Conservative Media Bias

Conservatives have long complained about liberal media bias. But conservative media seems to be much worse.

Conservatives have long complained about liberal media bias.  But conservative media bias seems to be much worse.

In a brief “Note to the Right,” Kevin Drum observes:

There have been three big conservative outrages that have choked the airwaves over the past couple of weeks. #1 was about a bunch of scary black men, the New Black Panther Party. #2 was about a bunch of scary Muslims who want to build a triumphal mosque on the sacred soil of Ground Zero. #3 was about a vindictive black woman who works for the government and screws the white people she deals with. The running theme here is not just a coincidence.

Honest to God, someone on the right needs to start talking about this. Not David Frum or Andrew Sullivan, who have long since been purged from the ranks of real right wingers. Someone that conservatives actually listen to. Pronto. Who’s going to start?

Matt Yglesias, noting that even Ann Althouse has called the Daily Caller‘s releases on the JournoList brouhaha “weak” and “pretty mild stuff,” is even more to the point:

At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information.

As I’ve noted many times, I largely stopped watching and listening to broadcast news and political talk years ago.  Not only do I get almost all my news and commentary online these days, I’ve almost completely abandoned sources that I consider too polemical or predictable.   So, I mostly judge those other sources based on what bubbles up into the blogospheric discussion, which may not be representative of the whole.

But both Drum and Yglesias make excellent points.  Far too much of conservative media seems to be a nakedly propagandistic exercise, designed to manufacture outrage.   To be sure,  the general direction of media, period — see Politico and HuffPo, for example — is to do whatever’s necessary to generate traffic or ratings.   But outright manipulation and distortion is qualitatively different from mere hype.

In fairness, OTB covered all the stories Drum mentioned and quickly identified them as bunk.   But that’s almost our stock in trade here:  Most of the Outrage of the Day stories on the left and the right are based on some combination of assuming the worst of opponents and not understanding how the system works.   We occasionally fall into the same trap others do, but our default position on almost all those stories is “Meh.”

And Yglesias’ point that conservative media outlets are, at the end of the day, in the business of lying to conservatives is worth underscoring.

Tucker Carlson, who’s trying to create a conservative HuffPo with his upstart Daily Caller, has always struck me as harmless enough and rather close to me politically, hovering somewhere in the centrist conservative – mild libertarian territory.  My sense is that he’s just trying too hard to make a splash with this JournoList story and banging the drum too loudly.   To the extent there’s an outrage there, it’s the one Andrew Sullivan has been pointing too — the clubbishness of media elites — rather than some conspiracy to set the news agenda.  Certainly, it’s not that a bunch of liberal journos were excited that Obama won the election.

Andrew Breitbart, on the other hand, become well known as a result of the fraudulent ACORN sting operation and has been trying to replicate that on a regular basis.   There’s simply no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point.

My advice remains what it was more than a decade ago — before the modern Yellow Journalism era –when I was teaching Media and Politics courses to undergraduates:  Consume a wide variety of news sources, especially those that challenge your own biases.

FILED UNDER: *FEATURED, Best of OTB, Media, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. john personna says:

    I started off giving the Chris Matthews critics in comments here some credit. Sure, Matthews was to the left of them. He was on TV. I could see how that would rankle. And the leg tingle thing was kind of funny.

    Really though I’ve come around to seeing how much fairer, and how much more able Matthews is to criticize both sides, than his critics.

    I would guess that Matthews doesn’t figure above because he reported it properly? Without going too far one way or the other?

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38343790/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/

    Ah, maybe some won’t like Chris’ observation that “, this is part of a larger attempt, I believe, to rip the scab off race problems in this country.” But then again, maybe you are saying the same thing.

  2. Brummagem Joe says:

    “As I’ve noted many times, I largely stopped watching and listening to broadcast news and political talk years ago.”

