Well Richard, I’m curious as to how you feel about the left-wingers in America demonstrating with signs and shirts that say “Kill Bush”, or is that okay?

I’m not accusing you, but it seems that many others have a double standard on this issue.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:18 pm | Comment

I don’t know how it is in the US, but where I come from advocating murder is considered a crime. What about sueing her?

April 19, 2005 @ 5:23 pm | Comment

Btw, I know how much you love Michelle Malkin 🙂 so I thought I would share her comments on the double standards Time seems to have when it comes to putting conservative faces on their cover page.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002127.htm

April 19, 2005 @ 5:24 pm | Comment

I saw Malkin’s column already. Here we have the ultimate MSM publication giving her a COVER STORY, and all Malkin can do is slam them about the photo on the cover, as though it’s all a net minus instead of a huge plus to be featured like this in Time magazine. Pardon me, but Ms. Maglalang’s a moron.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:37 pm | Comment

Gordon, any left winger who says Kill Bush is an asshole and a disgrace. They should be arrested. Who do you have in mind? Who on the left is suggesting this, aside from the nerds who troll around the Democratic Underground comments? Are any of those who advocate killing Bush being featured on Time’s cover, or anywhere else? Thanks.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:39 pm | Comment

Shulan, if the left went after all the wingnuts who have advocated violence against judges, politicians, journalists, etc. we would be busy filing lawsuits for the rest of our lives.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:40 pm | Comment

Gordon,

That’s not okay of course. As a matter of fact, isn’t it illegal for someone to say or advocate to murder a president???

That’s because Michelle is jealous she is not on the cover of Time Magazine. BTW, its time to cancel subscription of Time magazine for Newsweek or the Nation.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:45 pm | Comment

And Gordon, where are the liberals with the “Kill Bush” signs? Don’t think they exist except in the radical right’s scripted melodrama.

Fuck Bush? Now that’s a completely different story.

April 19, 2005 @ 5:52 pm | Comment

I think if you substitute the word “Jew” for the word “liberal,” you’d be amazed how much the Coulter/Malkin/Limbaugh crowd sounds like a group of Nazis. Of course, I don’t think they are Nazis. It is their style of “thought” and “debate” that is similar. (I just wanted to get the Nazi reference over with for everyone’s convenience). You can compare them to a group of die-hard communists, also. Same difference.

Michael Moore is an idiot that takes things out of context, but he is not the left-wing equivalent of Coulter by a long shot. The left-wing version of Coulter would be someone like Jiang Qing…except that Coulter doesn’t have the power to direct the Christian Cultural Revolution. So let’s say she’s a JQ wanna-be.

April 19, 2005 @ 6:15 pm | Comment

“The left-wing version of Coulter would be someone like Jiang Qing…except that Coulter doesn’t have the power to direct the Christian Cultural Revolution. So let’s say she’s a JQ wanna-be.”

This is just too funny but TRUE!!! HAHA, I think she secretly admires and idolizes Eva Braun.

April 19, 2005 @ 6:42 pm | Comment

Ha … all I can say is that you don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot. Either Michael Moore’s brand of extremist rhetoric was unacceptable, or there’s nothing wrong with this woman getting prominent media coverage. One or the other, but not both. Most people in the anti-Bush campaign freedly admitted that Moore’s views were hardly unbiased, but as long as it got the job done, they were perfectly happy to sit back and let Moore do his stuff. No, in fact, his work was positively promoted, and hailed to the high heavens. Now, when there’s a nut in the other camp, who is no more extremist than Moore, it’s all about wailing and “what’s the world coming to?”

And, I better add the normal “don’t jump down my throat” footnote: I am not endorsing her views. I agree, tentatively, that the media would probably be better off not highlighting her. I am also saying that Michael Moore was every bit as bad. So, if one is unacceptable, then so is the other. If Moore is fine, or even good if you agree with him, then Coulter is fine and good for those who agree with her.

April 19, 2005 @ 8:51 pm | Comment

Moore is definitely biased and can be sloppy. He has never said anything nearly as outrageous as Coulter, such as her statement that she wished Timothy McVeigh had blown up the NY Times building instead of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. (Ha ha ha.) If you can find one instance where Moore has done this I want to know.

