Powerline and "The Boogie Man"
By Brian Lambert
I had a plan to post a review of the most recent Frontline, "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story" . . . you know, before
it ran this past Tuesday night. As Donald Rumsfeld says, "Stuff
happened," and I was left searching for a hook to get it up now. To that
end, thank you very much, John Hinderaker, local attorney, once upon a
time "Blogger of the Year" (so said Time magazine), co-author of the
blog Powerline, an oft-quoted Koran of sorts for serious head-bobbing
conservatives and . . . and . . . recipient of the First Annual
Golden Wingnut Award, given for the single most jaw-dropping loss of
intellectual gravity displayed anywhere on the Internet in the past year (so said Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly).
Here's a link to the Frontline website. (Good interview with the director, Stefan Forbes.)
No sooner had I finished watching "Boogie Man" than I received an e-mail with this snippet from last Sunday's Hinderaker post on Powerline (And no, I am not making this up in one of my usual juvenile attempts to make some conservative deep thinker look ridiculous.):
Wrote Hinderaker:
"Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated."
Let me repeat this one in particular, George W. Bush " . . . chooses his words with care and precision." Is our children learning?
Hinderaker won The Golden Wingnut for this 2005 musing: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius . . ."
Maybe Hinderaker was hoping for a sleepover with that last one, but my point here is that Hinderaker and the rest of his Powerline team truly are regarded as part of the intellectual foundation for twenty-first century conservatives. Hence the internecine warfare the Republicans are waging as we speak. How do you climb out of a hole dug by that kind of thinking if you depend on . . . that kind of thinking . . . to return you to the surface?
If he wasn't when he was alive, "Boogie Man" Lee Atwater has become the personification of modern Republican philosophy (and morality) in death. The Frontline documentary captured both Atwater's manic intensity as well as his manifest personal insecurities and his almost complete indifference to policy. The film quotes friends and foes observing that Atwater--who was in his mid-thirties when he guided George H. W. Bush to victory in 1988, in a campaign widely regarded as one of the foulest and most dishonest of the last generation. (Atwater played the race card with the notorious Willie Horton ad but before that staggered Bob Dole with a relentless cascade of gross distortions/lies about his record, leaving Dole flummoxed.)
The Atwater story would make a terrific Hollywood movie--rising from modest circumstances in South Carolina; charming and conniving his way into a job with legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond; springboarding in with the Bush clan (where he was treated like the hired help); falling victim to a brain tumor shortly after achieving The White House; and then,in a final melodramatic twist, Hollywood would be ridiculed for tacking on--issue a series of death-bed apologies for the tactics that earned him his success (and launched the Bush dynasty in the The Oval Office). Atwater died in 1991 at age forty.
What the film does so well is draw a distinction between a brilliant strategist/tactician, which Atwater most certainly was, and a fundamentally amoral careerist, a man for whom literally nothing mattered other than winning. Atwater's gamebook was picked up by Karl Rove; spread across to countless local operatives in every nook and holler of the country; assimilated by talk radio; and, most recently, adapted one more time by Steve Schmidt (a Rove disciple) as campaign manager for John McCain.
The film also lays out Atwater's diabolical charm on the press, the vast majority of whom are suckers . . . suckers . . . for a "player" who can tell a joke, dole out inside crap, and . . . win. Add to that the press's pack mentality for following the "story of the day"--concocted by operatives like Atwater and Rove--and you've got the perfect recipe for well-controlled chumps.
And if you think I'm leaving out their Democratic counterparts, I kind of am. The Democrats, as so many "objective observers" noted with amusement during the John Kerry Swift Boat episode, just aren't in the Republicans' league when it comes to . . . flagrant, shameless dishonesty. There are too many moral Pollyannas at the base of the Democratic party to tolerate the kind of stench the Atwater-Roves have thrown up for the last twenty years.
