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Self-Appointed Liberal Enforcer
- Lies = Al Franken, Lies (And the Lying Liars who Tell
Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (New York, 2003).
- Idiot = Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other
Observations (New York, 1996).
Tearing liberal clowns to shreds is a lot easier than tearing liberal
thinkers to shreds, but what the heck, it amuses me to discover just how empty
the brains of the icons of the left are when you dissect them:
- Lies, p. 30: (Franken is relating the story of an encounter with
Bernard Goldberg on Phil Donahue's short-lived liberal talk show on MSNBC.
He tried to embarrass Goldberg by debunking one of his examples of liberal
Bias: Goldberg had mentioned a commentary by John Chancellor on NBC
Nightly News in 1991, in which Chancellor said that communism was not the
problem in the Soviet Union, but shortages were the problem.) ...What
Chancellor was saying was that Gorbachev couldn't use communism as an excuse
because, by that point, he had completely dismantled communism in the Soviet
Union. A brilliant observation, except that it proves Goldberg
was right. Perestroika, for all its claim to being a radical
reformation, amounted to some superficial changes to a behemoth of a flawed
system that defied subtle adjustment. The goal of perestroika was
not to dismantle the Soviet Union, but to preserve it by moving it gradually
in the direction of a sustainable economic system. It failed on both
counts: The economic system failed to change, and the USSR collapsed.
Chancellor was wrong on both counts: communism had not been dismantled, and
shortages had not been created by the dismantling of communism, as his
dissociation of the two would naturally imply. Neither Chancellor nor
Brokaw actively advocated communism as an economic system (which is the straw
man Franken erected for Goldberg, and then knocked down), but Chancellor
failed to see the truth: communism produced shortages, and despite Gorbachev's
feeble attempts to fix it, shortages persisted. The failure to see such
an obvious truth is what we call "denial." Only a liberal would find it
difficult to blame communism for the problems communism created.
- Idiot p. 5-6: I had been one of those twenty million
[listeners to Rush Limbaugh's syndicated radio show] a while back, listening
to him spew about "feminazis" and their "women-as-victim" ideas.
Limbaugh was railing about how feminists believe that all heterosexual sex is
rape, which, I admit, is a belief that's very hard to defend. The thing
is, I know a lot of women, almost all of whom consider themselves feminists,
and I know of only one who actually holds this belief. You didn't
listen closely enough or often enough or long enough to know what Limbaugh
means by "feminazi." None of the women you mention, except your wife,
fits the definition of a "feminazi," which is a feminist who holds extreme
views, such as the difficult-to-defend position that all heterosexual sex is
rape. I guess not being quite as fat as Rush doesn't prevent you from
exhibiting the traits of an idiot, such as a short attention span and
knee-jerk bigotry against people who sound like they don't think like you do.
- Idiot p. 6: These are the fans [of Limbaugh] who ... call
themselves "dittoheads" in honor of their ability to blindly and uncritically
agree with everything that comes out of Limbaugh's mouth. You
couldn't even get out of the next paragraph without stepping in your own horse
puckey again. "Dittoes" is a phrase used by his listeners to replace the
wordy and annoyingly repetitive pronouncements callers make on most talk shows
("I love your show and I listen all the time and I wish I could meet you
someday..."). A "Dittohead" is a regular listener who knows what it
means to say "Dittoes." Nice to know that you don't really know anything
about the things you choose to write about, Al. I think that's another
characteristic of an idiot.
- Lies p. 12-13: ["The Youngest, Cruelest Justice"] was actually
the headline on a lead editorial [about African-American Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas] in [The New York Times]. Thomas is not engaged
on the substance of his judicial philosophy. He is called a "colored
lawn jockey for conservative white interests," "race traitor," black snake"
... (foregoing quoted from Ann Coulter's book Slander).
