Some facts:
(1) I've barely ever heard of Media Matters, have never seen it, so I have no idea what they say. Apparently for you anyone critical of FNC has to be some "far-leftist" -- it isn't possible that someone could see them for the liars they often are and not be propagandizing for the opposite extreme.
(2) NOWHERE did I state that the Republican candidate in NY23 was a "guy" -- in fact, nowhere did I mention that person's sex. Re-read what I wrote, carefully this time. The "guy" I referred to was the Conservative Party candidate, as was quite clear, since I was referring to the candidate Beck et al were championing without even knowing anything about him. No, I don't live in Watertown. I read what the newspaper's editorial board said about the Conservative on line and in various papers, and also saw his whiny reaction that he should have been told the questions beforehand. The GOP county chairman who resigned did not do so "in disgrace" -- disgrace for what? That he helped pick a candidate who was then denounced by a lot of outsiders who don't live in the district, or even the state, and know nothing about the people involved? He quit because he came under pressure from disgruntled local Republicans. That sort of thing happens all the time, and for many reasons -- like the county finance chairman in Wisconsin who was forced from his job last year because he had had the temerity to criticize Rush Limbaugh. The debacle in NY23 was an entirely (and proudly) manufactured cause celebre by Beck, whose lead was slavishly followed by many national Republicans who feel they have to toady to his ilk. (The party of "individualism" that insists its members all toe the same line.) A few days after the Conservative lost, he was interviewed by Beck and made noises, encouraged by Beck, about challenging the election results -- of "un-conceding", as I believe Beck put it. Of course, nothing came of that.
(3)I don't know what Beck's racism charge referred to -- it may or may not have been spurred by the cop/professor episode, and that was a stupid thing for Obama to have said or even gotten involved with. But he made it as a general statement, not related to any single incident. He made it not on his show but on another Fox program. Aside from a vague statement from Rupert Murdoch a couple of days later that he (RM) doesn't think Obama's a racist, no action of any kind was taken against Beck, nor did he apologize for or withdraw his comments. This is in keeping with the insistence on the part of conservatives that liberals have to apologize for things that in some cases they had nothing to do with (for instance, the "General 'Betray-us'" crap from whichever liberal blog that was the other year, for which GOP senators demanded the Democrats apologize, though no one in the party had said it and all had denounced it); but when conservatives say or do something stupid, unconscionable or just flat wrong, they never get called on it by their fellows, as per my unrefuted examples last post.
And Beck, like Hannity and certainly O'Reilly, certainly does make ad hominem attacks, though his personal style may differ. I don't know how many so-called fact checkers he may use, he makes so many misstatements and misrepresentations he can't even be called out on all of them. Say what you will about Keith Olbermann (whom I don't personally care much for), but he has not ever been called out on a lie or mindless slur, and when he's made a mistake he's apologized and set the record straight.
(4)Still on Beck, once again, you accuse me of saying something I did not say. Where did I accuse Beck of being a birther? Answer: nowhere...although even you stated he had at one time questioned Obama's birth bona fides. (In fact, it was McCain, not Obama, who wasn't born in the United States.) But many conservatives, including most Republican congressmen, still try to play to the birther movement by refusing either to say that they believe Obama was born in the US, which apparently you acknowledge to be true, or saying that "as far as [they] know", he was born here. Sarah Palin played this game just the other week, saying in a radio interview that people are right to question Obama's birth legitmacy, then beating a hasty retreat to her Facebook page to deny that she thinks he wasn't born in this country. When relative moderate Republican congressman Mike Castle of Delaware refuted a woman's accusation at a town meeting last year that Obama wasn't a citizen, he was booed down by most of the crowd. Anyway, the only possible connection I made between Beck and the birthers is to state that many, maybe most, people in the so-called "teabag" movement are birthers, or at least have suspicions, as their many prominent signs to that effect at their rallies indicate. And since Beck is one of the leading promoters of the teabagger movement, while he may not agree that Obama is not a citizen, he has done nothing to stop such signs and activities at teabag rallies.