Atwater may have been a freak of nature, and John Hinderaker, whom I couldn't pick out of a lineup, may actually have some moral investment in ideas and policy, but each has abetted the reduction of American politics to a perpetual game, where the serious work of effectively running a government serving 310 million people and setting Democratic standards for the world is (distantly) secondary to gaining and holding power.
This is what the Republicans will have to sort out in the aftermath of their 2008 fiasco. If they're serious about dealing with big, bad, nasty issues such as international revulsion at cowboy foreign policy and complicated inside-baseball bombshells such as transparency in credit markets, they're going to have push away from Hinderaker/Rush Limbaugh-style rhetorical gamesmanship and Atwater/Rovian character assassination and establish credibility as problem solvers.
TPT tells me "Boogie Man" is not on their schedule again in the immediate future, but that the DVD is now available via the website.
Hinderaker is available, free of charge, day after day after day.
Here's a link to the Frontline website. (Good interview with the director, Stefan Forbes.)
No sooner had I finished watching "Boogie Man" than I received an e-mail with this snippet from last Sunday's Hinderaker post on Powerline (And no, I am not making this up in one of my usual juvenile attempts to make some conservative deep thinker look ridiculous.):
Wrote Hinderaker:
"Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated."
Let me repeat this one in particular, George W. Bush " . . . chooses his words with care and precision." Is our children learning?
Hinderaker won The Golden Wingnut for this 2005 musing: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius . . ."
Maybe Hinderaker was hoping for a sleepover with that last one, but my point here is that Hinderaker and the rest of his Powerline team truly are regarded as part of the intellectual foundation for twenty-first century conservatives. Hence the internecine warfare the Republicans are waging as we speak. How do you climb out of a hole dug by that kind of thinking if you depend on . . . that kind of thinking . . . to return you to the surface?
If he wasn't when he was alive, "Boogie Man" Lee Atwater has become the personification of modern Republican philosophy (and morality) in death. The Frontline documentary captured both Atwater's manic intensity as well as his manifest personal insecurities and his almost complete indifference to policy. The film quotes friends and foes observing that Atwater--who was in his mid-thirties when he guided George H. W. Bush to victory in 1988, in a campaign widely regarded as one of the foulest and most dishonest of the last generation. (Atwater played the race card with the notorious Willie Horton ad but before that staggered Bob Dole with a relentless cascade of gross distortions/lies about his record, leaving Dole flummoxed.)
The Atwater story would make a terrific Hollywood movie--rising from modest circumstances in South Carolina; charming and conniving his way into a job with legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond; springboarding in with the Bush clan (where he was treated like the hired help); falling victim to a brain tumor shortly after achieving The White House; and then,in a final melodramatic twist, Hollywood would be ridiculed for tacking on--issue a series of death-bed apologies for the tactics that earned him his success (and launched the Bush dynasty in the The Oval Office). Atwater died in 1991 at age forty.
What the film does so well is draw a distinction between a brilliant strategist/tactician, which Atwater most certainly was, and a fundamentally amoral careerist, a man for whom literally nothing mattered other than winning. Atwater's gamebook was picked up by Karl Rove; spread across to countless local operatives in every nook and holler of the country; assimilated by talk radio; and, most recently, adapted one more time by Steve Schmidt (a Rove disciple) as campaign manager for John McCain.
The film also lays out Atwater's diabolical charm on the press, the vast majority of whom are suckers . . . suckers . . . for a "player" who can tell a joke, dole out inside crap, and . . . win. Add to that the press's pack mentality for following the "story of the day"--concocted by operatives like Atwater and Rove--and you've got the perfect recipe for well-controlled chumps.
And if you think I'm leaving out their Democratic counterparts, I kind of am. The Democrats, as so many "objective observers" noted with amusement during the John Kerry Swift Boat episode, just aren't in the Republicans' league when it comes to . . . flagrant, shameless dishonesty. There are too many moral Pollyannas at the base of the Democratic party to tolerate the kind of stench the Atwater-Roves have thrown up for the last twenty years.