Okay. What percentage of Coulter's readers do you suppose read this and
thought, "My God! The New York Times called Clarence Thomas a
'chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom'! I knew the Times was bad,
but I never dreamed it was this bad!"? ... and what percentage do you
think bothered to go to the back of her book and wade through the endnotes to
discover that the quotes came from a Playboy interview with former
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders and from a black leader at a meeting of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.... The key here, of course, is
the sleight of hand...that deliberately leads gullible readers to the
conclusion that the Times called Clarence Thomas "a colored lawn jockey."
This should tell us a couple things about Ann Coulter. First, she's
dishonest. ...More importantly, it shows the contempt she holds for her
own readers. Wrong again, Al. You wrongly assume that
conservatives are generally less intelligent than you are (much less that Ann
Coulter thinks so). I suspect that Ann believes her readers are smart enough to read
that passage, consider the possibility that the Times is still being quoted,
and either assume it is not or go to the footnotes to check, as you did.
She's not dishonest, since every word she wrote was true. And she holds
her readers (the conservative ones, anyway) in high enough esteem to assume
they can follow her staccato stream of points. It is not as easy to read
as, say, the copy from your average Saturday Night Live sketch, but it
offers a lot more in the way of meaningful content. The fact that you
have such contempt for her readers only proves your own inability to
understand the conservative point of view.
- Idiot p. 15: [after 9 pages of trivialities and hyperbole
mischaracterized, misunderstood, and not dealt with substantively...] Given
his feelings about the poor, you might find it surprising that Limbaugh has
himself fed off the largesse of the government. In the form of
unemployment insurance. Poor Al. He doesn't know the
difference between largesse (that's charity, something given for nothing) and
insurance (that's a benefit that you obtain by paying for it). We all
pay FICA insurance premiums every time we get a paycheck (unless we're
government employees, for them it is charity), so when we draw benefits
because we've been laid off, we are drawing from a fund we supported with our
own contributions. Another characteristic of an idiot: he doesn't
understand the language or the institutions he chooses to write about.
If Limbaugh is an idiot, and he knows the difference between largesse and
insurance, what does that make you, who don't?
- Idiot, p. 16: The [hypocrite Limbaugh,] who says Ronald Reagan
belongs on Mount Rushmore, never voted for him. In fact, Rush didn't
register to vote until he was 35 years old... In order to be a
hypocrite, Rush has to be guilty of encouraging activity he himself does not
engage in now, or criticizing activity he does engage in now. If you had
any evidence that Limbaugh criticized people for failing to vote prior to his
own act of registering, that would be hypocrisy. But praising a man for
whom he never voted does not make him a hypocrite. You should use a
dictionary before you write a sentence, now and then. You might avoid
seeming like a clown who's trying to grasp something serious and finding it
difficult.
- Idiot, p. 37: [After chapter after chapter of boring, inane, and
uninspiring tales of his own life...] [Ronald] Reagan was one of those
guys who in 1964 opposed the Civil Rights Act. That's funny.
He wasn't in politics in 1964. I haven't found, in a cursory search, any
evidence that he actively opposed it (he is often quoted as having said that
he would not have voted for it, which is an odd thing to have said later in
life about a bill he had at the time actively opposed...). I think you
need to check your facts again. And note that Lyndon Baines Johnson
didn't really want the act, either (nor had John F. Kennedy before him), but
it was forced on him by circumstances.
- Idiot, p. 45: [After more boring stories with a point that's
really hard to discern...] [Newt Gingrich] visited [his first wife,
Jackie], in the hospital when she was recovering from cancer surgery. As
the story goes, [he] brought along their two daughters and a yellow legal pad
with his terms for a divorce. If that is the whole story,
Gingrich behaved like a jerk. If he had ever proposed making
jerky behavior a crime, he would also be a hypocrite, but he never even
proposed making divorces illegal or harder to get. And who's a bigger
jerk, Gingrich, or Bill Clinton, who had his trysts in the White House and
then let Hillary run around "standing by her man" (while she said she was not
doing so) and claiming it was all a "right wing conspiracy" when in fact it
was completely true (a lesser woman might have been seriously offended when
she discovered how thoroughly used she had been)? But I suppose he
doesn't qualify as a hypocrite, either, because he never proposed making it
illegal to exchange sexual favors with employees in the workplace, and no
Democrat ever really concerned himself with things like morality or decency.
