The biggest moron in the world
I must confess that I haven’t spent enough time writing about the Journo-list and the downfall of Washington Post “conservative” blogger Dave Weigel and today’s Daily Caller article on an effort by members of the Journo-list in 2008 to brand conservatives interested in the controversy over President Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as racists.
But amid all of that, I did want to point out that the biggest moron in the world is Media Matters’ Jamison Foser.
Foser has been hit with a stupid stick so many times his brains have apparently fallen out, been squished underfoot and put back in in some jumbled mess.
There are a wide variety rocks that are smarter than Foser.
From the Daily Caller article, quoting Spencer Ackerman, a vile leftist of the Washington Independent (who should, but won’t, be hounded out of journalism and politics for suggesting evil, baseless slanders of his political foes):
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Mary Katharine Ham highlights this quote and writes:
What better to paper over the cynicism and contradictions of the Democrats' candidate than some good, old-fashioned, crude shouts of "racist"? To their credit, several JournoList contributors suggested Ackerman's line of attack was not wise precisely because it contradicted so clearly Obama's message of healing. It was more of a strategic disagreement than a disagreement on the merits of the racism charge, but it's something…
…
Liberals do it because it works. In a standard that works rather conveniently for liberals, and has been embraced by much of the media during the post-Obama Tea Party era, white conservatives and their allies are considered racists for merely being white conservatives. No video evidence is necessary to condemn, and no number of repuditations [sic] is sufficient to clear conservatives of this taint.
It’s at this point the drooling moron Foser comes in and alleges dishonesty on Ham’s part.
Ham, in other words, portrays Ackerman as having argued for baseless allegations of racism against conservatives he knows aren’t racist. But in order to do so, she had to omit a key part of the Daily Caller article, which acknowledged: “Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. ‘We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.’”
So, according to the Daily Caller article Ham cites, Ackerman explicitly said that conservatives who don’t deserve to be called racists shouldn’t be called racists. But Ham omitted that fact from her post, and instead portrayed Ackerman as having advocated the “cynical political ploy” of baselessly accusing non-racists of racism.
Again: Spectacularly dishonest. [emphasis in original]
The “key part” of the Daily Caller article isn’t exculpatory, and if Foser had 1/1,000th of a brain he’d understand that. Ackerman’s acknowledgement that “some Republicans aren’t racists” is a sop to reasonableness and reality. Ackerman’s willingness to give a clean bill of health to Ross Douthat is like me pointing out that New York Times columnist Nick Kristof occasionally writes some good articles.
No serious individual (which of course exempts the entire Media Matters organization) believes that Fred Barnes or Karl Rove are racists. Ackerman suggested that Journo-listers slander Rove, Barnes and other Obama opponents as racists willy-nilly – hence the addendum of “who cares” to the list of potential victims. The resort to “who cares” isn’t a high-minded call to identifying racists and calling them out – it’s a call for using a scatter gun of slurs.
Ninety-eight percent of Media Matters’ output is garbage, but usually it’s tenuously connected to some sort of reflection of the real world. Foser’s analysis would be funny it weren’t so lame and if the charge of “racism” still didn’t carry such a stigma in today’s society.
One comment on “The biggest moron in the world”
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The JournoList strategy makes the response simple. Any time a lefty makes an accusation of racism, we need to immediately point out that this means he or she has run out of facts and knows that their only hope is to smear their opponents. They have used false accusations of racism very effectively but far too often. It's now time to turn the tables. Every time they shriek racism, we point out they are engaging in character assassination. Don't defend the charge. Presume it's false and demand an apology. The liberal use of the racism charge is like the squid's ink. It is meant to confuse and deceive.
They have no ideas, no facts and no honor. Make them eat their words.