Atwater may have been a freak of nature, and John Hinderaker, whom I couldn't pick out of a lineup, may actually have some moral investment in ideas and policy, but each has abetted the reduction of American politics to a perpetual game, where the serious work of effectively running a government serving 310 million people and setting Democratic standards for the world is (distantly) secondary to gaining and holding power.
This is what the Republicans will have to sort out in the aftermath of their 2008 fiasco. If they're serious about dealing with big, bad, nasty issues such as international revulsion at cowboy foreign policy and complicated inside-baseball bombshells such as transparency in credit markets, they're going to have push away from Hinderaker/Rush Limbaugh-style rhetorical gamesmanship and Atwater/Rovian character assassination and establish credibility as problem solvers.
TPT tells me "Boogie Man" is not on their schedule again in the immediate future, but that the DVD is now available via the website.
Hinderaker is available, free of charge, day after day after day.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
The GOP the last 30 years has really been a triumph of marketing. Create demand/need for a product,via the best and most efficient means and tools: the press/media, organization, FEAR (whether its Willie Horton, welfare queens, war on terror, etc.), and, above all, plenty of people (voters as well as wingnut radio and TV) to trumpet your product and spread the word.
When your competition's product isn't as good, or, rather, isn't as effective in its MARKETING, its a steep climb to beat your competition. Look at Gore, Kerry, heck, Patty Wetterling and/or Tinkleberg...and now, to a degree, Franken - the "product," i.e., the candidate, gets beat, the advantages one product (in this case, governing philosophy) might have doesn't win or "sell." At least not as much, or as often.
Until the last two years at least, and especially this election: when the perfect storm has finally hit: a GREAT product and message (Obama, superior marketing, superior organization) vs. a governing philosophy that has been an abject failure. The GOP's product is simply not as good, right now. We're in too much of a hole, and millions of people have figured it out. Meanwhile, there's still millions of people who still believe the old way is best - that's why you hear that the party and philosophy wasn't conservative enough, etc.
With the GOP there's an even bigger issue - they can't govern, they can't run things. Greed, corruption,cronyism and religious extremism prevents that.
Its a simplification, but there's definitely parallels, another example is GM - for years ignoring bettering their products and giving consumers more choices. As the years go by consumers get better educated and realize that there's something different, possibly better for them.
LAMBERT: To extend the wrong car at the wrong tme analogy. The Republicans seem determined to meet the 21st century with ... a new selection of 6000 pound SUVs.
Posted by: essar1 on November 13, 2008 at 11:13 AM
This type of confessional could be the next big thing for publishing. Consider a compendium of death bed remarks by rightwing extremists: G. Gordon Liddy, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Dick Addington, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Novak, Bill Kristol, etc.
I'd pay $30.
LAMBERT: I'll pay $40 if we can move a bit more quickly to that "passing" phase.
Posted by: offred on November 13, 2008 at 12:13 PM
I only saw the last half of the Frontline but it was really good. Is the two headed beast the metaphor we are looking for here? Rove does not exist without Atwater, culturally and professionally. Professionally, Atwater managed Rove's campaign in 1973 to be head of the College Republicans. Rove finally got the job after he and Atwater challenged the credentials of every other delegation, and after Atwater had to give a statement to the FBI getting Rove off the hook for bragging on tape about dirty tricks. (See the Bush Tragedy, by Jacob Weisberg.) Rove always saw Atwater as his model, say the biographers, and ultmately entered the vacuum created by Atwater's death in 1991. His tight working relationship with Bush 43 was part of the Oedipal struggle that took us all hostage for 8 years; He was availabale because he had been left behind when Bush 41 did not bring him along to Washington. Even the way Rove was brought into the White House instead of sent back to the RNC after getting Bush 43 elected was a departure from the father's losing strategy. He was an amplification of the Atwater model.
LAMBERT: As always, Paul, very astute. I have no sense that Rove has any deeper ideological convictions than Atwater. Fundamentally, passions such as a belief system are cumbersome and problematic.
