I don’t know why I’m feeling so inclined to spend my entire day on conservative websites (and non-conservative websites discussing conservatives), but I guess I woke up feeling a little masochistic this morning. Here are some highlights:
Score one for conservatives: They got Congress to waste even more of their time by introducing a resolution criticizing the New York Times. Which, you know, won’t actually do anything, but it sounds like a lot of fun. What was that about small government and trying to cut waste? Right.
Conservatives hate it when newspapers leak classified information, right? Right. (Hi there, David Horowitz!)
Don’t you just hate it when human rights organizations have the audacity to stand up for the rights of female humans? So does the National Review.
Concerned Women for America just makes me laugh. First, the organization does you the favor of “confirming” an apparent loneliness epidemic afflicting America. I’m glad the experts are on it. Not so funny is the fact that their president was named one of the 100 most influential women in Washington. Are women really this underrepresented in Washington?
Who’s to blame for black failure in schools? Black people, obviously.
Fox News screwed us all, but maybe it screwed well-meaning conservatives worst of all:
When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren’t the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.
Historically, we in the press have done more damage to our nation by withholding secret information than by publishing it. One example was this newspaper’s withholding details of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Kennedy himself suggested that the U.S. would have been better served if The Times had published the full story and derailed the invasion.
Then there were the C.I.A. abuses that journalists kept mum about until they spilled over and prompted the Church Committee investigation in the 1970′s. And there are secrets we should have found, but didn’t: in the run-up to the Iraq war, the press — particularly this newspaper — was too credulous about claims that Iraq possessed large amounts of W.M.D.
In each of these cases, we were too compliant. We failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country.
So be very wary of Mr. Bush’s effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.
Also, conservatives failed art class.
Who are we talking about, exactly? Well, the top 10 power brokers of the religious right is a good place to start.
Conservatives can’t govern. That’s the problem.
More bad news Jill. Your paper of choice, the LA Times, has an editorial that I would chacterize as the most insulting attack on liberal Democrats I’ve read in the “liberal media.” The low-light:
I’m pretty feckin pissed that a newspaper, let alone a California newspaper, is telling me that my opposition to Joe Lieberman – a man who earlier this week promised to disenfranchsie me in the Democratic Primary – is part of a “jihad.”
Fuck you LA Times, the seat Lieberman occupies belongs to me as a Connecticut voter and I can try to put someone else in there whenever and for for whatever reasons I please.
Ugh. Stupid LA Times editorial board.
[...] supremacists.) Jill at Feministe expresses my views on the matter. See also Jill’s Crazy Conservative Round-up. Be sure to add your own favorite examples of righties being [...]
Ha! Have you ever seen the 7/6 “Mallard Fillmore” comic strip where Bruce Tinsley implied that feminists are ugly?
If it wern’t for that great “Prickly City” strip, I’d have no faith for right-wing strips.
Matt Browner Hamlin,
I agree with you the Wilsons, Trumans, and Kennedy’s would still mesh well with American people. As would Lieberman. As a right leaning independent I would vote for a Lieberman style dem. The main thing that the independents and conservative swing voters like to see is atleast a hawkish approach to foreign policy instead of appeasement. They can handle liberalism at home because there is still enough conservatism to over shadow some domestic liberalism. But the bulk of Americans know that so called “peace deals” only postpones problems for a later date. I hope the dems wise up to this or Republicans will stay in power for a long time.
Of course Kennedy would say that about the Bay of Pigs. I could see why sending our men to get massacred without trying to complete his cause. I agreed with kennedy on sending them but they should have had the troops and resources to finish the job. Not be put in to harm’s way and not complete the task. And what is this about conservatives can’t govern. Dumb liberals and dumb conservatives both are well intended and it is offensive to say that an entire group of people “can’t govern” just because of their political stripes.
Brandcn, my anger isn’t about Lieberman and the war. I do think there is a place for Democrats of Lieberman’s ideology in the Democratic Party (see: Bob Casey, Harry Reid, Ben Nelson, etc), but not for Democrats who don’t think the decisions of Democratic voters are unimportant.
