I noticed you gave four examples of lack of civility by the blogosphere:
1. Michelle Malkin complaining about those evil liberals. 2. Joe Klein complaining about those evil liberals. 3. Nathan Gardels complaining about those evil liberals. 4. Deborah Howell complaining about those evil liberals.
Bo234 ———————————————————————————— Bo234,
I just went with the most recent examples I was aware of to talk about it in general terms. I welcome your additions of other examples. I certainly don’t believe this is an issue either side has a monopoly on but it does seem to be louder on one side than the other at the moment. Again, feel free to correct me.
Ok. Let’s go over this again, shall we? Let us stipulate that the left blogosphere is a bunch of shrieking freaks who have completely lost our marbles. We are rude, crude and out of control. But louder than the other side? Because of some blogswarms? If only.
For the last twenty years we have had your rightwing radio, your rightwing TV, your rightwing publishing, your rightwing speakers bureaus and your rightwing magazines and your rightwing pulpits. Then you have your imbalanced panels on news shows, your intermarried politicos and journalists and your faux liberal punditocrisy. Yet, our little blogswarms have the entire journalistic establishment all atwitter, wondering what has happened to the discourse?
The entire DC establishment went stark raving bonkers for eight years, followed by nearly five years of a kind of courtier sycophancy we haven’t seen since Louis XVI. I do not know the explanation for why this happened, although I have my suspicions. (The question brings out almost as many possibilities as “why did we invade Iraq?”) But it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. Now they decide that something’s gone wrong?
Are we “louder” now? Certainly. We were veritably silent before. But the entire rightwing media infrastructure still spews out its disgusting bile on a daily basis. perhaps the sound of it has become so familiar to those who live and work in Washington that they no longer hear it. To those of us in the “fever swamp” it is a little alarming. On 6/6/06, Ann Coulter will release her new book about liberals called “Godless.” This is on the heels of Ramesh Ponnuru’s new one called “The Party of Death.” Hannity’s last book was called “Deliver us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism”.
You see, the real difference between the Right blogoshpere and the Left is that the Left blogosphere is angry at the ideology and governance of the Republican party and the media who report on it. We believe the political press has been complicit where it has not been weak and we are taking our complaint directly to them, loudly and in no uncertain terms. It’s angry and vitriolic, but it’s political.
The right blogosphere, on the other hand, is no longer outraged at the Democratic party. They think they are clowns — they can barely get off a good Teddy Kennedy joke before nodding off. And except for the war correspondents whom they believe are cowardly and are refusing to report the good news in Iraq, the energy has gone out of their liberal media critique. But, make no mistake, they are still very, very angry — at rank and file Americans like me.
The gripe on the right side is that “liberals” literally shouldn’t exist. We are Godless, death-loving traitors whose very existence is a blight on the American way of life. They don’t hate our leadership. They hate us personally.
This post by Thomas Crown at RedState sums it up nicely, I think:
I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.
As the t-shirts say
The media sees only the Left these days because the Right has moved on to greener pastures.
Juan Cole takes Christopher Hitchens downtown and simultaneously writes the most stirring anti-Iran war polemic I’ve read. Hitchens, as usual these days, being both incoherent and dishonest, is evidently itching for another bite of the apple. Cole is having none of it.
Five years or so ago, I published an introductory textbook on intestinal tumors. Entitled “The Threatening Mass: The Case For Invasive GI Surgery, ” I came to the conclusion that only surgical removal of the tumor (no matter how small) stands a chance of working. A less “extreme” treatment – years of pointless, agonizing chemo – will only prolong the danger.
Furthermore, and this was a somewhat controversial assertion back then, I claimed that in all cases of GI cancer, not only must the malignancy be excised, but much of the colon must go as well. In other words, in many more situations than one might think, a colostomy – the notorious “Bag” – was a requirement to ensure long-term stability and health.
“The Threatening Mass” was a medical bestseller and I confess I made good money from it. I’ve spent the last few years making even better money guest-lecturing at medical schools. Even more gratifying – money isn’t everything, of course – surgeons throughout the country adopted my procedure and colostomies have proliferated.
