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

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

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

Why thank you! I think I'll run for office now, see what pork I can get.

Re: From the middle

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

Well, we call ourselves Sexy Conservatists, but really, we're just pervy independants who like corruption the right from within. You can have our nomination! ; )

But seriously - the BS on BOTH sides makes me just ill. Coulter is about snark - and most satirists are. People just aren't quite sure how to handle it when it's making fun of the left instead of the usual op-ed whippin' boys.

The likes of Moore scar me far more - because they present themselves as 'factual, reliable' stuff. I rather doubt anyone read Coulter and thinks she's dead. serious. Maybe some do - but I have yet to meet even a rightie that does.

The problem is that the Michael Moore's ARE serious... just not any less full of it than Coulter is.

Re: From the middle

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

I've been accused of sarcam just as bitter (well, maybe not as violent) as Coulters, but she happens to be on a national stage, I'm not. If you're going to be in teh spotlight, you have a social duty to act responsiblty, and moderate you comments accordingly.

I've seen way too much violence (here, and in other parts of the world) to just sit back and laugh at remarks like that, and say, well, she's just kidding. It only takes one fanantic to take her seriously.

Can one be a culturaly conservative nationalistic liberal populist left wing environmentalist liberterian tax revolter all at the same time?

Re: From the middle

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

I didn't mean to give the impression that I laugh at them. I just think that for every Coulter, there's an equally illogical and opininated asshat on the left.

It only takes one fanatic to take any of them seriously - it is still not a reason to use any one exapmle - or even 2 or 3 - as indictaive of of any entire political movement. Especially in a country with only 2 parties.

And yes, you can be all those thing - I'm equally complicated ;) Hawkish liberal feminist evangelical environmental libertarian at your service.

Re: From the middle

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

You're a librarian? lol

Re: From the middle

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

nar, just blond, ; ) Where'd you get librarian? I might read good, but I can't spell(or type) for shit.

Re: From the middle

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

Just making a pun in liberterians. Somehow they get all pissy when I call them librarians, or at least a friend of mine does.

Re: From the middle

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

meh, don't tell anyone I'm not reallyintellectually elite enough to be a libertarian - which is what the tests lable me as.

On the right/left ones:

in 2001 - I was .03 to the right on the scale; now I'm .072 to the left. Dead center, and I don't even *try*.

Re: From the middle

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Coulter is about snark - and most satirists are. People just aren't quite sure how to handle it when it's making fun of the left instead of the usual op-ed whippin' boys.

This is you, being an apologist for her. She is not about snark. She is, at the most generous I can be, intentionally writing agitprop. But when everyone says,"oh no one takes her, or the others who sound like her seriously (like say the CoS for a Senator, speaking of impaling judges)," and then make apologias for the Rudolphs, the McVeigh's and the rest. The Randall Terrys who saying killing doctors who perform abortions is just, and that anyone who happens to be in a clinic is allowable as collateral damage, well it seems to me that people are taking her seriously, and those who make excuses for her are enabling that.

It's kind of like making excuses for any other abuser.

TK

Re: From the middle

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

wow, I am an apologist for Coulter and her ilk?

or any other abuser?

for... disagreeing and considering their manner of op-ed a form of satire?

somehow I missed that leap in logic. This conversation is obviously about things I don't - or can't understand. Ta.

Re: From the middle

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

Coulter said this:
"'They're terrible people, liberals. They believe -- this can really summarize it all -- these are people who believe,' she said, now raising her voice, 'you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and pronounce that a constitutional right has just been exercised. That really says it all.'"
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/19/coulter/print.html

That's not satire. That's not snark. That's her expressing her vicious opinion about liberals. About ME. Kindly provide examples of similar slander made by the Left.

And Coulter does in fact present her writing as factual, even though she has emitted some huge whoppers. Eric Alterman of The Nation points out that an entire cottage industry has sprung up to document her errors of fact. He does a lovely takedown of the Time whitewash of Coulter. I suggest you take a look at it:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

Regarding Moore: I can only speak of F911, as that's the only movie of his I have seen. I am assuming you have seen it as well.He tried to connect the invasion of Afghanistan with a Unocal pipeline, which was ludicrous. But the other stuff? Bush did sit with a deer-in-the-headlights stare for 7 minutes as the second plane hit the tower. The Bush administration did mislead the nation about Iraq's nonexistent link to al Qaida. If you have any concrete examples of Moore's factual errors, I would like to hear them.

Re: From the middle

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

Are you saying none on the left are equally guitly of such gross generalizations?

Because that seems to be the impression - it's just not been my experience.

