Sunday, September 20, 2009

A Little Push Back For The Locals

It's difficult to believe that in the space of a 300 word letter to the editor that someone could get so much so wrong, but I guess Trudy Taylor is some kind of linguistics savant for having pulled it off. Taylor's letter (Longview News Journal, Sept. 20) was in response to my own LNJ column of September 12, titled "Taking Our Country Back From the Hatemongers." It first appeared on this blog on Sept 6 under the title "Civility Strikes Back." I will take a crack at answering Taylor's concerns because, as the blog's title suggests, Liberals can and should,  when called for, respond.


Italics are Trudy


Anderson's list was incomplete




May I remind Durren Anderson that President Barack Obama himself would have to be included in his remonstration of hate-speech users and listeners since the president has gone along, in order to get along, with race mongers like Jeremiah Wright.



Really? The only person Taylor could manage to come up with in completing my list of hatemongers was President Barack Obama? Now even a cursory glance at my piece will show the average reader that it was inspired by those who use the outsized megaphones of TV and talk radio to spew an unrelenting stream of vile, hate drenched demagoguery into the ears (and minds and hearts) of people too dull or desensitized to realize its harmful effects. And it was willful obtuseness to deflect attention from these purveyors of hatred by dragging out the fusty old ghost of Jeremiah Wright. The matter of Wright was laid to rest in the campaign. Obama broke ties with his erstwhile minister and apparently America was satisfied. After all, America did elect him President. Its foolish, and transparently vicious to equate the likes of Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk with Obama.


Glenn Beck is a buffoonish political entertainer who has recently found his niche taking shots, sometimes very accurate ones, at an administration which has apparently declared open season on itself with its unwillingness or inability to shepherd its own minions.


In the spirit of seeking common ground with those who differ from me on political issues, let me say that I agree with Taylor's assertion that Beck is a Buffoon. Beyond that bit of detente however, I have to disagree.As stated in my column, and in David Neiwert's book which I referred to, it's a mistake to let people like Beck and Limbaugh off the hook with the "entertainer" dodge. I guess what liberals and conservatives consider entertainment just doesn't jibe. Beck referred to the country's first African American President as a "Racist," and said that Obama "had a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." This doubtless would have come as quite a shocking surprise to Obama's white mother and grandparents! Nor can I find anything "entertaining" about it, especially in light of this country's anguished history of political assassination and home-grown terror. But hey, conservatives apparently get their jollies in different ways than we liberals do.


May I also remind Durren that eight years of hysterical name-calling and nastiness was standard operating procedure on his part while President George W. Bush was in office; the bulk of which was due to erroneous frustration at a perceived stolen election. The likes of which did real damage to the office of the presidency, leaving our current occupant even more vulnerable to slights and misjudgments from opponents.


This Orwellian double-speak is the strangest comment of all. And frankly, it cuts me to the quick to have my writings over the last eight years reduced to mere "hysterical name-calling." I prefer to think of it as eight years of deploying some of the most exquisite sarcasm, ridicule, and satire that LNJ readers have seen. All of it "reality-based" and richly deserved. Bush was elected under a cloud that included such stark images as the Brooks Brothers Riot in Florida that intimidated vote counters into stopping their work, and a conservatively stacked Supreme Court that ratified those rioters. This is all well documented in Vincent Bugliosi's book, THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA. Look it up. 


Bush did lie us into a war with a sovereign nation that never attacked us. He did lie about the depth and the full extent of illegal wire tapping of American citizens. He did lie about the horrors of detainee torture carried out in the name of the american people. These lies and others are laid out magnificently in David Corn's exhaustively researched, "THE LIES OF GEORGE W. BUSH". So I would differ with the statement that mere "name-calling" has damaged the presidency. Rather, it was the remarkable lack of ethics, morality, and respect for the rule of law which characterized the Bush administration that did the damage. 


Nice try though, Trudy.


d.


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