    You and I both Jim. Media hysteria fuelled by cable news shows and the blogosphere has become a joke. And it’s not limited to politics The constant over hyping of the oil spill story has effectively destroyed the vacation season along the gulf coast when the actual onshore effects have actually been relatively minimal. Haley Barbour was entirely right although he was widely castigated. The problem with the right wing media (for which mainly read Fox) is that they have a business model that is built around manufacturing outrage on the right. The sheep are being shearded. Seeing the huge success of this approach lot of others have jumped on the bandwagon and so we have magazines catering to the tendency, Glenn Beck in Russian uniform facing you in every bookshop, etc etc. MSNBC has moved somewhat in this direction by setting themselves up as the anti Fox but don’t seem to have wholly embraced the business model of a left based cable station (probably because of the NBC connection). As for Breitbart he’s what’s popularly known as a piece of s*** who has cleverly manipulated the media, the NAACP and the Dept of Ag into behaving stupidly but at the expense of smearing a totally innocent citizen who could be any of us. Whose he going to smear next? All this said I’m a great believer in the concept of materiality. When you get right down to it we’ve had a week of hoopla that’s largely taken place on cable and blogland and that will be largely forgotten in another week although maybe the media and others may be a bit more sceptical about stories from this particular source.

  3. Mr. Prosser says:

    “When you get right down to it we’ve had a week of hoopla that’s largely taken place on cable and blogland and that will be largely forgotten in another week although maybe the media and others may be a bit more sceptical about stories from this particular source.”

    I tend to agree, perhaps what is interesting to contrast is what is going on in the blogs versus what Brian Williams yammers on about between pharmaceutical ads.

  4. LaurenceB says:

    I wholeheartedly agree with every last word of this post. Probably the best thing I’ve ever read on the subject.

  5. John says:

    For every (political) action there is an (un)equal and opposite reaction.

    Rarely do people on the fringe think through their actions before putting information out for mass consumption. Actually, this is not only for the ten percenters but can be applied to a much wider scope. For example, action – 9/11. Reaction – Bush takes liberties with the Patriot Act and war in Iraq justifying both with terrorist action.

    In turn this becomes an action – making people feel uneasy about their government and running up the national debt while American’s are dying for increasingly mythical threats. Reaction – the anti-party is voted into power in ’06 and ’08 because “change” is required.

    This call for “change” is taken up by the Democrats and used to push personal issues such as health care and tax overhauls while we still fight wars and balloon the national debt. Reaction – fuel for disenfranchised to formulate a scape goat for their problems. The tea party is born because it can put a face on its villain. The face is dark and has decided to pursue social agendas that they perceive will deepen their loss of jobs/prosperity/liberty.

    Action – overzealous pursuit of more scapegoats to feed the causes and (ahem) increase readers/viewers because somebody’s got to pay the bills. Lines are crossed. Injustices are done. Finally the voices are so loud that someone on an official level reacts badly in a public manner on a hot button topic…only they are wrong. Reaction – now fixing race relations are a major issue. Now we can address the social ills of the nation perpetrated on the African-American community because, you know, this is a case of a person being discriminated against because of her race so ipso facto it must be rampant and the reason behind disparity. Now the NAACP believes it has a real cause rather than fighting against shadows.

    So whats the new action? What’s the result? Have the conservative media/action groups achieved their goals with this windstorm of accusations? I would say that in fact these ill gotten games will turn short-lived victories into defensible arguments for actions that are the antithesis of their charters. And furthermore, that rather than scoring points between cable networks who have no real ability to make policy, they’ve broken eggs on the faces of the people that can make policy. And as we know…for every political action there is an (un)equal and opposite reaction.

  6. just me says:

    Well I disagree with the “conservatives are worse” because there is plenty to point to from the liberal end of the spectrum, but I do think right now conservatives are trying to hard to find a scandal-and not just a scandal, but the kind the casual news viewer can easily understand and get outraged over. I think who is doing it more right now is more an artifact of the democrats controlling everything than conservatives being worse. When the GOP was in charge, there were manufactured scandals or overblown scandals all over the place (Rathergate probably being the worse one given the fact that it involved a major network news organization and network anchor).

