Rightwing Calling Cards: Hate Speech, Intolerance, and Brain-dead Right-wing Media

Whatever comparatively gentle terms we use for them, the assemblage of rightwingers, neocons, far-right nuts, and out-and-out fanatics seem to be in general incapable of picking up on their own character flaws. OK, yes, I'm being far too kind, as is my wont, not giving them proper credit for an amazing ability to prevaricate and commit all sorts of outrageous attempts to censor dissent when it benefits them. Being blunt, we face an obstinate cadre of hard-core opponents of the basics of human rights and hence the fundamentals on which this country was founded. When we progressives express ourselves, e.g., with respect to human rights, decency, the right to dissent, and habeas corpus, it is very commonly reviled as heresy, unpatriotic, and downright treason. When they name-call, slander, and profanely issue their standard bigotted racist demagoguery it is just the way these things are done.

I was saddened to hear that the two bloggers hired by the Edwards campaign, after already suffering a tentative firing and then re-hiring after a classic character-assassination by righty thugs, have now resigned. My understanding is that the bile and nastiness they were being subjected to for what I gather secondhand amounted to outre language and aggressive mockery of highly questionable religious ideology in historical posts on their personal blogs was sufficient to force them out of the campaign. That's a damn shame, for them personally, for the Edwards campaign, seemingly more than a little naive in this affair, and for our nation. Intolerance has become almost a major-league sport in this country that used to be called the Melting Pot. But that intolerance has been for a good long time, stretching back perhaps to the '70's decidedly more aggressively practiced by the right than the left.

The gestapo-like tactics and hardcore propaganda machine that the Republican Party has spawned over the past couple decades in their desperation to overcome the infection left behind by their Nixon has taken on a life of its own. Their lust for power, and preferably ultimate power (e.g. Rove famously wanting to permanently crush the Dems), should be enough to send a shudder through anyone who is a genuine patriot with a love for American democracy.

They seemingly have an automatic sensor that kicks in whenever anyone even vaguely middle-of-the-road, never mind independent-minded or - horrors - of a dissident point of view lets an expletive slip in. Yet the hate speech that is the standard parlance of their shocktroops, a la limbaugh and o'reilly et. al. is apparently not only fine with them but also with their craven sheep audience and much of the mainstream media. The latter of course puts QED to prior solid demonstrations that the standard claims of liberal media bias are absolute hokum (being polite). The bias is there alright. But it sure ain't liberal - or progressive or even democratic. Fox, the WSJ, the Washington Times, and more or less all of the broadcast media can be assumed to be cozied up with (hell, owned by) the corporate military-industrial republican machine. And sadly, those not named there, e.g., the NY Times and WA Post, every so often reveal a shocking shoddiness and laxity in standards by publishing crap by folks who are obviously total paid-off hacks who should never be found in the employ of an important representative of the Fourth Estate.

A while back, the Times featured a piece by Michael Gordon that was sub-sophomoric (well, truthfully brain-dead) in merely parroting white house propaganda regarding Iran without any actually thoughtful involvement by the "reporter" being exhibited. Maybe he's jockeying for a job as an ambassador in the twilight years of the bush dynasty or something. This seems to me the journalistic equivalent of a "dirty bomb," as it is both full of unsupported assertions right out of the war-criminally dishonest Bush/Cheney/Rice vocabulary used to foment our invasion of Iraq and also has the potential to lead many newspaper readers to believe that a sentient independent human with critical faculties has actually on behalf of the Times at least vetted the information.

Mr. Gordon reportedly has a history of carrying water for the powers that be, violating his journalistic credo, but that is little solace since the doddering old Gray Lady continues to pick up his tab. It's no wonder the "Internets" and news-blogs seem to be on the rise.

Mr. Greenwald has the honors for the takedown here:

Over the past few weeks, The Los Angeles Times has published several detailed and well-documented articles casting serious doubt on the administration's claims that Iran is fueling the Iraqi insurgency with weapons. A couple of months ago, The Washington Post published a very well-researched article reporting that extensive searches by British military brigades in Southern Iraq -- specifically in the areas where such weapons would almost certainly be transported and maintained -- have turned up nothing. It seemed as though the media was treating the war-inflaming claims of Bush officials against Iran much more skeptically, refusing to simply pass along accusations without first conducting an investigation to determine if those claims were true.

