Via Peter Daou’s excellent blog of blogs , which of course includes brilliant original posting of his own, I learned that a rightwing blog posted a link to Hugh Hewitt’s interview with Helen Thomas. I suggest clicking on the mp3 link and taking a listen. The wingers obviously think that Hewitt got the better of Thomas. I truly don’t hear it that way and to my mind, the transcript gives a skewed notion of the way the conversation flowed. But go and judge for yourself.
In any event, I’d like to ask you about one thing, out of many that occur to me, and “who won” is not that central a question to my immediate interest here.
I’d like to suggest that it would be very instructive for liberals and Dems to look at the rhetorical strategies used by Hewitt. I’d like us to trace how a discussion that began with a simple, easy question about what Thomas thought about the vice president shooting a 78 year old man morphed into Hewitt trying to set up a faux confrontation which – while looking obviously contrived to us – was designed to make Hewitt’s dittoheads think that Thomas had been reluctantly forced to concede that Saddam was an evil man.
I think we can all agree that there seems little direct causal connection between the two subjects – unless one gets snarky, and that won’t accomplish much. So really, how did Hewitt move the conversation to that point? What were the strategies he used? What did Thomas do in response? Where did Hewitt mess up? Where did Thomas? How did they recover? What do you think Hewitt’s point was? Did he make that point – not to you, but to his dittoheads?
Most importantly, what can the next person who’s not a card-carrying Bushite learn from this in order to make it next to impossible for Hewitt to find any red meat from using these kinds of cheap tactics? I am certain this is how Hewitt interviews all those he suspects of card-carrying liberalism no matter what the topic. Knowing exactly what he does should suggest numerous ways to make it all but impossible for him to get away with it.
Not that Thomas did poorly; as I said, I think she did quite well. But I’m curious: how can the next person do even better? What would they need to do? Also, please note that I’m NOT suggesting that a single position be changed to accommodate a clown like Hewitt (or any other conservative). I am asking, “How can the next potential victim best turn Hewitt’s cynical game against him?”
I think it is more than possible to do so. This guy is a piker and I think a little bit of careful thought could make him look like a buffoon even to his own followers. Yes, folks: Even if those bias studies are right and people tend to excuse hypocrisy in those they believe in, I think it is more than possible to turn Hugh Hewitt into a joke in the eyes of the people who think he’s right.
And I think it would be a very good idea to do so.
I didn’t post my suspicions, but My Smart Spouse will confirm that within minutes of first hearing the news that Cheney had shot a 78 year old man in the face, I suspected there was drinking involved. And unfortunately, I was right. This is a genuine catastrophe, because it means that Bob Herbert’s call for Cheney’s resignation is, as I see it, exactly right. Damn, damn, damn!
If it happens – and I suspect the odds are about 60/40 that it won’t, which are lousy odds – then one of two things will happen. Either Bush will play the GOP loyalty card and we’ll have Vice-President Rice, which will be extremely bad for Democrats for, oh, about the next geologically significant aeon or two. Or if he’s feeling personally insecure, Bush will appoint a far right lunatic in the Santorum mold, confident that no one would dare to impeach Bush even if, somehow, Democrats manage to win majorities in the House and Senate.
Either way, it’s bad news. Not only for Democrats but for the entire country. True, Cheney is bad news already. But never underestimate Bush’s ability to make an awful situation far worse.
On the other hand…I’ve got a thought! Let’s see where this leads:
Maybe Bush could really show he has the country’s best interests at heart and just go for it! I’m saying, if he knows Cheney’s resignation is inevitable, why not go for extra credit and resign along with him? And take the rest of the administration along as well?
Hmm… Well, to be honest, I do see maybe a few practical problems with that – like how to avoid a President Hastert, for one. And the worldwide collapse of confidence in the US, which would probably trigger a worldwide economic panic of mega-tsunami proportions.
Big deal. As George Packer might say, Hey, y’never know, it just might work. Let’s give it a shot. So I say:
Resign, Mr. Cheney, and take the whole damn administration along with you.
(Note to rightwingers and other humor-impaired readers: Everything from “On the other hand” is satire. Anyone caught taking it seriously will be peppered with pixels as soon as I put down my brewski. However, I am quite serious about this: Cheney must resign.)
Cheney said he drank a beer with lunch the day of the shooting, according to his interview. The shooting took place about 5:50 p.m.
Armstrong had previously told CNN that she never saw Cheney or Whittington “drink at all on the day of the shooting until after the accident occurred, when the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.”
