When it comes to viewing their opponents, the sides of the political spectrum have been taking pretty extreme viewpoints of each other lately (i.e. the last ten or fifteen years or so), heaving insults, accusations, and just general contempt and disgust at their opponents. My question is who is worse?
Taken from some celebrities and liberal talk-show hosts, you would think that the end of the world was coming when a Republican gets elected and that they better move out of the country now. Conservative talk-show hosts start wringing their hands in anticipation with a Democrat gets elected, because they’re sure to have plenty of skeletons in their closet on which to parade about in public.
But when it comes down to it, I’d say that the left is meaner than the right, and I base that on the basest of political arguements: The bumper sticker.
Case Clinton: “Don’t blame me - I didn’t vote for him”
Case Bush: “Don’t blame me - He’s not my president”
As far as who is MEANER? Well, as pointed out in the faith-based initiative thread, the Reps started gutting AmeriCorps at every opportunity they got. That scores pretty low on the karma-o-meter. As for the Dems, well… I’m sure they did something evil. I just don’t like them. Especially those celebrities you mention. Damn rich ass people playing at being the People’s Voice. If they would shut the f* up and start anteing up people who aren’t rich and corrupt, I’d like them a helluva lot more.
For the record, I’m a registered Republican who thinks the Democrats are far too conservative, and refuses to change to be affiliated with them. I am considering registering as a Communist, just because it’d be cool to find out if they really have membership cards.
Oh, yes, everyone knows the bumper sticker is the penultimate forum for intelligent discourse. :rolleyes:
I’ll counter your assertion with an assertion that the right is far meaner than the left, as a visit to any bookstore will demonstrate.
Speaking for the left, we’ve got folks like Al Franken, Molly Ivens, and Michael Moore, who call their opponents liars and hypocrites (usually with humor), but do not advance anything more severe than name-calling.
Speaking for the right, we’ve got folks like Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, who call their opponents traitors and anti-Americans (usually in total seriousness), and who do advocate imprisonment, deportation, and/or execution of said opponents.
Name-calling versus imprisonment and firing squads? Not even close.
And in a related vein, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times also noted the uneven weight between left/right criticism in a column this week:
I remember the conventional wisdom used to be: the right just thinks the left is naive; the left thinks the right is evil. Even being on the left myself, I saw a good deal to support this.
The last few years have certainly changed matters, though.
Hmm…Al Franken called Rush Limbaugh a “Big, fat idiot” and Bill O’Reilly said he’d shoot and kill Al Franken if we lived in the old west…
I’d have to say the Republicans are meaner. Of course, most of the examples of Republican Nastiness™ I can think of came from Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them…
In general, the Right is more meanspirited, but the Left does more actual damage. In terms of public discourse, they’re both on equally shoddy footing.
Oh, there’s plenty of meanness on both sides. Probably a LITTLE more on the Left, but only a little.
What’s really absurd, though, is how often I hear people on the far fringes of the Left AND the Right making (essentially) the same silly argument: “You know what our problem is? We’re too nice. Our enemies are so evil, so sure of the rightness of their cause, they’ll say or do ANYTHING to destroy us. But we’re too civil, too moderate to fight their way, and so we always lose out.”
The people who say such things actually mean it, too!
[QUOTE=rjung]
Oh, yes, everyone knows the bumper sticker is the penultimate forum for intelligent discourse. :rolleyes:
I’ll counter your assertion with an assertion that the right is far meaner than the left, as a visit to any bookstore will demonstrate.
Speaking for the left, we’ve got folks like Al Franken, Molly Ivens, and Michael Moore, who call their opponents liars and hypocrites (usually with humor), but do not advance anything more severe than name-calling.
Speaking for the right, we’ve got folks like Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, who call their opponents traitors and anti-Americans (usually in total seriousness), and who do advocate imprisonment, deportation, and/or execution of said opponents.
