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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Perhaps I'm missing something, but has The V.P., or his office, expressed even the slightest amount of regret over the personnel who were killed while providing his security?
He falls into a common fallacy today: that because a statement is opinion, it is free of criticism. "Everyone has the right to their opinion." No, there are badly formed arguments, opinions that are not based in fact, and self-contradictory opinions. Those can be dismissed, and the speaker judged badly for holding them.
Yes, of course Kurtz has the legal right to say any nonsense he wants to. But that doesn't mean that it is sensible for him to be respected for holding them, it doesn't mean that it is sensible for an organization claiming to honestly portray the news and to logically analyze it to employ such a man, and it doesn't mean that it is sensible for the audience to listen to the opinions of such a man.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature!!"
Stay paranoid for a little while longer. We need to get through the next two years. Hopefully without invading Iran. But recognize that you are paranoid.
If the Bush presidency reminds us of anything, it is how fragile democracy is, and how vigilant we must remain. It also teaches us that even our system of government can fail if any of the branches fails to check the others.
Still, you are missing the big picture. Our country was knocked off balance by 9/11. It could be knocked off balance again in the future. But the ship is righting itself.
* Democrats are in the majority.
* George Bush has negotiated a deal with North Korea.
* George Bush is negotiating with Syria and Iran.
* It is likely that our troops will begin withdrawing from Iraq within the next 12 months.
* By all accounts, Dick Cheney has been marginalized within the administration. His muscle, Scooter Libby, is gone.
* Don Rumsfeld is gone. Most of his generals are gone. The new defense secretary is not considered a neocon.
* Doug Feith is gone.
* The neocon movement is in tatters.
* The leading candidate for the Republican nomination is Rudy Giuliani. Despite his best conservative impression, he is a liberal. He nominated liberal judges. He was for gay marriage. He was for public funding of abortions. He was strongly for gun control.
We still have work to do in repairing the damage to our foreign policy, reputation and Constitution. Bush could do yet more damage.
But, while it makes for good book-jacket copy, we are hardly marching toward authoritarianism. You should have more faith in America, red and blue. Some Bush dead-enders remain, but they are in the minority.
Your scare-mongering about the right is no different than the neocons' scare-mongering about the terrorist hordes on our doorstep.
War radicalizes people. It polarizes. It divides. So why declare war on conservatives? They've already lost. Find common ground with the moderates and move on.
Yes, of course Kurtz has the legal right to say any nonsense he wants to. But that doesn't mean that it is sensible for him to be respected for holding them, it doesn't mean that it is sensible for an organization claiming to honestly portray the news and to logically analyze it to employ such a man, and it doesn't mean that it is sensible for the audience to listen to the opinions of such a man.
-- jojo
This is a really important point. The rightwing employs this tactic quite a bit. Such as, if you call Michelle Malkin a hypocrite for not being bothered by Freepers wishing for the death of Ted Kennedy and other liberals, you are trying to stifle her free speech. So, now it has become that even arguing with someone's argument, no matter how poor, is "stifling their free speech." It's so transparent, but they employ it regularly.
(Not to mention that the only entity that can truly stifle free speech is a government actor.)
Is is demonizing to point out that O'Reilly, by presenting his moderate, figurative "war" between "traditionals" and "S-P"s is providing the extremists within the Dominionist movement the cover they need to make their views sound and appear mainstream.
-- m.b.f.
Well, no...but I hardly think you can legitimately hold O'Reilly responsible for what they believe. As an example, I once was forced to spend a lot of time trying to explain to my supposed allies on the left that Off the pigs, however satisfying it might have seemed to them as a metaphor, was inherently flawed as a political slogan, precisely because it a) wouldn't seem a metaphor to our adversaries, b) might cause some of our own to mistake a metaphor for reality, and do stupid and violent things, and c) tarred with far too broad a brush.
Once, after a demonstration in Berkeley 40 years ago, I was thumbing a ride home down Telegraph Avenue. I had hair nearly to my waist, was wearing a beaded Lakota medaillion around my neck, etc. A short-haired guy in his early thirties picked me up. It was only after I got into the car that I noticed the riot gear in the back seat. He asked me, What was all that about anyway; what is it that you guys want? It wasn't a hostile question, it was genuine curiosity, probably the reason he stopped for me.
Should I have wanted to off him?
Raj, this isn't merely about "hypocrisy" as it is about pure incompotence. As said before the point of the post is basically that Howard Kurtz sorta sucks. Indeed that's kinda the problem many people (and not just "liberals", as the right-wing stenographers like mindlessly repeat) have with the administration as a whole.
As for the notion that "we" shouldn't argue that "they" are bad...the problem is that this argument is structured in the tired dichotomy of "liberal/conservative." Instead it should be reconfigurated in the dichotomy of "concerned citizens/political & journalistic buffoonery and laziness." Let's see how many people join that "side" when the debate is structured THAT way. When people have a job to do (especially if it's one serving the public) they are expected to do it well.
As for the issue at hand, the Right-Wing spin machine isn't whining about "hypocrisy" here. They save that shit for when people like Glenn exposes their inane claims. They're "problem" is that commenters (as many people already stated, we have no evidence that these were "liberals") on a blog wished he was dead and this somehow "proves" that liberals are evil people who eat babies. Glenn's take is that that line of overplayed hand-wringing is just plain dumb.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