As I’ve said elsewhere, we never said we wanted Lieberman to quit the Democratic Party. We just don’t want him to be our senator any more.
Ok I am posting this here since it seems the most relevant:
Some fellow called Sad Salvation emailed me:
Nobody Much wrote:
You seem to have shut down comments (or, perhaps, just banned me) on the post I commented on. I don’t know why, so, if it’s out of place for me to keep this up, I apologize at the outset. I find it worth doing to defend my honor on this, though. Just because you imagine your own perspective (and resulting behavior) to be faultless, does not mean that it is so.
You’re still insist (in your comment responding to mine) that calling rape natural excuses it. You’ve gone one step beyond that to insist that troubling onesself to argue about your having done that is to miss the point. If the point is so unimportant, why harp on it? In the selfsame paragraph? Why plug this post, at feministe, as being about something which you now insist it isn’t?
Look, if you’re even willing to explain how it is that calling rape natural excuses it, that would be something. But you haven’t yet been. You just keeping saying that it is, and then extrapolating from that that anyone who disagrees is, “standing uselessly by,” etc. Having never once in my entire life excused any rape, you must see how outrageous I find that. I do not excuse rape. I’ve never excused any particular rape. I don’t think rape is at all acceptable, ever. I’m as much against rape as any decent person is. I cannot prove it (as no one can), I suppose, so if you’re not willing to take my word for it, then I’m wasting your time posting at all. But I know this of myself, and am insulted, righteously, to have any other position called mine.
The bit about pitying men was so clearly tongue in cheek, that it’s embarrassing to have to point out that it was. As for my obligations, I do not think you understand what that word means. If you were willing to sketch out the philosophical basis for my being obligated to scold other men for making jokes about women (you should take that one step further, also, to explain how such jokes lead anyone to rape) feel free. But, barring that, you’ve not established an obligation, so much as insisted that one exists because you say so. Which is familiar, at least, but no more acceptable for it.
-Sad Slavation
My reply:
What in hell are you talking about? Nobody has “banned” you, nor have I shut down comments. Get your facts straight before you start shrieking on my blog.
I am not going to keep explaining this to men who cannot get beyond their preconceived ideas. I have already said that IN THIS CONTEXT, biology most certainly was presented as an excuse for the behavior of rape. I am not the one “harping” on it. You, and Weaseldog, have “harped” on it for many paragraphs. I keep trying to get you guys to get past it, but it seems you are incapable of doing so.
Just because you imagine your own perspective (and resulting behavior) to be faultless, does not mean that it is so. If you refuse to see a point, you refuse to see it. I have no idea why you consider yourself “insulted.” Perhaps you might want to get some therapy for this? Clearly you are prone to jumping to nefarious conclusions already, i.e. thinking you are “banned”, etc. Quit trying to make your own feelings other people’s fault. I am making an argument, have made it quite clearly, and your taking “righteous” offense is your own problem. I am not here to perform a course on remedial human relations for you. If you cannot see the connection between disparaging remarks, disrespectful “jokes”, and a rape culture, then I feel sorry for your lacking intellect.
Feministe regulars, who the hell is this Sad Salvation person? He is referring to a comment I posted here:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/06/23/porn-good-for-america-good-for-the-ladies/
which links to the post on my blog called, Anti-Rape Tips.
I don’t give a shit whether this is discussed on this site or mine – I am however interested in some kind of perspective on the issue of rape, and the aspect of it that I brought up, besides general justifications and willful ignorance.
Just because you imagine your own perspective (and resulting behavior) to be faultless, does not mean that it is so.
looks like I mixed in one of my comments with his, sorry.
If Amnesty International was thinking about coming out against abortion, sites like this one would be slamming them, and National Review would say they were “standing up for the rights of unborn humans.” I don’t think either side has reason to call the other “crazy” on this point.