[Kjorteo]

Psudo responded after I noticed this mistake, so it's now too late to edit my post, but a small retraction is in order.

Kjorteo wrote:

That's not really all that surprising. Personally, the main difference I saw between "mainstream" and "fringe" members of conservative punditry was how well they could participate in civilized debate. .... and Savage would let a caller who doesn't think the Republican party is right onto his show just to play clips from "Age of Aquarius" whenever they try to speak and then cut them off to launch into fourth-grade-caliber name-calling and general bullying.

I was getting my pundits mixed up. I actually meant John Gibson, who literally did the Age of Aquarius thing--a clip of it was replayed and discussed on the Colbert Report, though I can't find which episode that was now. He also replayed and made fun of Jon Stewart's emotional 9/11 response for no apparent reason other than to be a bully, among other things. I consider John Gibson to be less than human. I actually don't know anything about Savage, though I've heard some rather unkind things. (In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that the fact that Psudo not only failed to notice that I criticized the wrong guy, but seemingly agreed with the accidental criticism, isn't a good sign for Savage.)

[Amilam]

Quote:

Is there another option besides "fringe" and "mainstream"? Maybe your personal experience tells you something about core red state districts that my 27 years as a resident of them missed, but my impression was that Limbaugh and Hannity seem about as mainstream right-wing as it's possible to be. The clips and quotes collected by their critics are fringe, sure, but cherry-picking never produces representative samples.

Well again, I was talking about political representation of their beliefs. I'm taking Limbaugh at his word when he constantly complains about nigh the entire GOP moving left of his positions. Now of course this is a useful stance to take as you can take credit for all of GOPs success (See Conservatism worked again!) while washing your hands of any failures (See they weren't Conservative enough!).

On to the point of "cherry picking" though. Limbaugh's been in this business for 20+ years. He's well aware of what he's doing when he drops his cyclical offensive remarks. Let me turn it around, Conservatives hate Jessie Jackson (many Liberals such as myself don't care for him either) due to his more inflammatory racial remarks. However, I've seen Jackson write quite persuasively and evenhandedly on a wide number of issues. Still, it's not "cherry picking" to associate him with a being a racial partisan.

Quote:

Wait, you're arguing that Limbaugh's argument was legitimate, but he repeated it so many times that it became illegitimate? I agree with everything except the italics.

As for blacks voting for the black guy, I have no doubt it was part of the motivation but I dispute the word "only". To my memory, it was advocated as too much of a motivation rather than the only motivation in the whole, wide world.

My point was simply that he denounced reducing voting motivations to racial guilt and then in later shows proceeded to argue just that. Limbaugh was hardly alone, but yes at multiple times he stated that people were only voting for Obama because of his race (blacks because he was black and whites because they wanted to be forgiven by blacks). Just returning to my Powell example.

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He was applauded by conservatives, but I seem to remember widespread criticism of his comments from the left. I wonder if I could find the Boondocks comics that bashed Cosby for those comments; considering this forum is about a political comic, that'd be a particularly appropriate example.

Actually he was applauded by a wide number of Liberals too as well as many in the MSM. Other Liberals took issue with it, but there's a big difference between criticism and racism.

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My point is that cons approving of conservative comments and libs approving of liberal comments is more of a factor used in determining whether a comment is racist than whether the speaker is a member of the race being discussed. If a white liberal is adhering to the liberal talking points that are racially controversial he gets a pass from liberals and criticism from conservatives. And visa versa. To me, that suggests that calling someone "racist" ceases to be about race and becomes a political tool to advocate one's ideology. I then apply that rule back to Rush Limbaugh, an obvious conservative ideologue, and liberal accusations of racism loose all credibility.

Well of course members of each base aren't going to care much about the criticisms from the opposite base. However, going back to my Ferraro example there are plenty of cases where a white Liberal is not permeated to make some of the racial commentary that a black commentator would (liberal or conservative). If anything Ferraro would have been more insulated from criticism if she had been conservative because she would have had a base to rally around. Take Don Ismus as well, since he largely exists outside of political camps he didn't have any strong support when he made his racial remarks.


As far as placing Conservative pundits on the Right/Far Right spectrum, it's a bit difficult for those on the outside looking in. It's not that they are all identical, so much as on most issues they aren't in a hurry to differentiate themselves.

Take gun control. Virtually all Conservatives pundits are against tougher gun restrictions and they'll almost all tell you that gun ownership is a social positive. However, some pundits are against background checks for gun purchases, others won't risk offending some of their listeners and disagree with that position, but they won't advocate it either. The justification for gun ownership can also determine how far right a pundit is. If you just look at the core right like Limbaugh they argue that gun control takes guns out of the hands of citizens and favors criminals. Then on the extreme right you have people like Savage who believe that events like Wako was a fascist act by the government and that the citizens should have access to an even greater range of firepower (tanks, flamethrowers, bazookas, etc) to protect themselves against possible fascism.

