Rush for the exits

It's probably too much to hope for to dream that Rush Limbaugh, founder of the no-bigger-asshole school of conservative bullying, will change his bigoted behavior.  But it would be lovely if he got paid ever less to give cover to wingnut assholes as they pollute our national discourse with hatred and ignorance.

[O]n the one hand, we have multiple radio companies reporting losses directly attributable to Limbaugh's show as well as Limbaugh himself complaining about media buyers. On the other hand, we have an unnamed source close to Limbaugh's show denying reality about Limbaugh's advertiser woes and attacking one of the host's biggest affiliates.

Need a couple more letters

We used to call bumpkin idiots gomers. They used to be decent enough people. Now they have a new name, gohmerts, and three decades of hate radio has made many of them unrepentant assholes.

Louie Gohmert makes you look good even if you were the kid in high school algebra who said, "Whattaya mean, x is a number!" Come to think of it, al-gebra sounds like creeping sharia!

Where will the Gohmerts go when even Texas is no longer xenophobic enough for them?

Return of Bircherism

The Tennessee General Assembly passes a delusionally paranoid, anti-UN resolution against Agenda 21. The fact that it's anti-environmental? Bonus!

WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, social justice is described as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment which would be accomplished by socialist/communist redistribution of wealth

This sounds like the John Birch Society bullshit (h/t @Trace Sharp) I heard growing up in Tennessee 40 years ago, and sure enough it is. Don't any of them wonder how we're still free if fluoridation was a communist conspiracy to drug us all into sheep-like obedience?

Rick Perlstein (h/t Paul Krugman) notes that the crazy conservatives have been with us a long time - longer than we've called them wingnuts.

[A]longside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That's because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it's because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they've been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).

Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it's not going away, either. It's just getting more powerful. That's a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.

What we had until Ronald Reagan and talk radio brought them out of the darkness was a social norm that scoffed at the fever swamp of ultra-conservative imagination. Well, nationally, not in the South. We no longer have that moderating national norm, which is really depressing, and the continuing reason wingnuts are so sensitive to any norm that limits their various and sundry bigotries.

Still, it's hopeful to look back with a gimlet eye and see that we liberals have overcome the wingnuts before. Now, to do it again.

Update: Lest I get too optimistic, more lunacy on Agenda 21.

Dreams of electronic sheep

Only these sheep are as bare-toothed angry as they are ill-informed and illogical:

Without exception, however, every reader objecting to my criticism of talk-radio ethics mentioned Soros. It was like being scolded by parrots. Most called Soros a commie -- highly unlikely for a billionaire financier and philanthropist -- although I know very little about his views.

It's called the straw man fallacy: refuting arguments nobody's made.

Then there's the argumentum ad populum, another favorite of talk-radio fans: somebody with a big audience must be correct. Furthermore -- motive again -- I must be jealous of their success.

That's pretty much like saying Rush Limbaugh's jealous of President Obama. You buy that?

Look, these guys are playing you for suckers. They're reading scripts written to trick you into believing that the bigger Scrooge McDuck's bullion pile is, the better it is for you. Take away the call screeners and the mute buttons, and most of them wouldn't last two weeks. Talk radio is the political equivalent of wrestling.

Paid to impersonate wingnuts

If wingnut talk radio didn't pay actors to deliver lines to Rush Limbaugh and his belligerent ilk, there'd be no way to screen out all the obviously incoherent bullshit that teabaggers believe.

Limbaugh's job

Andrew Leonard of Salon says this about Rush Limbaugh's racist aping of Hu Jintao:

I'm not sure what is more appalling: Rush Limbaugh's 30-second-long imitation of China's President Hu Jintao speaking in Chinese, delivered on his radio show today in the most abominable display of evil Oriental stereotyping this side of Fu Manchu, or the fact that Limbaugh obviously feels his audience would relish an indulgence in racist mockery that most third grade boys would be ashamed of.

C'mon, Leonard, where have you been?  Limbaugh is popular because he tells his audience they have no reason at all to be ashamed of anything.  His most important job and function among wingnuts is to edge right up next to the racial epithet and then only to imply it without saying.  His job is to set a social norm that builds a tribe for his listeners where every bigoted thought they have or even give voice to is close enough to be acceptable.

Road outrage

Click image for full Mike Keefe/Denver Post cartoon.

Rush has a heart

Who knew!

I don't wish the man dead. Off the air, sure, but not dead.

Just imagine, though, the application of the Republican Le Chatelier's principle to Rush's chest pains. In response to every economic act - and especially the economic acts of the government - conservatives claim:

• Those who need help deserve what they got, whether it's the result of sex or business conditions or mere proximity to a social problem.
• Offering help only encourages more wrong behavior.
  

This reflects their own introspection into their character, I think. They know that they look to exploit rather than thank every helping hand, so they assume that everyone else must, as well.