That’s just one example of Coulter’s sins, and there are many, many, many others. If you want to debate this seriously, please give the example from Moore that you believe compares. And I don’t mean an exaggeration of a fact or getting some numbers wrong or being an asshole. I mean wishing death on innocent human beings simply for being liberal. Find a single example where Moore says that simply for being liberal one is committing treason. If you believe there is equivalency, I request you not use generalities but links and quotes, as Digby does to document Coulter’s experiencing multiple orgasms at the thought of dead liberals.

April 19, 2005 @ 9:58 pm | Comment

Sometimes, I get the feeling that the American Left and Right regard each other as more immediate threats than any external enemies. I think the problem vis-à-vis Ann Coulter and Michael Moore is that there is only one Michael Moore. The right has Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, and poor MSNBC misfit Joe Scarborough among others. The left only has one shill, and while he may balance the Right by gross tonnage (I couldn’t resist a fact joke, I’m sorry!) he is far outnumbered.

April 19, 2005 @ 10:02 pm | Comment

This was meant to follow the last comment, but somehow your spam filter kept blocking my comment. So I broke it up to see what keywords were hitting the filter.

Also of course that while Michael Moore is arguably more well known than his rivals on the right, he doesn’t have the same constant media exposure and demagogue’s pulpit as the others do.

April 19, 2005 @ 10:05 pm | Comment

Give Michael Moore four hours per night of prime time tv time, columns on national newspapers, and an ince-stuous cir-cle of blo-ggers who link to him and then you would have som-ething equi-valent to what the right has amas-sed. (hopefully the breaks will fix whatever it is the filter is hitting)

April 19, 2005 @ 10:09 pm | Comment

Richard & Tom,

Personally, I haven’t seen any of the signs myself becuase I haven’t been in the country for at least a year. I’ve only read the hubbub going around the internet.

I did go back to a website that had been selling the “kill Bush” merchandise, but I see that it has been removed and replaced with this:

http://www.cafepress.com/shop/sorry

Myself, I’ve never really paid any attention to Ann Coulter so I can’t really say a great deal about her. I will say that I haven’t seen anything where she has seriously advocated the murder of “liberals” as I believe that is also against the law, isn’t it?

I don’t believe that she is any further on the right than many of those who are way out on the left. It’s the pot calling the kettle black, imo.

April 20, 2005 @ 12:19 am | Comment

her statement that she wished Timothy McVeigh had blown up the NY Times building instead of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. (Ha ha ha.) If you can find one instance where Moore has done this I want to know.

Are you serious? Wasn’t it our own favorite scrotum-sniffer who said the 9/11 targets were a mistake because they weren’t Bush-voters?. Now it’s possible that I dreamed this, but it’s virtually certain that one of us is delusional.

April 20, 2005 @ 1:38 am | Comment

All this talk of the right needs to be put in the context of what the left achieved in the last 40 years. From 1960 on, the left managed to gain control of universities, mainstream media,and both houses of congress for most of that time. The right has managed to gain political power in the last ten, and has exploited the new media to gain power they were previously shut out of . You can also see the right making a counterattack on the leftist control of universities. The pendulum is just swinging back. Unfortunately the current period is also a time of extreme rhetoric, but if you checked newspapers from the first 150 years of American history there’s nothing surprising about it.

April 20, 2005 @ 3:29 am | Comment

Do Coulter’s comments actually call for people to kill anyone … I mean, really kill them, not just talk about it? Come on Richard, it’s called hyperbole. I think you may agree that Michael Moore also indulges in it, even if not using the same particular ones. If Coulter were in fact calling for people to be killed, then she could be easily prosecuted under existing legislation. Also, the idea that “liberals” (whatever that may mean) never called “conservatives” traitors is ridiculous … they’re betraying our heritage, massacring our forests, poisoning our earth, they’re destroying our position of respect in the world (umm, note: when in recent decades has America NOT been generally despised in the world?), they’re illegally invading other countries, they’re trampling on our basic freedoms, they’re causing the deaths of our boys … any of that sound familiar?

As I said … it’s a classic case of not liking it when the shoe is on the other foot. Humour and sarcasm and exageration are tolerated when it serves your purpose. When it’s aimed at ideas that you believe in, you start crying “foul!”