Again, it's easy for the public to miss this distinction because I'm sure if I called into Limbaugh's show and argued that events like Wako demonstrated the need for citizens to be able to protect themselves from the government he'd soft agree with me and redirect back to canard of protection from criminals.

[Psudo]

Kjorteo, I don't know that Michael Savage ever specifically did the "Age of Aquarius thing", but he was perfectly willing to yell at callers, shout names like "red diaper doper baby" at them, hang up on them, and spend 20 minutes on angry ranting on the state of education and media hysterics in this country that produces people like that caller. Savage DEFINITELY has the New York anger thing down. His appeal, I think, is the reasoning "He's a total jerk, but he's brilliant and he's our side's total jerk." I liked the brilliant but was repelled by the jerk.

Even if the literal Age of Aquarius event wasn't Savage's doing, it is correct by metaphor.

Sidebar: the term "red diaper doper baby", which is a Savage original, refers to individuals raised on communist doctrines since they were in diapers and marijuana through their teen and young adult years. As such, he reasons that they have been so thoroughly indoctrinated and medicated that reasoning with them requires some kind of shocking wake-up call to make them rethink their entire lifestyles and thinking processes. It's a little witty and a lot dismissive.

I think, Amilam, that your example demonstrates the weakness of the left/right system for describing the relationships between political ideologies. You've mentioned two conservative takes on Waco and I can name a third: 1) Waco proves criminals can get guns illegally, so gun control laws only weaken the law-abiding; 2) Waco proves fascism by the government, so citizens should be allowed to own more powerful weapons as a check against fascism; and 3) Waco isn't about gun control so much as religious rights and whether wackjob religions deserve constitutional protections against such government force.

1) and 2) can be seen as part of a gradient scale of opinions, but 3) is different in kind rather than mere magnitude. It is part of a different set of opinions altogether and cannot be included in a gradient scale alongside the other two. It's further complicated by the fact that one can agree with each of these points to some degree at the same time; I, for example, agree with all three, though I think the religious freedom one is the most important. I don't know that any religious freedoms were actually deprived of the Branch Dividians (the Waco sect), but the protection of people's religious freedoms is the most relevant point of the situation in my view.

I think I do remember some caller making that exact claim on Limbaugh's show that you hypothesized, and Limbaugh gave one of his "But the real issue is..." twists to it that isn't precisely agreement nor disagreement. That fits your prediction very well.

Interestingly enough, flamethrowers are not actually illegal. The fuels that power them are various degrees of controlled substance, but anyone who owns a gas grill can have a gas flame thrower that operates on the same fuel. My dad has a propane flamethrower he uses to kill weeds. Actually, if the government ever does become fascist, everyone who opposes it should move to the Utah/Arizona border; my extended family has the supplies and connections to be the center of a major resistance movement there. =]

Back on the racism issue, you're arguing that Limbaugh denounced "reducing voting motivations to racial guilt" and then used the same as his argument for who to vote for. Except the example you've given was not of him using racial guilt as the motivation behind people's votes, but of ceasing to do so. Stating his objection to racial motivations repeatedly never becomes advocacy for it.

You could argue that voting against racial motivations is the same moral/logical mistake as voting with them, but based on the election results either right-wing pundits didn't actually advocate that or no one listened. I think the former; voters largely voted along their usual ideological lines, with a subset who voted for racial equality (or against racism, if the distinction matters). Perhaps a negligible few voted racist or to negate the anti-racism vote, but it was not a significant influence on the election results nor was it widespread enough to think that influential media figures manipulated it into being.

The strongest bias in the election was opposition to racism that didn't really exist at any influential scale. There's no way Rush Limbaugh can be blamed for that.

[JJ]

Thanks for the praise for "America Alone," Psudo. That book was actually written by Mark Steyn, not Chris Hitchens, but since I recommended Steyn's writings to you on a different occasion, I'll still gladly take the credit

Psudo wrote:

Obviously I oppose arguments that start from the assumption that Republicans are right; that should be a topic of debate rather than a given. The problem I face is that when people claim one of these pundits is a Republican lackey, a list of ten or so examples of them opposing the Republican Party line leap into my brain. Sure, they oppose the Democratic Party line more often; with parties split by wings that's hardly surprising. But a lot of my disillusionment with the Republican Party can be traced to persuasive arguments by Savage or Coulter. Either my experiences are not a representative sample or the other side's aren't.