Re: From the middle

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

That quote from Coulter was not a "gross generalization." It was a vicious, FALSE slander. It was a smear. It was a hateful parody of the sometimes medically necessary late-term abortion of severely deformed fetuses that would never survive outsite the uterus. (And by severely deformed, I mean anencephalic, where there is no brain.) It was an offensive and malicious mischaracterization of the pro-choice position.

Even when Moore makes specious arguments, he never stoops to Coulter's level of venom.

I HAVE seen gross generalizations amongst the very young on LJ, like ones who accuse all U.S. troops of war crimes--the kind that Ginmar has tangled with. Some of them have lectured me tendentiously about the Bush administration's record, as if I weren't already well acquainted with it. And that Italian journalist who was kidnapped in Iraq appeared to be changing her story a lot. Alexander Cockburn of The Nation has apparently written anti-Semitic things, but I have not read them.

No figure on the left to my knowledge has been guilty of such outright lying, mischaracterization and advocating of violence as Coulter. Have you read the links I posted above? Coulter has said this:

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

--Ann Coulter as quoted in the New York Observer, Aug. 20, 2002

"RE: McVeigh quote. Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'"

--Ann Coulter, from an interview with Right Wing News

How can you defend that as "gross generalization" or satire, or snark? Please explain that to me.

So what has been your experience? I have requested examples from you. Do you have any of similar vitriol from the left? I also requested specific examples of Moore's factual errors. Can you provide them? I'm not interested in "impressions." I deal in facts. And WRT Coulter, the facts are not pretty.

Re: From the middle

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

Look hon, I had a yucky week. It's my birthday tomorrow.

And the way this 'discussion' has gone? I could go plowing thru the NYT and find equally nasty and slanderous things said about my 80 yr old right wing grandpaw, and y'all would still not consider the celebrtiy-polico's rhetoric equally bigoted and wrong.

I get the impression that spending a few hours pour over some really juicy nastiness, to ... what? make a point on line, with folks who can't even conceieve that for every right-wing offensive op-ed columbist, there's probably an eually offensive left wing one? Where the value in that at all?

There just is none, really. All it will do is make me even more disillusioned, and I might be up for that next week. I'll make an effort to remember in all seriousness.

But TK hon, no, I don't post in a vaccum. But I haven't here for months because this happened the last time I tried to as well.

You ain't convinced me you don't treat the right with the same distain you find offensive it twigettes like Coulter - and even a general discussion has me ... an apologist for abusers and slander a couple posts later.

After 6 years of this, I just don't have the stomach for it anymore. No, that's not right - I just don't have the heart.

You guys are more articulate, and you have more reliable link, but somehow... that condensation is almost more uncomfortable than the idgits calling me a racist, war mongering bitch who hates women for being... a christian.

You call that wrong? Well me too. Same as I call painting the entire right wing with the brush you use to tar Coulter. Both y'all even use the same damn words to describe one another. You object to her gross generalizations, but feel justfied using HER words to make them about the right.

I give up. I backed away from the right as 18 year old who dared vote for Clinton... only to find that the left seems to hate the right as much as the right hates them.

Silly me, I tried not to hate any of them. and I don't think it right to try to justify such things using the most extreem examples - like, I dunno -
political talking heads who make a living provoking people like you. ; )

I'm sorry - but I don't give a shit who's name you put up there. Left or right. Condemn it, by don't define others by it. That's what bothers me... and funny thing is, that's what seems to upset you guys so much about the lady in question.

Re: From the middle

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I could go plowing thru the NYT and find equally nasty and slanderous things said about my 80 yr old right wing grandpaw, and y'all would still not consider the celebrtiy-polico's rhetoric equally bigoted and wrong.

I would. You may find it hard to believe, but I would.

I get the impression that spending a few hours pour over some really juicy nastiness, to ... what? make a point on line, with folks who can't even conceieve that for every right-wing offensive op-ed columbist, there's probably an eually offensive left wing one? Where the value in that at all?

If you can do that... show me an equivalence in 1: vitriol, 2: Prominence and 3: (this is the important part, the part which I rail about, the part which makes the Limbaugh's, the Savages, the Randall Terrys and the Coulters so worrisome and offensive to me) the casual acceptance that such comment is acceptable, even "funny" and "witty" I will agree with you, and my posts on the subject will stop.

But what I see, and continue to see, is the Ward Churchills being condemned by left and right, and the Coulters praised by the right.


I call painting the entire right wing with the brush you use to tar Coulter.

What I accuse the Right of doing is enabling Coulter. Of allowing her to spout off without check, of, in fact, paying her millions of dollars to say the things she says. Of rewarding her for making reasoned discourse in the country less popular.

