Sexists on sexism

Ah, wonderful harp music is playing as my news media boycott continues. Speaking of...

How does a news network further undermine its credibility? By asking two punditheads who have made sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton to evaluate whether sexism has played a role in the presidential campaign. I kid you not! Who orchestrated the nonsense? MSNBC, of course!

During the May 22 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski asked MSNBC political analyst Mike Barnicle, "[D]o you think we'll be looking back on the coverage and on the conversations pertaining to [Sen.] Hillary Clinton's run for the White House and will sexism play a key role in what went wrong?" Barnicle responded: "No, I think the further we get from this election cycle, I think reality will play a much larger role in what has happened in this election than reality is playing a part now." Later, MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan stated: "[T]here's resistance to a woman being the nominee, but by and large, I think the fact that she's a woman has helped her here." But as Media Matters for America has noted, on the February 26 edition of Morning Joe, Buchanan made the admittedly "sexist" comment that when Clinton "raises her voice, and when a lot of women do, you know, it's -- as I say -- it reaches a point ... where every husband in America ... has heard at one time or another." Additionally, on the January 23 edition of the program, Barnicle had said of Clinton: "[W]hen she reacts the way she reacts to [Sen. Barack] Obama with just the look, the look toward him, looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court, OK? Looking at him that way, all I could think of ... was this fall, if it's [Sen. John] McCain that she's facing, McCain is likable. She's not."

After Buchanan criticized Clinton's voice on the February 26 Morning Joe, Brzezinski responded: "Oh, Pat, you're lucky you're not in the studio, I'm telling you." Buchanan said: "I know that's a sexist comment ... but there's truth to it! ... There's truth to it." He continued: "It's very difficult for women to reach those kinds of levels effectively, as it is to make them sort of a rally speech. They're not good at that." Brzezinski replied: "There is something so wrong with what you're saying, and what I fear is that the effect may be exactly what you're saying because of this double standard that people can't hear strength from a woman without using the B-word, and quite frankly, if that is what people are going to take away from this, it just seems to me as, well, everything that the Clinton campaign is arguing then." Buchanan had stated earlier: "[I]t's very tough for a woman. You see two men going back and forth at each other, you say, 'Boy, they're really going at it.' ... And you see two women or something, and say, 'Boy, what a catfight this is.' " During the April 23 edition of the show, Buchanan said of Clinton's speech following the Pennsylvania primary the day before: "[O]nly once or twice did that voice start rising to the level that every husband in America at one time or another has heard. You know, where it starts going up."

Barnicle made his January 23 comment during discussion of the January 21 Democratic presidential debate, among an all-male panel that included co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist, and correspondent David Shuster. [Emphasis added.]

They also talked as if Hillary is out of the race by refraining NBC Tim Russert's edict that Obama is the nominee and "no one’s going to dispute it." Bah!

Watch the Barnicle & Buchanan circus show in living color at Media Matters, a lot more including an noxious reference to President Billary.

Honestly, can news programming get any dumber and more clueless about its sexism?

Get your game face on for Hillary

Hillary is still in this race despite the 24/7 media spiel anointing Obama the winner and the chortling over the perceived fait accompli in the Obamasphere. So get your game face on and let's roll.

In cramming a lot into one post, I've abbreviated some of the cites so click the links to understand the whole picture.

Who has our worthless media establishment cut out of the political discourse?

Older voters. For Obama, it's teh suck:

The Clinton campaign consistently includes Hillary Clinton’s appeal to seniors when it discusses why she is the better choice to face off against John McCain – but the media seldom mentions older voters, choosing instead to concentrate on Clinton’s appeal to “white working class” voters to hype the race angle in the campaign.

The Obama campaign’s use of talking points involving “new voters” and a “new coalition” is sending a message to older voters – that “old” is worth a lot less to them than “new”, that young voters are more important than older voters, and that the “new coalition” means that the concerns of the “old coalition” members are no longer critical to the Party.

And all this is going on when the Republican Party will have a 71 year old as its nominee.

Paul Lukasiak provides in-depth analysis, numbers, charts, a whole megillah.

Who joined Republicans against progressive Democrats to undermine the middle class by voting for legislation with the Orwellian name, Class Action Fairness Act?

You know who:

In 2005, Barack Obama voted for CAFA, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Who voted against it? Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer and other progressive Democrats. Even Harry Reid. Who voted with Obama? Republicans, from Trent Lott to Lindsay Graham to Jeff Sessions and Democrats Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein (big surprise.)

Jeralyn of TalkLeft discusses why it was a very bad bill and commenter andrys adds more flesh to some of *cough* Barry's benefactors:

Obama gives Hope to corporations - Truthdig, Apr 28, 2008

Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine - (Harpers, Oct 26, 2006 issue)

Obama Campaign press release - response to Harper's article - Oct. 23, 2006

A Bit More on Barack - Harper's added detail for Obama campaign - Oct. 26, 2006. This includes Obama's explanation that We can do better than burdening businesses with cases of class-action abuse.

All his talk about not knuckling under to special interests is talk. M'yeah. Smell the hypocrisy. Here's a whiff of Barry's stealthy lobbyist network from The Hill.

Polls from West Virginia and Kentucky indicate an upcoming Hillary landslide.

Do you wonder why the media have gone ga-ga for Obama as if he's got the nomination? C'mon. The media are corporate subsidiaries comprised of influence peddlers dedicated to the plutocracy. Via tngen at Corrente:

There’s a good reason for the recent Obamabot psyops, pundit declarations, general wailing and at times cajoling Clinton supporters have been subjected to since her recent Indiana victory was spun into a loss: Clinton still has a very good chance of securing the nomination.

What’s more, the next few days are absolutely critical for her and her supporters. The end is only here if we allow the latest round to depress morale and turnout for the upcoming WV and KY primaries.

Jay Cost at RCP lays out why Clinton’s down but not out. First some numbers and demographics:

Two things are holding me back: West Virginia and Kentucky.

—SNIP—

However, it is possible that she could counter Tuesday’s blowout with two big blowouts of her own in the next two weeks. This could undo most of the damage done by her big loss in North Carolina, and put her back on track....

...What happens to “It’s Over” if Clinton pulls a 40-point victory in West Virginia on Tuesday, then follows it up a week later with a 30-point victory in Kentucky? If these states turn out in the same margins that states since March 4th have averaged, that would imply a net of about 290,000 votes for Clinton. That puts her within striking distance of a reasonable popular vote victory. “Over” will be over as we turn our attention to Puerto Rico.

