epic (and justified) rant from Jonah Goldberg. -- To Hell With You People August 2, 2011 11:24 A.M. By Jonah Goldberg Look, I am past exhausted talking about liberal media bias. It’s real, we all know it, and people who deny it aren’t even fooling themselves. But some things just have to be pointed out. This morning I watched the first 15 minutes of the Today Show. I don’t particularly love or even like the program, but I find it useful to see what the producers think is the big news of the day. And sometimes Chuck Todd is on, and I like him. If I sound defensive about watching the show it’s only because I am. Anyway, the first ten minutes was about Gabby Giffords’ return to the House yesterday. I’m not sure it merited the full ten minutes or trumped the hard news that later followed, but it’s a great story and everyone is rooting for the lady, so I’m fine with it. But think about this for a second. The Giffords shooting sent the media elite in this country into a bout of St. Vitus’s dance that would have warranted an army of exorcists in previous ages. Sarah Palin’s Facebook map was an evil totem that forced some guy to go on a shooting spree. The New York Times, the Washington Post, all three broadcast networks — particularly NBC whose senior foreign affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell, devotes, by my rough reckoning, ten times as much air time to whining about Sarah Palin as she does about anything having to do with foreign affairs — flooded the zone with “Have you no shame” finger wagging. A memo went forth demanding that everyone at MSNBC get their dresses over their heads about the evil “tone” from the right. Media Matters went into overdrive working the interns 24/7 to “prove” that Republicans deliberately foment violence with their evil targets on their evil congressional maps. Everyone “knew” the shooter was a tea partier. Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a conservative. He was a sick, demented, nutball. And it still didn’t matter! More bleating and caterwauling about the “tone” followed. More chin stroking and tut-tutting from Meet the Press roundtables and “very special segments” on the Today Show. More pizzas were ordered for the Media Matters galley slaves. Finally, president Obama, our national-healer, gives a speech. It was a good speech. Indeed it was one of the first speeches in a long while that got anything like bipartisan support. Civility. New tone. No more martial metaphors. These were the takeaways. So flashforward to this week. Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said. Then last night, on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack seven months ago, the vice president of the United States calls the Republican party a bunch of terrorists. No one cares. I hate the “if this were Bush” game so we’re in luck. Instead imagine if this was Dick Cheney calling the Progressive Caucus (or whatever they’re called) a “bunch of terrorists” on the day Giffords returned to the Congress. Would the mainstream media notice or care? Would Meet the Press debate whether this raises “troubling questions” about the White House’s sensitivity? Would Andrea Mitchell find some way to blame Sarah Palin for Dick Cheney’s viciousness? Would Keith Olbermann explode like a mouse subjected to the Ramone’s music in Rock and Roll High School? Something inside me hidden away shouts, “Hell yes they would!” The Today Show even had Debbie Wasserman Schultz on this morning for five minutes talking about Giffords. No one thought to ask her what she thought of Biden’s comments? It’s not like she’s the Democratic party’s national spokesperson or anything. Oh, wait. She is! Instead, after the full ten minutes on Giffords, we get an update about the debt-limit situation (which is supposedly an Armageddon-level issue) and Kelly O’Donnell basically carries water for Biden on the issue by completely muddying whether he said anything of the sort at all. (His office says, no, no the vice president didn’t call them terrorists, he just politely agreed with all the Democratic congressmen in the room that they “acted like terrorists.” Ah, this is a distinction a team of a million Jesuits working around the clock would have a hard time slicing). And yet you know the next time there’s the slightest, remotely exploitable tragedy or hint of violence, the same reporters, editors, producers and politicians are going to insist that blood was spilled because of the right wing’s rhetoric. Well, go to Hell. All of you.
basso thread, didn't read. but, I love this quote from Goldberg, "I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers."
the writer uses the return of Gabrielle Giffords to Washington to reiterate that the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in January was covered mostly by the liberal media, then offers a set of hypothetical what ifs right after stating he is not a big fan of hypothetical what ifs.
let's trade hyperbole over sex scandals for hyperbole over a Congresswoman getting shot through the face, and call it even.
Article makes a good point. Except about nobody caring -- I've seen plenty of complaining. And about the What-if-Bush-did-it game -- the What-if-Cheney-did-it game is the same game, and just as stupid.
So, Jonah Goldberg doesn't like NBC's coverage one morning. And the VP said something that hurt his feelings. Wow. Groundbreaking. If I listen to conservative radio for two seconds, I would hear all liberals called economic terrorists, traitors, and far worse. It's done, for conservatives, on the radio to "counter-balance" the liberal bias perceived in televised media. So back and forth they go, controlling their images and projecting an ideal of their politic that is too abstract, too idealistic, and too removed from the realities of contemporary Washington protocols (or the interests of globalism) to do anything in the mind of the listener other than incite tertiary "the-government-is-too-big," "the-government-is-too-oppressive," or "the-other-party-is-way-wrong" sentiments. Goldberg is adding nothing new to the oppositional, propagandized, reactionary, media game-theory of offsetting the biases of the big bad programming enemy out there with the biases of his own flavor. The only thing he ignores, is incendiary liberal bias, at worst, inspires extremists of left who want real socialism, or want to take more of Jonah's taxes, and conservative extremists and inspired a bit more radically. So we can all go to hell, and Goldberg, Coulter, Andrew Sullivan, Malkin and Basso will be left with the most boring, bitter heaven imaginable, cracking champagne and reading, shouting their own books louder and louder over one another until they all tire out. Of course they don't actually want that, as they all carved their careers out of the crevices of liberalism and live under the overpasses of 'progressive' enemy highways. No liberal bias left, no right wing agenda left.
Perfect. Just perfect. What Goldberg says about the media also applies to this cesspool as well. "Well, go to Hell. All of you." Indeed.
The "liberal bias" that most reactionaries perceive in the media does not exist in any real sense. Tea Partiers perceive "liberal bias" in any media organization that does not explicitly espouse conservative viewpoints. The "liberal bias" that Tea partiers perceive results solely from their own blindered view of the world that tells them "If a person does not repeatedly state their support for my values, then they are liberal. There are no other options."
Ummmm. The teatards aren't terrorists. They are, however, traitors. I'll repost what Boehner had to say about them. Try and wrap your head around that. The Republican Speaker of the House is straight out admitting that a significant part of his caucus want to throw the U.S. economy into chaos. That is treason.
And this is different, from the normal "go to hell" rhetoric and positioning that's been going on since W left office, how? Of all the things going on, THIS is what makes this guy want to put a fork in what he pretends was some air of tolerance and cooperation before? Please.
Uh Mr Goldberg, the VP was speaking of the tea party, not republicans. And he has a point: Willing to destroy the US economy over ideological reasons? Sounds like the definition of a terrorist to me.
the way that party is being hijacked by crazy ****s like basso and gwayneco and holding the rest of us hostage, we're a lot closer to hell than most people realize.
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One of these names doesn't belong. "But Biden denies he called Republicans terrorists. I did though with a modifier - "economic terrorism" and stand by it. The right is apoplectic, perhaps because their favorite rhetorical tool is getting borrowed by the other team"
F**king Amen. Guy, you posted less than a week ago, in one of the Norway threads that "liberals hadn't been this happy since Gabby Giffords was shot." The board doesn't need you, and if you are so cool and 'over it', why come in here and redirect the 'go-to-hell's' to this cesspool: a cesspool in which you have posted nearly three thousand off-topic, antagonistic misdirects to stir up partisan pissing wars. Yeah, now you're too cool to be bothered by the masses. Please. F**k 'em all doesn't transition smoothly to blasé.