Since that's how Rush would take it (and take it and take it), I wouldn't want to encourage more corpulence, smoking, drug abuse, and bile from Limbaugh. Even though I don't wish him dead, I'm not wasting any sympathy on him. After all, that would just encourage him to have a full-blown heart attack.

First draught of history

Media coverage of politics is no longer driven by the New York Times or the Washington Post, not even by CBS, but rather by Fox News, talk radio, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Drudge's rumor-mongering (still prospering on one semen stain after all these years!), and the rest of the concerted conservative corporate propaganda machine. The first draught of history is a heady blend of angry, paranoid, proudly ignorant Kool-Aid.

Any history of this period that's not a revisionist history will purvey the thoroughgoing bullshit of our age.

(h/t Philosoraptor)

Let's invade Iraq

Boycotting the census works against the interest of all foreign nationals in the United States, but the boycott advocates don't let a little thing like logic stop them from making lots of noise while cutting off their nose to spite their face.

If they did this in Texas, it might make sense. Here in Massachusetts, even illegal aliens would help retain a seat in Congress that's much more likely to frame immigration policy in a non-punitive way that might build a path to citizenship that's not too onerous.

I have to wonder who's paying for this.

No one's tellin' me nuthin'

Click images for full cartoons from John Branch/San Antonio Express-News (left) and Bruce Plante/Tulsa World (right).

United States of Wingnut

Every society has its weirdnesses. Many people inside the society don't even realize how weird they seem to outsiders. A history of homosexual hazing of schoolboys? Isn't that the English way?

Sometimes, a society changes enough within one lifetime that oldsters feel more than normally alienated - or maybe that's a universal, I'm not sure. Within my lifetime - and I'm only an oldster to the very young - the American national conversation has shifted far to the right. Extreme voices that would have been universally condemned when I was young are now defended by mainstream conservatives.

So it is with right-wing extremists. The FBI releases a report on increased activity and recruiting by extremist groups, and conservative Republicans worry that this somehow infringes their free speech rights!

[C]onservative radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock was not persuaded. "If the Bush administration had done this to left-wing extremists, it would be all over the press as an obvious trampling of the First Amendment rights of folks and dissent," he told CNN.

That's just weird. It's their potential violence that the FBI is targeting. It's not as though the extremists are reluctant to talk about the need they see for violence. It's not as though they aren't already armed. Sheesh.

Yet somehow this report is evidence of the asymmetrical victimization of right-wing extremists! Consider this: When was the last time a left-wing extremist killed someone? Does Ted Kaczynski count against the left? If so, huuuge organization - we better worry about the revolution of the Luddite bombers.

Yes, there have been some property crimes, and those deserve a police response, but some deranged right-winger kills someone every few months, and threats are much more common. Yet, big media bends way over backward to adopt conservative questions, even if they won't admit that they asked those canned questions:

A DHS official said the department was not trying to squelch free speech by issuing the report. "There is no link between extremists being talked about in that report and conservative political thinkers, activists and voters," the official said.

As if the DHS official would bring that up on his own!

But here's the best part:

In fact, the Obama administration in January did issue a warning about left-wing extremists. Both reports were initiated during the administration of former President George W. Bush.

In sum, a perfectly reasonable and obviously true report commissioned by a conservative administration squelches the free speech of radicals on the right (but not the left) by noting their propensity for political violence, and conservatives are therefore the victims of the liberal administration that merely releases the report. The media reports this as if it were plausible.

Yeah, this is something really weird about our society.

CNN fails again

CNN has graced us with the publication of bullshit from Brent Bozell as if anything Bozell ever says has the slightest chance of being true. Despite a complete, total, utter lack of even a single shred of evidence, credulous CNN thrusts the obvious propaganda. There's no byline on it because it's a warmed over press release from the Media Research Right-wing Propaganda Center.

So of course there's no response from any skeptic in this blurb, nor any acknowledgement that even an increase in Limbaugh's audience doesn't change the brilliance of making him the corpulent, disastrous face of the Republican Party for the large majority of Americans who can't stand the blowhard.

Wants me dead

The evil man who massacred churchgoers in Knoxville, my hometown, would kill me if he had the chance. There are others, too, and he appeals to them to act.

It's sobering.

Defense to blogosphere: drop dead

A Circuit Court judge back in Knoxville where I grew up is entertaining a defense motion to force the local paper to moderate comments or prevent anonymous comments. Really. Never mind the First Amendment. The judge is not just laughing and giving the motion the back of his hand.

Comments in the News-Sentinel are no doubt filled with bigotry, bile, and prejudgement of the case. But I'm sure the jury pool was already poisoned. The defendants are black and charged with a heinous crime of carjacking, multiple rape, and murder against a white couple.