Lambert weighed in:

I keep thinking that, if they really had it in the bag, they wouldn’t be screaming so loud that they’ve got it in the bag — and then attributing Hillary’s persistence to, er, psychological factors (“You know how women are…”)... Eh? ...I mean, why doesn’t Obama just release the 50 SDs he’s got in the bag and have done with it?

NOTE And I love that “elite opinion” has congealed around Obama triumphalism. This is the Village [aka media pundit class]. They’re always wrong about everything.

To quote a Daily Howler bromide I'll repeat often in the next few days: "You really can’t run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps." Big media is out of touch, disconnected in their ivory towers. They want to pitch information, not listen to info consumers. You think we have a free press in America with the public's best interest at heart? Don't make me open a can of bwahahahahaha.

What's happening to the Democratic Party? And are the Blog Boyz still members of the reality-based community?

Super-smart Anglachel analyzes the "mass psychosis that has overtaken half of [our] party" and the "dissolution of what should have been a solidly unified party." She delves into the break-up, the differences between Obama's and Hillary's approach, and a "revolution" of Barry's new "saints" demanding old sinners--Hillary supporters--to simply give up and bow to The One.

What I see rising from the other side is clearly of two kinds. Half of Obama's support is simply racial identity voting. The other half is from the faction of the party that is significantly insulated from the stark world of need and want. There is a love of the other-worldly where the beauty of the idea and the ideal matters more than the base. The political "base" is seen as base - low, uncouth, adulterated, impure, unworthy. They are not among the saved and the saints. I honestly cannot remember a previous time when so many people in the party were reviled for doing nothing except vote for a conventional candidate....

...Cultural liberals really do tend to think that people who fit the profile of Clinton voters don't have deeply held principles and are not capable of forming complex opinions of the world, little more than dupes of puppet masters like Karl Rove. They act from false consciousness, not from the rich inner life that the properly educated and worldly claim as their own. The dedication and commitment of Clinton voters is denied because those hicks can't really believe anything, and thus the saints need not take into consideration the desires of the fallen as real, let alone legitimate.

Are Clinton voters to STFU and sit down until our ballots are required at the sacrificial altar of The One? Ha! Think again. Anglachel cites Obama supporter Chris Bowers to prove her point. He wrote:

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

The New Democratic coalition is kicking the working class (and whole lot of other folks who aren't Bubbas) to the curb.

Note the Bowers echo in the words of the DNC's Donna Brazile here and whoa! A hostile response from her here. (Thank you, Joseph!)

After reading Bowers's crazy talk, I wish someone would spike the Blog Boyz Kool-Aid with lithium. Maybe their manic phase would subside and snap the boyz back to reality. Grandiosity and hubris has run amok. McCain and the GOP will make lemonade out of a chunk of Hillary supporters pegged as lemons cast aside as old.

I'm fighting for Hillary because she's fighting for us all. Let's do it.

Psycho Babel

Photo by Brian Lary from inside a radio tower

Clinton Derangement Syndrome abounds in the media in a sickening incarnation:

During the April 7 edition of Fox News' America's Election HQ, radio host Tammy Bruce joined the growing list of media figures who have purported to diagnose Sen. Hillary Clinton with a mental disorder, asserting of Clinton, "Well, there's an actual psychiatric term called mythomania, and it's part of a larger psychiatric scheme of people who make up fantastic stories to bolster their own image." As supposed evidence of Clinton "literally making up things out of whole cloth," Bruce claimed that Clinton had discussed "Chelsea being at the World Trade Center on September 11th." In fact, Hillary Clinton did not claim that her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was "at the World Trade Center on September 11th"; rather, as Media Matters for America has documented, Hillary Clinton said that her daughter had "gone, what she thought would be just a great jog. She was going to go down to Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She went to get a cup of coffee and -- and that's when the plane hit."

As Media Matters noted, in a February 25 National Review Online blog post, CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow wrote, "Now I'm no psychiatrist, far from it, but I think a simple answer is that Senator Clinton could be depressed." In a February 27 New York Times column, Maureen Dowd wrote that Clinton "has turned into Sybil," an apparent reference to a book and movie about a woman who developed multiple personality disorder after being severely abused as a child. On the February 26 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, commentator Jack Cafferty claimed Clinton "[r]esembl[ed] someone with multiple personality disorder." And on the February 25 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman asserted that Clinton's behavior "comes across as a little schizophrenic." As Media Matters further documented, in her book The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton (Regnery Publishing, 2007), Republican strategist Bay Buchanan suggested that Clinton may have a disorder "involving narcissistic personality style," and was quoted in an article about the book as saying, "[W]e are talking about a clinical condition that could make her [Clinton] dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief."

A clinically-trained mental health professional would never attempt a psych evaluation from afar but these pundits--who aren't qualified or evidently self-aware enough to diagnose their own shameless behavior--do. Puh-leeze. They're snarling Hillary-hating loudmouths with a megaphone at their disposal to disseminate mindless irresponsible pronouncements and fork-tongued propaganda.

You can't miss the misogyny in some of the rhetoric, in Kudlow's case, a blog post entitled, "Hillary's Mental Roller Coaster"...

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed Hillary's erratic, roller-coaster, mood swings these past few weeks?

She's all over the map. Irritable and angry. Manic. Pessimistic and sad. One minute she's shedding tears, the next minute she's shouting and attacking, then she's sarcastically ripping on Obama, and on and on it goes.

C'mon. We know a sexist dog whistle when we hear it, the implication that Hillary acted like an unhinged, hysterical female. The "sarcastically ripping on Obama" likens to Marc Rudov's whiny characterization of "when Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear, 'Take out the garbage.' " What Kudlow wrote doesn't unveil anything truthful or relevant: it's chatter exposing him as an exaggerator, whose embellished tale delivers a dramatized slimeball he can toss.

Not only is our media the worst, sleaziest press corps possible, but they're predatory and paid handsomely, some of them multi-millions, to say depraved, toxic, inflammatory nonsense. They do it to get people to watch The Show, to read Their Words, to listen to Their Shtick and they're smirking all the way to their estates in Nantucket having reeled in the rubes who lap up their craptoids as if they're M&M candies. Those media darthlings who haven't made it that big yet are slobbering rapaciously in their quest for "Millionaire Pundit Values."

The sane choice of any sentient being is to turn 'em off with the realization, "Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park." Which applies to the Tower of Noise, the babbling bobbleheads, the media's hit men, The Village.

