<p>“Oh, Ann Coulter is entertaining alright. I particularly liked her little diatribe against the 9/11 widows. Very enlightening too. No wonder people like that “funnin’”, and lack of spleen venting, that goes on with conservatives.”</p>
<p>Except you missed it. Ann Coulter is a liberal who has found a way to reach into the deep pockets of the righties by saying things that they themselves wouldn’t be caught dead saying in public.</p>
<p>I think she’s great!</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>A liberal is not bitter until they want someone ‘frog marched’ here or there. Then you know that switch has been pushed.</p>
<p>If a conservative wants someone frog marched, then they’re just mean-spirited.</p>
<p>I don’t mind so much the way Coulter, Rush, etc., ridicule anyone different from them. Even when Rush aired a picture of a pre-adolescent girl (Chelsey Clinton) and ragged on how unattractive he thought she was, it didn’t bother me all that much.</p>
<p>What really bothers me about those two is the outright lies and distortions they tell in an effort to whip up unreasoning hatred. “Al Gore’s a ■■■!” “Michael J. Fox didn’t take his medication!” They assassinate people’s characters without one shred of fact to back it up. </p>
<p>Both Rush and Ann have been caught in lie after lie. And they lie about things that can easily be checked. This suggests to me that they think that the people who listen to them are too dumb to catch them out and too close-minded to try. How disrespectful to the people who line their pockets.</p>
<p>To me it’s like the Roman circuses. Distract the masses with “entertainment” that gets their blood going and gives them a villian to boo…so they won’t notice you’re squandering their resources as their civilization crumbles around them.</p>
<p>I know you think Ann Coulter is a closet liberal, Mini, since you have said this a number of times before.</p>
<p>Have you any actual evidence of this suspicion, or on what are you basing said suspicion (because there are some equally outlandish conservative pundits…she is by no means alone in her hysterical rantings)?</p>
<p>
I’ve never heard that one before. Who’s supposed to have said that?</p>
<p>Conyat, I assume you don’t listen to Rush regularly, as that would make you dumb, in your own estimation, although it’s hard to understand how you can be such an expert on that which you do not know; I do listen to Rush regularly, so by implication, the same judgement must follow, although I’ll go mano a mano with you any time you care to have a go. In the meantime, here’s what a very thoughtful conservative Rush-listening lady had to say about the MJ Fox comment a few days ago. Dumb, too?</p>
<p><a href=“http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/10/26/fox-on-couric-tonight/[/url]”>http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/10/26/fox-on-couric-tonight/</a></p>
<p>I didn’t say the people who listen to Rush are dumb. I said he behaves toward them as though he thinks they are. Huge difference, and I’d appreciate you not distorting it.</p>
<p>As a faithful listener, why do you think Rush didn’t bother to do the five minutes research that would have told him that a Parkinson’s patient who doesn’t take his medication is going to be less mobile rather than more so? </p>
<p>This intrigues me. I can’t imagine any good faith reason for feeding your listeners a line like that without bothering to see if there’s any factual justification for it. </p>
<p>I read your link. Sorry, but I am still going to think that people with real life experience and expertise on an issue are more credible sources than people like Rush who just make stuff up. And I don’t think that Parkinson’s patients have to refrain from participating in political life simply because people like your blogger find them too pitiable to be acceptable spokespeople.</p>
<p>The “Al Gore is a ■■■” comment came from Ann Coulter. In watching the video again, she did say (pretty weakly) that she was joking, but she refused to take back her wholly unsubstantiated allegations about Clinton being gay.</p>
<p>I also read your link Driver and found it to be just more of the Republican right wing pounding manchine. She threw everything but the kitchen sink in on that one - victimhood, trial lawyers, and a scorched earth political agenda that started in 1992. The worst part though was when she accused MJFox of not knowing anything about the subject or the political implications.</p>
<p>Do you know that in Missouri they are actually voting yes or no to allow stem cell research? And that the opponents of the amendment are actually trying to scare people into thinking that if they vote yes, they will be voting in favor of cloning and women selling their eggs. I’m in Missouri right now. I’ve seen the ads and the pitiful yard signs. While people like Driver may be smart enough to listen to Limbaugh and know that he’s not serious, there are a whole lot of people out there who aren’t necessarily dumb, but don’t have the time to research and read to figure out right from wrong. They listen to the idiot and believe him. Limbaugh has helped create this world of black and white labeling - the very thing your little “anchoress” is bemoaning in her poorly written rant. Limbaugh puts the world in a neat little good vs evil package for Republicans to lap up.</p>
<p>I’m sorry Driver, but you loose when you defend Rush and his attack on MJFox. Stem cell research is the REAL issue, but you and he have successfully thrown up a smoke screen. Hmmm, maybe because the Democrats do have the moral authority on this particular issue.</p>
