...In order for there to be cognitive dissonance there has to be actual, you know, cognition, and that seems in very short supply among Republicans lately.
It appears that some of the bloviating blockheads at Fixed Noise are doing that most Republican of things, making an "enemies list." Not surprisingly, lib'ruls and the sites they frequent are pretty high thereon:
BERNIE GOLDBERG: Number three is the Daily Kos. And they are very significant in this current media world in which we live. They have one of, if not the biggest left wing political web sites. They are rabidly anti-conservative. Yet, its founder Markous Moulitsas has so much clout that not only does he get on the most mainstream of shows, Meet the Press, to talk politics but the Democrats who are running for President of the United States went there and made speeches to the Daily Kos convention. That’s how afraid they are of offending the Daily Kos.BILL O'REILLY: And it’s about as hateful as you can possibly...You can’t get a more hateful web site than them.
GOLDBERG: They started this rumor that Sarah Palin’s child with Down Syndrome may not have been her child, but the daughter’s. It’s just terrible, terrible stuff.
My, oh, my, where to start?
Let's hit the Wayback Machine and set it to, um, last week. Remember all those Republican "leaders" kowtowing before the Great and Powerful Rushbo? Funny how it seems to have escaped the notice of the Republican media machine.
I can't speak for Daily Kos, but I think "anti-conservative" is an accurate description of the prevailing philosophy there. And perhaps some folks there are hard on conservatives once in a while. But Goldberg's frothing at the mouth would look considerably less foolish if he and his fellow conservatives hadn't been spending most of the last decade pissing all over every liberal they could find an excuse to mention, and making scads of money from their followers doing it. Anybody else remember these conservative blockbusters yawners?
- Michael Savage, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder
- Ann Coulter, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)
- Michael Savage, The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on our Churches, Schools, and Military
- Ann Coulter, Godless: The Church of Liberalism
- Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
- Sean Hannity, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism
- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism
- Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror
Those are just the "best of" selections that struck me as I perused a few "people who bought this also purchased..." links at Amazon.com. And while I wouldn't soil my hands with any of the preceding titles, and tend to doubt that any reasonable human being, considering them objectively, would be able to find in them even a shred of a cogent or coherent argument, that didn't stop them from raking in the bucks. Three of those eight books made it to the top of the New York Times best seller list at least once: Coulter's Godless, Goldberg's Liberal Fascism and Hannity's Deliver us From Evil. Neither should we forget that Coulter, Hannity, Michelle Malkin, and dozens of other conservative, um, pundits, routinely call for liberals to be killed, stripped of their civil rights, exiled, tortured, imprisoned, and the like.
And if O'Reilly is convinced that Daily Kos is the most hateful website out there on the intertubes, perhaps he should spend a little time dredging his way through the hate-filled sewer that is Little Green Footballs, or the Free Republic before he makes such an absurd claim. Threats of violence get very short shrift at Daily Kos. They're a staple in trade at most of the conservative websites out there--and instead of being castigated, they're regularly applauded.
Yes, there were some disturbing allegations made about Trig Palin at Daily Kos: by a tiny fraction of the community there. They were universally decried by the rest of the community; a fact which Goldberg conveniently omits to mention. Apparently he was unaware of the smear campaign (widely believed, and probably with some justice, to have been promoted by the Bush campaign) directed against John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary when, among other accusations, it was alleged that McCain was the father of an illegitimate black child. Then there was the time when Rush Limbaugh (the Face and Voice of the Republican Party, according to all of its leaders) compared a teen-aged Chelsea Clinton to a dog.
In short, the take-home message seems to be that Republicans can do anything to anyone and no one dares to take offense. But let anyone do anything even remotely critical of Republicans, and it's the end of the world as we know it, a sign of the moral decay of American society, and imputable as guilt to absolutely every liberal on the planet and anybody who has ever even thought about voting for a Democrat. As for being put on the conservacons' enemies list, I'd say that was more of a badge of honor than something to be ashamed of. Or, to quote the immortal Molly Ivins, apropos of the Limboob, it's "...an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle."
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