-
Posted by: Paul Scott on November 13, 2008 at 3:05 PM
Good point Brian. A friend mentioned the Atwater special after the fact and my reply melted my keyboard. My distaste for the wedge issue uses Atwater as the poster boy.
These eras tend to be self-correcting (thankfully), they won-baby-won, but then crapped away their winnings due to a complete lack of true governing ability. They got everything they wanted and their own greed and divisiveness brought them down.
In the process, they destroyed their own party, forcing out all the voices for moderation in their pursuit of lockstep caucuses. They are truly a minority party now and sound more and more out of step with Americans every time a GA congressman mentions Facists, or a Hinderaker types an divisive opinion.
But, I disagree with your end statement above. For if you follow the Hinderaker day after day, you do pay, pay by how out of touch you become with reality.
That is the cost of wedge issue talk--instead of solving problems, you create distraction problems while not addressing the true problem. It becomes a pattern of creating two problems where you began with only one...and eventually all those overwhelm you and anyone foolish enough to try to follow you.
LAMBERT: The sad irony is that wedge issues over trivialities are most appealing in happy times -- like the '90s, when a period of affluence could have been devoted to addressing real problems.
Posted by: The Other Mike on November 13, 2008 at 4:05 PM
Perhaps, for a incisive look at the direction of the Republican Party of the future we can turn to Ted Nugent:
And the right wing-nuts cannot figure out why, when debating and describing them, we cannot resist questioning their intelligence.
LAMBERT: Ted caught Cat Scratch Fever a long, long time ago.
Posted by: Michelle on November 13, 2008 at 4:42 PM
And speaking of the media and GOP whining and such, A wingnut radio producer gives an inside look at how the whole thing works:
http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/currentIssue/full_feature_story.asp?NewMessageID=24046
A few choice nuggets:
"To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners."
"Conservative talk show hosts would receive daily talking points e-mails from the Bush White House, the Republican National Committee and, during election years, GOP campaign operations. They’re not called talking points, but that’s what they are. I know, because I received them, too. During my time at WTMJ, Charlie would generally mine the e-mails, then couch the daily message in his own words. Midday talker Jeff Wagner would be more likely to rely on them verbatim. But neither used them in their entirety, or every single day."
Truly fascinating...
LAMBERT: Hence the phrase, "echo chamber". It speaks to a truly startling lack of independent, critical thinking.
Posted by: essar1 on November 13, 2008 at 4:56 PM
I have been watching Rove with interest, I expected he would tuck his tail between his legs and hide for a while. Nope. He now is talking about how Palin actually helped the ticket and has an unlimited future. Please pass the pipe Karl.
I would like to learn more about the people behind Obama. They were brilliant in this campaign considering how new Obama really is to Washington (and no, I didn't vote for him).
LAMBERT: Dave, you were so close ...
Posted by: Dave on November 13, 2008 at 5:04 PM
If you follow the dramatic arch of politics after Watergate I think you can really appreciate how Lee Atwater and Karl Rove transformed the White House and its relationship to the American public.
Lying, with a wink and a nod, marketing and spinning "the daily message" became the stock and trade of the relationship between the press and government. Even the cynics in the press core came to expect it as a daily routine and stopped expressing outrage and investigating what lies can conceal.
This approach has its roots in Watergate but also the humiliation Jimmy Carter's earnest honesty was played or gamed. Carter tried to be honest with the American people about the hostage situation in Iran and, in is words, the cultural malaise.
In that 1979 speech Carter said, "I promised you a President who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you."
Carter then proceeded to talk about the energy crisis that produced the recession the country was embroiled in. The U.S. had, just like today, grown to dependent on importing and consuming oil from the Middle East and it was threatening our national security.
Carter didn't spin the situation, he talked honestly to the citizens about the problem and asked people to conserve and rethink our oil dependency. Many say that was Jimmy Carter's downfall. Republicans exploited Carter's malaise speech, his earnest words, and in turn came to believe that the President had to be isolated and protected from the people by a wall of spun messages and deflecting lies.
