Hmmm. On the one hand, you seem to be acknowledging that conservatives go around spewing anger, contempt and disgust. On the other hand, you seem to resent liberals’ considering themselves superior to conservatives.
Here’s the question: If somebody is spewing anger, contempt and disgust at me, why shouldn’t I feel superior to them? If someone’s using me as the target for vicious and hateful rhetoric, what claim do they have not to be looked down upon?
I frankly admit I do despise gratuitous meanness, viciousness, and animosity being used to poison the public discourse. If that makes me an elitist, so be it, I guess. Conservatives who resent being looked down upon for gratuitous meanness, viciousness, and animosity have nobody to blame but themselves, AFAICT.
In any case, the allegation of “elitism” on the part of liberals seems to be mostly a free-floating scare word used by conservatives to whip up that anger, contempt and disgust that you seem to feel is so intrinsic to their discourse. As this article notes:
If anything, for the longest time it’s been liberals who’ve mostly expressed contempt, disgust, and anger, while the conservatives sat in power just dripping smug superiority.
But then, leave it to the religious and/or right to manage to portray themselves as the persecuted minority while reality is completely different.
No, I really and truly do not see anywhere near the same condemnation of liberals coming from the right (and when I talk about this kind of thing, I’m talking about the population as a whole and not TV and radio personalities and politicians) as I do coming from the left and aimed at the right. I’m not aware of any particular conservatives who deride liberals as being dumb, mouth-breathing knuckkle-draggers, backward and old-fashioned, etc., etc., etc.
I’ve heard it said that while conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, liberals think conservatives are bad people. And what I see and hear coming from the left - whether it’s from the news and entertainment media, liberals I talk to face-to-face, or innumerable posts around here - bears that out.
Again, I’m talking about the population in the main. When people gripe about conservatives around here, they gripe about all of them and not just TV personalities or politicians. So I don’t think it’s kosher to point to a handful of conservative pundits and personalities and extrapolate from their behavior that it represents conservative thinking in the main.
Now see, this is the kind of thing I have to fight around here all the time.
I NEVER SAID “EVERY EVIL” THAT OCCURS IN THIS COUNTRY IS THE RESULT OF LIBERAL ACTION!
Mmkay, is that plain enough?
I have said several times around here in the past that there are some areas in which liberalism has been correct. There have been other areas where I think liberals had good ideas but went off the rails in implementing them. And I have never blamed all the evils in this country on liberals or liberalism. What I have done is point to areas where I think liberalism has caused a lot of damage (mostly in terms of societal quality of life) and I’ve criticised it for that.
Now that isn’t to say I view liberalism all that benignly, either. I view it as a philosophy that is deeply flawed and based on wishes and idealism rather than pragmatism and realism. Still, some good comes from every ideology and I’d never claim that every evil that exists came about from one ideology, and one ideology only.
And now, I’m all typed out. See you later.
Dammit, Ruby! (Sorry if that’s not your real name.:)) Now you’re doing it, too! I’ve never said, *“Liberals are rude, elitist snobs who dress poorly and their goal is to destroy American cultures and traditions.” *
For one thing, the elitist snobs of the type I’m talking about, and which Time and Newsweek covet, don’t dress poorly. They’re wine and cheese types. (As am I on occasion , but then I paint sometimes too and I love the way Elton John’s homes are decorated. :eek:)
It’s society in the main, rather than the wine-and-cheese types, which has become rude, crass, vulgar, etc. And yes, in a sense I believe that liberalism has had as its goal the destruction of American cultures and traditions as they existed in the days when American culture was more civilized and polite and where adults dressed in such a way that they actually looked like sophisticated and mature men and women rather than going through life looking like they just left a little-league game.
Still, I don’t think that rudeness, crassness, vulgarity (well, maybe vulgarity ;)) was ever a goal - I just think they were predictable results that lefties don’t care about, scoffed at at the time, and are indifferent to now that the damage is done.
The same could be said about the people who opposed black rights in the 50’s and 60’s. Or women’s rights at the turn of the century. Or immigrants rights the century before that. So what? No one wants to think of themselves as an asshole. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as an asshole. It just means that there are a whole lot of people who are capable of going through all sorts of impressive mental gymnastics to justify their bigotries.
And I’ve heard it said the other way around. And certainly, much of the rhetoric we’ve heard over the past several years from conservatives denouncing liberals as “treasonous”, “godless”, “cowardly”, “immoral”, “America-hating”, “anti-religion”, etc. etc. etc., seems to strongly bear out the idea that conservatives think liberals are bad people.
There’s an elitist remark if I ever heard one. Isn’t it the “ordinary people” who constitute “society in the main”? And isn’t it the “ordinary people” whom conservatives like to extol as being “real Americans” unfairly derided by those sneering, elitist liberals?
And of course, conservative discourse simply drips with disdain for those among the “little guys” who don’t happen to trend conservative, such as immigrants, the urban poor, and union members. From Sarah Palin sneering at the work of urban community organizers to Phil Gramm dismissing concerns about economic hard times as the “complaining” of “a nation of whiners”, conservative elites periodically let slip their mask of patriotic adoration of the non-elite “real Americans” and allow their condescending snobbery to show through.