As someone else commented, the left has dominated the American media for so long that people have forgotten where the middle ground lies. Now people from the right are revelling in their new-found freedom to come out with horrendously non-politically correct language. It’s not because they actually want people dead, it’s because they know it will be a tremendous wind-up to their enemies, and isn’t it good that the very words you use can no longer be dictated to you by your political opponents? I remember when I was a teenager … me and my friends got together and put up a handful of posters in our school simply saying “death to all who oppose us!” Was it because we actually wanted to kill anyone? No … in fact the idea of violence of any kind never entered our heads. Rather, we knew it was outrageous, and we just wanted to see what would happen. We stood back and watched. Very quickly, a few outraged people of more left-leaning political views than ourselves came along and tore down the posters with greatly exagerated looks of outrage on their faces. What was our reaction? We laughed ourselves silly, and then ran off to collect our coins to print off five times as many posters, and stuck them everywhere. They continued to be ripped down, and we continued to laugh, and eventually the deputy head came along and told us that we could still put up posters, but we’d have to tone it down. So, we put our heads together, and came up with a new slogan, “Bad health to all who oppose us.” Frankly, we thought it was time to let people know that we weren’t being serious, and that the whole thing was a combination of prank and social experiment for us. So, we duly stuck up our “Bad health” posters, thinking that surely people would get the point. To our consternation, the new batch generated almost as much moral outrage, and continued to be ripped down by these self-appointed guardians of propriety. With eyebrows raised, we looked at eachother and shrugged. These people were just too stupid, and it wasn’t fun baiting them anymore. So our poster campaign came to an end. We didn’t like being told what we could and could not say, so we chose to push the envelope in the most outrageous manner we could think of. So I would suggest to you that your moral outrage is only providing amusement to those using this kind of language, and encouraging them to continue. Sooner or later, they’ll get bored with it, but the more moral outrage it generates, the longer it will last.

April 20, 2005 @ 5:02 am | Comment

9
Your last comment is the silliest piece of rationalization to ever grace this blog. You were playing, the right nuts are close to being deadly serious in their motivation to gain control of the politics and minds of Americans for effectuating the right’s policies, some of which are regressive and harmful.

On Mike Moore. I love the guy. He tries making a points about some of the dirty and nasty aspects of American life and politics against the rich, the powerful and the mendacious. All of whom need to have their varnish stripped regularly to expose the truely bad ones. Good for him I say.

Annie babe. She can’t carry Moore’s honey bucket simply for the reason she is a partisan political hack.

April 20, 2005 @ 9:33 am | Comment

You can predict exactly where these conversations will go: straight to the “liberal media” conspiracy. This is a perfect example of what has been happening in American politics over the past 15 years. Because of the liberal conspiracy that is controlling the media and academia, the right justifies its own extremism as a “balancing act.” So I always hear people claiming that Fox “balances” the NY Times. And that Coulter balances Moore. And that talk radio balances CBS, etc. In other words, right-wing extremism supposedly balances anything that isn’t right-wing extremism.

Make a real comparison: Mother Jones vs. National Review. Or The Nation vs. Limbaugh.

If the media in the US is “liberal,” I sure must have missed it. I would say most of the mainstream media in Europe is actually liberal. The mainstream media in the US these days mostly panders to whomever or whatever happens to be popular (these days its Chrisitan conservatives). Look at local news, talk radio, FOX, — those aren’t the conservative versions of ABC, NBC, CNN. Not by a long shot. I don’t recall ABC or CNN getting talking points directly from the Clinton white house.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t liberal strains in some media outlets. Of course there are. Although, I don’t see many left-wing wing nuts on national TV “balancing” the Hannity’s, the Limbaughs, and the Coulters.

April 20, 2005 @ 10:10 am | Comment

On most issues:

The President agrees with Ann Coulter.

Most members of Congress agree with Ann Coulter.

Several members of the Supreme Court agree with Ann Coulter.

Most CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations agree with Ann Coulter.

The editorial boards of several of the country’s largest and most influential newspapers agree with Ann Coulter.

And yet, because some professors of math and chemistry and history voted for Kerry, we continue to be fed the interesting lie that America remains in the grip of a totalitarian Islamo-Marxist élite.

America has historically not about glorifying the overdog at the expense of the underdog. What the right-wing élite doesn’t seem to realize is that they’ve won. So why do they persist in behaving as though it’s 1993 and they’re a poor, powerless, persecuted minority?

Probably for the same reason that they perpetuate the idea that John Kerry is an aloof, out-of-touch, radical snob, whereas George W. Bush — educated at Andover, Yale, and Harvard, son of a President, grandson of a Senator — is a humble man of the people.