    I don’t watch network or cable news. I read my local papers online, read a smattering of online news sources and several trusted blogs.

    I think to some degree opinion has bled into news coverage. But then I am one who has never believe in the unbiased journalist. Bias comes through in multiple ways even when a journalist is trying to be unbiased, word choice, quote choice, and how the quote is edited come into play. It is sort of like the “find the party” joke when a politician goes wrong. When it is a republican the media generally make sure the party ID happens within the first paragraph if not the actual headline, while a reader often has to look hard to find the party ID of a democrat caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

    Everyone carries some bias and what we read and write is filtered through that bias-even when a person is open minded and open to persuasive argument what they hear is still going to be filtered through their own views and experience. Journalists are magically inoculated from this.

    I think there are some out there who are more dishonest than others, and I do think when a person’s party is out of power, the tendency is to desire to find the “gotcha” which makes them a little more prone to believing anything, trying to magnify the small things into big things, or in some cases manipulating the information in a way to make it the “gotcha” that really wasn’t.

  7. Herb says:

    I’ve been saying for years that complaints about “media bias” weren’t rooted in animosity to bias. They’re mostly complaints about having the wrong bias.

    With that said, would it be more fair to call Breitbart a partisan right-winger than a conservative? I haven’t seen very much that’s conservative in his work….although he does seem to be a pretty reliable partisan.

  8. Brummagem Joe says:

    just me says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 10:27
    “Well I disagree with the “conservatives are worse” because there is plenty to point to from the liberal end of the spectrum, ”

    Would you like to give us a few examples of where liberals have indulged in this sort of character assasination. Over the past few years we’ve had litany of cases where individuals have been smeared by the right and I’m struggling to think of any from the left. Which is not to say they don’t say some stupid things sometimes but there isn’t this continous mudslinging so I’d be interested to see whay you consider a list of liberal victims like Sharrod.

  9. Brummagem Joe says:

    “I haven’t seen very much that’s conservative in his work”

    In that case most of the GOP isn’t conservative these days.

  10. Duracomm says:

    Brummagem Joe said,

    Would you like to give us a few examples of where liberals have indulged in this sort of character assasination.

    Here you go

    Think Progress and the Eighth Circle of Hell

    Late yesterday afternoon, Think Progress posted a bit of video that they created, claiming that that bit of video was “proof” that “Yes there is racism in the Tea Party movement.”

    That sad little bit of evidence that millions of Tea Party protesters constitute a racist group was a 54-second video they cobbled together. Not at all surprising was the fact that the video was heavily edited.

    Even less surprising was the fact that Think Progress had to use fraud even get that much footage.

    The current follies kicked off with the NAACP resolution to censure the tea party as a racist organization.

    That resolution was the crowning effort of months of attempts to smear the tea party as racist. This effort kicked off with the false but widely repeated media lie that racial epithets were hurled at black congressman before the vote on health care.

    The usual bullies threw the race card and it blew up in their face. Now the bullies are whining that their favorite tactic blew up in their face.

  11. Dantheman says:

    “The current follies kicked off with the NAACP resolution to censure the tea party as a racist organization.”

    Try again, but this time aim for truthfulness. The NAACP asked the Tea Party to disassociate itself from racist elements within it.

  12. Juneau: says:

    Try again, but this time aim for truthfulness.

    Dude, it’s a video and verifiably, intentionally false. Your denial of it is unbelievable.

    You can lead a donkey to water, but you can’t make it drink.

    And to add to the ThinkProgress example above, what about the last three days of evidence provided by the “Daily Caller”, where it shows concerted efforts by Journolist members, illustrated by THEiR OWN emails, to find a way to smear “any conservative” by calling them racist. All in order to deflect attention from Barack Obama’s associations before the 2008 election? And these are supposed to be those that “speak truth to power.”

