The man they love to hate
Politics
Reason=Treason
From the moment that he yelled out “Yeah!” at a rally, I knew that that Howard Dean was one crazy bastard. Okay, maybe it was the 632nd rerun of Dean yelling ‘Yeah!’ that did it. His face was so red! Anyway, there can be no doubt of his complete mental instability now that he has uttered incontrovertibly ludicrous statements that the GOP is made up mostly of white Christians and Fox news has a conservative bias. That's just crazy.
MYTH: Howard Dean's recent horrible comments about Republicans prove that he is out of control, especially now that the Republican Party has become a party of inclusion
Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are "not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party ... it's pretty much a white, Christian party." (AP, 6/8/05, CNN.com)
"My view is FOX News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and I don't comment on FOX News," Dean said. That was in response to vice president Dick Cheney calling Howard Dean "over the top" on Fox News on Sunday. (Ben Bradley, 6/12/05, ABC News)
Conservative pundits are so overtaken with glee at the magnitude of controversy in the DNC chairman’s statements that they can’t even decide how to spin them. Is Dean the true voice of the hateful Democratic Party? Or is he the exact opposite, a fringe radical whose venom is running the party into the ground? Well, as long as there are still pictures of Dean shouting, why can’t Rush, Newt and Hannity have their cake and eat it too? And a quick glance at these three will prove that they are no strangers to eating their cake.
Dean is not helping the Democrats. In fact, I think it's just laughable. There's a piece by DeWayne Wickham at USA Today today, and you can find these columns sporadically throughout the day all encouraging Dean to keep talking and the Democrats shouldn't be such wusses here. Let them keep talking. It just tells me I'm right. I've known all along that he's saying exactly what the Democrats want him to say, and they're happy about it. This is who they are today. They're filled with this kind of rage, but the idea... You know, a party chairman is supposed to go out there and broaden the base and build the base and enlarge it. It's not happening. ("Oxy-Rush" Limbaugh Show, 6/17/05)
I just touched on it a bit, but George Lakoff was in Fort Bragg, North Carolina last week, and they wrote about it in some newspaper called The Advocate. I've got it from a website. I don't even know if it's a newspaper or whatever, but it's written by a name named Frank Hartzell of The Advocate and the headline: "Liberals Must Speak from the Heart, Not Polls, Lakoff Says," and my point is: They can't. They are-so-poll-driven; they're so consumed with doing what they think the American people want them to do and that's what's crazy. I doubt that they've got any focus group data that says the American people want a nonstop barrage of doom, gloom, pessimism and hate. But they can't be honest about who they are. (Limbaugh)
With his standard clarity of vision, Limbaugh sees three things: that everything he reads makes him know that he’s right, that Dean’s vitriol accurately represents the Democratic Party, and that Dean is failing to represent the Democratic Party.
On Thursday, Newt Gingrich had a nice discussion about the same topic with Hannity and Colmes in which Gingrich and Hannity seemed to hear all kinds of things in Dean’s words. It ended with Gingrich and Hannity having a spirited disagreement about whether Dean was mostly bad, or entirely bad.
GINGRICH: ... is Howard Dean saying that all white Christians should be Republican?
COLMES: Of course not. And in fact, he's a white Christian, isn't he?
GINGRICH: Well, I assume he is. I'm just trying to — trying to understand this. (Hannity and Colmes, 6/9/05)
HANNITY:…Let me just run through a quick litany. Because I don't want Howard Dean to go away and I suspect now with Pelosi and Biden and the others criticizing him that it may happen.
He said the Republicans are a white Christian party. You can't succeed if you're a person of color in the Republican Party. Republicans have never made an honest living. I hate Republicans. Republicans are evil. Republicans are brain dead. Republicans are mean. Republicans aren't nice people. Republicans are dark. Republicans are dishonest. Republicans are corrupt.
I want to help him save his job, Mr. Speaker. I don't want him to lose his position, because I think it's good for Republicans.
GINGRICH: This may surprise you. I don't agree with you. I mean, I don't know if Howard Dean had a bad childhood, a bad middle age, a bad last year. But when you take that list of comments by somebody who is almost pathologically out of touch with reality.
But I don't think it's good for Republicans to be relying on the Democrats self-destructing. I think that having Howard Dean be this bad is bad for the Democrats, and it's bad for the Republicans. It makes us a little bit lazy, because we figure with Howard Dean as their leader we're going to win anyway. (Hannity and Colmes)
Somehow, Gingrich and Hannity seem to stray a bit from Dean’s actual words in their struggles to “understand him” and “save his job.” Why is it so important to them and others that Dean seem off his rocker? Because he’s bluntly challenging two conservative myths.
Reality
Despite the much trotted out Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and whoever those two African American delegates were got so much love from the camera at the RNC, the Republican Party is mostly made of whites and beholden to Evangelical Christians.
