I generally like the job that Chris Mulick does, and I love the fact that smaller papers like the Tri-City Herald still maintain an Olympia bureau, but I just gotta call him out for a recent blog post in which he succumbs to the classic journalistic sin of equivalency. Mulick writes:
One of the more amusing aspects to covering campaigns in an election year is digesting all the yelling and screaming political parties intend for public consumption.
A favorite tactic is the missive from one party telling the other party’s candidate what they should do, as if they were playing a high stakes game of Simon Says.
For instance, the state Republican Party issued a press release last week titled “Gregoire Should Denounce Her Presidential Favorite’s Elitist Rhetoric.”
A week earlier the Democratic Party issued a press release titled “Rossi Should Reject and Denounce the BIAW.”
Yeah, no doubt, the two parties routinely do this sort of thing, and it can sometimes get quite silly, but Mulick chose a dubious example to illustrate his point. On the one hand, the state GOP demanded that Gov. Gregoire denounce Sen. Barack Obama for saying that small town voters are “bitter.” On the other, the state Dems demanded that Dino Rossi denounce the BIAW for repeatedly insisting that environmentalists are “Nazis.”
Sure, both parties sent out press releases, but there’s no equivalency between Obama’s statements and the violent, extremist hate-talk of the BIAW… and to imply such is simply irresponsible.
If there is something to ber bitter about, it is the acquiescence of the MSM to the spin from the campaigns.
Let em give you another example. The Clinton Crime Family has doen all ti can, short of plantigng a horses head, to Rovize Obama. The press faithfully rports these issues as controversies. Whenr challenged, the MSM say that this sis news because the ca,mpaifns make it so.
Really? What is the role for the MSM then?
Yup!
Yet how many times have people on the left called people on the right nazis? Hell, look how many times the HA hooligans call people nazis they don’t agree with.
What’s wrong, can’t take what you dish out?
The MSM is frequently referring to the Reverend Wright issue and Obama’s reference to “bitter” people as “scandals.” Such do not qualify as scandals in my book. Scandals involve licentiousness, or moral failings, or graft, or like matters. Misuse of words in this manner is symptomatic of a media that is failing to do its job. We need a media that follows objective journalistic principles rather than what we have–a rightwing spew machine.
Huh. It turns out that Fox News viewers are less informed than anyone else.
http://people-press.org/report.....portID=319
Well, call me Captain Obvious.
3 MS
I don’t know, how many times? Hey, I have an idea! Cite a fact with a credible source and amaze us all.
1 SJ
The role of the MSM, apparently, is to suck McCain’s dick.
@5
I now pronounce you Captain Obvious.
That crazy Jeremiah Wright. He seems to be under the misaken idea that the US government staunchly supported the Apartheid government of South Africa for decades, and that (this will make you chuckle) the US government supported the peasant-killing Contras in Nicaragua and Honduras using money gained from selling arms to Iran.
Such a sad, crazy man. Where does he get this stuff?
Marvin@3
Dude, you ARE Nazis. Big diff. What’s puzzling is why people like you, Goldberg and the BIAW’s Mark Musser are so ashamed of your fascism. I kid you. It’s not puzzling at all. It’s pretty fucking obvious what you’re up to.
Marvin Stamn @3,
“Yet how many times have people on the left called people on the right nazis?”
Seemingly, not nearly as many times as you Wingdings claim to be the victim of people on the left calling Wingdings Nazis.
Don’t you think perpetually playing the Nazi victim dishonors and belittles those who really were victims of the Nazis, Marv?
@10 Steve – chuckle, ROTFL
Actually, the Pentagon has just demonstrated true Goering press manipulation tactics by paying off ex-military to spout about how well we are doing for Fox, CNN and others. Instead of apologizing for subverting democracy and the supposed free press – they are doing an “investigation” at the pentagon. I can see it now – gee – how did we ever get caught doing this….? Instead of why are we in the business of buying good publicity for the government and hiding it. Haven’t noticed too many republicans complaigning about rampant Stalinism by the DOD and bush administration. I guess if it is our own propaganda, the republicans don’t mind…
Also, it turns out we DO torture despite all the denials by Bush. Instead of apologizing, the Bush administration just claims it is legal.
Sounds like the National Socialists to me.
All we need is a Kritalnacht, some brown shirts and terrorists scapegoats …oops, we are halfway there. Now if only Hitler had illegal wiretapping – like we have now…..
I seem to remember Rush Limp.. calling women feminazis about 100 million times.
Take a peak here at the protests and all the hitler references.
http://www.zombietime.com/
How many of these people lean left. How many lean right.
If you believe it dishonors and belittles those that really were victims of the nazis, shouldn’t you speak up about the left.
Feel free to provide some links where those on the right are protesting and calling others nazis. It would be funny to see some working guy marching down the street with a sign and picture of [insert democrat name here] with a hitler mustache.
Marvin@14
Go ahead and call the left commies. Those on the left will call you fascists. It all makes sense in a name-calling way. But when you on the right start calling commies fascists and writing books titled “Liberal Fascism” and writing articles in trade organization newsletters damning enviro-fasists, you folks come off like the loons that you are.
Again, why are those on the right so ashamed to admit that fascism is their thing, not ours? Why this attempt to disown it? Oh, don’t bother. I know why.