(5) When you wrote that Beck was doing an investigation of the Progressive movement, I almost asked whether you were referring to the one that took place a century and more ago -- but then assumed that was too ludicrous a question. Yes, thank you, I have heard of the Progressive movement, and may well know a great deal more about it than you do, having a degree in history and not getting my information from Glenn Beck. I find it hard to believe that Beck is confining himself to something of historic interest only, that is, that he is not trying to link the Progressives of the 1890s - 1920s with liberals or some other right-wing bogeymen of today. I know of his recent obsession with so-called Marxist (or is it his oxymoronic Marxist-Fascist?) art around Rockefeller Center, which to anyone with any education is hardly hot news -- the leftist sympathies of many of the artists hired by the Rockefellers in the 30s were well known then and have never been a secret, Beck's breathless "discovery" notwithstanding. In any case, where you got the idea that Benito Mussolini was a "progressive" is beyond me. (Well, actually, it isn't.) First, the "Progressive movement", as defined by you in citing TR, Wilson and LaFollette, had nothing whatsoever to do with Mussolini or with any foreign leader. The Progressive movement was exclusively an American phenomenon, beginning in the 1880s with the likes of James B. Weaver and William Jennings Bryan, through people such as Hiram Johnson in the 1910s and 20s, and even with LaFolette's two sons, in Wisconsin into the 30s and 40s. But the New Deal largely put paid to the by-then ancient rhetoric of the Progressives of the turn of the century.
To connect Mussolini with this movement is factually inaccurate, ridiculous, and clearly intended as a slur against all the modern liberals who have been cowed by right wing fanatics into thinking that "liberal" is a dirty word, and so dredged up "progressive" as a substitute. Mussolini was a socialist turned fascist, but could in no context be labeled a "progressive" as the word is historically understood. You could as well label Hitler a progressive, for certain of his views. Of course, the term "progressive" was used in other countries and by other political persuasions -- the Communists, for one, routinely used the term to describe someone with like-minded views to theirs (almost always referring to people in the West, less often among their own kind in the old Soviet bloc, where they used the word "socialist"). But these had nothing to do with the Progressive movement in the United States. Henry Wallace's Communist-infiltrated third-party presidential bid in 1948 used the name "Progressive Party", but it had absolutely nothing in common with LaFollette's Progressive Party of 1924, which in turn had little to do with -- and no direct connnection to -- Roosevelt's Progressive party of 1912. Mussolini's fascism had nothing whatever to do with any form of so-called "progressivism", and in any case nothing whatsoever to do with the "movement". There never was any such "movement" as a global, or international, entity or even concept. Every major country had its leftist parties, along with its rigthist ones, and obviously some similar themes arose in each nation. But a "movement" broad and organized and connected enough to warrant linking Mussolini with Woodrow Wilson? Factually wrong, and utterly idiotic. If anything, Mussolini's fascism is closer to Beck's politics than to these other people's.
(6) I'm sorry to make a personally nasty comment, but much of your post above made me wonder how smart you are, or at least how well you pay attention to things. First, there have been many signs featuring swastikas at teabag rallies, not just the one featuring Pelosi you cite as the supposed "lone" such sign. Most of these have featured pictures of Obama with a swastika across his face, with or without diagonal line. There have also been pictures of Obama altered to look like Hitler, and many featuring him with a hammer and sickle -- indicating at the least that most of these fools know nothing about history. (Tough to be both a Nazi and a Commie.) Now, of course these aren't "pro-Nazi signs" -- they're signs accusing Obama, Pelosi and whoever else of BEING Nazis. To say they're not "pro-Nazi", as if that was their intent, shows one to be either stupid or dishonest. They're calling their targets Nazis, not proclaiming their own Nazism...although I expect that some of them may hold views not at all inimical to some Nazi tenets, such as virulent racism. Do you really not get this simple fact? (I'm sure when some irresponsible liberals carried signs slurring Bush as Hitler, you, like all conservatives, took great umbrage, which clearly means you got the point of such signs.)