It’s called “projection.”

April 20, 2005 @ 10:50 am | Comment

For the record, if you want the left-wing version of Coulter, I would say the best candidate is Ward Churchill. They are both extremists that the right and left should ignore.

April 20, 2005 @ 12:10 pm | Comment

Tuode, you’re right that there aren’t many left-wing “nuts” balancing Hannity, Limbaugh et al. However, one of the striking things about the U.S. media landscape in recent years is the appearance of truly left-wing
commentators on mainstream T.V.

People like Katrina van den Heuvel and David Corn, both of “The Nation” and Bernie Ward of KGO now often appear on CNN, MSNBC and even Fox because these networks devote so much time to point-counterpoint-type debates they have to draft pretty much anyone they can find for these segments. I don’t recall seeing them on TV in the Clinton years. That development has taken place even though TV has, in fact, drifted to the right since before 9/11.

April 20, 2005 @ 12:56 pm | Comment

Wow, so did I miss the part where the United States became Marxist under the influence of pernicious leftist academics? Dang. I must have been napping…

April 20, 2005 @ 4:06 pm | Comment

FSN and Gordon, it’s fun to see you both back away from my simple challenge. You both in effect are calling a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Let’s call Moore the pot and Coulter the kettle. Coulter’s dangerous rhetoric is a matter of record and can be easily found. Let me help:

“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”

“All 19 hijackers in last week’s attack appear to have been aliens…. [Legally,] Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave.”

“The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man’s dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet — it’s yours. That’s our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that’s the Biblical view.”

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 – except Goldwater in ’64 – the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.”

That took just a minute. Now, what about the pot? Both of you, Gordon and FSN9, carefully backed away from my request to simply put your money where your mouth is and show me why you claim Moore is Coulter’s equivalent. It’s disappointing, because both of you instantly see through the stupid and superfluous arguments with which some Chinese xenophobes dismiss criticism of Mao. They presenty a broad generality, like “He gave China its spine” but refuse to actually examine what he did. So I repeat, What has Moore done specifically that makes him Coulter’s equivalent? He’s distorted facts, but hell, a lot of journalists have done that. He’s opinionated. But he usually lets those he’s against do the talking to make his points — his clips are his most powerful tool.

Moore doesn’t call for violence. Now, maybe you can find a quote he once said that indicates he’d like to commit violence on a Republican, but that’s absoutely not his trademark or MO. We all say dumb things sometimes. But with Ann, it is all she ever does, uttering such appallingly inane shit that you wonder why on earth she is on TV. No one who says these things should be handed such a huge audience. And no equivalent spokesperson on the left has been given such an audience. This is truly a right-wing phenomenon: the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth pundit who serves as an attack dog, being payed to say the most shocking things conceivable against the “enemy,” liberals. I ask you again, and request you employ critical thinking and offer specifics: Is there a similar phenomenon on the left? We have Air America. They’re not my favorite station because I find they get tiresome. They can bite a little, but I have never, ever, ever heard them employ Coulter’s techniques of bludgeoning the opponent with one baseless charge after the other. Al Franken is usually polite and even reserved. Witty, sharp, but always respectful and always a gentleman. So when you say it’s symptomatic of hype and excess on both sides, I must challenge you — where is this manifesting itself on the left, and where are the concrete examples. If you only give generalities and no examples, I will take it as proof positive that you don’t have a leg to stand on here.

FSN9, I’m not saying she should be indicted for threatening people with murder because she says she wants reporters to die. No, my point is about language and the shift in media integrity, from a relatively civilized and respecting tone to one of raw ugly threats. Coulter brings this to a new level. But she isn’t alone, Sean and Bill and Rush and Oliver and a huge fleet of GOP populist slanderers on the air and in print do the same. Have you ever hung around Town Hall? Now, we can point to idiotic commenters at Democratic Underground and even Atrios. You’ll always get those assorted fruitcakes on both sides. But Coulter is a syndicated columnist, a “political analyst” on a amajor news network, a best-selling author and the cover girl on Time magazine. That you do not look at what she has said and written and fail to see that something is off — well, I probably won’t change your minds but at least I’ve tried.