For example: of the 109th Congress, of the 49 African American members of the house, not one is a Republican. The lone African-American in the Senate, Barak Obama, is also, of course, not a Republican. Of the 26 Hispanics in the house and senate, 20 are Democrats while only 6 are Republicans. Of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the House and Senate, 5 are Democrats versus the one Republican. (Infoplease.com)
As far as religion is concerned, let’s look at some exit polls:
Bush won among Protestants 59%-40%. Among Catholics, 52%-47%. He lost among Jews 25%-74%. Among people of other religions he lost: 23% to 74%. Among people of no religion he lost 31% to 67%. Bush won 78%-21% among evangelicals and lost 43%-56% among non-Evangelicals. Among people who attend church more than weekly, he won 64% to 35%. Among People who attend church never, he lost 36%-62%. Also, see Oops. The GOP really is all white, study proves it.
These statistics say nothing of the GOP’s hatred of minority-friendly legislation from affirmative action, to welfare, to gun control, nor do these numbers speak as powerfully as the Bush Administration’s attempts to appoint radical judges in order to overturn Roe V. Wade, to halt potentially disease-ending Stem-cell research, constituionalize anti-Gay bigotry and generally side with fundamentalist interpretations of the bible over issues of health and personal freedom…
But to return to the point…that Howard Dean…he’s hateful.
MYTH: Fox News is fair and balanced, just look at all of the liberals on it
Liberals are all over the place on Fox. I don't know how many of their news anchors are liberal or not. They just cover it up if they are. ("Oxy-Rush) Limbaugh Show, 6/17/05
Reality
It’s true, there are sometimes token “Liberals” appearing on Fox news, like Alan Colmes. Colmes is such an obvious straw man, that Al Franken uses a small font for every mention of Alan Colmes in his hysterical and informative Lies and the Lying Liars. . . Any “Liberal” that starts making any kind of sense is immediately interrupted by either right wing bloviators or important news announcing/we’re out of time music. Of course, the best way to debunk the myth of Fox’s ‘balance’ is to invite you to watch Fox News for 3 minutes, as cruel as that may be. Just in case you’re mesmerized by the waving flags and intractable strength and charisma of Alan Colmes, here are some places to go full debunking:
It’s not enough for Conservatives to defend Fox News…it’s also important to make sure that any truly fair or balanced news sources disappear. Hence:
MYTH: NPR and PBS have a liberal bias…but this is not why their budgets are being slashed
In fact, the CPB's own new chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has readily admitted that public television has a liberal bias, stating, "I frankly feel at PBS headquarters there is tone deafness to issues of tone and balance."
As NewsMax.com reported, Tomlinson insisted that CPB needs to take a more balanced approach to politics in order to attract a wider range of donors.
Nevertheless, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Republicans "are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting."
But the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public broadcasting.
"The thinking was, there's not enough money for everything," he said in an interview. "There are 'must-do,' 'need-to-do' and 'nice-to-do' programs that we have to pay for. [Public broadcasting] is somewhere between a 'need-to-do' and a 'nice-to-do.' "No one's out to get" public broadcasting, he said. "It’s not punitive in any way. (Carl Limbacher and Newsmax Staff, 6/10/05)
Reality
Again the conservatives try to have it both ways…even when both ways are wrong. NPR is biased, a Republican stooge seems to prove, but this not why it is being attacked. This is a cute one. First they present Kenneth Y. Tomlinson as an unbiased veteran of Public Broadcasting rather than a conservative political operative appointed specifically for this mission of destroying a balanced news source. Tomlinson, who has only been CPB chairmen since 2003, and was appointed by Reagan as the chairman of Voice of America, was recently seen on Fox News telling O’Reilly how much he “loved his show”. And there's more:
In an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson denied ever discussing the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) -- which Tomlinson has publicly criticized for airing programming that he says shows a liberal bias -- with Bush administration officials, a statement O'Reilly did not challenge. In fact, The New York Times reported that as CPB chairman, Tomlinson has previously worked with White House officials, including senior presidential adviser Karl Rove, on issues related to public broadcasting. Moreover, Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications "on the recommendation of administration officials," according to the Times. (R.S.K. and J.W., 5/13/05, Media Matters For America)
Next, Rep. Ralph Regula politely explains that PBS is simply a luxury that the American people can’t afford. In reality, conservatives have been gunning for the truth-telling Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio since Vietnam and are seizing their chance to kill it form within and from without. For much more on the myth of liberal bias in PBS and NPR, see Polianna’s previous Debunker.
There are some Liberal pundits out there. Some of them even have radio shows. In fact some of them win awards for these radio shows. Clearly this cannot go unpunished. That’s why when Al Franken gave an impassioned speech after receiving A Freedom Of Speech award from Talkers Magazine, Newsmax had to make it clear that this violent madman was dragged, slathering at the mouth from his pulpit by horrified onlookers.