I understand very much what you're saying. I watch Bill O'Reilly a lot, for instance, and it irks me when people characterize him as some angry buffon who never lets people talk, etc. Obviously the man has a lot of flaws, but you have to actually watch his show on a regular basis to understand what they are. A lot of people just hate the idea of Bill O'Reilly, the caricature they see on Colbert and so forth, rather than the actual, much more complex man himself.

However! I still hold true to my (begrudging, and disappointed) analysis that most mainstream conservative pundits are, at this point, way too partisan, in the sense of supporting party over common sense and ideology.

Laurence Auster would say that for a pundit to be truly independent, he or she must be able to outline a scenario in which they would not vote for "their" party. Many of the mainstream right-wing punditocracy did this, and said they would never support John McCain if he was the nominee. But they all eventually supported him anyway, even though he embodied (or outright authored) all of the major GOP sell-outs that they supposedly hated so very much.

Auster also often says that he finds all the Johnny-come-lately conservatives who blast Bush for "being too liberal" in his style of government very insecure, since Bush has always, always had a long track record of saying and doing liberal-type things. Since day one, for instance, he presented himself as an open-borders kind of guy, and an aggressively pro-Mexico (ie: pro immigrants) policy was one of the cornerstones of his presidential campaign. Yet all the pundits supported him anyway. As bad as Bush and the Republicans got, and of course they criticized both from time to time (they're not outright propagandists) the idea that there could ever be a cut-off point in which support would be withheld never, never came up seriously. It is always an unquestioned given that the Democrats are always worse and a Republican victory, of any sort, at any time, is always good.

It can be thoughtful or critical partisanship at times, but it's partisanship all the same. The tone of the rhetoric is always "us Vs. them," with the understanding that basically all political debates, issues, etc, in America are really about the organized camp of the "Democrats" feuding with the organized camp of the "Republicans". For example, these days right-wing pundits frequently speak not of liberal bias but rather "Democratic bias." Colleges should not hire more conservative professors, they should hire "more Republicans." It becomes impossible to conceive of ideological goals that are not also partisan victories.

[Psudo]

Pardon my mistake on authors. I'm horrible with names. I should have checked that I had the right one.

The eventual punditry support of John McCain is a very good point. I ended up taking the punditry's earlier advice and refusing to vote for McCain, but it's rather telling that they themselves didn't. The reasoning in my head was "It's not enough for us to win; it has to be our principles that win." McCain was, in my reasoning (and in that of the pundits in that temporary period of honesty), an abandonment of those principles.

In the end, it's not even my principles that should win. It's correct principles. Compared to that, I don't matter.

[CanadianJeff]

"It's not enough for us to win; it has to be our principles that win."

Amen to that. It's why I get so ticked off when I see people who blindly follow one party or another and whine that "left" or "right" are nothing but responsible for every bad thing that happens in government. Frankly i salute your thinking.

[commanderkai]

Amilam wrote:

Man this is a tired old delusion I've seen trotted out a hundred times. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you were not once called racist for questioning the mantra of "change".

Oh yes I was, trust me. I don't have the luxury of having youtube clips of my conversations, or taped copies of phone calls, but meh. That being said, I was usually called racist by those who saw Obama as Lord and Savior of the Universe, than by actual politically active people

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There were countless Conservatives that criticised Obama that were never labeled racist: look no further than McCain and Palin themselves. However, some of the fringe right like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter were indeed slammed as being racist in there criticism. Mainly because there criticisms were racist. When you say someone is being voted for entirely based upon white guilt that is the definition of a racial remark. Of course this was intentional on their part, to take up some bizzare racial persecution complex (cue White Man Victim music). Sad to see that it actually stuck with some people.

I don't believe it was entirely on white guilt, however, some of the arguments for voting for Obama, more specifically the "OMG a black man has a chance to be President" (see Lord and Savior people mentioned above) probably did vote for Obama due to his race, and rhetoric, instead of actual policy.

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As far as Obama's cabinet choices, yeah even I (a pretty skeptical Liberal) am taken aback by just how Washington insider his choices have been, mainly because like it's been pointed out he should know better. I mean he exploited the long Washington track records of his opponents throughout the election. Why he's not trying to at least mix in new faces that adhere to old Clinton policies is beyond me.

Oh I didn't expect anything of the sort, don't worry, I was just irritated at those who, once again, saw Obama as the second coming of Jesus Christ. I knew he was a politician, and once again, from a very...cutthroat political area (Chicago) I knew he'd be quite typical of past Democratic politicians. However, at least in my experience, mentioning this to those who saw Obama as the Second Coming basically labeled me as a racist who hated change and hope, so on and so forth. I really can't speak for other conservatives personally, but that was my experience.