This was all a poignant message for the young turks like Cheney, Rumsfeld and the up-and-coming Darth Vader of the Republican Party, Lee Atwater. "Win at any cost; lie if you have to" became their mantra.
LAMBERT: And how was this cynicism covered by the press, in general? As "canny", "shrewd", "masterful", etc.
Posted by: Robb on November 14, 2008 at 8:03 AM
Ah, the relevant Frontline or Fallows piece is again provided. And they are consistent enough, that you don’t even have to watch it to know what to think.
BL - The Democrats, as so many "objective observers" noted, with amusement, during the John Kerry Swift Boat episode just aren't in the Republicans' league when it comes to ... flagrant, shameless dishonesty.
No, but saying so is another way of congratulating you and the likeminded of being the 'good' people. And it takes some denial of history to be able to do that.
The predecessor of the Horton ad (lets just say hyperbolic and emotionally manipulating) was the Daisy ad. Additionally, there's every reason to suspect that if Bill Moyers would have succeeded on Johnson's errand to identify homosexual Goldwater Republicans, they would have had the stomach to use that info.
I always discounted the notion of Atwater or Rove and 'wedge' issues (there are none) swinging elections. I favor a political science theorem which states the superior candidate wins. No one could ever utter the words President Dukakis with any seriousness.
LAMBERT: The "Daisy ad" was a race-baiting, wedge issue? And they've never swung an election you say? Whoa.
Posted by: 108 on November 14, 2008 at 12:23 PM
Rove remains a God to the neo-cons and media, especially the propagandistic FOX. The more successful Rove is able to manufacture reality and distort the truth, the more he is feared by both sides.
Liberals give Rove almost omnipotent and other-worldly status as an all powerful embodiment of evil. And that's why the extremist right fanatics loves him also.
Frankly, I think we give Rove too much power by fearing him. He should be indicted and tried for his criminal wrong-doing but he has such a scary figure for many Washington insiders that he stands arrogantly above the law. And Bush still holds the pardon which I assume he will use excessively in the final days of his administration.
But in America, the higher they rise the further they fall. Just look at Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson -- Rove's fate is set and it is just a matter of time before it all plays out. You cannot stomp on and injure as many people as Rove has without it coming back around and biting you on the posterior extremity.
It is the universal law of repulsion - every act of distaste and repugnance against another will come back in equal force to thee.
LAMBERT: Indicting any of a dozen key figures from the Bush administration is not on any Obama agenda I've heard of. But my guess is that a reinvigorated Justice department -- you know that dispenses justice as opposed to cronyism -- will be quietly accumulating a lot of information over the next few months. Obama's got plenty else to do, and big high-profile cases, with the echo-chamber shrieking "witch hunt" -- which of course they never did as Rove polluted the Justice Department with the Rachel Pauloses of the world -- would be very distracting. On the other hand, to paraphrase Walter in "The Big Lebowski" ... "This aggression must not stand."
Posted by: Michelle on November 14, 2008 at 1:37 PM
Do you find the FREE SPEECH of Ted Nugent reprehensible?
Does hearing about Obama being the least qualified and least examined candidate for President EVER offend your delicate sensibilities?
Do obscure PBS documentaries with anti-conservative agendas send a THRILL up your leg?
Then you could be a Lambertron (tm)!
Embrace the class envy!
Admire the ad hominem!
Fan dance with the faux-elitism!
SNAP! to the snark!
Lasciviate (?) with the loathing!
Hey, turns out CJ scooped you on Anselmo.
Your thoughts?
LAMBERT: Did I say Nugent should be muzzled? Here's how "free speech" works, old boy. One idiot shoots off his mouth sounding like a rabid racist ... and anybody else gets to call him on it. As for CJ ... what are time stamps on those posts?