    Living in that nice pink, fluffy world of denial must be very comforting to you…

  13. reid says:

    Thanks for this one, John. Posts like this are why I check in with this blog regularly. Unfortunately, for every reasonable conservative that is immune to the faux outrage and propaganda, there are probably 100 that lap it up. Maybe with efforts like yours, Frum’s, and a few others, sanity will slowly be restored.

    just me: I, too, think the far-right has gotten more detached from reality, more unhinged, more hateful, and more populous than anything when Bush was in office. Not easily quanitifiable, of course, so it’s my opinion vs. yours…. We should also consider that the things being reacted to are quite different as well. Is a lefty protesting the Iraq war or torture really equivalent to a righty protesting that Obama is a socialist or even health care reform, for example?

  14. Brummagem Joe says:

    Duracomm says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:40

    ” Here you go”

    This isn’t a case of an individual. And given that I’ve seen loads of news video footage of tea party folks carrying racist banners of one sort and another it’s fairly obvious that at least some of them are.

  15. reid says:

    And no, I don’t know why I called you John. Sorry, Jeff….

  16. Brummagem Joe says:

    Duracomm says:

    “The usual bullies threw the race card and it blew up in their face. Now the bullies are whining that their favorite tactic blew up in their face.”

    The fact you don’t think the actions of Breitbart are deeply reprehensible really tells me all I need to know about the extent of your moral compass

  17. Juneau: says:

    The fact you don’t think the actions of Breitbart are deeply reprehensible really tells me all I need to know about the extent of your moral compass

    You know, this is somewhat ironic coming form a bigoted, racist, left-wing demagogue.

  18. Brummagem Joe says:

    Duracomm says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:40

    ” Here you go”

    Not to mention the notorious Mr Lincoln letter from tea party founder Mark Williams!!

    Dear Mr Lincoln

    We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

    In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

    The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

    And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

    The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

    Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

    Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

    Sincerely

    Precious Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew NAACP Head Colored Person

  19. Dantheman says:

    “Dude, it’s a video and verifiably, intentionally false.”

    The NAACP resolution is a video? Please come back to earth.

  20. Brummagem Joe says:

    Juneau: says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 13:20

    “You know, this is somewhat ironic coming form a bigoted, racist, left-wing demagogue.”

    You guys always end up in the same place. The name calling saloon. And I always leave.

  21. Duracomm says:
  22. Juneau: says:

    You guys always end up in the same place. The name calling saloon. And I always leave.

    You guys always begin in the same place. The hypocrisy saloon. And I, along with millions like me, are not leaving you unanswered any longer.

  23. Brummagem Joe says:

    Duracomm says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 13:36

    ” Joe, please try and keep up with current events.”

    But they were active members until less than a week ago. Thus how can one possibly say there have never been racist elements in the Tea Party movement. Williams just over reached rather as Breitbart has done I suspect.

  24. Herb says:

    “This effort kicked off with the false but widely repeated media lie that racial epithets were hurled at black congressman before the vote on health care.”

    Oh lord….why do you believe this crap?

    I understand being skeptical of the Rep Lewis’s claims. There’s no definitive proof, aside from witness testimony, (which does hold up in court,by the way) that it happened.

    On the flip side, where’s the proof that it’s a media lie??????

  25. Juneau: says:

    The NAACP resolution is a video? Please come back to earth.

    No, silly. The video referenced in the reply to your post – which accompanied the NAACP resolution. Stay on track with your conversations…

  26. Juneau: says:

    Thus how can one possibly say there have never been racist elements in the Tea Party movement. Williams just over reached rather as Breitbart has done I suspect.

    You can’t call an individual an “element.” Unless you want to state that the Congressional Black Caucus has racist elements because it invites Farakhan to speak at it’s events. Are you saying that the CBB is racist? Or simply that they should denounce Farakhan?