UPDATE: Susie Madrak picked up on Dick Morris' lie, his contribution to the towering Psycho Babel.

Misogyny kitsch of Christopher Hitchens

Someone cut the crap. A decision-making dolt thought this graphic for the column of the same title was probably cute, apropos, without fathoming its dark humorless kitsch. Probably didn't think twice about the usage of the B word, an insidious denigration of women.

Hey, it rhymes. Oh, goodie!

Yet one more example of misogyny , not just for women anymore exhibited in the media complete with a wild-eyed, snarling Christopher Hitchens feigning hysterical rage. Get it?

I'm not a fan of Hitchens and I let my Vanity Fair subscription lapse years ago. Glad I did.

Best thing about VF is James Wolcott.

The Hillary Clinton edition

Maybe Rembrandt didn't have this in mind



Clinton and Scaife... Uh oh! Josh Marshall, Kos, and the Boy Blogz, who have contracted a terminal case of CDS, won't be happy. As eriposte warned, Hillary Clinton meeting with Richard Scaife could stimulate the "sound of several heads exploding" in the netroots Obamasphere.

See snips from The Left Coaster of an article by Scaife on "Hillary, reassessed." One comment from Scaife: "But it does mean that I have a very different impression of Hillary Clinton today than before last Tuesday's meeting -- and it's a very favorable one indeed. . . Call it a 'counterintuitive' impression." Now eriposte's closing, "Very troubling indeed. Sen. Clinton has this ugly and detestable habit of impressing people who get to know her well - especially independents and Republicans! The result? A powerful Republican and media magnate who hated the Clintons came dangerously close to endorsing her! We certainly can't have that! After all, according to The Clinton Rules and The Obama Rules it is only acceptable if Republicans endorse Sen. Obama - he who has courted them aggressively - in support of his campaign of hope, unity and change."

The Goddess will git you for that! Egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women on McCain's veep pick: "I've seen a number of stories this week suggesting that Condi Rice wants to be John McCain's VP. If the old guard Democrats were to succeed at pushing the woman off the Democratic ticket only to face a Black woman on the Republican ticket, that would mean there really is a goddess and she really is pissed. And it would mean that Democrats might well be waiting another 50 years for their next 2-term president." Go read the rest from Egalia. Truth meter: 100%. M'yeah, the Goddess is pissed!

Destroying Hillary in the press. . .and: Susie Madrak shared notes from EschaCon that included Media Matter's Eric Boehlert, who said, "...it goes back to Gore’s press in 1999 which was 'really unfair and really weird.' What’s happening online now is potentially dangerous: HRC has gotten dreadful press, not fair, 'gotcha,' and so on — there’s a portion of the blogosphere that has ignored that and there’s a portion that has encouraged that." Ya think?!!!! No disrespect intended, but the Boy Blogz have smeared Hillary relentlessly and turned a blind eye to Barry's faults and exaggerations. And what about Hillary bloggers? Boehlert has been "interviewing Clinton bloggers for a book... how bloggers are affecting the 2008 presidential campaign, and was 'shocked' to hear again and again that people felt they could no longer speak freely in the blogosphere. . . bullied into silence." More.

Sexist attacks on Hillary hurts all women! Read and learn: "Why calling out misogyny matters" by zuzu at Feministe, a superb, in-depth post and worth your time. Intro graf: "I’ve gotten a lot of criticism lately whenever I do a post about the primary, and, specifically, about misogynistic language or sexist framing used to tear down Hillary Clinton. Invariably, someone accuses (and it’s always an accusation) me of being a Clinton shill, or grills me about why I don’t write a whole bunch of balancing posts about racist language and framing being used against Obama, or tries to dismiss what I have to say because Clinton did X, Y or Z that the commenter found offensive." Highly-recommended reading. (H/t Susie)

Hillary can seat MI and FL! Barry's BFF Donna Brazile is wrong and Clinton is right. "Clinton can actually gain a majority on [the Credentials Committee], and thus seat the existing Florida and Michigan delegations." Of course, it depends on Hillary winning enough delegates in the upcoming contests. Details at TalkLeft. I wonder if my blogger friend Bryan in Florida has heard about this? Best solution is a revote but Obama's opposition, DNC bias, and those pesky Republican state legislators... Still.

The dream ticket: Mentioned earlier in an update to "Hillary Clinton will go all the way," but worth repeating: The Cuomo Dream Ticket Plan. I'm biased thinking that Hillary should top the tick' for many reasons, but bring it on!

Clinton fact checks Obama and the senator from Illinois has some explaining to do. Nine exaggerations ranging from taking "credit for nuclear leak legislation that never passed" to "his assertion that lobbyists 'won't work in my White House.'" Why am I unsurprised?

A compilation of sources making the case for Hillary from admirals, generals, Ambassador Joe Wilson, Krugman on the economy, lowering taxes on the middle class, veterans, job creation, and more.

Who's the best candidate for fixing the economy? It's not wackydoodle "Let them eat cake" McCain or "cautious and relatively orthodox" Barry. C'mon, you know the answer. Hillary! If you watch the video at the link, notice how Donna Brazile repeats an Obama line about "crisis on main street." M'yeah, she's a DNC shill for Barry and a total disgrace for her cock-up involving the MI and FL primaries. But I digress. If you're worried about the economy, then Clinton is the best choice for prez. "[H]er policy proposals continue to be surprisingly bold and progressive."

Obama blog bias unveiled

Josh Marshall took the plunge changing TPM to the official non-official Obama Talking Points Memo.

BTD at TalkLeft provided the details. The gist:

By doing an attack video on Hillary Clinton, TPM demonstrates that not only has it become an Obama site, it is one of the most virulent and unfair of such sites.

Did Josh feel a thrill go up his leg?

Ugly reality

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Don Imus strikes again

Channeling Chris Matthews:

On the March 7 edition of Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus asserted that Sen. Hillary Clinton won her campaign for a U.S. Senate seat due to "a sympathy vote," adding, "She came here, everybody felt sorry for her 'cause her fat ..." At that point, guest and Fox News host Alan Colmes interjected, asking, "[W]hy did she get re-elected?" Imus continued: "'Cause her fat, stupid husband was getting BJs from the poor little intern there in the Oval Office."

What? No refrain of the I-Man's infamous Hillary-bashing, The Lady is a Tramp? People will say Imus has lost his touch. Or he's out of touch. Or touched in the head. How about all of the above.