True, there’s been a lot of recent apparent evidence that chemo often appears to work and that extensive GI surgery is counterindicated in many cases – in fact, there appeared to some readers that there was a lot of evidence before I published my book. As for colostomies, despite the fact that removal of most of the colon proved unnecessary in many cases (and psychologically devastating), I still feel confident that in the long run, this seeemingly “radical” expansion of the surgeon’s role in treating GI cancer will result in a preponderance of decisive cures. In truth, I can’t be held responsible for those who misunderstood what I wrote and perform operations hastily or without the specific preparations I prescribe.
In any event, flush from the success of “The Threatening Mass”, I’ve now decided to write an introductory textbook about brain surgery. It will be called “The Pondering Puzzle: The Conflict Between Cancer And Cerebellum.”
I’ll be describing the various kinds of malignant execrescences that can grow in the brain. I’ll discuss how they affect different areas, and what it means in terms of behavior – useful for emergency room diagnoses, to be sure. I’ll also be analysing the various surgical techniques involved and the latest research, both in considerable detail. I’ll talk with brain surgeons, study the advanced textbooks, and read the medical journals. I’ll make specific suggestions as to which surgery is best under specific conditions, complete with a chapter on all the different surgical instruments involved. And I’ll describe the various operations – the advantages and pitfalls – and lay out the possible outcomes.
At the end of my new textbook, I’ve decided to get a little personal for a change. I’m going to drop in a brief author’s note that’ll talk about how I did my research. Readers like to know that sort of thing, even if they’re slogging through a medical text.
I’ll explain that while I’ve been as scrupulous as possible in studying brain surgery, in fact I don’t have a background in oncology, let alone surgery. Not only have I never been in an operating room, I haven’t even tried to stitch up a bad cut. But not to worry: I have looked at dozens of videos of brain surgery and studied some with care. You see, while I have a rudimentary knowledge of medicine – of course, I know where the temporal lobe is, and how to find the hippocampus – I really can’t understand even the most general medical journals because I’ve never been to medical school. However, I assure you, I had well-trained doctors carefully explain to me the meaning of every article I discuss. Just as I did with my text on GI surgery.
Now, given the fact that I never troubled to learn to read the basic language of medicine -or wasted a perfectly fine afternoon by getting my hands bloody in an operating theater – you might think that I have no business writing two words about surgery, let alone two entire books on the subject. Books, I hasten to add, that are thought classics, cited constantly as justification for current protocols. But with all due respect, I disagree.
After all, if Kenneth Pollack is thought a scholar on the Middle East, then I must be considered an expert on brain surgery (and colostomies). At the very least, given how hard I’ve worked to make my knowledge of medicine appear credible, it’s only fitting that my opinion of what constitutes a proper approach to the elimination of cancerous tissue from the body be considered carefully by responsible leaders in the medical community.
And if you like, I’ll be happy to diagnose your own brain tumor. And, what the hell, I might as well do the operation myself. Y’gotta start somewhere, after all. And to make an omelet, you do have to break a few eggs.
Both David Neiwert and Glenn Greenwald have written blockbuster posts about the foolish Shelby Steele’s stunning call today to divest ourselves of “white guilt” and bomb the hell out of the wogs.
Greenwald looks at the implications of the argument for the GWOT and checks in with the bigotsphere while Neiwert examines this idea in the context of the right’s new assumption the racism is dead — nothing to see here, move along citizen — even while a fairly large faction of Americans are fulminating daily about how the Mexican vermin are defecating in the streets.
The only thing I can add is that I’m not surprised, by either the racism or the embrace of all out war against the the newly “liberated” Iraqis. The conservative experiment is melting down. William F Buckley got what he always wanted and it turned out to be bullshit. We are finally seeing the facade of civilization crumble, leaving only the conservative id.
The argument here is that racism is dead so we needn’t worry about killing, deporting, marginalizing or demonizing “the other.” How convenient for the party that has been exploiting the southern strategy for forty years and finds itself nearly as unpopular as the disgraced president who first embraced it.