    Your logic is a little unclear here, could you clarify it for me based on the above questions?

  27. Dantheman says:

    “The video referenced in the reply to your post – which accompanied the NAACP resolution. Stay on track with your conversations…”

    I did, you didn’t. I commented solely upon your lie that “The current follies kicked off with the NAACP resolution to censure the tea party as a racist organization” by pointing out that this was not what the NAACP resolution said. You responded with a non-sequitir about a video I had not commented upon. When challenged upon this, you doubled-down on your confusion. And you have the temerity to call anyone else silly.

  28. Juneau: says:

    “The current follies kicked off with the NAACP resolution to censure the tea party as a racist organization” by pointing out that this was not what the NAACP resolution said. You responded with a non-sequitir about a video I had not commented upon.

    If you look above, you are confusing two different conversations…

  29. G.A.Phillips says:

    ***You know, this is somewhat ironic coming form a bigoted, racist, left-wing demagogue.***
    Ain’t it, lol…………….

  30. Duracomm says:

    Brummagem Joe, putting wheels under the goal posts, said,

    Thus how can one possibly say there have never been racist elements in the Tea Party movement.

    Be careful Joe, look out!!!

    By applying that standard you cause big problem for the democrats.

    What with their esteemed ex grand klegle in the senate and their filibustering of civil rights legislation. Pretty sad really.

  31. Dantheman says:

    “If you look above, you are confusing two different conversations…”

    There may be 2 different conversations, but I’m only having one of them. Let’s look at the history, starting with the first one.

    ” Dantheman says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 12:48
    “The current follies kicked off with the NAACP resolution to censure the tea party as a racist organization.”

    Try again, but this time aim for truthfulness. The NAACP asked the Tea Party to disassociate itself from racist elements within it.

    Juneau: says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 13:08
    Try again, but this time aim for truthfulness.

    Dude, it’s a video and verifiably, intentionally false. Your denial of it is unbelievable. ”

    In other words, you responded to a comment on the NAACP resolution by diverting into the video. It went downhill from there.

  32. Wayne says:

    For those who don’t watch\listen\read the different news sources, you opinion of them are from second hand opinion. “Fox is a conservative because someone or CNN told me they were”. Not reliable in my book. I prefer to watch myself and form my own opinion.

    IMO Fox in the Bush year was about 40/40/20 in Conservative\Liberal\middle. Now they are 50/30/20. CNN went from 95 % liberal to an even more extreme liberal bias. MSNBC is in la la land.

    Some have already pointed out several liberal bias examples. If I get time later I will point out even more.

  33. Brummagem Joe says:

    Juneau: says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 13:59

    “Your logic is a little unclear here”

    Not at all I asked for a few examples of where liberals had committed individual character assassinations of the sort the Breitbart had perpetrated against Sharrod. So far no one has produced one.

    Secondly (and totally separately) I pointed out that until a few days ago the Tea party movement contained at least one major racist element in Williams and his organization that has just rather publicly left after publishing a blatantly racist dummy letter. Therefore it is impossible to say there have NEVER been racist elements in the tea party because there obviously have been and almost certainly still are.

    If this relatively simple logic is a struggle for you to understand what can I say.

  34. Brummagem Joe says:

    “IMO Fox in the Bush year was about 40/40/20 in Conservative\Liberal\middle. ”

    Yeah right, it was only minority right wing. Liberals and independants were in the ascendant at Fox back in the Bush years everyone knows that.

  35. Juneau: says:

    So far no one has produced one.

    This is pure horse-puckey. Would you care to address the Journolist post I made above?

  36. Brummagem Joe says:

    Juneau: says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 14:31
    So far no one has produced one.

    “This is pure horse-puckey. Would you care to address the Journolist post I made above?”

    Not really since there’s no similarity whatsoever between private musings which were supposedly never going to be made public and the blatant public smearing of Sharrod by Breitbart with an edited video that Fox promoted. The problem is you can’t accept there’s a difference, or that the tea party movement had/has racist elements, without your entire house of cards collapsing.