FSN9, you also trot out the old canard about the left controlling the media. What crap. The media was never more confrontational, never such a pack of snarling dobermans as they were during the Clinton sex scandal. It’s their job, not to be partisan but to be oppositional. Their role is questioning the government and stopping them from getting away with the shit they inevitably try to get away with. Media coverage in America leaves much to be desired, but it’s not nearly as imbalanced as you’d have us believe, with pillars of conservatism like the Wall Street Journal, and excellent mainstream publs like the Washington Post, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Newsday and many, many others. Reporters will fuck up, like Dan Rather, but when they do they are called to account and fired. Ask Dan. The untruths in Coulter’s books have been pointed out numerous times even by conservatives who see her as a bratty big-mouth. So why isn’t she fired? Why isn’t she tarred and feathered? Why is she on Time’s cover? Again, if you don’t see the oddity, and how a liberal equivalent of Coulter is simply not allowed to exist (because educated, open-minded people don’t communicate like that and besides, no one would give them an audience) — well, you’re entitled to your opinion. But never excuse what she’s doing by saying it’s just “jokes” or “hyperbole.” People in responsible positions are supposed to be more responsible. If any Democratic news commenter had said similar things in tone and content, they’d have their career ended on the spot. Luckily, there is not a single prominent liberal commenter who talks in her vein, not one. If you believe there is, who are they, and what did they say to make you draw the comparison (and I don’t mean a one-time slip-up, but a pattern of suggesting violence and demeaning others)? Thanks.

April 20, 2005 @ 5:17 pm | Comment

I think the facts of left wing media bias speak for themselves. It’s very difficult to start a new television channel, yet Fox News needed only 5 years to become bigger than CNN. The bias doesn’t excuse extremism though. The extremism is a result of the media bias, however. The media organization acts as a filter. The right felt they could not get their views across, so they went to the new media- and old media where they could. The result is that the rightwing media has a lot more individuals like Rush Limbaugh as opposed to organizations like Fox News.
I mean, you guys know that a lot of the big three network’s newscasts used to just pull stories off the front page of the New York Times? I think the Times can safely be said to be biased to the left. Of course the media will be oppositional, they always go after people in power. If you actually examine it though, and look at things like what adjectives they use to describe people and what they choose to report and what they choose not too, the bias becomes pretty clear. Plus you can read Bernie Goldberg’s book which shows that no one in the media thinks they are biased because everyone thinks the same way. Like the woman who couldn’t believe Nixon won because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him.
Finally, you guys do know that Coulter is joking, right? (I don’t think Ward Churchill was making hyberbole when he called people little Eichmanns.) I don’t see her so much an a commentator as a comedienne, albeit a bad one. I mean, the joke about women not voting, do you think she’s serious? She’s making a joke based on the facts. If you ever watch her, she’s always smiling and laughing, because liberals go nuts over the stuff she says. She’s not taking that crap seriously and no one else would if liberals just dismissed her comments as idiotic. I think conservatives just like her because she makes liberals mad. Eventually, she’ll go the way of Andrew Dice Clay. It’s unfortuante though because some of her books are well researched and full of facts, but she obscures it with her inane rhetoric.
In the end though, I think people just need to grow a pair. The world is changing due to new technologies. The last Century saw the rise of centralized control- military, state, media, etc. The Big 3 in media, autos, etc. Now there are more voices, and media is probably going to look more like the 1800’s, when there were thousands of papers. It’s only in the recent past that a city like Washington, DC has 2 major newspapers. The “extremism” on both sides will increase because voices that were silenced before will be heard, and because people are going to shout to get their views heard over the din of millions of voices.
“I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a ‘deserter.’ What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar, and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants” –Michael Moore

April 20, 2005 @ 7:03 pm | Comment

Don’t get me started on Goldberg’s book. It’s been discredited enough, certainly to my satisfaction. The Times is an establishment media that moved more to the left during Raines’ leadership than ever before, but still it never, in any way, even approach Fox in terms of vitriol and blatant slander. Prejuiced, yes. Partisan and drenched in snide bashing? Not at all (and I know the institution very well and that’s all I’m going to say). Maureen Dowd is the closest they ever got to that, and she was tougher on Clinton than any other pundit. Luckily she’s equal opportunity, and is just as vicious with Bush. The Times is generally a class act, and allows Brooks and Safire to counterbalance Krugman and Herbert. It’s editorials are strictly middle of the road.