I’m listening to Scarborough dissect Colbert’s performance with Ana Marie Cox and Michael Sherer from Salon and I can’t believe how vapid it is. They all agree that Colbert is usually hilarious but he wasn’t entirely successful at the white house correspondent’s dinner because well … they’re not quite sure. Apparently, they don’t know that comedians often fail to get laughs in a room full of uncomfortable, angry people who are being skewered by a master satirist who is pulling no punches. Have they ever seen any footage of Lenny Bruce?
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took on a rare role yesterday as a defender of President Bush.
Hoyer came to the defense of the commander in chief after Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where the president took a drubbing from comedian Stephen Colbert.
“I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough,” Hoyer said. “He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect.”
“I’m certainly not a defender of the administration,” Hoyer reassured stunned observers, but Colbert “crossed the line” with many jokes that were “in bad taste.”
Colbert needled Bush, often prompting only an expressionless stare from the president, who appeared not to be amused.
Bad taste? I’ve got your bad taste for you:
Don Imus was the featured speaker at the Radio Television White House Correspondents Association Annual Dinner 1996:
“Dan has these utterly incomprehensible bucolic expressions he punctuates the conversation with. Several times after talking with him, he would say to me ‘Tamp ’em up solid.’ Having something to do, I later learned, with fortifying underground tunnels his father dug, for reasons that remain unclear. Now I’m hearing impaired a little bit from wearing headphones for a long time. I thought he was saying ‘tampons up solid’ and I’m, ‘Why would he say that?’ I mean, I know he’s nuts, but what does that mean? Anyway, I’d laugh and I’d say uh huh, and I would hang up.
[…]
And then there’s Peter Jennings, who we are told more Americans get their news from than anyone else — and a man who freely admits that he cannot resist women. So I’m thinking, here’s Peter Jennings sitting there each evening, elegant, erudite, refined. And I’m thinking, what’s under his desk? I mean , besides an intern. The first place the telecommunications bill should have mandated that a v-chip be placed is in Mr. Jennings shorts.
[…]
By the way, and this is really awful, if you’re Peter Jennings and you’re telling more Americans than anyone else what’s going on in the world, shouldn’t you at least have had a clue that your wife was over at Richard Cohen’s house? She wasn’t at my house! Bernard Shaw and Peter couldn’t be here tonight — he went to the movies with Alanis Morissette — Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff round out our network news anchors and deserve mention only to recognize that Bernie has greater nut potential than even Dan Rather. If not for CNN, Bernard Shaw is at the post office marching somebody around at the end of a wire coat hanger and a shotgun.
[…]
Mort Saul made the original observation that people who talk most about family values are all on their second and third wives. And I would point out they all have families you could rope off and charge admission to view. You throw up a tent, put Pat Buchanan, his brother Bay, Newt, Mom, Candace, Hugh Rodham in it, and you’re lookin at a theme park.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Saying the president is rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenberg doesn’t even come close to that low-life rap. Here’s the whole thing. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its funny moments — but it’s almost entirely inappropriate by anybody’s standards.
Colbert’s routine is a satirical take on the bloviating wingnut (and covert wingnut) gasbags who support the Republicans no matter what they do. That’s not in bad taste. It’s a public service. He stood up there and mirrored what we see them do every day of the week. They didn’t find it funny because it was a little too real.
Apparently Steny Hoyer is a stereotypical Democratic wuss who can’t tell the difference between raunchy bad taste and political satire. I honestly can’t figure who these guys actually appeal to.
And the press — well, we know how they reacted to being insulted as ugly, deranged adulterers. Imus became a huge star and the press corps immediately lined up to go on his show and get under his desk themselves. That’s why we called them mediawhores.
This is exactly the kind of thing the mainstream media should be interested in playing.
Bush’s highly-scripted 2001 inaugural ceremony actually featured a rendition of the national anthem sung in Spanish by Jon Secada. From Cox News Service, 1/18/01:
From Cox News Service, 1/18/01:
The opening ceremony reflected that sentiment. A racially diverse string of famous and once famous performers entertained Bush, soon-to-be First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who watched on stage from a special viewing area.