Perhaps Serious People--NBC's Tim Russert, CBS anchor Bob Scheiffer, and Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford--should stop validating a rotting cadaver's career of fouling up the air waves with hate-filled invectives and fatuous gossip. Oh, I suppose they feel sympathy for Imus' condition. Must be terrible for Don to be continually mistaken for a litter box.

RELATED LINKS:
The pillory of Hillary
The Imus media disconnect on sexism

Moyers: Buying the war

Bill Moyers exposed the failure of the American press in Buying the War. As we near the anniversary of the political stagecraft orchestrated on the USS Lincoln and the Commander-in-Codpiece's "Mission Accomplished" moment, don't forget who aided the selling of the war.

Glenn Greenwald sums up:

The fraud that was manufactured by our government officials and endorsed by our media establishment is one of the great political crimes of the last many decades. Yet those who are responsible for it have not been held accountable in the slightest. Quite the contrary, their media prominence -- as Moyers demonstrates -- has only increased, as culpable propagandists and warmongers such as Charles Krauthammer (now of Time and The Washington Post), Bill Kristol (now of Time), Jonah Goldberg (now of The Los Angeles Times, Peter Beinert (now of Time and The Washington Post), and Tom Friedman (revered by media stars everywhere) have all seen their profiles enhanced greatly in our national media.

And while Judy Miller became the scapegoat for the media's failures, most of the media stars responsible for the worst journalistic abuses -- from Michael Gordon to Tim Russert to Fred Hiatt to most of The Washington Post, to say nothing of the Fox stars and cogs of the right-wing noise machine -- continue merrily along as before, with virtually no recognition of fault and no reduction in their platforms.

I certainly don't trust the news media with only a few exceptions, for example, McClatchy. Wise are those who question everything. Triple check reporting before buying what the press says. Always. Look to the blogroll under "Favorites" on the right for more reliable sources than what you will find in the media.

UPDATE: Another example of how the press has transformed into a propaganda outlet. From the Horse's Mouth: Rupert Murdoch's New York Post rewrites an Associated Press story to tilt the story against Democrats. Read and compare.

Scaife attack

Further proof that media attacks women regularly as mentioned in my previous post, on Sunday the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review used a Shakespearean analogy to assault Hillary and her Weird Sisters:

Macbeth reveals the tragedy of a woman's lust for power and betrayal of friends; Lady Macbeth is aided in her purpose by three aged creatures, the Weird Sisters. These three hags -- witches -- call up "snakes, newts and the toes of frogs" to conjure a "hell's broth" of "furies" to plague man as they hobble and prance around a steaming cauldron on a wind-swept heath.

Off we speed to the gender war camp where evil "furies" concoct man's downfall. With Hillary assigned as the Lady Macbeth in this Scaife publication hit job, the anonymous author, Dateline D.C., "a Washington-based British journalist and political observer," continues with--should I say "his"--rambling un-bard by introducing us to Sen. Clinton's sister hags: Geraldine Ferraro, Madeleine Albright, and Billy Jean King. First, Geraldine's bewitchery:

...She says that her backing of Hillary is not "because she's a woman, but isn't it wonderful that she is a woman?"

This former three-term New York congresswoman of Queens remains the mistress of the tart retort. Asked recently if she would want to re-enter national politics, she quipped, "No way. For one, I'm 71 years old -- a full 12 months older than John McCain -- and my health is not the best."

Tart? Does the writer's choice of adjective imply he meant whorish? Attacking Clinton and her "hags" in a Scaife newsprint pimp begs a gaze into the mirror, Mr. Anonymous. Unlike the column, Ferraro scored a valuable point for voters to consider, an issue the Arizona Republic raised about its home-state senator: McCain ain't no spring chicken having overcome one bout with a "potentially fatal form of skin cancer."

My congratulations go to any one who beats cancer. However, at his age and the weight of a close encounter with death, could McCain's drive cause him to urgently lust for power afflicting him with the madness of King George? He hawked the Iraq surge strategy as stubbornly as Bush did in his cushy bubble when the Joint Chiefs warned of an even bigger failure -- with no backup options. How out of touch has McCain grown to claim "proof that Baghdad was getting safer" once he strolled through the Shorja market as if, in the words of his fellow traveler Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), 'twas "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time"? Who knew Indiana markets required the protection of 100+ soldiers in steel-plated Humvees, snipers on rooftops, and attack helicopters hovering above just to shop! Oh, pshaw. McCain's a manly man. He doesn't have to explain his irrational behavior or politically-staged histrionics. "Ms. Ferraro," on the other hand:

...brings to her role as Hillary's champion her own family's male-created problems. These included allegations of financial misdeeds against her husband, John Zaccaro, a real estate magnate when she was running for office, that endangered her campaign.

At the time, Zaccaro was targeted by Rudy Giuliani, then the U.S. federal prosecutor, of whom Geraldine says, "Without 9/11, Giuliani would be an asterisk, a footnote, in New York's history."

Evil witch! How dare she speak the truth! Ms. Ferraro had the audacity to diminish America's mayor to his previous accomplishments, which included ridding the pee smell from NYC subways. This same Rudy capitalized on 9/11 despite his stupid decision to locate the emergency preparedness office in the World Trade Center--the very target that terrorists bombed in 1993 and later toppled in 2001--and who errantly recommended Bernard Kerik to head Homeland Security. What a presidential contender, another Decider in training. Yet, Geraldine rated vilification as a hag. Ha! Methinks the D.C. hack doth protest too much. The rest of the Scaife writer's op/ed:

...Madeleine Albright, another septuagenarian on the response team, is known for her wonderful ability to juggle friends and business interests with politics. Bill Clinton made her secretary of State because she had won power and friends in the Democratic Party by advising losers.

She counseled Ed Muskie, Ferraro, Michael Dukakis and the Carter and Clinton administrations. Her weird decisions at the State Department resulted in thousands of deaths, ranging from Somalia through the deadly Bosnian-Serbian conflict and Kosovo killings to the Rwanda massacres and the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Africa. She fully earned the honorific "Madeleine Halfbright."

The third acknowledged member of the Hillary "truth squad" is the world tennis professional Billie Jean King. She is remembered by many for her wonderful net play and her saying, "Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever!" She also is known for winning the Battle of the Sexes in 1973 against male tennis pro Bobby Riggs, the high point of her (if not his) career.

Putting Shakespeare and his snakes, newts and caldrons aside, Hillary's ladies, unlike Macbeth's witches, have "fear" as a vital ingredient to add to their 2007 mix. By telling her detractors that Hillary, and she alone, can save America from the disasters prophesied hourly on television, they hope to make Bill "the first gentleman."