Lee Anne McBride of Cheney’s office referred CNN to a statement from the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Office Monday, which said that the investigation “reveals that there was no alcohol or misconduct involved in the incident.”
That’s not exactly convincing when the secret service “made an appointment” with the sheriff’s office for the next day and ran off the deputy who showed up to interview Cheney at the ranch.
It’s just so awful when the kewl kidz have to report icky things about Republicans. It makes everybody feel so darned uncomfortable!
Candy Crowley just said:
“Assuming that nothing else comes up, I suspect this fades.”
Now if Cheney had received fellatio and hidden it from his wife instead of drinking beer while on medication, shooting a man at close range and hiding it from the public, the story might not fade. Not because they would be concerned about his personal sex life, of course. It would be because of what it said about the his character.
On the other hand Jack Cafferty just slammed Cheney for running to his little friends at Fox News for his softball interview. “Talk about seeking a safe haven…”
Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last night with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Fox News styles its coverage as “fair and balanced,” but it has a heavy stable of conservative commentators that makes it a favorite around the White House. It is unusual for a president or vice president to single out a commercial enterprise for public praise.
The comment came as Cheney took questions from supporters at 5,245 parties that were held in 50 states to energize grass-roots volunteers building a precinct-by-precinct army for President Bush’s campaign.
“It’s easy to complain about the press — I’ve been doing it for a good part of my career,” Cheney said. “It’s part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they’re more accurate in my experience, in those events that I’m personally involved in, than many of the other outlets.”
Good girl Candy. Bow down to the administration AND your competition.
ReddHedd’s doing the play by play of the Fox interview with Cheney. He keeps saying it was the worst day of his life. He’ll never foreget it, blah, blah, blah. Very touching, I’m sure.
But he was very worried while he ate so that’s ok. In fact, he was so busy worrying and eating that he couldn’t even make some calls to DC to have his press office inform the public.
And then there’s this. Jesus, these people are unbelievable.
Krauthamer (from yesterday):
Cheney knew he would get a lot of heat for withholding this, and I think he did the manly thing. He decided, “I’ll take the heat, but I’m going to give my host and my friend, who just got shot, a half a day of reprieve.” Anyway, it’s a minor issue, and to make it into this — I mean, it was a zoo at the White House yesterday. I think the public had the right reaction. It was disproportionate and unseemly.
Well yes. Blow job and semen stains are one thing — the country has a right to know all the details of the president’s sex life. But when the vice president shoots an old man in the face and then covers it up for 24 hours, it’s nobody’s business but his own. All this attention is disproportionate and unseemly.
Update: ReddHedd says:
Hume says Cheney said he had a beer at lunch — that had been hours earlier — no one was drinking. Went back to ranch, took a break for a few hours, and then went back out hunting at 3 pm. Says it was out of his system by the time they went back out. Cheney told Hume he had BBQ and a beer a lunch. (That should be an interesting point of discussion.)
OH mygoodness. I’ve always heard that alcoholand guns do not mix. But certianly a man who had two DUI’s and had his driver’s license suspended — back in the days when you had to be really, really drunk to get popped — now admits to drinking on the day he shot an old man in the face. And he didn’t let law enforcement talk to him until the next day.
I know it’s unseemly to bring this up but shouldn’t there be at least a teeny-tiny little investigation about this now? People are mouldering in jail for decades for drinking and injuring people with guns.
So it looks like the Judiciary Committee is going to do the big el-foldo on the NSA spying scandal and some Democrats in the congress are going to simply vote with the Republicans make the president’s illegal program legal and call it a day. Once again their losing strategists have misunderstood why Americans believe that they are weak on national security. Indeed, if they capitulate on this they will have reinforced that image much more than if they oppose it outright.
This article by Walter Shapiro on Salon discusses what is driving some Dems to play down the NSA spying issue:
Typical was my lunch discussion earlier this week with a ranking Democratic Party official. Midway through the meal, I innocently asked how the “Big Brother is listening” issue would play in November. Judging from his pained reaction, I might as well have announced that Barack Obama was resigning from the Senate to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. With exasperation dripping from his voice, my companion said, “The whole thing plays to the Republican caricature of Democrats — that we’re weak on defense and weak on security.” To underscore his concerns about shrill attacks on Bush, the Democratic operative forwarded to me later that afternoon an e-mail petition from MoveOn.org, which had been inspired by Al Gore’s fire-breathing Martin Luther King Day speech excoriating the president’s contempt for legal procedures.