Only Republicans can be jerks, because in order to be a jerk, you have to
first pretend to be something else. I guess. I don't know.
You lost me.
- Lies, p. 14: [In response to Ann Coulter's claim that "The
New York Times had allowed loose associations between Nazis and Christians
to be made in its pages:] The first quote ("Did the Nazi crimes draw on
Christian tradition?") is from a 2001 book review (emphasis original).
The Times reviewer, Paul Berman, was framing the question asked by
the book... Okay, but did he dispute it, or not? Since you
don't say so, and I don't have the time to pursue it today, I must assume he
did not, since that would be more embarrassing to Coulter's case than the fact
that it was in a book review, which, by the way, her statement does not rule
out. She said the Times "had allowed" such statements in its
pages, which is true, and you can't deny it. If you choose to conclude
that that doesn't indicate a problem, you are free to do so. But I agree
with Coulter that newspapers, which frequently deny advertisers space because
they don't agree with points of view they may advocate, and edits stories and
columns for phrases and words they consider inflammatory or outrageous, it is
still relevant to ask: which ideas will they print, and which will they not?
Do they print claims by Muslims that the Holocaust was a myth, or that the
Jews perpetrate it? Or do they simply allow Christians to be slandered?
- Lies, p. 14-15: [Continued] The second quote is a
quote of a quote (emphasis original) from a 1998 Times article,
"John Paul's Jewish Dilemma." The writer for the Times isn't
saying that the church is "co-responsible" for the holocaust. He's
quoting a critic of the church. In the same article, a Jewish historian
is also quoted saying that "[Pope] Pius saved 750,000 Jews."
Sure. And if they printed a story alleging that the holocaust never
happened, they'd probably print someone saying it had. But the point is
that they gave credence to the claims of the critic, which are far outside the
realm of reason compared to the defender who is simply reporting a fact.
Again, you may disagree with her conclusions, but her claim was not false, as
your thesis demands. Your argument isn't holding water.
- Lies, p. 17: After 9/11, she wrote in her column...: "We
should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to
Christianity." It's hard for me to believe that Al Franken,
author of two masterworks of vain, bombastic political satire, doesn't know
hyperbole when he reads it. But I guess it must be true.
- Lies, p. 19: Later Coulter calls the phrase "working families"
"a euphemism for families in which no one works." Does that seem maybe
the tiniest bit elitist to you? Not at all. Especially
since she didn't mean to say that this is what she means by "working
families." She means this is what Democrats mean when they say it.
And she is right about that. So chalk another one up to knee-jerk
don't-bother-thinking-about-it-if-it-feels-good liberalism.
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Lies, p. 32: [Disputing the notion that the news
media are dominated by liberals] He fails, however, to explain that
editors and publishers--who have the final say over what goes out--tend to be
conservative. According to a study made in this century by
Editor and Publisher magazine, more than twice as many newspapers endorsed
Bush as endorsed Gore. Bush-endorsing papers accounted for 58 percent of
national circulation. Okay, then let's look at those numbers:
numerically, twice as many papers endorsed Bush as endorsed Gore. If all
papers endorsed one or the other, that means nearly 68% endorsed Bush.
But those 68% of the papers only accounted for 58% of the nation's readership.
Therefore, the 32% that endorsed Gore account for 42% of the readership.
That is, all the big papers: the New York Times, Washington Post,
Los Angeles Times, endorsed Gore. And those are the papers that
dominate public discourse (the New York Times is, after all, the
Paper of Record that sets the headlines for the big three networks).
The least influential members of the media are conservative (except for Fox
News, and I know that sticks in your craw).
Modified: 01/05/2004
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Jonathan Alter
David Corn
Walter Cronkite
Maureen Dowd
Al Franken
Ellen Goodman
Molly Ivins
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Ed Quillen
Anna Quindlen
Welfare Follies
Chris Matthews
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