messages as something that the late “Queen” would find offensive.

Not simply political messages but cheap shots. Perhaps she would have been fine with such cheap shots. But the proper way to pay respect in such a situation is to not take such cheap shots, and act with dignity–irrespective if the deceased would have demanded such dignity or not.

Frankly, it ain’t about her or blacks in general.

—-

He was Joseph Lowery, former head of the SCLC. One of the biggest extortinist organization in the country. They used the same tactics that Jesse Jackson uses to extrort money from Corporations. You pay or we picket.

Myth buster, these were pupils of MLK, Jr.

—

This is Al Sharpton to Howard Dean in 2004:

“Do you have a senior member of your cabinet that was black or brown?”

Dean did not, but apparently, we can take Sharpton’s cue and refer to all non-African dark-skinned people as “brown”…unless he meant Latinos only, in which case we must deploy “sienna” and “umber” in our earth-tone rainbow coalition.

It really is funny to watch you “progressives” jump all over itrytobenice for picking up the wrong crayon. Why don’t you throw in a lecture on the difference between “colored people” and “people of color”?

—–

Those who follow leaders like Dr, Lowry deserve to be marginalized.

Funny, but I recall that African-Americans are losing political clout in America, as the Hispanic population increases in size.

So, explain to me again why the NAACP and other “mainstream” African-American organizations should be accorded respect, if they refuse to be respectful– or even polite themselves?

—

That crowd looked to be heavily Afro-American, and with their response and their applause, they showed themselves to be the same–no class! Just like the Paul Wellstone funeral–the memories of many are going to be long.

Insulting the sitting President of the US, when he has the respect to come to a funeral to honor the deceased and the causes they/she fought for–this is going to stick with me, a long, long time.

This is a crowd that as Karl Rove said, is pre–9/11. Protect the country, forget it. Every chance they get they’ll just want their political ox gored, and their handouts increased.

—-

blah … blah .. blah blah
It’s doubtful that either Coretta or MLK will be standing up for any reason … not anymore.

—-

And The Winner Of the Most Idiotic Moonbat Meme of the Year, for the FIFTH year running is. . .?

“You can’t tell us how to mourn!”

Gee, if those Muslims burning down embassies claimed to be mourning someone (Mohammed, presumably, since Cindy Sheehan demonstrates that there’s no time limit on this principle, either), I guess they’d have an airtight justification among our friends on the left.

—–

Actually, I can’t wait for the unsealing of the secret FBI King files in 2027 to reveal the truth about MLK and his less than honorable life and legacy (thanks to a liberal judge and the King family they have bought time preventing their release under FOIA… hmm, you think they have something to hide?). In the mean time, the country remains held hostage to the unbalanced and intellectually dishonest legacy of this man and his family. Pardon me if I choose not to worship at their phony altar.

Also, I can see clearly why blacks just love the Democratic party for all its done for them in perpetuating their continued pride in their own sense of victimhood. Bravo!

Got racial hostility much?

I have written a lot about race on this blog over the last three years. It’s a topic that I feel strongly about and work hard to understand. Everytime I write about it, I’m told by more than a few people that racism isn’t really a problem anymore, it’s a class issue.

With the amount of energy expended in that Red State thread deriding blacks for having “no class” perhaps in one respect that is true. But in the sociological sense, it is not. Class is an issue in this country, to be sure. But it is not the same as or the cause of racism. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of our culture. Lurking beneath the surface is an improvement over the blatant violence and legal segregation of the Jim Crow era of 40 years ago, but racism has not disappeared.

The comments and the disgusting picture above are indicative of the racist strain that has been a presence in both political parties but which settled on the Republican side after the civil rights movement. Over the last quarter century this impulse was regulated with coded race speech and marginalization of the worst purveyors of racist sentiment to the fringes of political life. But something seems to be changing. I’m seeing this more often all of a sudden and not just in wingnut sinkholes like Free Republic, but in mainstream blogs like Red State, the constantly recurring discussion of “The Bell Curve” and the pages of the Wall Street Journal where James Taranto writes things like this:

The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.

Fuck the blacks. They don’t vote for us anyway.

But then, there’s always some good reason to fuck the blacks isn’t there? I wrote a comment about the continuing problem with hiring patterns some years back on Kevin Drum’s old blog:

Hiring minorities is a problem because:

1955 – They are an inferior race
1965 – They aren’t good workers
1975 – They make old white customers uncomfortable
1985 – Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus
1995 – They are a litigation risk for discrimination

When it comes to equal rights it’s always something, isn’t it?

2006: They don’t know how to behave in public.

.

The Inevitable Hissy Fit

Published by digby on October 31, 2024

Look at that nonsense. David Kurtz at TPM writes:

In the final week of the presidential campaign, the country’s two most prominent newspapers extended into a second day their credulous coverage of Republicans’ fake outrage over President Biden’s “garbage” comment.

The NYT and WaPo each made it a front-page story in Thursday’s editions, with above-the-fold, prime-real-estate treatment.

Considering that Trump routinely calls Harris voters scum, garbage vermin and worse this is journalistic malpractice. Have they ever put his comments above the fold like that in this campaign even once, much less in the final week? I don’t think so.

Josh Marshall put it like this:

It’s actually a long time GOP tactic, one of their most infuriating, not because they do it but because the mainstream media falls for it every time. And sometimes the Democrats do too.

I wrote about this years ago:

The Art Of The Hissy Fit
By digby

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I first noticed the right’s successful use of  ostentatious handwringing, sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and titillating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.

In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.

With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.

By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.

It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)

But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.

The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others toinsincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.

Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.

There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.

What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

That was written years before Trump became a political figure. Maybe someday the media will stop falling for it.

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