A series of conversations with Democratic pollsters and image makers found them obsessed with similar fears that left-wing overreaction to the wiretapping issue would allow George W. Bush and the congressional Republicans to wiggle off the hook on other vulnerabilities. The collective refrain from these party insiders sounded something like this: Why are we so obsessed with the privacy of people who are phoning al-Qaida when Democrats should be screaming about corruption, Iraq, gas prices and the prescription-drug mess?
Again, aside from the ridiculous fantasy that they will be able to “neutralize” the terrorism issue and move on to prescription drugs (again!), they have made a huge error in their analysis of why the Republicans have the edge on national security and every time they genuflect to the administration’s wacky plans they drive the image home. The problem for Democrats isn’t that they are seen as soft on national security. It’s that they are seen as not believing in anything and therefore are not strong on national security.
Every time the Democrats first speak out strongly and then fall in behind Republicans on national security like this, selling out their principles and the deep concerns of their constituents, they reinforce the image that there is nothing the Democrats are willing to fight for and the national security vote goes to the Republicans who have shown they are willing to fight for everything.
“I think they lost their focus” “I think they are a little disorganized right now” “They need leadership” “On the sidelines” “fumbling” “confused” “losing” “scared”
Republicans openly defied the polls when they impeached a president who had a 60 percent approval rating. (They had the help of the press, of course, but it never made any difference in public opinion.) They used the language of principle and “the rule of law” and paid no price for what they did beyond the loss of a few seats in 98. People do not hold it against politicians for standing up for principle even if they know there is political intent. They do hold it against politicans if they are seen as having no principles at all.
Capitulating on issues of such huge importance is even more damaging when it’s clear that it’s the Eunuch Caucus who are truly soft on this issue, not the Democrats. The Republicans hold both houses and have the power to defy this presumptuous administration on a matter of fundamental principle to the conservative cause: unfettered government power. The few who managed to squeak out a tiny protest just caved in response to arm twisting from president Dick Cheney. Apparently when he wasn’t drunkenly shooting old men in the face, he found time to put the metaphorical shotgun to the heads of his own party who promptly fell to their knees and kissed his ring. They are invertebrate, cowardly eunuchs who cannot even muster enough courage to defy this lame duck jerk when he openly regards the US Senate as his personal pack of spayed retreivers.
The polls today show that more than half of the country believes the president broke the law with this program and that it was wrong for him to have done it. And the press is in the most danger they’ve been in since since the Pentagon Papers, which was the last time whistleblowers came forward with such important revelations about government secrecy and lawlessness. So Democrats do not have to fear the press on this — particularly if they remind them who their friends are on this issue. The Republicans are split on it, with the libertarian wing and the doctrinaire conservatives finding themselves having to swallow their disgust or break with the party. Democrats are in a much better position than they think to turn this into a positive and drive a wedge through the Republican coalition while they do it.
If the Democrats in congress simply stood together on principle instead of listening to overfed, out of touch strategists who have misdiagnosed the problem for years, they would begin to crawl out of this hole on national security. In order for the nation to trust them to defend the country the first thing they must do is stop believing that going along with the Republican Eunuch Caucus will ever improve their lot. People trust leaders who lead not followers who fall in line.
60 more photos, including six corpses, and what appear to be wounds from shotgun pellets (and no, I don’t find any humor or irony in comparison. Torture takes away my ability to laugh or smirk.) The Bush administration has been trying to prevent Americans from seeing these new pics but 15 of the 60 are published in a slide show with the article. They are sickening.
The rest are to be shown on an Australian tv show. Note the very different way the incident is described by a press that is not American, which seems to my mind not only to imply culpability but also a cover-up of the involvement of superiors:
Seven US guards were jailed following publication of the first batch of Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004.
Glenn has another great post up today in which he throws down the gauntlet to the right wing bloggers like the Old Perfesser who are all quick to require that Democrat purge the party of radicals while they cheer and applaud the eliminationist fascists in their own midst.
Republicans have been playing this game for years. They wildly inflate the importance of fringe, extremist figures and then — every time one of those individuals makes an intemperate remark or comment that can be wrenched out-of-context and depicted as some sort of demented evil — they demand that Democrats ritualistically parade before the cameras and either condemn those individuals or be branded as someone who is insufficiently willing to stand up to the extremists “in their party.”