  37. Franklin says:

    For those who don’t watch\listen\read the different news sources, you opinion of them are from second hand opinion.

    Actual *news* reporting at Fox, such as that done by Sheppard Smith, is actually pretty unbiased and even informative. But every opinion show I have seen on FNC ranged from moderate right to far right. Even Colmes was a moderate when compared to the American public.

  38. Juneau: says:

    The problem is you can’t accept there’s a difference, or that the tea party movement had/has racist elements, without your entire house of cards collapsing.

    No, frankly, the problem is that you’re like an elderly spinster with 30 cats living in the house. She can’t smell the stench because she lives with it every day, but everyone else can. They think it quite strange when she complains about the smell of the shop across the street..

    Clean your own litter-box. Then maybe I’ll be open to discussing mine with you. Until then, keep telling yourself that yours doesn’t stink.

  39. Herb says:

    Brummagem Joe wanted examples of the left doing “character assassination” based on accusations of racism. Juneau, having the sophistication of a hangnail, couldn’t come up with the most obvious example:

    Trent Lott.

    Any right-wingers here prepared to argue that Trent Lott was treated fairly? Yeah….thought not.

  40. anjin-san says:

    Living in that nice pink, fluffy world of denial must be very comforting to you…

    Of course Juneau, of course. And Paul Newman was no liberal 🙂

  41. anjin-san says:

    Excellent post James.

  42. Juneau: says:

    Juneau, having the sophistication of a hangnail

    Thank you. Let’s see what else can you throw in there; Teabagger, Nascar retard, trailer trash, neo-fascist jingoistic Rovian pig, moronic conservative, oh, and of course…..racist. Go ahead, you know you want to…

    Sophistication is a wholly ineffective tool of oration when employed against those opponents who care nothing about substance or accuracy.

  43. Juneau: says:

    Of course Juneau, of course

    Welcome to the cat-house.

    Later…

  44. Herb says:

    “Thank you. Let’s see what else can you throw in there; Teabagger, Nascar retard, trailer trash, neo-fascist jingoistic Rovian pig, moronic conservative, oh, and of course…..racist. ”

    Like I said…..the sophistication of a hangnail. If you were more sophisticated you would recognize there’s a lot of daylight between calling someone “unsophisticated” and that list you just pulled out of your ear.

  45. Juneau: says:

    If you were more sophisticated

    So. You chose an elegant way of calling me – essentially – uncultured, uneducated, and uniformed. And because I translated that into the course and common labels used by liberals to communicate the same point – when they’re not being sophisticated, of course – this is proof of my lack of sophistication? Ahhh, I see. Gosh, if only I had gone back and gotten that GED…

  46. Juneau: says:

    Ahem… Coarse, not Course. Maybe I SHOULD have gone back and gotten that GED 🙂

  47. wr says:

    Herb — Count me in!

    Well, maybe not. Trent Lott should have been kicked to the curb years before he was. The fact that he finally said what he really meant in public — that if racist and separatist Strom Thurmond had been elected president we wouldn’t have had “all those troubles.” Presumably because the darker folks would have learned their place for good.

    But one thing you really need to know. It wasn’t liberals who took Lott out. If they could have they would have years before. It was Bush — or maybe Rove, who knows? Bush wanted Lott out as majority leader so he could get the guy who was in his pocket in place. And it worked.

    Next?

  48. Herb says:

    Juneau, I apologize if I didn’t make myself clear.

    I didn’t call you unsophisticated to hurt your feelings or imply that you have other faults. Sorry if that was the result.

    I merely say that because it seems that when it comes to an argument, you seem to look first to who’s making it rather than how sound that argument may be. Unfortunately, when you operate like that…it’s very easy to be led by the nose by bad faith operators like Breitbart.