But today, The New York Times does precisely the opposite -- it has published a lengthy, prominent front-page article by Michael Gordon that does nothing, literally, but mindlessly recite administration claims about Iran's weapons-supplying activities without the slightest questioning, investigation, or presentation of ample counter-evidence. The entire article is nothing more than one accusatory claim about Iran after the next, all emanating from the mouths of anonymous military and "intelligence officials" without the slightest verified evidence, and Gordon just mindlessly repeats what he has been told in one provocative paragraph after the next.

Start with the headline: Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, U.S. Says. That is a proposition that is extremely inflammatory -- it suggests that Iranians bear responsibility for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, even though that is a claim for which almost no evidence has been presented and which is very much in dispute. Why should that be the basis for a prominent headline when Gordon's sole basis for it are the uncorroborated assertions of the Bush administration? The very first paragraph following that headline is the most inflammatory:

The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.

Is that extremely provocative claim even true? Gordon never says, and he does not really appear to care. He is in Pravda Spokesman mode throughout the entire article -- offering himself up as a megaphone for administration assertions without the slightest amount of scrutiny, investigation or opposing views.

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And the Post - well Ms. Toensing is obviously in the competition for the anti-pulitzer with her dumbed-down court-reporter what-me-worry there's-no-check-with-my-name-on-it act. For commentary, I recommend this and this.

But I suspect there is and will be plenty more out there. These two papers in particular used to be counted on to fend off the growing regressive, anti-American program fomented by the reagan/limbaugh/fox/moonie fruitbats and exploited so adroitly by Karl Rove, the American Bigot par excellence. The Times and Post have obviously been stumbling steadily these last few years, for whatever reason, aside from the obvious one that they are part of Big Business, and corporatism and kowtowing to authority are Standard Operating Procedures in that elitist environment.

War as a Game

I'm going to shamelessly crib from a great Digby post at Firedoglake here. The post features what can only be Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Strangelove. I squandered a good deal of time before finally succeeding in bringing in a similarly-minded pic.

But that other image is too good to miss, and an extra incentive to check out the original post.

Tristero's post over at my place from earlier today about General Peter Pace's divergence from the administration's talking points may illuminate some of the backchannel infighting going on in the Bush administration over Iran. Here's the nut:

A top U.S. general said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with highly lethal roadside bombs, apparently contradicting claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.

Now, we don't know what this really means. It could be that they are playing some sort of elaborate good cop/bad cop routine. (God help us — these people are not very good at complicated tasks.) Or it could be a real revolt of the generals. We can't know for sure. But we do know that as much as a year ago, the administration has been actively planning to attack Iran and the generals have been resisting. Here's Seymour Hersh from April 2006:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a
potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

I have believed for some time that the Bush administration is intent upon attacking Iran because they believe that their unpopularity will be redeemed by history for having taken great, bold steps to transform the middle east. The more Iraq looks like a cock-up of epic proportions that results in nothing more than chaos and death, the less likely it is that their "vision" will come to pass. And so they rely more and more on the "big" thinkers who set us on this path many years ago: the neoconservatives who cooked up a document for Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu years ago. A document called "A Clean Break", which many people, including Ambassador Joseph Wilson, have pointed to as the guiding document that took us first into Iraq — and now maybe Iran.

For those of you who may be foggy on the details, I would highly recommend that you read this very interesting neocon primer by Craig Unger in this month's Vanity Fair. It was, at one time, considered to be crazed moonbat conspiracy mongering to talk about "Clean Break." Today those of us who were writing about it prior to the Iraq invasion have been vidicated by events. We were not being hysterical then and we are not hysterical now:

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That is the argument that's clearly driving Bush and Cheney today. They have nothing else. Cheney is melting down on national television. Bush in his bubble is as detached and oblivious as ever. I believe that we are at a point where the only things standing between us and the order to attack Iran are the generals. (Forget congress — they can't even pass a toothless resolution against the "surge" in less than a couple of months. The "surge" will have already failed by the time they even stage a uselss protest.) And that is about the scariest thing, out of many scary things, I've contemplated since the beginning of the Bush administration. We are now in a Strangelovian bizarroworld where we must count on General Buck Turgidson to refuse to follow orders. Holy Moly.