I’ve written dozens of posts on this topic myself and it never fails to amaze me how deeply the right believes in its own righteousness. We on the left are not perfect, but by God, when leftist radicals start talking wistfully about killing Republicans we don’t make them into best selling authors and cheer them like rock stars.
But I think there is another dimension to Glenn’s observation and one that lets the right wing bloggers off the hook just a little. You can’t really hold them responsible for Ann Coulter when the woman is profiled on the cover of TIME magazine and characterized as some sort of kicky, ascerbic comic. The writer of that article said:
“the officialdom of punditry, so full of phonies and dullards, would suffer without her humor and fire.”
Here are a few more choice quotes from that article, (gathered by the incomparable Howler🙂
CLOUD: Coulter’s speech was part right-wing stand-up routine—she called Senator Edward Kennedy “the human dirigible”—and part bloodcurdling agitprop. “Liberals like to scream and howl about McCarthyism,” she concluded. “I say, let’s give them some. They’ve had intellectual terror on the campus for years … It’s time for a new McCarthyism.” Curtain.
CLOUD: [S]he told me several times that, as she put it in an e-mail, “most of what I say, I say to amuse myself and amuse my friends. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about anything beyond that.”
CLOUD: So which is it? Is she a brave warrior or a shallow hack? Or is Ann Coulter that most unlikely of conservative subspecies: a hard-right ironist?
CLOUD: [A]s Coulter herself points out in Is It True What They Say About Ann?, “I think the way to convert people is to make them laugh or to make them enraged … Even if I could be convinced that if I had gone through 17 on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hands, I might convince one more liberal out there, I think I’d still write the way I write, because it gives me laughs.” Coulter told me that when her editor suggests cutting a line from a column to save space, “I’ll ask him, ‘But is it funny?’ And if he says it’s funny, I’ll cut an actual fact [instead].”
CLOUD: People say that Jon Stewart has blurred the line between news and humor, but his Daily Show airs on a comedy channel. Coulter goes on actual news programs and deploys so much sarcasm and hyperbole that she sounds more like Dennis Miller than Limbaugh.
CLOUD: One theory about Coulter is that she is less Joe McCarthy and more a right-wing Ali G, acting out a character who utters what the rest of us won’t.
Why Coulter is just a female Ali G! Hilarious!
When Eric Alterman had the temerity to call Cloud on this utter swill, the author fell back on journalism’s tedious false equivalency crutch:
Eric Alterman calls my piece on Ann Coulter a “moral, professional, and intellectual abomination” as well as, redundantly, a “moral and intellectual scandal.” He says Time has “a journalistic venereal disease.” This is the left-wing equivalent of an Ann Coulter attack: callous and intended to create as much friction as possible (words I use to describe Coulter in my alleged puff piece). But that’s really what my story was about–the kind of take-no-prisoners dialogue that Coulter has helped create and popularize. Now Alterman, it would seem, is trying to out-Coulter Coulter.
[…]
What Alterman wants is for people to ignore Coulter, to pretend as though she doesn’t exist and isn’t one of the most loved–and hated–figures on the public scene. I would rather engage her, examine her ideas and her popularity, and challenge her. My story does all of those things. It’s true that I don’t list every single mistake Ann Coulter has ever made, although I do print some new ones. My job was not to fact-check all of Coulter’s 1,000 columns, the 1,300-odd pages of her books and the hundreds of TV appearances; it was to profile her. Nonetheless, I do list several Coulter errors and also correct the record on some mistakes by others who have written about her–including Alterman. In his book on the media, Alterman asserts that Coulter said to a Vietnam vet, “People like you caused us to lose that war.” She did not. In fact, the vet had just gotten his facts wrong, and Coulter responded sarcastically, “No wonder you guys lost.” Harsh words, yes–sort of like saying Time has a venereal disease–but Alterman got the quote wrong.
Yes the phrase “TIME has journalistic venereal disease” (meaning that this rhetoric is passed along through intimate contact) is equivalent to “my only regret is that he [McVeigh]didn’t blow up the NY Times building. Right. Exactly the same.
I wrote about this nonsense last spring when the Coulter profile was published:
Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn’t. For instance, he doesn’t say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn’t say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn’t say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn’t put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn’t, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.
Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it’s a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.
I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions. Slowly, slowly the water is heating up.
It’s kind of funny that I and others spent last week arguing whether Democrats ought to be encouraging Hollywood to stop selling sex, (which even David Brooks agrees doesn’t seem to correlate to any real negative change in the way kids behave.) But, here we have a real problem, a real coarsening of the discourse which has resulted in our politics becoming so polarized and rhetorically violent that it’s as if we live on two different planets.