MYTH: Al Franken had a crazy public breakdown received with shock and disappointment
Air America star Al Franken had a meltdown Friday night while accepting the Freedom of Speech Award at Talkers Magazine's New Media Seminar, before being forced to leave the stage by the event's sponsor.
The liberal yakker launched into a 20-minute tirade against his conservative colleagues, taking shots at Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Bill Bennett, according to WWRL host Steve Malzberg, who witnessed the ugly outburst….
As the Air America host droned on, the audience grew restless, with some shouting for Franken to "hurry up."
But according to the New York Post's John Mainelli, Franken wouldn't budge. "It's freedom of speech ... I have about two pages left," he shot back.
Finally, Talkers publisher Michael Harrison gave Franken the hook, beseeching the volatile host: "We honored you, now honor us. Don't kill our party." Before he departed, however, Franken leapt into his own peroration about visiting the troops - appearing to sob as he detailed their injuries. (Carl Limbacher and Newsmax Staff, 6/13/05)
Reality
In this widely traveled article, we hear of a “tirade” and an “ugly outburst” without a single quote from a speech given at an event that Limbacher did not even attend. Franken, a liberal (who must therefore hate the military) gets emotional about the wounded troops he spoke with when he visited them in Iraq and this constitutes a “meltdown.” According to Limbacher et al, the crowd was purely hostile…while even Matt Drudge admits that Franken was simultaneously encouraged by supporters:
With that -- while some shouted “keep going, keep going” and “let him finish” -- the Air America star wound down his rant by talking about his visits with Iraq-war vets. (Matt Drudge, 5/13/05, The Drudge Report)
So what has the Right got on Franken here? Clearly he likes to talk. A hint of this might have been that he has his own radio talk show. Also, he exercised his Freedom of Speech while accepting a Freedom of Speech award. Finally, he is moved by the courage of our troops. Ouch! And I thought Dean was nuts…. It’s one thing to use spin and dishonesty in attacking an opponent with a strong voice who has attacked you, but, with the Iraq war decreasing in popularity and opposition mounting to the facility in Guantanamo Bay, Conservatives are showing their ugliest faces in slinging the word “treason” at every critical voice of reason that speaks out…See Newshounds for a more accurate assessment of the evening.
MYTH: Liberals criticize military actions because they are traitors who hate America
But in recent years--especially since George W. Bush became president--Karen Finley-style shock rhetoric has become a dominant mode of expression on the political left, among politicians like Rangel and Dean as well as cultural figures like Michael Moore and Ward Churchill and even once-serious groups like Amnesty International.
… the same people professed horror when Anita Hill alleged that Clarence Thomas had made ribald remarks in the 1980s. When Ward Churchill called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he was exercising his academic freedom, but when John Bolton called Kim Jong Il a tyrant it was outrageously undiplomatic. Urinating on a crucifix is art (Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ"), but "mishandling" a Koran is a crime against humanity. And so on. (James Tarranto, 6/10/05, Opinion Journal)
In the old days, many leftists promoted "moral equivalence" not just because they disliked the capitalist United States but also because they sympathized with Soviet Communism. The new moral equivalence arguments are just as silly. Those who make them, however, do so not out of any sympathy for Saddam Hussein or militant Islam, but simply out of a dislike of the United States… (Brandon Crocker, 5/14/05, American Spectator)
REALITY
Putting aside the obvious hypocrisy of conservatives criticizing liberals for relying on shock value, Tarranto's attacks are based upon the very sort of false equations they claim to be against. Artists Karen Finley and Andres Serrano, for doing controversial things on stage and in galleries, are compared to Clarence Thomas, who sexually harassed an underlying in the workplace and is now a Supreme Court Justice. Ward Churchill, whose job it is as a professor to open minds, is equated with John Bolton, whose job it is as a diplomat is to, well…behave diplomatically.
Crocker’s remarks are emblematic of a spate of recent attacks on truth-speakers ranging from Congressman Charles Rangel and Senator Dick Durbin, to comedian Bill Maher, and Amnesty International. Crocker boils down the argument well: Liberals compare American atrocities to the atrocities of the past because they hate America like we all hate Nazis or Stalinists.
The point Rangel was making was that: "The whole world knew [about the Holocaust] and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored." Quite simply, speaking up is not anti patriotic. If one believes that dishonorable acts are being perpetrated in the name of one’s country, one is bound by love of country to speak out against it. Disagreeing and even criticizing government policy is the hallmark of liberty in a free society. Attempting to silence dissent is indeed, a step toward the regimes that Tarranto and Crocker are so offended to be compared with. For more on the myths surrounding Guantanamo Bay and Foreign Policy, see our past Debunkers.
comments@polianna.com
