Here’s what I’m getting at. I grew up in a conservative family in a conservative state. Though I think the Republicans have the market cornered when it comes to stupid, that doesn’t mean I’m a liberal. That said, I’m probably a little left of center, whatever that even means.
But whenever I would read “liberal propaganda” back in the day about how conservatives were hypocrites, slanderers and idiots, I never believed it. Sure, I thought for the better part of the last, say, five years that most Republicans and conservative pundits were inept/jingoistic/hypocritical, but I never believed that they would act as they have since Obama has become president.
I get factcheck.org and politifact articles sent to me every day, and sure there are and have been the occasional flat-out liberal lie or stretch, but the vast majority of these articles document the absurd lies that conservative pundits and Republicans promulgate.
I’m starting to believe the liberal propaganda. So, what I want is for someone to talk me down, and show me how the double standards on the left are just as bad.
We have some rules here:
You can’t point to the vitriol of domr DailyKos commenters or a blog that gets less than a million hits a day, and say, “See, they called us Nazis too.” I want mainstream.
Also, you can’t just point to one or two articles or people. I want to see an orchestrated, constant campaign of character assassination by Democrats and liberal commentators that is comparable to what conservatives have done on health care, the financial crisis, etc.
It cannot be just online. At least one politician or prominent public figure has to have picked up on it and made some sort of formal or informal campaign out of it.
It has to be patently false like the death panels, the birth certificate claims, forced sterilizations, or pretty much anything mentioned aboutACORN.
a bonus would be showing me that some prominent liberal commentators with comparable audiences show as much of a disconnect from reality (and sanity) as Glenn Beck.
Finally, all examples must be from 1980 on.
Convince me that republicans and conservative pundits are not far more superficial, intellectually lazy, and partisan than democrats and liberal pundits.
I’ve seen plenty of clips of Hannity and O’Reilly shouting down their guests. Do Maddow and Olbermann do that on a regular basis? I’ve seen several times where Maddow corrects an error she made on her show, while at the same time I’ve seen several occasions where O’reilly refuses to accept that he has reported something that has been proven false.
(NOTE: I am not holding up Maddow and Olbermann up as exemplars of great journalism, rather they are just *the *“liberal” commentators. However, I do find myself watching and liking Maddow more and more .)
I just want to be shown that I am giving liberals and democrats a pass for their stupid behavior.
You step up to the mic wearing your ‘Martyr’ sash, and then immediately do two things the OP specified he didn’t want. Are you going to keep doing this for 3 pages just so you can go ‘See! I was right!’?
Well, it just doesn’t, unless you can show that Mr. Jones spends the bulk of his paid time publically tearing apart everything Republicans say or do.
In case you missed it the first time:
Which of those qualifiers would you say allows you to present Mr. Jones as one of the notional “liberal Glenn Becks/Hannitys/Bachmanns/Steeles/etc.”? I’m really not seeing it.
I hadn’t, but his wiki page indicates a general-purpose nutcase rather than a liberal demagogue. His own page is full of conspiracy theories involving diseases, vaccinations, Jews and 9/11. Did he have any specific comments about the Bush administration when it was in power that weren’t conspiracy-related?
Is he the one who hosts a show on CNN or MSNBC, I can never remember.
I think the current situation is the fault or Murdoch. He brought British style tabloid journalism to the US. We never before had a major news outlet whose business model was to appeal to a particular political viewpoint without any regard whatsoever for telling the truth. If it brings in ratings (and advertisers) then it is OK with Murdoch. Beck got a slap on the wrist because advertisers pulled out. If they had stuck with him Murdoch would not have cared what he said.
I didn’t read the OP closely enough; my mistake. No, I can’t think of any leftist figure comparable to Beck or Hannity who has the same kind of pulpit.
I’ve never heard of Rense either. But, interestingly, Alexa shows that Rense’s website consistently gets more viewers (but fewer total page views) than Rush Limbaugh’s website. Rense.com and straightdope.com are about even in page views. In the case of Rense, most people view the home page for an average of 3 minutes and then move along. Huh.
I think that Michael Moore, the documentary producer, is probably about as close as you’re going to get. Some of the things he does in his documentaries are pretty dickish (like harassing Charleton Heston, or trying to storm into building headquarters past the secretaries) and some of the information he presents is pretty misleading. Some of the people he included in Fahrenheit 9/11 have since voiced their objections to being included in the movie, and that the views Moore appears to show them voicing represent highly edited and slanted cuts of what they actually said.
Still, I don’t think he’s quite as intellectually dishonest or influential as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh.
So long, of course, as said behavior fits exactly within the six specific criteria you specify. Otherwise, it means nothing, right?
Do the pubs get to set up their criteria of what exactly constitutes “superficial, intellectually lazy, and partisan?” Do dem politicians who supported the “truthers” count?
You’ve filled your request full of terms such that you can reject every instance given to you.
Define “mainstream.”
Define “an orchestrated, constant campaign of character assassination”
Define “some sort of formal or informal campaign.”
Define “patently false.”
Define “as much of a disconnect from reality (and sanity) as Glenn Beck.”
The tone of you post suggests that, as Shodan says, you’re just going to shoot down every example given to you.
It’s been over a week since his passing, so I’ll say that besides Chappaquidick & his defiance of his Church in promoting feticide, a major tarnishing of Ted Kennedy’s record was his smear campaign against Justice Robert Bork. Most political commentators, liberal & conservative, still try to support “a President should get the justices he wants”, but Kennedy set a precedent on partisan smearing of judicial candidates.
Al Sharpton had his day of being the hoax-perpetrating (to be fair, I believe he was hoaxed but could never admit it), pogrom-inciting racist anti-Semite left-wing lunatic. Somehow, he’s been rehabilitated.
Unfortunately, we are getting a glut of conservative stupid, because that’s what the public will listen to. Liberal stupid doesn’t get an big audience.
By questioning “mainstream” and “patently false” you undermine the credibility of your other criticisms.
Yes, clearly he’s trying to filter out the lone, uninfuential nuts that nobody listens to. It’s an obvious thing to try and filter out, because such people are irrelevent. (The Glenninsanity criteria was optional, you’ll remember.)
So yeah. His question is fair. You just don’t like what the answer shows.
Though, I would say that Moore would qualify. So, there’s one!
Howabout Al Sharpton? He’s intellectually dishonest (Tawanna Brawley), is quick to play the martyr, and gets a good deal of airtime whenever a race-based controversy pops up. He’s also someone that seems to have plenty of at least nominal support among the Democratic establisment.
Also can we mention organizations and not just individuals? If so, I’d say PETA and its supporters are probably the birthers of the left, at least in terms of batshit craziness.
Why don’t you just give us a few examples and let us all be the judge. Or show us why the criteria in th OP are unfair? They seem to me to be reasonable, and still allow for a fair discussion of who on the progressive side may be comparable to Glenn Beck, et. al.
