Fear and the teabaggers

The only thing to fear is becoming like them, the violent fringe that is.

I couldn't agree more, though some of them do bear watching. I'm hopeful that the Southern Poverty Law Firm is doing just that, so I'm keeping an eye on their website for updates

Yesterday, in the right's wake of bricks hurled and epithets spewed at pols of a progressive bent, Doris Kearns Goodwin, on ABC's "This Week," strained to introduce some historical perspective -- but she did so in a rather peculiar way that, to me, underscored the left's ambivalence.

First, she reminded the audience that today's polarization is, if you will, a proverbial tea party compared to the catastrophic breakdown of the American political system in the 1850s, a time when mere bricks would have been an atmospheric improvement. Goodwin then noted the right's hostility to various 20th-century social legislation, as it arose, yet she further noted that such hostility would indeed spike, then quickly exhaust itself.

Finally, she approvingly referenced Frank Rich's column of yesterday morning -- that today's "Rage Is Not About Health Care"; that it is, rather, in Rich's own words, merely "the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964."

Which is to say, today we're within the final phase of an American demographic makeover, politically expressed, in which "a dwindling and threatened minority," continued Rich, is frightfully reacting to the representative ascendance of a black president, a female speaker, a Chicano justice and a gay congressman.

For the frightened, their battle against health care reform as a socialist plot is but a convenient, euphemistic proxy war waged on behalf of much deeper but now socially unacceptable fears.

What Goodwin omitted, however -- and this is what I deem as the left's aforementioned ambivalence -- was any approving reference to Rich's rather over-the-top conclusion: that because GOP politicians are "frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base" -- so frightened "that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers" -- then "the rest of us have reason to fear them too."

I find this a fascinating divergence. Rich was emphasizing that Congressional Republicans "can’t pretend that we’re talking about 'isolated incidents' or a 'fringe' utterly divorced from the G.O.P.," while Goodwin was emphasizing, Sure they can -- to the extent, that is, that the fringe makes little difference; that it's but an exotic collection of malcontented humbuggers and bogeymen who've always been with us, and always will be.

Rich's loophole, I suppose, lay in the term "utterly divorced," which of course the brick-hurling right-wing fringe cannot be, any more than the elemental left-wing fringe of, say, 9/11 Truthers could ever be utterly divorced from the Democratic Party. Both groups are an incorrigible embarrassment to responsible liberals and conservatives, but hey, whatcha goin' to do? Paranoia isn't illegal.

Rich's evidential proof of a permanent courtship -- some vague, romantic coalition of the violent fringe and the GOP? This came in a logically spectacular sleight of hand: "A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents."

Which in itself sounds ominous, but proves ... absolutely nothing. (In the passage not only was there an inexplicit transition from violent fringe to "Tea Party members," there is no way to know what percentage of the 74 percent is actually violent. Statistically speaking, correlation is often an empty assurance.)

Here, above the cries of liberal horror, I should hasten to add the standard disclosure: I love Frank Rich. As a progressive columnist he's unsurpassed, yet at times -- and this is all, I think, that progressive historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was getting at yesterday, in her own muted manner -- Rich himself, as a preeminent voice of modern progressivism, goes to the gratuitous extreme.

In his admonition to fear the "Tea Party-Glenn Beck base," as Rich advised, the fundamental danger lies in becoming like them -- of paranoically blowing an essentially dismissable opposition into a kind of Hofstadterian "amoral superman" of unconquerable powers.

Let me shortcut to the point by quoting from a mass email I recently received from TeaParty.org: "Isn't it ironic that the beginning of this nation, 'The United States of America' was founded by a courageous 13 colonies? Now, another assault, every bit as great as that faced when 'The Declaration of Independence' was completed and it now is 2010.... Our beloved nation has tasted the bitter poison of Global Marxism. The poison has reached our veins, if it reaches our national will, we shall die a slow convulsing death."

Quite aside from the insufferably poor writing of that missive, quotation-marked proper nouns and all, its frantic call to arms isn't to be feared. It is, in all its profound ignorance, merely to be pitied.

It also merely represents the authentic fringe, as Goodwin reminded us -- and the last thing we should do is empower it by fearing it.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Fox, Insists On Stoking More Threats of Violence if not Violence.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Now that the healthcare reform debate appears mostly over and FOX's campaign against it mostly lost, some might have expected the nation to move on to the next great issue. 