Finally, over much ado about Bill, herein lies the rub. I'll table the debate over the culpability of Albright's killer "weird decisions," a lot to fact-check, although the author never proves the magic of his "Halfbright" tale en route to the main event. As any male chauvinist can tell you, manly shame depends on never being subservient to a woman or beaten at a sport by a jockette. I can almost smell the misogynistic fear in the realization that the first husband ever...Gasp!--bonus points for having been a POTUS--would assume the First Lady's role if Hillary were elected.

The unusual complaint that Hillary promotes fear (aka female hysteria) as her agenda...

Danger flags have risen to full staff because of climate change, pandemics, cyber attacks and retirements. In turn, these horrors bring floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, tornados and droughts. The threat of war and of losing war is omnipresent as are economic fears generated by job losses, rising prices and immigrants swamping our society.... ...We are becoming a fear-ridden society!

...cemented in my mind the columnist's intellectual dishonesty not that much highway remained ahead. Into the boiling cauldron of the past six years of Bush swirls the specter of nukular mushroom cloud, the ad nauseum mantra of "the attacks of 9/11," election run-up terror alerts, and the president's toadie argument that troop withdrawals from Iraq would lead to a "disaster" (Lead to?! It has been the biggest blunder ever!). Remove the newt from your eye, pilgrim, to see the flecks of Republican froth.

Right-wing politics has preyed on fear and hate. Equality for gays and lesbians will destroy marriage! There's a war on Christmas! The Mexicans are coming! "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Fear-mongering split Americans asunder with a thump from the Divider, "You're either with us or against us," who later donned his CinC codpiece with the axis of evil. The conservative movement has dealt the fear card since the "evil empire" days of Reagan-Bush shenanigans. Try turning on conservative talk radio. Knees shake and pulses race when the screaming banshees of wingnut media warn, as Michael Savage did, that "homosexuals" are "everywhere, anyway, trying to tell me what to say and what not to say and what to think." Oddly, no one including gays and lesbians has yet unearthed a copy of the "agenda." Still, in conservative circles and on media air waves, the urban legend looms as large as a galloping headless horseman.

Oh. But. Hillary. As. President? Oooogly-booogly boo! Babies cry; conservatives shudder. Scribed in wingnut mythology, machismo must rule because women are fearsome creatures. Pffft. Pfffffft. See no evil in the atrocities that male stupidos perpetrate in the world. Even on liberal blogs, Hillary bashing in the comment sections typically bemoan, "She's tooooo divisive." How sad to see liberals sucked into the Republican noise vortex by adopting con-apparatchik propaganda.

To his credit (I love it when men speak with Sophia), the esteemed Glenn Greenwald diagnosed a symptom of why Princess Wingnut Coulter announced that John Edwards was a "faggot." Glenn explained the right-wing cult of contrived masculinity:

...[Michelle] Malkin expressly acknowledged: "[Ann is] very popular among conservatives." The focus of these stories should not be Coulter, but instead, should be the conservative movement in which Ann Coulter -- precisely because of (not "despite") her history of making such comments -- is "very popular."

[...]

Coulter plays a vital and irreplaceable role in this movement. The reason I linked to that Bob Somerby post on Maureen Dowd yesterday is because he makes the critical point -- one which Digby, among others, has been making for a long time, including in a great post last night -- concerning how the right-wing movement conducts itself and the rhetorical tool they use not only to keep themselves in power, but more importantly, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected. As Digby put it [augmented to add more of the quote than Glenn snipped]:

Here's just a small sampling of how this has played out in just the last six years:

Al Gore needed to be taught how to be an "alpha male." He doesn't "know who he is."
John Kerry "flip-flops" like a flaccid penis.
John Edwards is "the Breck girl."
Howard Dean was "hysterical."
Barack Obama is "Obambi."
Bill Clinton was "a pervert."
Hillary Clinton is a lesbian.

The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out loud. [Maureen] Dowd hints at it broadly. And the entire press corps giggles and swoons at this shallow, sophomoric concept like a bunch of junior high pom pom girls.

Coulter insisted last night that she did not intend the remark as an anti-gay slur -- that she did not intend to suggest that John Edwards, husband and father, was gay -- but instead only used the word as a "schoolyard taunt," to call him a sissy. And that is true. Her aim was not to suggest that Edwards is actually gay, but simply to feminize him like they do with all male Democratic or liberal political leaders.

[...]

The converse of this is equally true. As critical as it is to them to feminize Democratic and liberal males (and to masculinize the women), even more important is to create false images of masculine power and strength around their authority figures. The reality of this masculine power is almost always non-existent. The imagery is what counts.

[...]

...It is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind -- or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is -- and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

[...]

John Dean and Bob Altemeyer have both documented this dynamic as clearly and convincingly as can be. People who feel weak and vulnerable crave strong leaders to protect them and to enable them to feel powerful. And those same people crave being part of a political movement that gives them those sensations of power, strength, triumph and bravery -- and they need a strong, powerful, masculine Leader to enable those feelings. And they will devote absolute loyalty to any political movement which can provide them with that.

[...]

...The only real complaint from Bush followers about the Commander-in-Chief is that he has not given them enough Guantanamos and wars and aggression and barbaric slaughter and liberty infringement. Their hunger for those things is literally insatiable because they need fresh pretexts for feeling strong.

And that is where Ann Coulter comes in and plays such a vital -- really indispensible -- role. As a woman who purposely exudes the most exaggerated American feminine stereotypes (the long blond hair, the make-up, the emaciated body), her obsession with emasculating Democratic males -- which, at bottom, is really what she does more than anything else -- energizes and stimulates the right-wing "base" like nothing else can....

With rigid gender stereotypes from the 1950s in motion, the needy denigrate Hillary, the potential feminine Leader of the world's super power. They cry for their idealized Manzilla to protect them, to destroy and humiliate the Enemy. They do not hesitate to sacrifice damsels on the altar or their knaves in battle to appease the dragon for his aegis. Confronted with the possibility of a shredded hyper-masculine, hyper-feminine cardboard cutout, the Right compulsively rips the authentic feminine wherever it lurks in women and in men lest their heads explode with terror. Fear propels the character assassination of powerful women as much as it ascribes effeminate quirks to distinguished men. And the authentic masculine? Oh, don't even let a women express an integrated animus or the gnashing of teeth escalates to a dizzying ear-bleed. To please Manzilla and ensure their strength through Him, the Clinton woman must die by a million tongue lashings.

In Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, conservative Tony Blankley recited a passage from Edward Klein's 2005 Hillary gossip book of an alleged Nixon quote about the former First Lady. Why a reader would trust an observation from Tricky Dick Nixon--the Watergate president who did virtually nothing without calculated political advantage--tempts tomfoolery. More egregious, the book has been proven to contain misleading fabrications and poorly sourced material. Nonetheless, the chosen cite by Blankley revealed the pathos of the paranoid Right:

'Hillary inspires fear.' Nixon explained that a few minutes after the meeting started Chelsea Clinton joined the group. The kid ran right to Clinton and never once looked at her mother. I could see that she had a warm relationship with him, but was almost afraid of her mother. Hillary is ice-cold. You can see it in her eyes. She is a piece of work — 'Hillary inspires fear.'

Blankley echoes, "I fear, [Hillary will be] the next president of the United States." The anxiety over female ascendancy--guilt from years of attacking Hillary and Bill plus the threat of Oval Office retribution from a scorned woman who could with executive powers unmask the tribe of "contrived masculinity"--was conjured up in this latest Scaife-produced op/ed from the anonymous D.C. author.

Media Matters exposed Scaife's relationship to the present attack on Hillary with the return of Lady Macbeth. Salon identified Scaife "as a key funder of the $2.4 million Arkansas Project, a four-year effort organized through the American Spectator magazine to discredit [Bill Clinton]." In August 1992, the American Spectator christened Hillary "the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" in a feature written by Daniel Wattenberg, famous as a speechwriter for Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams and notorious for disparaging the Clintons. He's no Brit but Scaife money has succeeded in attracting aspiring drivelers past and present. What's lacking in the Lady Macbeth metaphor fitting Hillary today the author more than compensates with unsubstantiated bombast. He earned his keep and Lord Scaife must have smiled approvingly.

If Shakespeare were alive these days and to depict Richard Mellon Scaife in a play, what character would the bard fashion of the right-wing media financier and "the ultimate patron" of the Clinton haters? So many ruthless choices to consider. One I can easily imagine, a Shakespearean line retrofitted for the role: "A horse's ass! a horse's ass! my kingdom for a horse's ass!"

Answered by the anonymous D.C. observer, Scaife finds a lackey.

(Related links: Digby, Bob Somerby, ThinkProgress.)

The Imus media disconnect on sexism

Is this painting Artemisia's means of brandishing
symbolic justice for herself and other victims?

I haven't posted in ages but I wanted to step away from painting to note an astute observation from Digby's Hullabaloo on Don Imus and media. Read the whole comment. After examining the media's "feeding of a nasty American Id" --a complicity that enabled Imus to smear the exemplary Rutgers women's basketball team 12 days ago, black journalist Gwen Ifill in 1993, and many others over the years--Digby highlighted an insidious issue that often gets overlooked. And it's a shame:

The blatant racism of Imus's comments was the straw that broke the camels back. Everyone recognized immediately just how wrong that was. But, we have a long way to go with the sexism issue, which was never really dealt with openly in this thing and which is so pervasive in talk radio that it's hard to know where to start.

Listen to any radio talk show discuss Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi or Rosie O'Donnell and tell me if they can stick to substantive disagreements with what they say for more than 30 seconds before they launch into an attack against their looks, their voice, their sexuality--- whatever. I dare you. When the Republican party's cleverest issue framer comes out with a shocking rhetorical clunker like this, you know that there is a serious problem:

FRANK LUNTZ: I always use the line for Nancy Pelosi, "You get one shot at a facelift. If it doesn't work the first time, let it go."

It's stupid, sexist and ultimately self-defeating. It's a recipe for a political backlash and shows just how out of touch many of our culture's most powerful men are on this issue.

But rightwing male idiocy aside, let me just say this: I would hope that no decent person of either party would ever, ever think it was ok to appear on a show where someone says things like this:

"Ain't gonna be so beautiful when the bitch got a bald head and one titty."

That wasn't some obscure rap lyric (and I'm not sure I've ever heard a rap lyric quite a horrible as that, and some of them are truly horrible.) That comment about an unnamed famous woman who had announced she had breast cancer (I think it might be Sheryl Crow) was made just two years ago by Imus sidekick Sid Rosenberg and it was recounted in Vanity Fair in January of 2006. I'm pretty sure that all his fans in the media knew all about it --- the piece featured all of them, after all. I find it completely stunning that anyone could find that "charming" or funny or entertaining, who doesn't have a real hatred for women in his or her soul. That is the very definition of misogyny. (And you can throw in a despicable loathing toward the sick and disabled too.) I'm not sure it can go any lower than that.

Yes, Digby. That's pretty low. What passes for media opinion and alleged political discourse--I say alleged as if howling qualifies--too often belittles women, especially powerful female politicians. I doubt that a predominantly African-American male Rutgers basketball team would have registered on the Imus radar.

Still more curious: Why didn't the female employees and managers of NBC and CBS rise up to condemn Imus before his racist-sexist combo bash of April 4? Where's the outrage over denigrating women that occurs in media regularly?

If I could speak to the young women of America I'd caution: Don't let the internalized misogyny of Phyllis Schlafly doormats and whining macho boys undermine the force of the U.S. Constitution and your dignity as half of the human race. It's time to stand up and say, cut the "bitch" talk. Now. Advertisers traditionally court female consumers since women account for 81% of household purchases and you can use your purchasing clout, your minds, your influence, and the law, and organize. When advertisers axed Imus out of their schedules, the network pulled the plug on his show. So get a clue, ladies.

Will the Imus incident signal a change for the better? I hope but I doubt that misogyny in America will subside until more generations of gender-blindness have evolved and after the lizard brains--male and female--have finally shut up six feet under. Color me skeptical.

For now, I'll gather my brushes and paint, doing what I can to lift my sisters up with new narratives, new imagery, and hopefully inspire future acts of justice. We've got some catching up to do.

IMAGE: Judith Slaying Holofernes, oil on canvas by Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1620. See her Naples version for commentary and source for the quote below the above image. I mentioned Artemisia in my previous post but she deserves the extra attention as one of the world's greatest artists. Art historian Mary D. Garrard expressed in her book that Artemisia "has suffered a scholarly neglect that is unthinkable for an artist of her calibre." Indeed. I wonder why?

UPDATE: It's not just Imus.

Savage got comeuppance for Etheridge smear

I'm taking a temporary break from painting this afternoon to rest sore muscles before I start the final painting coat on my current oil, A Tribute to Artemisia's Judith. [Update: Completed oil, drawing, and details].