Of encouraging, by their silence (calling Rev. Neimuller) making it possible, as I quoted, for the Chief of Staff for a Senator to say he wants to impale judges. That's not someone on the far right, camped out in the woods waiting for the Feds to come with their black helicopters to make his house another Ruby Ridge, that's the primary counselor to one of our Senators.

That bothers me. That Coulter's rhetoric makes it more acceptable, that bothers me too.


I'm sorry that this is casting a pall over your birthday. I am, but until you can show me (as you keep saying is rampant) the equivalant on the other side, I'm going to keep calling people like Coulter a blight on the nation.

TK

Re: From the middle

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

You have repeatedly asserted that the Left is just as bad as the Right, but you have spectacularly failed to give even one example of why you believe this is true, despite repeated requests. Just one example. You cannot do it. Merely stating an opinion does not make it so. That is a logical fallacy called "an argument from assertion."

You are insulted that Terry called you an apologist for Coulter, but you downplayed as a "generalization" Coulter's patently false and inflammatory quote how liberals are evil and think people should be allowed to kill babies during delivery. What am I supposed to think?

"You guys are more articulate, and you have more reliable link, but somehow... that condensation is almost more uncomfortable than the idgits calling me a racist, war mongering bitch who hates women for being... a christian."

I have no idea what you are trying to say here. The fact that our documentation is reliable should tell you something.

"You ain't convinced me you don't treat the right with the same distain you find offensive it twigettes like Coulter"
I assume you meant "the left" in that sentence. In any case, that statement is false. For example, Christopher Hitchens, a self-proclaimed leftist, has tried to paint opponents of the British holocaust denier David Irving as being censors:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/02/07/lipstadt/index1.html

I repudiate Hitchens and will be letting the Atlantic Monthly know that I don't appreciate his being on their masthead. Even so, Hitchens has never called on people to blow up buildings, as Coulter has.

"You object to her gross generalizations, but feel justfied using HER words to make them about the right."

That is another argument from assertion.

You have chosen to make assertions that you are completely unable to back up with facts, and you have gotten defensive and resorted to ad hominem statements when called on it. If you are unable to marshal a convincing argument to support your opinion, has it not occurred to you that your opinion may be incorrect? You have been shown example after example of ways that the far right has committed slander and poisoned public discourse. And I don't tar all conservatives with the same brush as Coulter. Actually, it is a misnomer to call her conservative. She is one of the most prominent examples of the neo-fascism that has taken root in our country in the past 30 years. I suggest you acquaint yourself with David Neiwert's excellent blog:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/

If your previous comments in Terry's journal were anything like your statements in this post, then I am not surprised that you received a negative reaction.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

But seriously - the BS on BOTH sides makes me just ill. Coulter is about snark - and most satirists are. People just aren't quite sure how to handle it when it's making fun of the left instead of the usual op-ed whippin' boys.

Really? I'm kind of missing the snark in that hilarious statement she made about invading Muslim countries, forcibly converting them to Christianity and killing their leaders. What a kneeslapper!

The likes of Moore scar me far more - because they present themselves as 'factual, reliable' stuff. I rather doubt anyone read Coulter and thinks she's dead. serious. Maybe some do - but I have yet to meet even a rightie that does.

He's more factual than Coulter, who lies, blusters, or just doesn't do research. Dismissing her as merely snarking is an old tactic, and you should recognize it. "Waht's the matter, honey, can't you take a joke?"

The problem is that the Michael Moore's ARE serious... just not any less full of it than Coulter is.

She's hateful; he's not. I can't recall him every advocating killing and murdering people. How funny! He uses hyperbole: she's vicious.

People ahve quoted Coulter. There's no equivalnet on the Left. It's that simple.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

More to the point, and the point I keep trying to make:

People say "The Left" has to get rid of the evil, mean, nasty [insert perjorative of choice] because they make us look bad, and keep the middle from voting for us.

But when one points out the large number of, richly rewarded (with money, recognition [Limbaugh gets to speak at the Republican convention) and access to powerful people) on the Right, one gets told that they are fringe players, that no "real Conservatives" actually listen to them.

And even so, as you point out, it's all in fun, so just ignore it.

TK

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

My point exactly. I'm still waiting for that list from the New York Times archive that someone promised, that is full of vicious Leftist lies just as bad as Coulter's.

Re: From the middle

[kasheesty.livejournal.com]

mmmmm.....pork......

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

[sergeant3.livejournal.com]

That's why I called my post "from the middle." Thanks for replying with a reasonable post.

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.