Steve @ 15: Well, the whole neo-con argument that the left is fascists only makes since if you remember Orwell’s “double-speak” in his work “1984”.
My guess is that Rove & his minions have spent some time accumulating polling which accumulates a list of words which create negative reactions, especially among those he consider potential Republican voters. Among those words he thinks are “poison” are “far left”, “liberal”, “American-hater”, and “fascist”. So apparantly the instructions to Fox News and just about every Republican who gets within ten feet of a microphone is to string them together with a sentence, adding as the subject of the sentence the name of a Democrat of anybody in the news media with enough brain or balls to report anything other than what the Republicans pass to them.
By the way, I think it is Newsweek this week which is carrying an article headlined “Karl Rove gives Advice to Obama”, or some such. I didn’t bother to read the article.
Besides, I’ve always disliked the left/right dichotomy, with the idea that Communists make up the extreme end of the spectram and Fascists the right end. It’s a very lazy way of trying to organize a lot of different political issues and tactics. It works for the media, which believes it only has a limited amount of time/space to discuss a candidate. But it is very distorting, creating a characture of people and political parties, rather than a real examination of the issues.
rhp@17, Agreed about the left-right simplicity. On the other hand, the right also counts on liberals being pointy-headed libs – and they often oblige. While the left might engage in discussion of “just where in the spectrum”, etc., the right continues to lob fascist mud and it begins to stick. Sometimes you have to drop the intellectualism, call a right-wing nutjob the fascist that he is, challenge him to step outside and be done with it.
Of course, the right ignores or downplays real fascism in America, real American Nazis, hoping to redefine, disown and demonize. How clever of them. Marvin, like Musser, must have gotten the memo.
If Marvin got the memo – I doubt that she could read it. Marvin can only parrot right wing talking points that are only minimally relevant.
Steve @ 18: I agree. I used to spend quite a bit of effort to logically deconstruct neo-con’s arguments, and I still do that where it is appropriate. But I found that to be a fruitless exercise when they are just lobbing emotional name-calling grenades at your direction, without any pretense of logic or honest discussion. In those cases, I found it somewhat liberating to realize that ridicule is just as effective.
Parrot?? I only copy and paste. What’s a talking point.
@3 “Yet how many times have people on the left called people on the right nazis?”
I call Republicans “Nazis” all the time. Want to know why? Because you guys call us “commies,” “traitors,” “unpatriotic,” etc. ad nauseum. Would you like me to stop? Tell you what, if you guys stop, I’ll stop. But your side started it, so your side has to stop first, and I won’t stop until your side stops. How do you Nazi fucktards like them apples?
@22 You tards are traitors.
The BIAW people are great patriots of the USA
and there aint a tard on here that could hold a candle to any one of them. That is a fact.
Fascism and Nazism were both competing forms of socialism. Throw in the obvious statist, totalitarian similiarities to communism and calling the left Commie, Nazi or Fascist is historically dead on.
Professor Darryl: Pathetically bad comeback in #11.
Results 1 – 10 of about 1,020 from horsesass.org for Nazi
And that’s just the ones cached by Google.
Againnotcorrectneverbright@13:
Correction, Rush calls certain women feminazis all the time. NOW for example – who kept their mouth shut on the Clinton peccadilloes.
Steve@15: Commie argument specious at best. Your side wants to play Robin Hood with taxes, wealth, social programs, etc.
So take a minute, pull the thumb out of your ass, allow the pressure to dissipate, and maybe synaptic brain function will return to your cranial orifice.
Steve@15: We don’t have groups like PETA, ELF, GLAAD, GLA, NAMBLA, etc (you know lefty alphabet soup) on our side…
Nuff said!
The liberals here are pizzed because Fox News tends to show the other side of the argument. And… since morons like the late Peter Jennings called the 1994 elections a temper tantrum, people are watching cable news more and more. Hence Katie Couric has a paltry evening audience because her shtick doesn’t work in the evening when brains are engaged. In the morning people are walking zombies until their 3rd coffee cup.
Mark@23 and screwedher@25 must be putting out some kind of satire – I hope. Puddy, on the other hand, seems to be one of those feverish psycho fascist-follower types that litter the blogs. Take a pill or something. Maybe meds will help you to accept that you’re a repressive twit and a fascist. What a fucking loser.
And the reason that the dixiecrats turned democrats turned liberals turned progressives change their label every generation is because???
Mark@32, Dixicrats? Good grief! I take it that your fascist shame knows no bounds. You ought to consider coming out of the closet. I bet there’s lots of closeted fascists like yourself yearning to bust out. You won’t be alone.
Steve: Fucking Loser? Feverish psycho fascist-follower? Who do I follow loser freak? Here is a PuddyFact for you. I follow no man! Got it? When you post BULLSHITTIUM I’ll call you on it!
I don’t do drugs. And since you need to recommended them, I suggest you take your psychedelics. It’ll give you a “colored” view on life!
Yes the thumb is way up Steve’s ass. And I can see the pressure is building. Soon his head will explode like the opening scene in Scanners.
Puddyfact? Puddyfact??? Damn, you fascists are silly shits. Such bullshit. So anyway, why the shame? Shouldn’t you be, well, in a pathetic way, of course, proud to be a fascist?