See Artemisia Gentileschi's famous Judith painting, Naples version, here.

In catching up on news, I was thrilled to read that Creative Arts Agency decided to not reward the hateful rhetoric of Michael Savage. Savage has ranted too many times about gays and lesbians and other minorities but he went too far in smearing their client Melissa Etheridge and CAA dropped him, kaboom! TMZ has the scoop and links to his rant smearing Missy. Media Matters offers more details. Whatever possessed CAA to sign Savage in the first place is curious but they came to their senses within 48 hours. Let's hope more people wake up.

Mel Gibson, hate speech, and media

The Stoning of the Drag Queen, graphite on paper

I swore to myself that I wasn't going to join the furor over Mel Gibson but Rev. Irene Monroe tied the subject to hate speech and how name-calling has become mainstream:

Hate speech is not a passive form of public speech. And one of the signs of an intolerant society is its hate speech, whether used jokingly or intentionally, aimed at specific groups of people. When this form of verbal abuse becomes part and parcel of the everyday parlance between people, we have created a society characterized by its zero-tolerance of inclusion and diversity, where name-calling becomes an accepted norm.

Lately this Republican political era of “compassionate conservatism” has brought forward an unabashed no-holds-barred attitude when it comes to passionate invective hurled at queers, African-Americans, and Jews.

In an interview with Ann Coulter, author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism, on the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with host Chris Matthews, Coulter called former vice president Al Gore a "fag,” and she hinted that Bill Clinton might be gay.

[...]

Let us not forget that the word and image of fag derives from the word faggot, which is a bundle of sticks for burning, and that LGBTQ people were supposedly righteously burned at the stake in medieval England.

And let us not forget Matthew Shepard, the openly gay Wyoming student who in 1998 was bludgeoned and left to die in near-freezing temperatures while tethered to a rough-hewn wooden fence.

Or 1999, when Billy Jack Gaither, a well-respected and beloved textile worker in Alabama, was bludgeoned with an ax handle, burned, and left to die on a pile of tires because he was gay.

And some claim the Bible refers to us stoking the fires of hell.

But the real hell we LGBTQ people confront from this type of name-calling and stereotyping is a societal disparage of sexual relations between people of the same gender, in a society where both the church and government bar us from marriage, many states bar us from adoption, and the federal government forbids our serving in the military.

According to the National Mental Health Association, gay teens hear "anti-gay slurs such as 'homo', 'faggot' and 'sissy' about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes." Why aren't schools stopping this verbal abuse? Or worse. Almost a third of "gay youth had been threatened or injured at school in the last year alone!" Unbelievable! Can you imagine such a situation today for African-Americans? For Jewish kids? Just for being who they are? Well, maybe. And yet our society turns a deaf ear especially to bigotry and bullying that targets gays and lesbians--child or adult. Shame, shame.

More shameful, gay news media report Georgia's Republican candidate for attorney general compared gay teens to pedophiles. Where are traditional media's outcry? The local newspaper story? A candidate for the state's top law official doesn't understand who the overwhelming majority of child molesters are or the difference between a pervert and a gay or lesbian teenager! Is this conservative ignorance and bigotry to the tenth power or what? And what about the media's complicity by not reporting homophobic McGuire's remarks? I checked Google News a minute ago and not one U.S. non-gay news media outlet (except for Christian news) popped up in search results. Maybe later.

OTOH, if you've seen the news about Gibson (how could you miss it?), you've heard the anti-Semitic, sexist, vain, and profane spew that Catholic conservative Mel drunkenly gushed at police officers during his arrest. But I hadn't heard Gov. Mitt Romney's tar baby remark. Rev. Irene comments in response:

The relationship between homophobia and racism is shown in how LGBTQ and African-American civil rights struggles are pitted against each other by our enemies. It also appears in the federal government’s new HIV/AIDS supposed prevention program, which requires all public-health authorities and agencies to report the identities of HIV-positive patients. It’s a program in which African-Americans—straight or queer—will ostensibly feel profiled.

Language is a representation of culture, and it perpetuates ideas and assumptions about race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation that we consciously, and unconsciously, articulate in our everyday conversations about ourselves and the rest of the world—and, consequently, transmit generationally.

The liberation of a people is also rooted in the liberation from abusive language, which is essentially hate hurled at them. Using epithets, especially jokingly, does not eradicate its historical baggage or the existing social relations among us. Instead, dislodging these epithets from their historical context makes us insensitive and arrogant to the historical injustices done to specific group of Americans.

It allows all Americans to become numb to the use and abuse of the power of hate speech because of the currency these epithets still have.

Any kind of hate speech, sugarcoated with humor or irony or not, thwarts the daily struggle in which many us engage in trying to ameliorate human relations.

I can't decide which medium offers the worst examples of hate speech: online or offline, the blogosphere or conservative TV, radio, or newspapers? Bloggers and their comment threads host some of the most vile language I've ever read (More examples here and a diatribe here. H/t to Pam). Yet, the insidious, subtly-parsed bigoted speech--in the case of Ann Coulter types, blatant defamation--disseminated by the talking heads at Fox News, Chris Matthews, et al may cause far more damage than the blogosphere with its perceived credibility, its frequency, and its sheer reach into the public realm. As always, Media Matters can supply a regular dose of harsh language broadcasted on any day of the week. A few examples:

Boortz: Adults earning minimum wage are "incompetent", "ignorant", "stupid", "worthless," and "pathetic"

O'Reilly blasts "smear merchants" and "vampires" criticizing Mel Gibson; Rivera smears Olbermann, Stewart, and Colbert

Coulter put "even money" on Sen. Clinton "[c]oming out of the closet"

And then we have the examples of deceptive disinformation, specious propaganda, and downright ugly lies.

I'll confess my errors of referring disparagingly to "wacky doodles," the "Codpiece-in-Chief," and other sarcastic names aimed at Republicans and the Religious Right in my fondness for Hunter Thompson and Gonzo journalism. I promise to temper my rhetoric without diluting my criticism or passion for cutting-edge art. Sometimes telling the unvarnished truth is all that's needed to expose a lie, an atrocity, a grievance, or an injustice. May not cut through today's shrill atmosphere but sometimes pictures can communicate more quickly.

