Those mean spirited liberals (again)

[pecunium]

This isn't really about liberals, unless it's the "liberal press."

Ann Coulter. I keep mentioning her when people tell me about how bad, mean and small minded, liberals are. I mention her because she ought to be poor. Why ought she suffer from a lack of money? Because the vitriol she poisons the national debate with is horrid.

I, of course, am mentioning her today because I just found out she was on the cover of Time. Ye gods and little fishes. I've been in the house all week, so it escaped me. What I've been seeing on the Web implies Time has been painting her as amusing, reasoned, in some way worthy of being on the cover of a national magazine, without being called to account for what she has said.

So what has she said?

Liberals ought to be killed.

That if one has to talk with a liberal (instead of just killing them), the best medium of communication is a baseball bat.

Tim McVeigh's real crime was not dropping his truck off at the NY Times building.

Being Liberal is treason.

That she wished the American military was killing reporters, by design.

That women are too stupid to vote.

That the real question about Clinton was, "whether to impeach, or assassinate."

Those who support her (and we now know that support is in the mainstream... not that most of us doubted it) have been on the side of Iraqis, the insurgents who killed an aid worker (if you can stomach it, the conversation here at Freep, is what I'm talking about. A sample.... "My bet, of course, is that she was so concerned about the decrease in US casualties that she misread the insurgents' orders of the day and forgat to avoid a place where she knew a blast would take place."). Great company she keeps.

On the flip side we hear how evil the Dems are. They actually think judges ought to be allowed to judge. The right is calling for them to be killed. Not just the kooks and the Militia types anymore, but the mainstream. At the recent confab they called "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" a speaker quoted Stalin (you know, the guy the left is supposed to be guilty of not hating enough) Edwin Vieira, a lawyer and author of How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, went even further, suggesting during a panel discussion that Joseph Stalin offered the best method for reining in the Supreme Court. "He had a slogan," Vieira said, "and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: 'No man, no problem.'"

The complete Stalin quote is, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Max Blumenthal in The Nation.

He said it twice. Just in case one has heard his explanation that he wasn't really trying to inspire another domemstic terrorist like Eric Rudolph, another attendee said something more explicit, Before I could introduce myself, he turned to me and another observer with a crooked smile and exclaimed, "I'm a radical! I'm a real extremist. I don't want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!" This was no inbred twit from the back of beyond, no this was Michael Schwartz the chief of staff for Oklahoma's GOP Senator Tom Coburn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Michael Moore, the present bogey-man used to paint the left as mean-spirited pales to insignificance compared to that. He calls Republicans liars and thieves. Tom DeLay calls him a political hack.

But he didn't call for anyone to kill Bush, he asked us to look at the record and turn him out of office.

On the subject of the Supreme Court... he said they made a bad decision, and called on us to turn out Bush, so that when new appointments were made, someone else would be making them.

Yep, when you compare him to Coulter, the Left sure looks mean.

Comments

[swimmingotter.livejournal.com]

She really said that women are too stupid to vote? I don't understand . . .wouldn't that make her stupid, too? If she's stupid, like the rest of us women--who shouldn't be allowed to vote--why the hell is she on the cover of TIME?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That is a damned good question.

And yes, she did. She questioned the wisdom of giving women the franchise, because they are too emotional, not really wise enough and lacking in judgement.

Honest.

She's on the cover of Time because she is full of foul sentiments, has television time, write columns which get published, and is, "pretty" and God knows why else. One might think, given the whitewash her views were given, they agree with her, and want her to get a wider audience.

I find her revolting. The lack of repudiation on the part of the Republican Party of people like her is no small reason they aren't able to get my vote right now.

TK

[swimmingotter.livejournal.com]

I was reading online somewhere that she got pissed at the cover, making her look like her legs were 6 miles long and selling her beauty. But, seeing as she's a woman who's lacking in judgement, perhaps she was just being emotional and will get over it in a day or two.

*shudder*

I am so sad to be young in times like these. I'd much rather be at the end of my life, or a small child who doesn't know, because I realise more and more every day that I am one of the people who will be around to clean up the mess that is being made of the world. The Boy is a Republican, and I am so not, we get by. Sometimes it's just more fun to fight it out. I just don't see how anyone in our government can quote Stalin and not think anything of it. What does that say about the country we've become?

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

See, you're expecting her to make sense! She doesn't write so much as she froths incoherently. IIRC from reading Atrios, one of the major conservative publications--I want to say National Review but I'm not sure that's it--asked her to report from the Dem. Convention. They rejected her copy because it absolutely incoherent. I think they went with Jonah Goldberg's stuff instead.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I think what you're remembering is: USA Today decided it would be neat to have Michael Moore review the Republican convention and Ann Coulter review the Democratic convention. They rejected it, went with someone else.