That jury pool was completely capable of poisoning itself just by breathing. Read any comments thread anywhere in the country and you'll find the haters spilling over from talk radio.

Should the judge engage in unconstitutional prior restraint, here's my offer: Come here and comment.

My guarantee for the racists: I'll ridicule you for the small size of your brain, your heart, and your balls. I may even whack your comments, though I've only deleted one comment here ever. Just because the Constitution guarantees you free speech doesn't mean you're free from my abuse of your ignorance and hate.

Best of all, though, the judge can't touch me here in Massachusetts. It's the new reality. Get used to it. And if he could touch me, well, we don't get to keep these rights if we're not willing to stand up for them. I'm willing.

Lord of the Flies

Every now and then, I am horrified to see the face of the mob through the veneer of civil order. This vicious face nowadays comes almost always from the wingnuts, and I explain to myself their inexplicable unselfconscious ugliness as a result of talk radio's unleashing the id of hate.

When a day exposes this psychopathic unconcern for other humans, it stops my usual optimism. Yesterday I glimpsed a hint of this in Dave Schultheis. But today was one of those days when I saw too much in the comment thread of the Boston Globe's story on a surge in applications for food stamps. Here's a small sampling from only the first page of the merciless depravity of the lunatics:

Here's a novel idea: tell them to try growing their own food. --swan9

where are all the skinny, starving people? --prettywoman [I shit you not]

Since when did eating become something you are "entitled" to? People who are cutting back on food are being fiscally responsible and doing what needs to be done. --thisisdumb09

The entire food stamp program should be cancelled. I always see people in the checkout line with their vouchers paying for steaks, salmon, premium ice cream, etc., while people that work like me buy cheaper foods. --will12335

Birth control not welfare. Get sterilized, get a new GM or Chrysler car. Less future welfare for all involved. --JudgeBean

I totally agree with the shopping cart stories. I have been in line behind some female with first of the season watermelon, first of the season corn, a package of butts squeezed into the back pocket of her hot pant, and yes, she had stamps. I'm in line with a can of beans and a loaf of bread. unless you are certied disable (by other than Arroyo's doctor), no stamps - get a job and get rid of your escalades. --gooberboo

Rush must be so proud.

Money talks

Of course, much of the time what it says is bullshit. The Globe story is useful to remind people that what they hear on commercial media can often be bought. But, really, did anyone ever expect wingnut radio to be fair? To be even-handed? To provide a level playing field?

Peter Blute and others like him (Rush, Bill O., to name just two) must indeed be entertainers. It's entertaining even to me that they pose as journalists when they're on the air, while claiming only the non-responsible role of entertainer any time larger responsibilities come up (say, just to name one, responsibility to truth).

When we gave up the Fairness Doctrine, we gave ownership of our commonweal's airwaves to people like these. It ain't coming back; better keep our bullshit detectors working.

Republicans sold out to Iran

If this potentially lethal technology leakage had happened under a Democratic administration, the Republicans in Congress, on the Sunday talk shows, and on hate radio would be frothing with rage over it. The media would dutifully echo the wingnut noise machine with "some have questions."

How do I know this? Remember Bill Clinton and China?

Unfairness doctrine

The frothing wingnuts are everywhere, spilling bile as if it were water. Now and then I find one willing to spill blood (Matt at January 5th, 2009 4:12 pm ET):

The end of democracy as we know it. This is whithout [sic] a doubt the most fixed election ever. There was no standard other than cheat enough to have Franken pull ahead and then stop counting.

When democracy ceases to function and if you pay enough money you can subvert the will of the people to your whims. Then there is only one thing left for the comman man to do.

Civil War.

Reading the hate and ignorance in any mass market comments section makes me less than sanguine of the happy fate of democracy. Sanguinary? Yeah.

There's plenty of ignorance on the left, though it comes nowhere near matching the sheer stupidity of the right, but the real yawning abyss of disparity is in hate. We make fun of them, despise some of them, hate a select few. They hate us all.

The wingnuts have forgotten their kindergarten lessons - how to use their inside voices, how to play nice with others, how to use their words instead of their puny little fists to settle disputes, how not to bite their classmates, how to accept not getting their infantile narcissistic way right goddamn now from mommy every goddamn time, how not to throw a tantrum even if they're disappointed. They have no sense whatsoever of a commonwealth that extends beyond them.

They have lost this most basic socialization - hey, they're against socialism, why not be against socialization - because of the swill they listen to on talk radio and Fox News. They have public models of ugliness that allow them cover to revise and extend that ugliness forever.

And that gives their petty little 2-year-old's ids such a thrill of delight that only isolation could ever make them stop. Instead, they have a permanent play date with their mutual dittoheads, with whom they have constant self-reinforcing tantrums.

America is much the lesser for it.

Same coin

Click image for full Joel Pett cartoon.