In short, SA, you and the conservative leadership are the ones with your noses in the air sneering at the “ordinary Joes”, and then hypocritically blaming the liberals for their elitist disdain for the common people.
Okay, once more unto the breach, dear friends, and then I must conkify.
I didn’t say conservatives go around “spewing” anger, contempt and disgust. I’m saying that they are the emotions that liberalism engenders in us, and largely as a result of the type of behavior I’ve been describing in this thread.
You said that they “exude” anger, contempt and disgust.
What, in your opinion, is the significant difference between spewing and exuding?
Now you’re trying to weasel out of what you said by claiming that you’re comparing liberals’ behavior to conservatives’ feelings: in other words, you’d now like to have us believe that you mean that liberals are behaving badly and conservatives aren’t. Nice try, but too bad your own words contradict you.
Yeah, you’re right; I did. But I didn’t expect your interpretation.
A person can go around puffed and disgusted because he doesn’t like the way things are going, but that’s a far cry from “spewing” hatred at the source of that enmity.
Then I would have to say that you either hang around with a very tiny group of extraordinarily reticent conservatives or you are not listening to what conservatives across the country are actually saying. I hear all sorts of insults hurled at liberals from conservatives all the time. Even on this board, before Bush’s Iraq folly encouraged most of them to leave, I have seen conservatives accuse liberals (and centrists) of treason, of desiring the destruction of Western civilization, called stupid and hateful. I have worked with conservatives in jobs ranging from business executives to (literally) ditch diggers and I have heard every possible epithet hurled at “liberals”–and when I have stumbkled across conservative preachers on the radio, I have heard liberals described as the “spawn of Satan” and everything just short of that remark.
My guess would be that your particular filters–like the ones that let you claim that 99.9% of the U.S. population of the 1950s had never witnessed or heard of a lynching in their lifetime–simply screen out any nastiness emanating from conservatives so that you can feel superior to liberals.
Really? Seems like a distinction without a difference to me:
I suspect that you should take a deep breath and remember what you have posted previously–or, better, stop making your broad brush claims that are historically inaccurate.
Now now, tom, you’re making his point for him, by resorting to just the sort of gotcha, actually researched, posting we’ve come to expect and loathe from the liberal elite of this board.
OK.but can we keep the part about how the dirty fucking hippies destroyed the Ozzie 'n Harriet world of the 50’s? I know its not really true, but its so *damn *flattering!
(You know, Ozzie was an atheist. That’s a true fact, you could look it up…)
Talk radio has always admitted they’re “biased” toward the right. It’s no surprise…you know what you’re getting ahead of time when you tune in.
This has not been the case with most of the newspapers and magazine. Oh noes…they’re fair and balanced! :rolleyes:
In 2005, the New York Times chided Bush for the $40 million price tag on the inauguration. Do we hear any such tsk-tsking because of the $120 million Obama spent?
You excluded talking head types, but it seems to me if you take a look at the talking heads’ rhetoric you get a good idea what kind of ideas their listeners and readers approve of.
Look in the “current events” section of a bookstore and you have another good idea as to what kind of rhetoric conservative and liberal readers enjoy reading.
And the over the top derision is definitely to be found more on the “conservative” side of the talking head/political writer divide than on the “liberal” side. Given the fact that you wanted to exclude these sources, it appears you are aware of this fact.
And conservatives always want these groups to just wait, not impose their desire for equal rights on society until society is “ready.” “Why do you have to be so strident about it? It’s our society and we like it the way it is. You’re imposing yourself on us by wanting equal rights. Back off, you’re being so rude! We’ll give you your rights when we’re good and ready. In the meantime, too bad. And if you dare call us bigots, we’ll get the vapors and use that to justify continued denial of your rights.” And Starving Artist repeats this line to gays, not realizing that it shows him for what he is.
But, what the heck! Let’s give you that one! On the list of terrible, no good, awful things GeeDub has done, in order of importance, #1,235 Spent Too Much on His Inaugaration is hereby rescinded!
(You’re all better now, so I can pick on you without feeling like I’m drop-kicking a puppy for a field goal.)
Your link projects the price tag for the Obama inauguration as $45M, not $120M. Whence the discrepancy?
NYT, ISTM was being silly in 2005. It’s not as though it was taxpayer dollars being spent. And AFAIAC, forty million dollars that was being spent on throwing the Chimp-in-Chief a party is forty million dollars that WASN’T being spent on carrying out his evil.
I can’t believe I’m still repeating this after years and years of discussing these issues.
But okay. Apparently it needs to be repeated again.
There is a difference between the news on the one hand and editorials on the other hand.
No one has claimed–much less have the editors themselves claimed–that editorial articles are in some way “fair” or “balanced” or “unbiased.” They are “biased” by definition. This is something everyone knows.
You can not link to an editorial article as a citation for a claim that a newspaper’s news reporting is biased or unfair or whatever.
It would take an examination of the news articles themselves to make such a judgment.
If a newspaper’s editorial bias makes you suspect that its news reporting might be biased, that’s fair enough. But that’s all that’s warranted–a suspicion. Anything more than that requires a lot more work.
, but then I paint sometimes too and I love the way Elton John’s homes are decorated. :eek:)
Your link projects the price tag for the Obama inauguration as $45M, not $120M. Whence the discrepancy?