Pop star Jon Secada sang the national anthem in English and Spanish.
Apparently, Secada singing the anthem in Spanish was a regular feature of the Bush campaign. From the 8/3/00 Miami Herald:
The nominee, his wife Laura, erstwhile rival John McCain and his wife Cindy joined Bush on a platform where children sang the national anthem – in “Spanglish,” Secada explained.
I have sent this Think Progress link to every reporter I can think of. If they could run the tape of Monica in trhe beret on a loop for two years, they can show Bush sitting there smiling at Jon Secada singing the national anthem in Spanglish a time or two.
This, my friend, are what sharp political wedges are made of.
By the way, Bush supporter Jon Secada appeared at the 2000 GOP convention and even sang in Spanish (although not the Star Spangled banner.)
If you recall, the whole 2000 GOP convention had an strong Hispanic theme to it:
They brought plenty of props and a sea of signs. The signs read: ”Our Final Answer” and ”Giddyup” and ”un nuevo dia.” They gave the place a homey, grass-rootsy feel. But they weren’t really homemade.
Each afternoon, convention workers came by and dropped the hand-painted placards on the seats. They were all made in the same place and, judging by the lettering, by the same small group of people.
I seem to recall the hunky George P Bush wowing the wingnuts with his totally awesome bi-lingual speech, too:
George P. called George W., “a good man, un hombre de grande sentimientos, who loves his family and his country.”
As he concluded his brief remarks, he exhorted the cheering delegates with a message that combined family and country: “Now is the time to restore a sense of honor and decency to the White House. We can do that by electing my uncle the next president of the United States. Que viva W! Que viva Bush! Que viva los Estados Unidos.”
Oh my goodness. Who let the “illegal alien” into the Bush family?
Josh Marshall writes about the Washington Press corps’ thin-skin today, saying:
There’s a lot on the web that it is crude, cruel, coarse, even hateful. And that’s without even taking Hugh Hewitt into account.
It’s certainly not for the faint of heart.
But when I hear this argument from journalists (or more often folks speaking on behalf of journalists) it’s freely conceded that little has changed in terms of criticism from the right. There was talk radio before the Internet, the various right-wing media watchdog outfits, Fox News, etc. What’s changed is that journalists now often feel besieged from the left as well. They’re getting from both sides. There’s nowhere to turn. (Believe me, I’ve had this conversation many times.
That’s exactly right and it’s exactly the point. I wrote about this a few months ago in response to Franklin Foer’s article in The New Republic in which he worried that the left was making a mistake in undermining the credibility of the mainstream press because it would ultimately be bad for the country:
Back when The NY Times was relentlessly flogging Whitewater, I agreed with Franklin Foer that it would be a bad idea to help discredit the mainstream press because their reputations would be so sullied that eventually they’d have no clout to protect sources and tell the truth.
I thought when the Washington Post took every self-serving leak from the Starr investigation and put it on the front page like it was VE Day that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to vilify their obvious slavishness to GOP operatives because it would be bad when we need the media to have credibility on other major issues.
I was angry about the fact that more than 60 newpapers, including the NY Times editorialized (“until the Starr investigation, ‘no citizen … could have grasped the completeness of President Clinton’s mendacity or the magnitude of his recklessness.'”) that Clinton should resign because of a personal indiscretion. But I didn’t rail against the press for jumping on this Republican manufactured bandwagon because I thought that it was important not to paint mainstream journalism with a broad brush just because they were being absurdly obtuse in this particular case.
When the media treated Al Gore like a circus clown and overlooked the fact that George W. Bush was a gibbering idiot (and admitted openly that they did it for fun) I held in my intemperate remarks because I thought it would harm the party in the long run if we attacked the press as the Republicans do. When they reported the election controversy as if it would create a constitutional crisis if the nation had to wait more than a month to find out whether they had the right president I kept my own counsel. After all, who would defend democracy when something truly serious happened?
After 9/11 when they helped the president promote the idea that the country was at “war” (with what we didn’t exactly know) I knew it was a terrible mistake and would lead to a distorted foreign policy and twisted domestic politics. But I didn’t blame the media because it was very difficult to fight that at the time. They’re human, after all.