Worse than all this crap is the fact that Republican politicians have fallen all over themselves addressing teabag rallies, and not one has ever expressed regret at, let alone denounced, signs defaming the President of the United States or any other politician, whether as a Nazi or some other slur; or the signs calling Obama a Muslim or a foreigner. They all claim "not to have seen them". Even if true (which is not credible), does this relieve them of the responsibility of denouncing such stuff afterward? They sure demanded apologies for similar things lodged against Bush. Those signs, of course, they "saw". The gutless cowardice and utter lack of any semblance of principle or integrity by most Republican politicians, cowering before the teabaggers as if they were a majority of this country, or even of the Republican Party, is disgraceful. You want to denounce Obama or his policies, fine. But comparing him to a Nazi, or letting such accusations go unrebuked out of political fear and hatred? For supposedly responsible people, that's unforgivable. There has to be some line of decency and respect that politicians will not cross, even if many of their more lunatic supporters do. It reflects cowardice, cravenness, and an abysmal lack of leadership or civic responsibility.
(Although the Republicans are learning that they cannot, as they seemed to confidently think, control the teabagger movement. At a second such rally day, very sparesly attended anywhere, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. John Cornyn both tried to address the Texas event -- and both were roundly booed. The trouble in dealing with fanatics is that the fools who think they can harness them for their own purposes quickly discover that they won't automatically do their bidding, either -- not even for people like Perry, or the Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature, both of whom claim, in statements and in a legislative motion, that their states have a right to secede. This is false, but driven by their trying to prove they're more anti-Obama than others. The real word for such advocacy is, of course, treason.)
By the way, if FNC were the unbiased "news" source it claims to be, why the heavy advertising promotions for the teabag rallies last year -- as if they were covering a moon shot? These were staged political events (all such events are) by a political fringe, abetted by Fox news people and commentators, who claimed they were simply covering the news. Do you advertise the news? Give a political rally wall-to-wall coverage across the country? Bill O'Reilly justified it by saying that when the "Million Man March" on Washington was held in 1995, Fox gave that wall-to-wall coverage...which was fine except for the tiny fact that Fox News didn't go on the air until a year and a half later.
(7) Lastly, as to your final point, the term "teabagger" is, as far as I know, used by people in the so-called movement itself. If someone thinks of it in the disparaging terms you suggest (your erudite "douche-bag" remark), then that's that individual's opinion, but I doubt the teabaggers think of themselves that way, even the ones carrying signs like "I am a Christen" [sic], probably a good indicator of their level of tolerance, discourse and understanding. But I confess not getting your final sentence, "Certainly not on the topic of propaganda, as it identifies that person as one susceptible to the most outrageous falsehoods." This sentence reads as a complete non-sequitor to what came before it. Be that as it may, if your purpose was to indicate that teabaggers were not susceptible to outrageous falsehoods, this is patently untrue. One can't make a generalized statement that every teabagger is misinformed or prey to lies, slurs and other name-calling stupidities seen in abundance at their rallies -- any more than one can make a generalized statement that they are not -- but the available evidence is overwhelming that a great many, probably most, very clearly are in agreement with at least a goodly number of the lies, smears and ignorant slanders so vehemently expressed by so many teabaggers.
At a minimum, I have yet to hear anybody, amongst the teabaggers or on the right in general, denounce the scurrilous and bigoted attacks widely in evidence at teabag rallies, including your pal Beck, who likes to claim significant authorship of the movement (if that is indeed what it is). The failure of anyone connected to the teabaggers, whether as a participant, abettor, media cheerleader, speaker or whatever, to denounce the racists, crazies and other lunatic-fringers in the group, and instead keep it focused on honest policy differences, justifiably marks the teabag movement, however you want to spell it, as a radical fringe group who bring disgrace to themselves and their own views, even the few legitimate ones.
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