<p>Liz, the thing that you and others are missing in this, is that Rush’s particular statement that day (which I was not defending) wasn’t about ESCR, per se…it was about the use of victims in politcal ads that are, by their nature, designed in such a way that counter-argument, however logical, will be deemed “mean-spirited.” Remember…Cindy Sheehan was proclaimed by multiple media sources to have the ultimate moral authority as to Iraq…never mind that there were plenty of military families with dead kin that disagreed with her. As the Anchoress said, Rush was dumb to have made the “MJFox was off his meds” comment, just as Coulter’s over-the-top critique of “the Jersey Girls” wasn’t helpful. But, the fact remains that if any of these folks want to interject themselves into the political arena based on their status as victims, they shouldn’t expect kid glove treatment. BTW, MJFox , in his interview with George Stephanopolous, said that he was personally unfamiliar with the details of the Missouri amendment he was opposing.</p>
<p>Driver, you and Rush are defining the ads as VICTIM ads and are crying victim yourselves when you say they are designed in such a way that counter arguments will be deemed mean spirited. You or Rush or anyone could talk about the issue in such a way that doesn’t even focus on Michael J Fox. It is not an attack ad that requires a counter argument against Michael J Fox. </p>
<p>You have successfully steered the argument to everything but STEM CELL RESEARCH, which is what the ad is about. I don’t agree with your comment that “if they want to interject themselves in the political arena based on their status as victims, they shouldn’t expect kid glove treatment.” They do deserve respect,dignity and a FAIR argument, not one directed at them personally. That is the part of this political game you play that I really have no patience for.</p>
<p>Liz, I think that fair treatment of important issues such as stem cell research would emphasize what is known and not known as to its prospects, the difference between ESCR and ASCR, the fact that both forms are funded by the government, and the fact that the latter is the one that scientists deem most potentially helpful to people like MJFox.</p>
<p>I don’t think that I’ve directed anything at anyone personally in this “political game,” so I beg your patience. I really have no patience for politicians (or their proxies) delivering Chicken Little arguments, whether uninformed stem cell issues or uninformed global warming arguments, or uninformed issues dealing with energy resources, etc.</p>
<p>chicken little? gosh, I think that argument could go toward bush and wmd…</p>
<p>Personally I kinda of like the situation we currently have. I have a pretty good idea where we could end up. ‘Staying the course’ is better than not knowing where you are and how to get there. Itstoomuch to say that we are lost.</p>
<p>I concur with Liz. While you may be intelligent enough to be discerning of Rush, Driver, many people, listening to talk radio out there in middle America (where there is nothing else to listen to), don’t have that same skill. They hear what they hear, and they believe it, no matter how misinformed, or just plain wrong, that information is.</p>
<p>I think Rush’s messages are disgraceful and deplorable, but he uses the same tactic that the rest of your party uses…fear, fear, and more fear. It’s been successful for some time, but the steadfast resolve to follow that mantra is waning. America is waking up (not soon enough, but they are rousing).</p>
<p>
AM, I hesitate to argue with you, because I think you are basically a decent person, but here I go anyway.</p>
<p>How in the world do you know what there is to listen to in Middle America, or how could their analytical skills might be? This provincial outlook – typical of people on both coasts – just completely discounts the entire middle section of the country. NPR does make it to Minnesota, for example, and network news – liberal all the way – makes it to Iowa. I’m sure you didn’t intend for your comment to sound this way, but it strikes me as the same liberal superior attitude, the same condescension, that seems so prevalent to me in the Democratic party. It’s the idea that intelligent, sophisticated people must be liberal. After all, how could they possibly be conservative?</p>
<p>I’ll tell you what. I’ve concluded that it’s not a big deal if you are liberal in a blue state. It’s probably not a big deal if you are conservative in a red state, although the dominant media is clearly liberal. The people I find interesting are those who are conservative in a ble state or liberal in a red state. They must have done some serious thinking in order to buck the trend in their geographic areas.</p>
<p>Edit: Perhaps you meant middle America as middle income or middle class? My comments still apply.</p>
<p>With as much clarity and maturity as I can afford, I will concur with driver and Sjmom.</p>
<p>What’s more, the “dumb-American” argument, though offensive is much worse for being so old, tired and predictable. The “dumb American” is essentially “the ugly American” slander used for the domestic purpose of carpet-bombing the dummies before they leave shore –it’s an import-export final, if rhetorical, solution.<br>
A canard that allows the latte-drinker to lift their eyes over the New York Times and find that America is not good, as it falls short of their refined expectations (“the problem is choice, Neo,”…”freewill” if you’re an old-timer)–something of a self-styled act of divinity and creation–thereby skipping over the fussy requirements of thought and argument to pronounce on their actual and intended victim: the dull-normals required to be “beneath them”…strictly for ontological purposes (from time to time they make for good victims–class war and party politics).</p>
<p>SJ, I think it is wrong to characterize people too. My apologies.</p>
<p>I think there is an elephant in the room, kind of a reverse PCness, which doesn’t allow us to discuss the fact that there really are very obvious intellectual differences among people, which affect how they are influenced by news, pundits, talk shows etc. It’s not a snobbish comment, merely a truthful one.</p>
<p>Perhaps my “middle America” was offensive (but hey, bet you didn’t know that I was born and raised in middle America), and I’m sorry about that. But I do think there is a large population of people who really do not digest news in a critical fashion. Now, to be fair, I could say there are liberals and conservatives alike, who have this problem. Truth is, however, the liberal side (even with the liberal media :p) does not have anyone even remotely close to Coulter, Rush, Hannity, Savage, etc. who is giving information, presented as news, that is so slanted (no, Jon Stewart is not the same).</p>