Posted by: bertram jr on November 14, 2008 at 1:55 PM
As a tenured and esteemed participant here, I demand a citation on the Nugent quote. I can't find it with the google. As far as I'm concerned it's a Martin Eisenstadt redux. Not that it wouldn't stop those with incurable cases of confirmation bias around here from believing it.
Posted by: 108 on November 14, 2008 at 3:38 PM
Gotcha!
How does Uncle Ted's supposed quote make him "sound like a rabid racist"?
I nominate Michelle for "Miss Lambertron".
Can we see a picture, please?
Time stamps? What are you - a St Louis County election judge? Always with the timestamps!
Posted by: bertram jr on November 14, 2008 at 3:42 PM
Oops - found it, if Rolling Stone can be believed. I was wrong. First time for everything.
LAMBERT: The date will be duly noted.
Posted by: 108 on November 14, 2008 at 4:03 PM
I agree with Michelle. The universe will want to correct for abhorrent behavior and we are a nation of laws and not men -- something long forgotten during the dark days of the Bush era.
The President doesn't sit on a throne and call for his subjects to come before him as their judge. Therefore, any investigation and indictment of Rove or any other number of Bush administration officials of wrong doing doesn't need to be on the newly elected Presidents agenda.
In the American system of justice, the process begins with plantiffs -- people like Valerie Plame, US Attorney Bud Cummins, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, etc. and the other victims outing agents of American intelligence and of federal prosecutors firing as well as the FBI's improper use of administrative subpoenas to obtain people's telephone records and other sensitive data.
There are egregious cases of Bush Administration law breaking, for instance, in Michigan where a Republican appointed U.S. Attorney was trying to prosecute a terrorist cell and the Justice Department leaked inculpating evidence in violation of the law and at threat to the lives of key witnesses for the prosecution. They undermine their own case, for political reasons, and made a terrible example of not protecting informers, thereby, ruining the possibility for further cooperation from insiders with information that could keep America safe.
Of course, all Americans should be concerned with the abuse of power by officials in its government but we should not expect that justice is pursued simply by a political change of office. Laws are laws and they should be inforced regardless of which party wins an election. We must have system of justice and Constitution that responds not to the coarse exercise of intimidation and threat but to the law.
Even the echo-chamber should not over rule reason and justice.
BTW - It is fantastic Ted Nugent speaks his mind openly so we can know just how dangerous a nutjob he is and when he makes violent terroristic threats against people's lives, he can be watched by the FBI in case he decides to act these violent fantasies out.
Posted by: Robb on November 14, 2008 at 6:45 PM
bertram jr. is unhinged. Definitely come completely off the doorframe.
He flails about, ranting and raving, projecting his weird and sorted self-loathing attacks onto others while he engages in class envy; engaging in ad homonym attacks; anti-intellectualism; confusing stupidity for brilliance; equating venal dogma as the will of the common man; accusing others of being opposed to free speech simply because someone pointing out the terroristic threats of violence by extremist Ted Nugent, Ann Coulter, and Mark Alexander. Bertran jr. rants sound like the smoke screen of tyrants and tin-horn dictators.
LAMBERT: You're making a new friend, you know.
Posted by: Michelle on November 15, 2008 at 10:52 AM
Duke, Jr, this is yet another instance where your pathological fear of nuance lets you down: It is possible to venerate the 1st Amendment freedom that allows a frothing yahoo the likes of Nugent to spew his inarticulate hate speech with government interference and simultaneously be appalled by its hateful and twisted content.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on November 15, 2008 at 6:53 PM
Hinderaker is probably angling for a second Golden Wingnut, so he can use them as bookends for his library of coloring books. Not being very imaginative, he uses a variant of the tactic that got him the first.