Unfortunately, so much of the vitriolic rhetoric that surrounded the reform bill appears to have incited violence after the bill's passage. In response, many FOX personalities have made deplorable attempts to excuse the actions much of their own coverage helped produce.

The threats against Democratic lawmakers have increased in number and ferocity to the point where the FBI has had to investigate threats and attacks against them. Now even GOP Rep. Eric Cantor claimed in a relatively terse press conference that he, too, has received similar threats including a bullet through one of his campaign offices. As often noted by media analysts, much of the blame for the hyperbolic rhetoric goes right to FOX news. When FOX boasts of a personality such as Glenn Beck who is willing to write off political opponents as "Marxists," analysts have a hard time laying much of the blame on people outside the FOX network.

Unsurprisingly, FOX has made several efforts to diminish the severity of the attacks. Steve Doocy referenced the attacks against Democrats and suggested with a smile that it resulted from people who "maybe...didn't want this bill." The Fox & Friends hosts did speak out against violence, but illustrating an inability to grasp the severity of the attacks, Gretchen Carlson compared them to "a kid who acts up at a birthday party."

More offensive than failure to comprehend the serious nature of the violence was the effort to blame the Democrats for the violence perpetrated against them. Beck accepted a call from a listener suggesting the Democrats walked through the Tea Party protesters to intentionally provoke the crowd for political purposes. In fact, Beck took it a step further and said, "I can guarantee you they walked out and said, 'What the hell do you have to do to these people to get them to kill us?' I swear to you!"

Karl Rove failed to go so far as to say Democrats willfully manipulated opponents into violence against them initially, but he did the next best thing -- accusing Democrats of using the attacks for political purposes and only encouraging more. Rove expressed sympathy for those subjected to potential violence, but he continued, "I don't think, however, it is useful for those in a position of authority to fan the flames and to try and draw attention to these because it simply is going to encourage copycats." By that logic, no one should mention the attacks, even to condemn them, and anyone who becomes a victim would only have themselves to blame. Since so many of those attacked had been, up to that point, people politically opposed to Rove, taking such a ridiculous stance probably made sense to him. Ironically, Cantor echoed Rove's sentiments about not publicizing the violence while simultaneously publicizing the violence at his press conference where he told the nation about the violence reaching his own office.

The closest FOX has come to having a host hold accountable some of those responsible for inciting the violence came in the form of Shepard Smith's interview with Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele. Smith laudably chided Steele for responding to questions about the Republicans' approach to healthcare reform with talking points and went on to ask Steele, "I want to talk about the message a little bit. Leader Boehner called this 'Armageddon.' You've talked about a 'loss of freedoms.' The bill, said one Republican Congressman from Texas we now know, it's a baby-killer if we're to believe what he says about it today. Is this rhetoric helpful in these times in this nation? And if not, how might it be changed to where both sides could make their points without leaving a level of division that...is not good for this country?" Steele tried to explain that it was what "average folks out there are saying around the kitchen table." Smith handily replied, "Armageddon? Seriously?"
Smith had a valid point in suggesting that the leaders of the GOP had a lot to do with the rhetoric. Besides talk of Armageddon, Minority Leader Boehner also said of Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Democrat, that if he considered voting for healthcare reform, "He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati." Smith's main shortfall comes from failing to similarly take his FOX colleagues to task. Preceding his questioning of Steele, Smith read a piece from noted conservative columnist David Frum describing healthcare reform passage as the GOP Waterloo. Another telling comment from Frum came in his explaining the association between FOX and the GOP when he said, "Republicans originally thought that FOX worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for FOX." If, as Smith suggests, the GOP shares much of the blame for the vitriol in politics today, then FOX also carries much of, if not the bulk of, the same blame.

Violence against any politician in the U.S., regardless of political leaning, deserves condemnation. FOX's refusal to accept some of the responsibility for the rhetoric it fostered and the real violence that has apparently spilled over to both sides as a consequence seems ignorant. Trying to blame the Democrats for it by belittling the severity of the issue and the impulse to speak out against it or for insidiously willing it upon themselves, seems shamelessly self-serving. People should turn away from the violence and vitriol until people like Smith turn to the entire network for accountability -- and choose to Turn Off FOX.

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Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.

Let The Sun Shine In......