<p>I have no idea what you are talking about, FS. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t communicate anything except a certain kind of contempt for the “dumb (or ugly) American” stereotype.</p>
<p>I would, however, like to take exception to a couple statements. Someone above casually said that CBS News is liberal, and sjmom just said that “the dominant media is clearly liberal”. I think this is an example of the “big lie” that Limbaugh et al. have been telling since they got on the air. The dominant media are less ideologically conservative than Limbaugh or the Fox News commentators, but that’s not a low bar to get under. I read The Economist every week – clearly a Tory publication in British terms – and it is far, far more critical of U.S. policy and implementation than any mainstream U.S. media. You need to go a long way off center to find media as liberal as Limbaugh is conservative.</p>
<p>But what really naffs me off is that the conservative media is always clucking about how liberal the New York Times is, or this or that network news, but I don’t see them making anything – anything – like the investment that the Times, Post, Wall St. Journal, Economist, BBC (name your establishment media) makes in actually gathering and fact-checking news. You may not like the message, but for better or worse they have actual, knowledgeable people (in the case of the BBC, often four or five actual, knowledgeable people) on site telling you what they are seeing. And – Jason Blair aside, that being a clear exception – they have known, fairly transparent journalistic standards that let you believe that what’s being reported is, if not necessarily complete, at least true. They also make a visible effort to provide commentary and background from people with different ideological slants. If you read the mainstream media, you don’t have any trouble knowing what conservatives think about most issues. If you get your news from Rush Limbaugh, you have no idea what liberals think, all you know is his straw men.</p>
<p>I have been fascinated by Elizabeth Rubin’s Afghanistan articles in the Times Sunday Magazine the past two weeks. I’m sure conservatives hate them (basically, the takeaway is that Afghanistan is in no better shape than Iraq, and the U.S. has irrevocably screwed up a real opportunity there). But where are the conservative reporters spending weeks and months in the Northwest Frontier tribal areas, interviewing Taliban figures high and low, and Pakistani intelligence, and opium farmers, and then spending weeks with American troops, and doing it again and again over four years? Not to mention cowering in a burkha by the roadside with your vehicle turned over in a ditch and Taliban fighters on their way to check out what you’re doing there. She was there; I believe she actually talked to those people and that they said what she reported. In the absence of other evidence as striking, why shouldn’t I trust that her views reflect something pretty closely resembling reality?</p>
<p>
The fact is that NONE of these people are or purport to be “newspeople”; they are commentators with an unhidden conservative perspective. As such, anyone listening to these people (including the simple minded people in the Mid-West) know to put the appropriate filters on before accepting what they say as truth. </p>
<p>Contrast that with the “mainstream media” who do claim to be “newspeople” and which many people feel are honest, ethical journalists who have somehow mananged to purge themselves of any bias when presenting the “real” news. This is a far more insidious way of dispensing liberal views, because, even if a journalists tries to present both sides (which certainly excludes Dan Rather), their bias remains - and their audience does not realize that they are being presented a slanted view.</p>
<p>And, back to your original view that I quoted above, clearly Keith Olberman with his foaming mouth falls into that category on the left.</p>
<p>JHS, my perception of the mainstream media as being liberal was based on Bernard Goldberg’s book, “Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News.” Goldberg is not conservative or a Republican. But he outlined the many ways that the news is presented in a slanted way. When I read the Boston Globe, it is very clear what the biases are. If someone gets most of their news from the LA Times, the Globe or the NY Times, they are getting a report with an agenda, in my opinion.</p>
<p>When I lived in California, Canada, and Minnesota, I was still pretty liberal in my outlook. The mainstream news seemed quite fair to me. But as my views evolved, the slant became more and more obvious. It’s like living in “1984” – if people question the general perception, it’s unacceptable. Living as a conservative in Massachusetts is like living in an underground world – I am careful with whom I share my outlook, because the prevailing winds are so liberal. </p>
<p>As far as reading material goes, we get the Boston Globe, the WSJ, Discover Magazine, Scientific American, the National Review and others. Occasionally, we buy a copy of the Sunday NY Times. The differences in coverage between the various publications is striking. How can anyone claim the media is unbiased? The same basic story can appear in the Globe and the WSJ – I can almost guarantee that they present it differently. If it were truly objective, all the coverage would agree. The only place for opinion pieces would be the editorial page. But that’s not what I see. Even the headlines in the Globe portray a liberal slant.</p>
<p>An interesting discussion with Mark Halberin, news director for ABC:</p>
<p><a href=“http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/8096249b-e534-43ac-81ac-8c4722648377[/url]”>http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/g/8096249b-e534-43ac-81ac-8c4722648377</a>
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