Where is the Moore quote from (context)? There you see, he is being a true clown, as the “poops his pants” line indicates it. Dumb, but not far off-base until the last phrase.

April 20, 2005 @ 7:10 pm | Comment

Matt:
You can be funny. But Coulter while she might think she is being humorous has a presence that belies what I think is her real intent, to support the GOP and win the hearts and minds for the GOP conservative movement. Coulter is not an entertainer as such and I don’t think she is billed as an entertainer. I guess if I don’t refer to her a a hack I would refer to her as a political operative.

April 20, 2005 @ 8:21 pm | Comment

More information on the biased Time writer who tried to whitewash Ann Coulter…

http://mediamatters.org/items/200504200008

“Defending his 5,800-word cover story on right-wing pundit Ann Coulter in an online interview, Time writer John Cloud used all manner of ad hominem attacks — including against Coulter, the original subject of his whitewash profile — but few facts. Apparently stung by widespread criticism over Time’s decision to feature Coulter on the cover, Cloud invoked the ultimate distancing technique, comparing Coulter to Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. ”

April 20, 2005 @ 11:28 pm | Comment

Nothing ever changes, does it? You guys were the same ones ripping down my posters when I was 16, and you still haven’t learned. Well, maybe it’s a good thing, because after a while it really does become boring baiting such easy targets. Richard, no one has backed away from anything … you’ve just chosen to miss the point. You want to engage in a blow by blow discussion of what Moore said and what Coulter said … but in the end, what does that prove? It proves that Moore and Coulter use different forms of hyperbole. That’s it. Coulter’s style is dictated by the topics that will wind up you (and others like you) Richard … and it’s plainly working very well. If you want to see the motive and source of the words she uses, you need to look at her targets. Moore pokes away at Bush where he thinks it will cause the most hurt / outrage, and so does Coulter. They’ve got different targets, so they use different methods. Just because I have declined to engage in the debate on terms you dictate does not mean you’ve won the argument … it simply means that I regard those terms as invalid.

As for the “myth” of bias in the American media … well, when the media is agreeing with you, it’s very easy to think it’s fair and balanced I guess. And yes, I know that’s the slogan of a media organ you hate, but see it both ways … they think its fair and balanced because it gives them the kind of news they want to hear. You think other media outlets have been fair and balanced for the same reason.

And for proof positive of my views, just see the comments of Pete “Mike Moore, I love the guy”, who couldn’t have done a better job. Actually, maybe he’s a plant for our side?

April 21, 2005 @ 12:16 am | Comment

Oh. brother….

April 21, 2005 @ 1:14 am | Comment

>but in the end, what does that prove?

You mean what do facts prove? Hmm.

“They’ve got different targets, so they use different methods.”

But you just said they use the same method. So now you are saying that they actually are different?

>If you want to see the motive and source of the words she uses, you need to look at her targets.

So is this like when a racist uses racist terms? They are just trying to get non-racists riled up? Or their targets are non-racists – and it “works very well” at getting those non-racists riled up….? Hmm, that makes sense.

>when the media is agreeing with you

Uh, I thought most of us said that the media doesn’t agree with us. Also, no one here said “bais” is a myth in the media and that every non-FOX media outlet is “fair and balanced.” People said that the American media aren’t generally “liberal.” Everything is biased to some degree. It is convenient, though, to have a persecution complex/myth that lets you be as extreme as you wanna be.

April 21, 2005 @ 9:35 am | Comment

I agree with some of FSN9’s comments, but think tuode’s rebuttal is excellent.

Here’s the thing for me. Michael Moore is liberal but what he “preaches,” what his vision is — it is not extreme. What he’s always been fighting for has been better treatment of workers, less government waste, less corruption. His big thing about Bush is the total dedication to big business even at the risk of American lives. He doesn’t preach anything even close to racism or throw barbed insults without some supporting evidence. He exaggerates, like any clown – and he is a clown, not a columnist or “political analyst.” But his beliefs and his “agenda” is strictly liberal (in the good sense, as in before Ronald Reagan turned it into an obscene word).

