Here's an experiment: Pull up Google and type in the words "defund Vietnam". Then look at the first five results. Hell, look at the first ten. Most of them are from wingnuts who have been marinated in Dolchstoß 2.0 for three and a half decades now.

The original Dolchstoßlegende -- "backstab myth" -- was of course crafted by angry German wingnuts after World War One, who blamed their humiliating defeat on those dirty liberals, Commies and of course Jews. Hitler rode that myth to victory in the 1930s.

Fast-forward fifty-odd years, to when the Democrats were trying to get us out of Vietnam and Nixon was resisting mightily. Their measures eventually succeeded, and they were rewarded for it, as well as for Watergate, in 1974 and 1976; however, the wingnut noise machine has been nurturing the myth that -- just as in the original Dolchstoßlegende -- "we woulda won if it wasn't for you meddling Jews -- er, Democrats!" Defunding became synonymous with the blackest, most treacherous evil.

And that myth gained strength as the wingnuts took over the AM radio bands and many if not most of the "morning zoos" on FM drive-time radio. (Remember, most Americans still get their news from drive-time radio or the evening TV news. How many of your neighbors, rellies or co-workers even know Salon.com exists, much less read it regularly?)

A corollary myth, one repeated by Mark Shields, is that the Democrats paid a high electoral price for getting us out of Vietnam, when in fact from 1974 through 1976 they picked up three Senate seats, fifty House seats, and the Presidency; the 1980 loss of the Presidency came not from getting us out of 'Nam, but from the continuance of the crummy Nixon-Ford economy and the drawn-out hostage crisis (which may have been drawn out at the GOP's behest, much as when Nixon sent Anna Chan Chennault to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks in 1968.)

The sad thing here is that Congressman Levin may well (though he may not) know that his meme is false, but that he's apparently decided that he can't fight three decades worth of Dolchstoß 2.0 all by himself, not when the rest of the media takes its cues from FOX News, Matt Drudge and AM radio.

When somebody says "As a Democrat, and especially as a classical liberal in the mold of Thomas Jefferson and F.A. Hayek...", RUN! (Especially when they follow it up with blatantly pro-Republican, anti-progressive "invisible hand" garbage along the lines of what Bush and his buddies do, and which has been a disaster for this nation.)

Why do conservatives love Fred Hayek so much? Because he promotes the idea that if a group of people aren't doing as well as another group of people, it's because they're somehow inferior or lazy. It's not because of, say, systemic racism and a power structure in this country rigged by the GOP (and some corporatist Dems, alas) to funnel money away from the vast majority of us to those who already have gobs and gobs and gobs of it. That's why they freaked out when Kanye West, in the wake of Katrina, lashed out against Bush. (http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Gilman/)

The Hayekians and other conservatives act as if the Horatio Alger dream was alive and well, when in fact it is all but dead in America. Upward income mobility is actually much easier to pull off in the Socialist parts of Europe than it is here, as even a reporter for the Wall Street Journal admits: http://edstrong.blog-city.com/americas_class_system_the_myth_of_upward_mobility.htm

By the way: Bill Gates Jr. isn't a rags-to-riches tale, but a riches-to-even-more-riches tale. His father was the name partner in Seattle's toniest white-shoe law firm. Young Bill Jr. was set for life no matter what he did. (And Bill Sr. is at least honest enough to recognize this.)

I don't know what to make of that interview, Mr. Shapiro. Has Salon already sided with Clinton? I kind of feel like it has.

Oh, goodness gracious breakdancing Christ. The interviewer was just fine. I wasn't too thrilled by the interviewee's answers, but it sounds like if Shapiro had done anything short of chopping her head off and sticking it on a pike, you'd still be accusing him and Salon of favoring Clinton.

He follows their campaign contribs!

Of course, he ignores the fact that their bosses skew right -- and they're the ones that dictate media policy in this country.

That's why the press rags on John Edwards as a rich guy who is somehow a hypocrite because he cares about the poor, while fawning over Saint Rudy of the Three Wives and Umpteen GFs, who has between three to four times as much money as Edwards and who doesn't give a rat's buttock for the poor.

He doesn't care about the damage Bush and Cheney and their minions are doing to this nation and the world. All he cares about is that this decision made "lefties" (defined by him as anyone who's ever refused to believe that Bush's excrement doesn't stink) upset -- and anything that ticks off lefties MUST be good, in his knuckle-dragging opinion.

Shooter doesn't mind because he thinks he gets to be the Stasi or the Gestapo, not the people whose doors get kicked in.

The formula is similar to that used by the StarTribune under the late and non-lamented McClatchy reign: Let the editorial staff speak sense on occasion, but drown it out with irritating right-wing column hires (Brooks and Tierney for the NYT, Katherine Kersten for the Strib) and the use of right-wingers over centrists (much less actual lefties) in the reprinting of syndicated columns.

Outgoing Strib Editorial Page writer Jim Boyd exposed the McClatchy-Strib scam for Minnesota Monitor back in May (http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1752); even though Avista was letting him go, he actually had kinder words for Avista than McClatchy because they didn't try to tell him or the other editorial writer what to say.