She'd been rejected from National Review (possibly only their online edition) earlier -- thanks to a column in which she called for forcibly converting all Muslims to Christianity. (As you may remember from your history classes, the conversion of Europe to Christianity meant that there would never again be war in Europe. No, she didn't use that argument....)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nymphette_/]

I think you miss the point on Coulter - you're just comparing her to the wrong liberal extreemist. ; )

And come on hon. Her work is the mirror images of hundreds of op-ed peices I could right out of my NYT folder, toot sweet!

The problem is that I think both sides choose to actively ignore the log in their own eye. I don't care if you're bitching about Ann Coulter or Maureen Dowd - they are equally despised for responding to their political opposites with the same attitude directed at them.

I read both of them knowing their are painting caricatures of pure snark - knowing that nfortunately, their fans & their detractors will take thaier words literally, out of context, you name it.

But to use either woman's beliefs or attitudes as an illustration of EITHER party, or even as an 'average joe' of their respective parties, is just plain old stereotyping.

I see so many liberal I respect clinging to sterotypes like this, as though they define anyone who doesn't vote their way - or that the existance of such persons 'on the other side' proves that their own party is not equally distasteful at times.

And that's EXACTLY what happens on the right too!

It makes me sad... There so much that I love about the democratic party, but it just feels wrong to associate myself with it right now. Too many are unwilling to even admit the existence of the same hatred and bigotry in their own ranks - and that was the very same reason I didn't become a republican. I wanted to get away from all the preaching - all the talk about evil and enemies. But it's just the same on the left - only the enemy is my neighbor, parent, samily, friend...

It wasn't like this in the 90's, and I was too young to remember what it was like during the regean years. Is it always like this? I mean, I grew into a woman during the Clinton years - I SAW how the right was! But is it just the habit of the party not in power to claim the other is corrupt, wicked, evil, and dangerous?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

OK, where is the moral equivalent of the "hundreds of op-ed peices I could right out of my NYT folder." I want to see them.

Look at your own comparison... When has Maureen Down said the president (any president) ought to be assassinated?

When has she said the Left ought to go and kill republicans? When have those who claim to be following the beliefs of the advisors of the president been convicted of acts of domestic terrorism (a la Eric Rudolph).

The Left denounces the Ward Churchills, but the Right embraces the Randall Terrys; the Steven John Jordis. It calls the actions they take, "deplorable, but understandable."

When the number, the depth and the breadth of those who espouse such views is as great as it it, and when the leaders don't denounce it but rather make apologias, that isn't a fringe problem, it is a moral failing on the part of the leaders, and the led.

TK
What I am doing, and have been doing, is pointing out the difference in how the parties deal with such extremists. The Right is bring them to bed, The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."

They are encouraging it. This is not good.

And no, this is not how it always was. In the past it has been worse. But for the last 30+ years (since Nixon, and the southern strategy) the Right has been doing this, letting the wing-nuts froth, and then talking about "all the people" who are saying things, which then legitimizes those things.

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

But when these mouth pieces are so up in front, they BECOME the party, whether the average joe wants it or not.

[ladymeow.livejournal.com]

Your opinion doesn't matter because you're a woman and too stupid to have an opinion.

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

No, it's not the mirror image of NYT op-eds. Your perspective is painfully skewed.

It works this way -- the Left cares about being disliked. The reason the Right so often brings up fringe lefties and tries to paint them as the face of the Democratic Party is that the party moderates will automatically jump on board and try and denounce them, "oh no we're not all like that, oh that's just an extremist point of view," and then have a big argument about it.

The Right, on the other hand, doesn't care. Because if you get upset by what these people write, then you're just being "Politically Correct." For the most part, they don't defend or denounce them, they just quietly give them column inches and airtime and let them say the views that they secretly believe but don't have the clit to say themselves. Better media savvy? Partly. But I don't think that people on the Left wouldn't do exactly the same if the extremists on the Left were actually equivalent, if they said what moderates Truly Believed but didn't want to say.

And that's why Coulter can be successful in the mainstream where those of similar standard on the left remain entirely on the fringes. The right don't care that there are hideously offensive bigots resting in their fold. They are the attack dogs that they use for their own purposes. The Left, crazy bunch of hippies that it is, hates its own extremists as much as it hates those on the Right.

If Coulter's views weren't accepted, someone would say something about her. The Braying Masses would take the collective silence of the GOP establishment as damning, just as they jumped on every left-winger who didn't denounce some university lecturer they'd never even heard of before he was trumpeted as "the true face of the Left." The silence, though, is deafening.

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

Got it in one.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

I think you miss the point on Coulter - you're just comparing her to the wrong liberal extreemist. ; )

Malatesta? He was far more coherent in his writing, though. Czolgosz?

[sethg]

No, no, you see, when Coulter said all these things, she was joking.

What? You didn't laugh?

That's because you're a Liberal and, as we all know, Liberals have no sense of humor.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

What a bitca. I wish I subscribed to Time, because then I could cancel and tell them why.

Of course the reason she's so popular with neocons are the black leather minis. All those B&D fantasies come to life. Rent-a-dominAnnie.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I can, however, get you the writer's phone number, so you can express your dislike of him personally.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I've seen her on Bill Maher (when he was doing Politically Incorrect - haven't caught her on any of his new show).