And when they helped the government make their case for this misbegotten war in Iraq, I assumed that they knew what they were talking about. After all, I had been defending their credibility for years now, in spite of everything I’ve mentioned. If they would screw up something like this, then for what was I holding back my criticism? This was the most serious issue this country had faced in many a decade.
When no WMD were found and I was informed that the NY Times had assigned a neocon shill to report the story, and then defended her when she was implicated in a white house smear to cover up its lies going into Iraq, I no longer saw any need to defend them or any other mainstream media outlet who had rah-rahed the country into Iraq because of promises of embedded glory on the battlefield and in the ratings.
This is fifteen long years of watching the Times and the rest of the mainstream media buckle under the pressure of GOP accusations that they are biased, repeatedly take bogus GOP manufactured scandals and run with them like kids with a brand new kite, treat our elections like they are entertainment vehicles for bored reporters and generally kowtow to the Republican establishment as the path of least resistence. I waited for years for them to recognise what was happening and fight back for their own integrity. It didn’t happen. And I began to see that the only way to get the press to work properly was to apply equal pressure from the opposite direction. It’s a tug of war. They were not strong enough to resist being dragged off to the right all by themselves. They needed some flamethrowers from our side pulling in the opposite direction to make it possible for them to avoid being pulled all the way over.
So, it is with great respect and reverence for the press, which I consider to be indispensible to democracy, that I have become a rabid critic. It did this country no good to allow the Republicans to perpetuate their permanent “mau-mau the media” campaign for 25 years. And it does the press no good to be defended by liberals when they succumb to the mau-mauing. Indeed, history shows that their reaction is to lean even more closely to the GOP to show they are not liberal themselves.
I will no longer defend the press unconditionally. They have proved that they can’t resist the powerful pull of rightwing intimidation and seduction without some counterbalance on the left and I’m more than willing to call a spade a spade to do that. It has not served my politics or my country well to quietly support the media so that they could maintain crediblity. I honestly don’t see that we have anything more to lose when presidents are being impeached for trivial reasons, elections are being stolen and wars are being waged on lies. Just how bad would it have to get to justify criticizing the press for its complicity in those things?
Sorry to re-post my old stuff, but there’s a reason for it. Today, Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary is a lobbyist (working for telco companies apparently) who wants the congress to reject the concept of net neutrality and he has gotten into a heated blog war over the issue, taking the blogosphere to task for, among other things, failing to stand up for the first amendment because we allegedly didn’t support journalists who were trying to expose the WMD lies.
I’m not sure what he’s going on about with that, but I can’t help but be a little saddened that McCurry is the guy writing this. Reading my piece, you can see that I was the staunchest of Clinton supporters when it came to the destructive, rightwing character assassination campaign. I saw it for what it was and had there been a blogosphere at the time I would have been fighting Drudge and the talk radio screamers and the screeching harpies with everything I had. Citizens around the country were radicalized when Mike McCurry and Joe Lockhart had to appear every day before a prurient, sophomoric press corps who were slavering over details spoonfed to them by rightwing operatives for maximum tittilation and scandalous insinuation.
One of the most important catalysts for the emergence of a left online community was the Clinton and Gore character assassination campaigns. We just could not remain quiet anymore — particularly since the mainstream press seemed to writhe around in the muck with the same pleasure as the GOP operatives who plied them with tabloid trivia. The technology merely gave voice to what millions of us out here in Americaland had been screaming in our minds for years.
You’d think that Mike McCurry, of all people, would see that it is necessary to have some sort of counter balance to a sophisticated righwing noise machine that is powerful enough to co-opt the mainstream press and hijack the national agenda. Having watched the modern Republican party operate as I have for the past quarter century, I can guarantee you that should the Democrats assume power again, they are going to be subject to an even more outraged and wounded GOP attack operation than existed under Clinton. It is what they do and they do it well. After watching what went down during the Clinton and Bush years many of us quite rightly have no faith that the mainstream media will be able to resist either the lure or the indimidation of the GOP’s well oiled propaganda operation.