When PC Isn't

I recently listened (raptly) to Bill Maher's "When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden." It's great stuff, tweaking authority and conventionalism at every turn. The title jabs us for our absolutely inexcusable waste of gasoline, driving alone in highly-inefficient automobiles, with extremely subsidized gas prices.

A significant fraction of the gas profits go straight to terrorism. Diamond sales, likewise - so much for those incredibly obnoxious Valentine's season radio commercials.

I gather that tweaking was also a mainstay of Maher's former tv show. I don't believe I ever saw the show, and I only marginally became aware of him as a result of his eviction from prime time. He took on a sort of martyr cloak for me as a result of that ejection. I didn't know details, but I knew that there was a very disturbing apparent violation of Amendment 1 rights. He said and asked stuff that made his employer uncomfortable, not hewing to the politically correct line and possibly even tweaking the government in power - i.e. the god to whom his employer kowtowed.

Not a new story.

But this was almost certainly criminal censorship, excused because of the events of 9/11, i.e., the devastating attack on our country that the bush administration (the kowtow-ee) had at best been too lazy to prevent. Of course anyone with an IQ over 100 has gotten beyond "too lazy" by now, given all the evidence.

Maher's aversion to the concept of political correctness is at the heart of much of his schtick (no criticism implied by term). That can present a challenge for a progressive like me, raised with PC up there with the golden rule. The topic comes up frequently in his book, and I admit to feeling a bit chastened. We can't be cowering in the corner, flogging each other for violating political taboos. Nor can we sit on the sidelines, too timid to call crap for what it is despite PC issues. You got me there, Bill, for sure.

Where we differ is on his characterization of the Koran and the basics of Islam as being both violent and intolerant. He makes some strong statements about their monolithic antipathy and antagonism towards the USA. It seems very clear to me that the vast majority of Muslims have no violent disagreement or conflict with us - and consequently we should not be feeling antagonistic towards them. Of course as our "pre-emptive war" goes on and expands we can naturally expect that thinking folks in the Middle East, Muslim or otherwise, will increasingly begin to doubt our motives, potentially hate us, and eventually decide that violent counter-measures may be appropriate. Bill, please re-read Karen Armstrong's "Islam, a Short History" and contain your testosterone, baby.

That said, I'm certain (and I believe Maher would agree) that we have promulgated far more terrorism recently than we have been subjected to. In the cold terms of deaths of innocent civilians, we have far more blood on our hands from indiscriminant bombings in Iraq, including cluster bombs in urban areas and use of depleted uranium than were involved in 9/11 and all prior "terrorist" attacks that killed American citizens. What the hell were we doing in planning this that we decided that wild bombing in cities was appropriate? Given that the elitists in power knew they were going to war whether they had a good justification (or proper support from congress or the populace) or not, it seems clear that this is the classic war crime. Bombing civilians indiscriminantly. No serious attempt to limit damage to military targets.

Why is that not a subject of discussion? The government that supposedly represents You is a more significant terrorist than all of the "them" terrorists!

Please think about that for a moment.

And then share your thoughts with someone else.

What wound me up here was this article about the ludicrous debacle over edgy historical posts by blogger staff hired by the John Edwards campaign. In case you are unaware (bless you), there was a full-out swift-boat style (i.e., gutless, totally unfounded, and cowardly) orchestrated attempt to whack the candidate over this, pretending a tone of PC that in fact most of the sleazy attackers have never subscribed to themselves. From what I can tell this is a bunch of Rush Limbaugh/Bill Donohue/Bill O'Reilly suckups, desperate to preserve their partying access to that wonderful group of "moral high-liners"!

The candidate's group from what I understand shuddered briefly, perhaps to the point of even initially firing bloggers, but then regained footing and fired back, with bloggers back on staff.

So it's good to be seeing some push-back.

And I greatly applaud the recognition of the concept of "Conservative Correctness," though I think "Regressive Correctness," RC, is the proper term. RC is the destructive shibboleth we must be far more concerned about than PC right now. But neither is good for free-thinking and democracy.