What a crock! I’m gonna have to call for a cite on where Coulter, O’Reilly and/or Hannity seriously called for the imprisonment, deportation and/or execution of Franken, Ivens and/or Moore.
See, this is the problem when you have a known liar, manipulator and con-artist in the White House. Clinton was a known liar as far back as his first campaign; his own state troopers told of his using them to procure women; he assigned his henchmen to handle the numerous “bimbo eruptions” that were occurring, usually by smearing the reputations of and trying to discredit the honesty of the various women in question, including one who had him on tape advising her to deny their affair, and that if she did, no one would be able to prove otherwise. Then there were the numerous questions of propriety concerning Hillary’s law practice and stock profits; Whitewater; Hillary’s secret health care machinations; disappearing files; and of course, Vince Foster’s odd death.
Live by the sword; die by the sword. If you’re known to be a liar and a cheat people don’t trust you, and if people don’t trust you it’s easy to believe, or at least think possible, every accusation that comes down the pike.
Objectivity will be quite rare in this particular thread. Shockingly enough, the opinion rendered and the examples used will directly reflect the ideology of the poster.
If Kerry is elected, the dominant expressed sentiment on the left will be “Thank God, our national nightmare is finally over. Now we can move forward and build a consensus to fight the troubles of the world.”
If Bush is re-elected, the dominant expressed sentiment on the right will be “Yeah! WOOHOO! Toldja so - f—in’ liberals - see! Guess you’re not the ‘silent majority’ after all, huh, are you? Are you?! Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy? God has granted us this victory, so what does that make you? La-hoo, a-hoo, a-zers!!”
Too, too funny! However, even if the conservative sentiment is expressed as you predict, the inner emotion will more likely be “Thank goodness, we’ve staved off a national nightmare for another four years!”
First of all I’d like to join the others asking rjung to back up his absurd accusations.
I’d break it down by category.
The pundits on the right and left are about equal. Coulter and Savage are pretty mean (on the right). So are Frankin and Moore (on the left). O’Reilly isn’t “on the right” at all, and is pretty middle of the road on issues.
Politicians on the left are much meaner when it comes to bashing opponents. Bird, Kennedy, and others routinely trash Bush with extremely harsh attacks. I honestly don’t recall Republican reps trashing Clinton in a similar manner. Bush when he first took office tried to appease Kennedy by meeting with him and trying to work with him. He was critized by talk radio for doing so. In the end, it didn’t work. Ted Kennedy still attacked him whenever he gets the chance.
As far as image goes, the right is seen as meaner. Most people don’t know a lot about politics and it’s easy for them to just see conservative policies as “mean”, because they don’t understand them. Liberal social spending programs are misguided, IMO, but one certainly not call them “mean”.
The people on the right and left are a mixed bag. It’s not possible to generalize on this. Some people on the left are mean as are some people on the right. I would say that folks on the left tend to be more idealistic and folks on the right tend to be more realistic, but that doesn’t nessesarily equate to “meanness”.
I swear, for sheer comic gold you can’t beat a liberal.
As an example of how mean the Right is, our friend mentioned above links to a site calling Armey
and
And this is supposed to demonstrate the measured civility of the Democrats as opposed to those nasty Pubbies.
Notice also that this was published after the Democrats had lost badly in both the House and Senate. As I said, the bigger the loss, the louder the complaints.
The Right is perfectly content to be kindly and genteel, so long as they’re winning. And they can be very flexible as to what “winning” actually entails. Lose the popular vote by half a million, and you have a ringing endorsement of policies just to the left of Otto von Bismarck. A mandate.
If Bush were ahead 70%-30%, he would be affable and folksy as all get out, calling Kerry “Stretch”, “Lurch”, or “Cheerful Charlie”. But he isn’t, somehow the libruhl media is distorting the vast majority of real Americans who support the Shining One. Fuzzy math. Voodoo statistics.
By the way, have you heard about Kerry’s secret plan for a Constitutional amendment forcing Eagle Scouts into gay marriages?