We will have the Democrats’ backs this time, whether the Washington insider establishment finds us distasteful or not. It’s our party, and our country, too.
Update: Haha. I see that Chris Bowers has accurately, in my view, characterized the beltway mentality about blogs as “adults vs teenagers,” which is funny considering the title I gave this post. At my age, being called a teen-ager is a compliment, although it’s hardly believable.
(Where have I heard crowing about how “the grown-ups are back in charge” recently? I seem to remember that didn’t work out so well. And pardon me for thinking that the late 90’s political establishment’s obsession with the taped girly confessionals of the youthful Monica was just a tad immature.)
But beyond all that, this is probably a fairly accurate analysis of how the blogosphere is perceived and those who believe it miss the point. I have been following politics for a long while and, believe it or not, by temperament I’m fairly low key. (Some might say I’m dead inside.) I was a fervent 70’s reformer and a strong anti-Reaganite, but even then I can’t say that I was particularly rabid in my beliefs. It was never my personal style to be a bombthrower.
I suspect that many others who are engaged in the netroots like me became radicalized in their 30’s and 40’s by a Republican Party that started to behave as an openly undemocratic institution. Why so many of these establishment Democrats and insider press corps aren’t exercised by this after what we’ve seen, I can’t imagine. Perhaps they just can’t see the forest for the trees. This past decade has not been business as usual.
History has many examples of societies that enabled radical political factions to dominate, through inertia, cynicism or plain intimidation. It happened in Europe in the 25 years before I was born and almost destroyed the whole planet. I know it’s unfashionably hysterical to be concerned about such things, but I have never believed that America was so “exceptional” that it couldn’t happen here.
The stakes are incredibly high. Without the cold war polarity, the US has bigger responsibilities than ever. And instead of behaving like a mature democracy and world leader, we have been alternating from adolescent tabloid obsessives to playground bullies. This is serious business.
The center-left blogosphere may sound overwrought, but in fact it is a rational, clear-headed response to what has been happening — and continues to happen as this country’s political establishemt fiddles and fulminates about civility.
Update II: Atrios is absolutely right that this new paradigm means that contra whatever nonsense McCurry is on about with respect to WMD’s, we will always support accurate reporting.
I’ve got to say, though, that in the Clinton years I could count the reporters on one hand who actually did that. Waas, Lyons, Conason and maybe a few more. The rest were like a pack of 12 year old girls at an N Sync concert.
Via Buzzflash and A liberal Dose, I see that it’s being reported that Turkey has denied the US access to its bases for an air attack on Iran, even though the US promised to provide the Turks with their own nuclear reactor:
Turkey’s refusal to comply with the US request was another indication of the growing tension between the two nations, which, according to Gul, have not “seen a single day of positive stability since the Islamic party was elected to power [in 2002].”
As we’ve noted here several times before, the administration thought muscling the Turks would pay off for the United States — a strategy that backfired terribly. I don’t even think I imagined, however, they’d be this clumsy. Buried in the last graf of this article in Saturday’s Washington Post comes this …
But one senior U.S. official acknowledged that U.S. pressure in recent months has backfired, saying that at one point Pentagon officials insinuated to Turkish politicians that they could get the Turkish military to back the request for U.S. troop deployments in Turkey. “It was stupid stuff. These are proud people,” he said. “Speaking loudly and carrying a big stick wins you tactical victories from time to time, but not a strategic victory.”
The backdrop here is that the military pushed out an Islamist government only a few years back. Going over the civilians’ heads to the Turkish General Staff would inevitably raise the spectre of a repeat of those events.
It’s the sort of tough guy tactics that’s worked for the Bushies at home but failed miserably abroad.
It hasn’t been working so well at home lately either.
If this article today from the Jerusalem Post is correct, the Bush administration tried to buy the Turks off this time, and didn’t get any better result.
You can see why the administration wanted a middle eastern country with airbases of its very own. You just can’t trust these anybody these days to allow you to use them as a launching pad for attacking their neighbors. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