Coulter’s agenda, on the other hand, is total subservience to Republicans even if it makes her tell the most extreme and utterly unsupportable lies. That’s why I feel, if you’re going to make this comparison, you have to show some evidence. There is evidence to prove Coulter’s extreme reactionary and medieval views; there is no corresponding evidence to show Moore’s far-out-leftist views, because he doesn’t have any. Where I agree with you is their methodology, to go after weak spots and create the most havoc with what they say. More at least has his evidence on tape — just showing Bush himself talk is usually enough! With Coulter, it’s pure invective, often groundless and always incendiary. There are one or two instances in F911 that I thought Moore wandered into this territory, namely the Afghan pipeline thing. But in a 2-hour film with so much packed into it, most of it has stood up pretty well, especially when it wasn’t Moore doing the talking. I resented his portraying Iraq as a fun peaceful paradise at the beginning, and thought it was terrible judgement not to balance that with Saddam’s atrocities. A good example of prejudice. Just like some to the right who portrayed Iraq as a total hellhole, which it was for anyone who crossed the Ba’ath party; but it wasn’t much worse than many of its neighbors.

About a balanced media…The media do balance themselves to a great degree. There’s a mix of conservative and liberal columnists. My own newspaper, the large AZ Republic, is rather far to the right. They tend to reflect their geographies. The WSJ is ultra-far-right on its editorial page (though even they have called for Delay to resign) and moderate-left in its news reporting.

Fox News stands out as a true and pure aberration. There is no liberal counterpart. Most of the time the ones doing the jaw-flapping are figures from the true fringes: Oliver North, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris — these are not people of expertise or knowledge. They are far-right loons. There is no news station or major newspaper that stacks the deck like this, devoting the majority of its time and space to true fringe liberal types, or even to lefties like Michael Moore. Most of their guests are government officials and university professors. There may be some liberal bias, and sometimes it may even erupt (as with Dan Rather) but that’s extremely rare. Fox News is full of errors and inanities every day, every hour but no one flinches because they are supposed to be that way. Because they are not news, they are pure right-wing titillation, a platform to endlessly slam those monstrous liberal professors and news editors who want to eat conservatives’ babies and burn the American flag in an orgy or liberal glee. We expect this of Fox, because it is not a news station. It is infotainment at its most base, like watching gladiators rip each other apart.

April 21, 2005 @ 10:30 am | Comment

I wouldn’t be as kind to Moore as Richard, but he isn’t the equivalent of Coulter.

You know it is amazing: the media and academia are completely controlled by a left-wing conspiracy, yet the Republicans control the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the governerships. They also dominate most of the radio airwaves in this country.

Funny how that works. Well, on to the independent judiciary….you know, controlled by liberal activists judges like Justice Kennedy.

Wow.

April 21, 2005 @ 3:45 pm | Comment

Richard:

Of course Michael Moore is not the same as Ann Coulter. One of them has tits. The other is a Republican.

April 22, 2005 @ 12:08 am | Comment

9th
Talk about getting someone’s goat, you just slipped on your own vulnerability, buddy.

I think there is a big right wing conspiracy happening in America. It has been occurring for the last 30 or so years, driven by true believers, “Christian” (or maybe not so christian at all) religious fanatics, greed and profits, among other things.

What is the liberal conspiracy? I do not think there is one at all. It is a myth cooked up by those who are against progressive attitudes and politics and want to gain and keep political control in the US, by those who believe in the power structure represented by the GOP, “money talks” and “what is good for business is good for America.” There was the infamous statement by the then CEO of GM on some national issue affecting the company, “what is good for GM is good for the country,” that typlified the GOP/business attitude some years ago. It seems to me that this self-centered attitude is once again making its way forward as the standard of the Right’s political dialogue in America. We have had for a long while the businss/military interests controling the money for their own benefit, now we have the religious fruitcakes trying to control the politics in their religious images.

Whatever ones position is on these matters, US politics, China/Japan, China/Taiwan/US, the Middle East, Palestine/Israel, it is a hell of an interesting time to be alive. Just saw that Koizumi apologized to China for Japan’s wartime aggression. Probably not enough for CCP and its government puppets, but I hope the masses will accept it.

The reason I do not think there is a liberal conspiracy is because there is a real world, away from and outside of agendas of the religious forces trying to gain power in American politics and outside of the
agendas of the other forces that want Americans to be easily moved and manipulated, that values real learning and education, that values truth for its own sake, that values people as humans, not votes, not pieces of a chess game,
that values scientific knowledge and inquiry as sacred for civilization, not as something that is to be bent, distorted, or exaggerated for selfish gain.

April 23, 2005 @ 2:50 am | Comment