  49. Brummagem Joe says:

    Herb says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 15:22
    Brummagem Joe wanted examples of the left doing “character assassination” based on accusations of racism. Juneau, having the sophistication of a hangnail, couldn’t come up with the most obvious example:

    Trent Lott.

    Agreed but he was done in as much by his own side who removed him from his leadership position as by anyone on the left. There’s also a qualititive difference to some extent in that Lott was a politician and has to deal with this sort of stuff because it goes with the territory whereas Sharrod was essentially mid level bureaucrat who could have been your mother. Lott of course is now regularly denounced as a RINO by the hard right.

  50. G.A.Phillips says:

    ***Living in that nice pink, fluffy world of denial must be very comforting to you…***—————————->***Even Colmes was a moderate when compared to the American public.***

    hehehahaehehaha

  51. Brummagem Joe says:

    wr says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 16:50
    “Well, maybe not. Trent Lott should have been kicked to the curb years before he was. The fact that he finally said what he really meant in public — that if racist and separatist Strom Thurmond had been elected president we wouldn’t have had “all those troubles.”

    C’mon Lott was speaking at a celebratory lunch or something for this senile old buffer and said some positive things about him. People all over the country and no doubt at his funeral were saying Steinbrenner was a great guy when he was a bit of thug. That’s what people do with the aged and dead! Otherwise you’re totally correct, Lott was principally squeezed out by his own side and not because of any outrage from Jesse Jackson. So it’s a poor example but probably the best they can come up with.

  52. Brummagem Joe says:

    Juneau: says:
    Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 14:54
    “Clean your own litter-box. Then maybe I’ll be open to discussing mine with you. Until then, keep telling yourself that yours doesn’t stink.”

    You just crossed the line buddy, I don’t mind having a robust debate with anyone about policy but once the name calling starts we’re done.

  53. ponce says:

    I think the biggest problem with these coordinated fringe-Right efforts to lie to Republican voters is…timing.

    They don’t seem to understand that their lies are being debunked within minutes these days.

    They used to be so good at avoiding making objective, falsifiable statement.

    But I guess once you’ve called Obama a Muslim agent bent on destroying America there’s really nowhere else to go, though.

  54. Coloradan says:

    Reading this comment thread is nauseating. Even if the Liberals were the nastiest bunch of hacks to ever walk the earth, how is that justification for Conservatives to be the same or worse? Hackery and hypocrisy rule both idiologies. I get it. Both sides suck. Not a newsflash. Meanwhile America is going down the toilet. Shame on all of us for letting it happen.

    Where are the adults here?

  55. Jilli says:

    Well done Mr. Joyner. Unfortunately, those that need to hear the message the most will remain deaf and the gullible will continue to fall prey.

  56. MNPundit says:

    Ah, the problem is as they said, so many news sources that challenge my biases as a liberal are well, peddling lies. I suppose I could read you and Sully and Frum and I do read Sully and Frum (I think you are too blind to danger the right wing poses to the country) but you’re not representative of the actual political opponents my side is faced with.

  57. M. Farmer says:

    “Certainly, it’s not that a bunch of liberal journos were excited that Obama won the election.”

    I had a different reaction — it’s not that liberals wanted Obama elected, it’s the degree of elation, the quivering teariness over a president that concerns me. At best it should be a choice between two evils, not an orgasmic deliverance.

  58. Wayne says:

    Franklin
    Just exactly who would you consider a liberal? Try to give some examples that are not extreme far left. Would Gore or Obama be a liberal in your book for example?

  59. mannapat says:

    Happy to have discovered this site. Since the current Supreme Court has ruled that it’s OK to lie on national TV, I don’t think there is much anyone can do other than shun the the channels that promote not only flat out lies, but the insidious misrepresentation that passes for “news”. And it appears that the bigger the lie that’s repeated endlessly, the truer it becomes.

    This country is in big trouble.

  60. mannapat says:

    Franklin, Obama would fall to the right of the Republican Eisenhower.