She always struck me as one of those women who uses her sex as a way to get ahead in life. "I'll say or do whatever you want if you'll pay attention to me, lover boy..."

From the middle

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

WAy out here, sitting in Iraq, is me, an average Joe. I want my sons to have decent jobs. I need a job when I get back. I'm concerned about my property taxes going higher, becasue we have to pay off huge pensions and the industrial / econimic base in my county is disappearing. At the same time, I'm extremly concerned about the environment around me, because I have a pretty good idea that the world IS getting warmer. I'm fairly well educated, extremely well read, and I can think.

I think ANN Coulter is full of crap. And so is Michael Moore. Both are grandstanding and using shock tatics about valid issues, but what we need is a rational discourse and an effort to solve these problems.

I fear for my country. Let me restate that, I fear for my country remaining a country.

Re: From the middle

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nymphette_/]

*applauds*

Re: From the middle

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

I may be biased. In fact, I'll come out and admit that I probably am.

But from where I'm sitting, I think it's telling that the equivalent on the left of, well, everybody on the Right is "Michael Moore."

Coulter said that killing journalists is OK? Yeah, well Michael Moore made a spurious connection between Afghanistan and a pipeline!

DeLay and his cronies used the Schiavo case to push their own pro-federal agenda? Yeah, well Michael Moore is fat!

I think Moore makes propaganda pure and simple, but he was a Nader voter in 2000 who probably did as much to ensure Gore's defeat as anyone so he's hardly enslaved to the Democratic machine. He knows how to manipulate, sure, but so does Karl Rove. Moore isn't drawing a paycheck from your tax money, but Rove is.

Every time someone brings his name up, I thank the fates that Moore really is the worst we have on the Left. Hell, that we could have gone beyond Marxism and Communist apologists so quickly such that the only non-marginal character on our side is a populist propagandist who made his name arguing for workers rights and against pork and corporate crime, while the cornucopia of vitriol on the right gets more and more consumer dollars pushed into it and gets more and more name-recognition for the loudmouths, is truly a magnificent achievement for left-liberalism.

Re: From the middle

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I think ANN Coulter is full of crap. And so is Michael Moore. Both are grandstanding and using shock tatics about valid issues, but what we need is a rational discourse and an effort to solve these problems.

I came back from Iraq a few months ago, and I didn't have any problem telling the two of them apart. One advocates murder, then whines that she was just joking. The other one advocates impeachment and calls our elected officials liars.

One of the biggest hurdles to ending this problem is not being able to see the difference between someone who's hateful and someone who's angry.

I came back from Iraq and found that though I had fought for my country--literally---my country was fighting only to take my rights away, with this blonde bitch leading the charge. Women don't deserve to vote? Yeah, MM says shit like that all the time.

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

As I'm sure you know, your friend Digby has been making much the same points as you:
"Flame on High"

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know.

The trouble with such things as this is the parallel nature of the complaints. There are times I decide not to rant, because I figure it's all been said before.

Then I recall, "so what?" and remember that I do give a damn, and a fairly heated damn at that.

But what I might say is colored by everyone else I've read on it. This one, well I've beat this horse before, so I try to avoid it (in part because it leads to things like the present flame) but there are times one has to be like Martin Luther and say, "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir."

TK

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

Whew, everyone is full of piss and vinegar here, ain't they? For all of yu who are "Far to the right" or "Far to the left" take a minute and look at your own arguements from the other side.

Each of your view points are colored by experiences that you have had. Maybe someone who is on the right has never had the experience of being denied a job for the color of thier skin, or had to go home to face thier family after having been "downsized". Maybe someone on the left has never been burdened with having a gun stuck in thier face, or been shot at in a foreign country while trying to provide peace and order to a place which hasn't known it in 20 years.

My point is, you have to understand where the other person is coming from. Maybe it won't change your views, but maybe you might slide a little more to the middle and we might actually accomplish something.

Coulter needs to have my salary and figure out how the hell to pay my heating bill next year, or sell my Jeep cherokee because gas is too expensive.

Moore needs to stand in a rank with a new platoon of Iraqi Army basic training graduates and listen to the pride and dedication and HOPE that these guys have.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nymphette_/]

aight that's it, can I friend you? ; )

well said!

[jesurgislac.livejournal.com]

Moore needs to stand in a rank with a new platoon of Iraqi Army basic training graduates and listen to the pride and dedication and HOPE that these guys have.

...he might do that. And then he'd do a documentary on the tragedy that is the Bush administration's fuckup of occupying Iraq that means most of these Iraqi army graduates are shortly going to be dead.

One Iraqi army commander was shot by the US army - same kind of fuckup as happened to Nicola Calipari, and has happened to so many Iraqi civilians and foreign journalists. Others will be killed by Iraqi resistence to the US occupation - a messed-up occupation. I'd like to see that documentary. Moore would do a good one.