While Ann Coulter makes the cover of Time for writing that liberals have a “preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason,” her followers actually side with Iraqi insurgents against an American charity worker. At freeperland and elsewhere they laughed and clapped and enjoyed the fruits of the enemy’s labor. This is because if you listen to Ann and Rush and Sean and Savage and all the rest of these people you know that there is no greater enemy on the planet than the American liberal. That’s what Ann Coulter and her ilk are selling and that is what Time magazine celebrated with their cover girl this week.
Ann Coulter and her violent, racist eliminationist rhetoric is considered funny and mainstream by the Washington post and TIME magazine. Considering that, why should the right wing bloggers believe they have any responsibility to hold themseloves to the standard to which they hold liberals with an outlying provocateur like Ward Churchill? In thier view, and most of the poltiical establishment, Ann Coulter is perfectly respectable.
Ann Coulter doesn’t go on television ranting and raving like the liberals do. Remember Lawrence O’Donnell? Paul Begala? James Carville? Try Maureen Dowd. Ann is nothing like these losers but she does have a sharp wit and biting tongue and knows how to dish it out. These conspiracy theory wingnuts deserve nothing less.
That is the problem with Republicans. They don’t know how to go for the throat while the Democrats are pros at aiming for the head.
I hope Ann keeps it up and never gives an inch. She is a strength for us conservatives, not something to be ashamed of.
Here’s a cute little quote from that fun little minx’s biting tongue:
“Liberals hate America, they hate flagwavers, they hate abortion opponents. They hate all religions except Islam post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do; they don’t have the energy; if they had that much energy they’d have indoor plumbing by now.”
Yesterday McClellan kept saying that the vice president and his staff couldn’t get all the facts together because they were concentrating so hard on making sure Whittington was ok. The implication was that Cheney must have been intimately involved, pressing down on an artery or administering CPR for hours since he didn’t bother to even call Bush until much later.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that the first priority was making sure that Harry Whittington, Mr. Whittington was getting the medical care that he needed, and I think that’s where everybody’s attention should have been focused and was focused when the hunting accident took place. And in terms of here in Washington, there was information that we were continuing to learn about throughout the course of that evening and into early Sunday morning. The initial report that we received was that there had been a hunting accident. We didn’t know who all was involved, but a member of his party was involved in that hunting accident. And then additional details continued to come in overnight.
And it’s important always to work to make sure you get information out like this as quickly as possible, but it’s also important to make sure that the first priority is focused where it should be, and that is making sure that Mr. Whittington has the care that he needs. And the Vice President went to the hospital yesterday to visit him. The Vice President was pleased to see that he was doing well and in good spirits. And the President is, as well.
Today,post heart attack, they are again saying the the Veep is standing by (waiting to be called into the operating room to monitor his vital signs orsomething.)
A statement from Cheney’s office said, “The vice president said that he stood ready to assist. Mr. Whittington’s spirits were good, but obviously his situation deserves the careful monitoring that his doctors are providing.”
The funny thing about all this is that during the long night that Cheney was supposed to have been rolling bandages and mopping Whittington’s fevered brow, he was actually “focused” on having his dinner:
She said Cheney stayed “close but cool” while the agents and medical personnel treated Whittington, then took him by ambulance to the hospital. Later, the hunting group sat down for dinner while Whittington was being treated, receiving updates from a family member at the hospital. Armstrong described Cheney’s demeanor during dinner as “very worried” about Whittington.
“Man I hope that old bastard doesn’t kick. Can you pass the butter?”
I have to say that judging from the cable gasbags today, this is the first scandal I’ve seen handled by the press like the Lewinsky scandal — with everyone sitting around breathlessly speculating about what really happened and “what it all means.” I suspect it’s because it fits a larger narrative, as this diary on Kos, only partly tongue in cheek, shows. In fact, I just heard Bob Shrum say on Hardball that this story is a metaphor for the entire Bush administration: the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
But, seriously. What in the hell are they hiding? What?
Update: Ok. I think something very serious is happening behind the scenes. There is simply no way that a normally functioning white house would let their most powerful propaganda voice say this:
“Would you rather go hunting with Dick Cheney or riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy?” Limbaugh asked. “At least Cheney takes you to the hospital.”
Is that really where they want to go with this? Yow.