Earlier today, TMZ reported that Rabbi David Baron invited Mel Gibson to the Temple of the Arts for a Yom Kippur appearance so the celebrity could deliver a public apology. In his letter to his congregation (PDF), Baron wrote that he would pre-screen Gibson's penitence and sincerity, address his father's Holocaust denials, and examine whether Mel had the adequate "willingness to take the necessary steps to heal the pain he has caused." The good rabbi then closed his letter with a remembrance:

Lastly, our tradition teaches us that when someone offers a direct personal apology, in public no less, we should be prepared to open ourselves to forgiveness. This is especially true if the offending party is prepared to make amends and promises not to repeat the same offense. Please remember we are not dealing with Yasser Arafat or Hezbollah whose words and actions have resulted in the deaths and maiming of hundreds of innocent people. We are dealing with a celebrity whose alcoholic problem has exposed out latent anti-Semitism. Better a repentant sinner than an unrepentant one.

What are the chances Mel will follow through with an apology at the temple? I dunno but I wish that a major Christian church or minister would bravely invite right-wing homophobes--religious and/or political leaders--to his or her services to make amends to the LGBT community. Wouldn't that be something? More astounding, what if the news media actually covered it? Without hate speech.

IMAGES: At the top, The Stoning of the Drag Queen with cropped close-ups. Plus, the mug shot of Mel Gibson from his arrest.

$20 Whorowitz, O'Lielly, and the con-apparatchiki

On CNN Larry King, $20 Whorowitz defended comrade Ann Coulter, who has been assailed for her toxic waste dumping (funny what passes for talent at publishing houses), and he executed a precision strike as tight as a Rumsfeldian post-war plan for Iraq. Whorowitz demonstrated how it's done (with emphasis):

Appearing on the June 12 edition of CNN's Larry King Live, right-wing activist and author David Horowitz again defended right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's recent attacks against widows of victims from the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, declaring that "Ann has done us a service," adding: "It wasn't Ann who crossed the line. It was these widows who crossed the line." Characterizing Coulter's personal attacks on the 9-11 widows as "satire," Horowitz echoed others in the media in suggesting that the underlying point Coulter was making in going after the widows -- that Democrats and liberals use victims as advocates for particular causes because they are insulated from criticism -- was "perfectly legitimate." In fact, far from being immune from challenge, the individuals Coulter cited as examples of "infallible" advocates promoted by Democrats have faced strong Republican opposition and, quite often, ad hominem attacks from conservatives, as Media Matters for America has demonstrated. Indeed, Horowitz himself smeared one such person -- anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan -- during the CNN broadcast, stating that Sheehan is "a disgrace" who "defamed her own child" who died in the Iraq war.

So "satire" is what the right-wing punditry calls ad hominem attacks? I must remember that explanation. Why, I must be writing satire even as I type! Ha!

You've got to smile (as if you've discovered the owner of a silent fart) at the alleged use of victims as liberal "advocates," a creative invention for a member of the con-apparatchiki. Could it be these protesting "victims" were already of a liberal bent so other liberals came to their aid? Nah, that's too simple and logical for a $20 Whorowitz who fancies underlying nastiness. But perhaps the comrades of the con-apparatchiki, having seen a Bush WH exploit 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! ...think that everybody does it, so they--the opposition--must too. I also recall that a certain NFL star, the dearly departed Pat Tillman, was promoted as a heroic poster child for the war by the Bush Administration, that was... until the news came out that Tillman supported Kerry over Bush and opposed the Iraq War. I suppose IOKIYAR (it's OK if you're a Republican) to use fallen soldiers to bolster one's glorious adventure even if it is without the family's permission. But isn't that using a victim, a dead soldier, as an advocate for the war? Didn't Bush cross the line exploiting Pat's death? Isn't that disgraceful? Don't tell me that $20 Whorowitz might criticize the Bush WH as a "disgrace" having "defamed" one of our soldiers!? Banish the thought. Zip it. A double standard liberates the comrades of the con-apparatchiki.

Whorowitz hurled a lot more ga-jizzle so click on over to Media Matters. No one takes the pulse of media better than MM in exposing discrepancies, disinformation, blatant propagandizing, lies, and plain ol' kookiness... like the latest installment from O'Lielly.
Another comrade of the con-apparatchiki, Bill O'Lielly, appeared with Matt Lauer on the Today show this morning to add his two cents to the Coulter the Impaler controversy by saying that she preaches to an angry choir through her use of personal attacks, which he stated was "terrible" and "wrong." Odd... could Bill suffer from early senility? Because he has forgotten his own expert personal attack technique:

As an example of his opposition to personal attacks, O'Reilly cited his appearance on the January 3 edition of CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, in which host David Letterman challenged O'Reilly's criticism of Sheehan.

Regarding his exchange with Letterman, O'Reilly told Lauer:

O'REILLY: I never attacked Cindy Sheehan personally. I said her politics are far-left, she's being run by far-left elements. Period. Letterman said I have no right to say that. I said, 'Baloney.' OK? I can criticize her politics, but if I had criticized her personally, that would have been wrong.

O'Reilly further stated that "If I start to personally attack, people walk away" and accuse him of being "a right wing nut."

Despite the fact that O'Reilly has made this false claim before, regarding his treatment of Sheehan -- a claim that Media Matters has debunked -- Lauer did not challenge him on the assertion or point out prior instances in which O'Reilly did in fact engage in personal attacks on Sheehan. These include:

• Claiming that Sheehan was "dumb enough to allow" herself to be "run by far-left elements who are using her."

• Claiming that Sheehan "has thrown in with the most radical elements in this country" and "other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq ... feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous."

• Including Sheehan on a list of "coward[s]."

Additionally, Lauer failed to challenge O'Reilly's false suggestion that he does not engage in personal attacks, a striking failure given O'Reilly's comparison, on the November 30, 2005, broadcast of Today, of those who advocate a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to Hitler appeasers. Media Matters has also documented numerous other instances of O'Reilly attacking those with whom he disagrees.

Media Matters offers quite a file on flippity-floppity media punditry and politicians who say they despise personal attacks, accuse others of making them, and then, amazingly, do it themselves. Confusing morality!

So, I'm puzzled. Is lying and viciousness the brand of morality that the Right thrusts onto the public stage these days? What about the Oval Office? Is Karl Rove the kind of guy our kids should emulate? If the preznit still coddles Rove, doesn't that say it's OK to lie, smear, play dirty, and cheat... just don't get caught?

Conservatives talk about how America has succumbed to moral decay. The con-apparatchiki attempt to offer us answers, blaming liberals for too much permissiveness and opportunism, but I think the Right ought to just... Look. In. The. Mirror.