Letters to the Editor

• This Conservative is Cheering the Panic on the Right

  [Read the article: Is Rush Limbaugh next?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  As a thoroughly disgusted and disillusioned conservative (from the Goldwater school, no neocon, me)I am simply thrilled to see the dread setting in and the ridiculous mind games already being set in motion by the neo-right, after having been given the gift of Imus' totally appropriate and well-deserved boot in the ass. The utterly specious notion that "liberals" will somehow use the Imus debacle to attack neocon rant shows only betrays the knowlege among that camp that time is running out. Let the Blame Game begin yet again.

  It is at once embarrassing (give us this day our dose of that) and oddly satisfying to hear the occupants of Das Boot as it founders in the waters of sudden-onset lucidity among Americans, and I take particular pleasure in the knowlege that the Fairness Doctrine, vague as it ever was, is also dead as it ever was.

  If Limbaugh's employers own the courage of their convictions and if the bottom line remains sound, The Bloviator should be guaranteed at least his contractual obligation. After that all bets are off, as the market is drying up for lunatic ranting from the fringes. No loss when it happens, and it will, via the wonderful Free Market about which neocons know nothing but that it has somehow magically served them well during the recent ignorance boom, which is now going bust. That sound you hear is the air being let out of the neocon bandwagon's tires.

  Imus is gone for the crime of costing his employer business. Limbaugh, wrongly enough, will likely only be gone when there is no longer a viable market for his blathering. I hope, and I sincerely believe, that time is now short.

  Permalink Monday, April 16, 2007 11:37 AM

• And I'd Thought it was just Me

  [Read the article: "America at a Crossroads" veers to the right]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  The ramp-up to "Crossroads" had begun to look, to me, a lot like National Geographic's recent forays into scholarly Biblical explication: an infomercial for confusion. It got worse last night, and now I see, thanks to Mr. Kamiya, that it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets any better. The fact that PBS has become infected with the plague of willful ignorance should bring yipes of joy from the White House and such substations as Lynchburg and Viriginia Beach where the real neocon think tanks are located.

  I also would like to second Kamiya's diss of the inclusion of Irshad Manji's views. "Eccentric" was way too kind a description. And this does matter, because if we, as a people (and that is the purported audience of PBC, no?) are to gain any useful insights into the broad issues of Islam vs. the West we are going to need to be enlightened, not merely beat over the head by screwloose, self-hating Muslims. Manji is no John Shelby Spong. Her views on Islam don't seem to seek any sort of reconciliation. They are merely hacking away, like some furious,disenchanted ex-Catholic.

  But Manji is the least of the problems besetting this project.

  To include so much of the work and thought of Richard Perle seems positively seditious, academically. The man is a stark- raving wog-hater, to be blunt. His views have probably done more to set back the search for common ground between Islam and the west than anything outside of the outright sedition of George W.Bush and Co.

  This is not good. If "Crossroads" is even one tenth as off-base as Kamiya says (and so far I have no reason to doubt this) it not only illustrates the victory of willful ignorance over one of the last bastions of intelligent information in this country, but it will only serve to spread and entrench the virus that is killing peace on earth.

  Terrific. Who needs to re-write history when we can simply ignore it?

  Thanks, GK. I was afraid I was just turning paranoid in my old age.

  Permalink Monday, April 16, 2007 07:22 PM