It's not surprising that people who believe that greed is the central force of the social universe campaign and govern as they do, but what's maddening is the media enablers. If you divide the media into the reporters and commentators, a lot of the reporters still do their jobs, but a subset have traded their shriveled little souls for access under a rule the Roves of the world make which goes, "Unless you print my lies to you anonymously, I will never lie to your again, and then how will you write your columns?" The pundits are largely hopeless, and the further right, the worse off. Take the lot, Kristol, Krauthammer, Brooks, Goldberg, Saunders, Thomas, etc. has any of them ever made a prediction that has come true or deviated from RNC spin points? The Chris Matthews of the world spend their time spinning faux street smart cobwebs--most recently on Hillary Clinton as possible Secretary of State--out of no material but their own nastiness.
LAMBERT: I'm laughing, but only because it is sad and true.
Posted by: john sherman on November 15, 2008 at 8:17 PM
"...if Rollingstone can be believed"?
I never said the quote made Nugent sound like a racist - it makes him sound like an ideological extremist and terrrorist as he is threatening people's lives.
There is a live video clip from the concert where Nugent was screaming his extremist violent and obscene vitriol onstage. Is it okay for brain dead Ted Nugent or Ann Coulter to call out violent fatwas against U.S. citizens (or any human being for that matter) based on political belief but wrong if Osama bin Laden, Iranian Allatolah's, or the Taliban does so? Please explain what the difference is or exceptions that might be applied.
LAMBERT: I said he sounded like a racist ... but I was extrapolating based on his psychotic tone.
Posted by: Michelle on November 17, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Nugent's latest jag is what he calls RINO hunting. Using the coined acronym RINO (Republican's In Name Only), he has called upon the hateful faithful to hunt down and kill the isle crossing, moderate, centrist Republican's who sold out the ultra-conservative Republican revolution in 2008.
I love RINO hunting! First on the list, of course, is John McCain. Watch you're backside John, they don't care if you were a war hero, you're going hunting with Dick!
Next, the slippery and sleezy Norm Coleman has been betraying Bush and he jut last week supported a "green" auto-industry bail out. So, Norm you are in Ted Nugent's cross-hairs also!
Republican's killing Republican's -- now that's a high entertainment value sport the whole family can enjoy!
LAMBERT: Maybe they can open one of those Wild Animal Parks and fill it with fratricidal Republicans. We could ride a big bus through and watch natural selection at its finest.
Posted by: Michelle on November 19, 2008 at 1:51 PM
At this point in time, the best thing that could happen to Norm Coleman is if he lost the recount.
If he isn't called up and investigated for ethics violations, OR indicted for taking bribes from donors, he will be tracked down and shot by one of Nugent's machine gun mercenaries of the fanatical right for his aisle-crossing chameleon behavior.
Posted by: Robb on November 20, 2008 at 7:47 AM
Yes, we've got Nugent.
You've got Rosie. And Bill Maher. And Michael Moore. Quie a fine collection of dumbells.
LAMBERT: Not even in the same league of cat scratch craziness.
Posted by: 108 on November 20, 2008 at 6:12 PM
You've got Nugent, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Mark Alexander... all irrational and explosively emotional and advocates of armed VIOLENCE.
I'd rather get into a fight with Rosie, Bill, or Michael any day because they aren't going to devolve into shoving the muscle of a machine gun into my face. They still ascribe to a notion of justice and reason. "When justice is gone, there is only force."
There is a huge line being crossed with nut-jobs like Nugent. I'm just glad his target is hunting down RINOs rather than threatening and provoking assassination of those who won't adapt his extremist positions on political issues.
Your folks are American Taliban and those you mention are just softy liberals. Give me a break!
Posted by: Richard on November 21, 2008 at 8:22 AM
Nugent gave an interview to High Times magazine in 1977 describing how he avoided the Viet Nam draft by dispensing with good hygiene for about a month. (A short, disgustingly detailed, excerpt from the interview is quoted on his entry in Wikipedia.) He later said he made up that story, that he avoided the war with a deferment and was now ashamed for not having served. I don't think he qualifies as a chickenhawk since it sounds like he did not support the war at the time.
LAMBERT: Still, he was only in an imaginary foxhole ... with Limbaugh and Hannity and Cheney and the rest.
Posted by: frogster on November 21, 2008 at 12:20 PM