Both Sides? No!

[IDemo]

Bill Cope
Boise Weekly
January 12, 2011

"We have to be careful not to blame one side or the other, because both sides are guilty of this. You have extremes on both sides. You have crazy people on both sides."

The preceding is a quote from Rep. Raul Labrador, the newest member of Idaho's Congressional delegation. He said it on Jan. 9 on Meet the Press, less than 24 hours after 20 people were gunned down in Arizona--with six never to rise again--and less than four days after he was sworn into Congress.

Lest we start thinking of Labrador as a some sort of analytical genius who can cut through the most convoluted national dilemmas with only four days of experience under his belt, it must be pointed out he was merely aping what he'd heard from the big kids in his sandbox. Republicans across the land had barely let the smoke clear from that Safeway parking lot before they were Johnny-on-the-job of pulling their fannies out of the accountability fire. It wasn't even clear whether or not Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had survived, and spinsters for the right (along with plenty of servile complicity from national newscasters) were spouting that if indeed it turns out the Tucson violence was incited by the toxic tone of current national politics, let everyone remember that "both sides are guilty of this."

Alrighty then, Congressman Labrador, let us see if you can put your memory where your mouth is. Let us say that you and the people you doggedly mimic are correct, that there is an equal portion of toxic tone coming from the left as comes from the right.

http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/both-sides-no/Content?oid=2007631

[pacalo]

1. Beautifully done -- one of the better pieces I've read on the subject.

Of course, we both know there isn't. But for the time being, I will play along by conceding that for every Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, Michael Savage or Ann Coulter, there is a voice on the left spouting equally vile and fraudulent sewage.

I will, however temporarily, pretend that for every mob of gun-toting, race-baiting clowns dressed up like Ben Franklin, there is an equal mob of demented, hate-dripping leftists gathering in a public forum somewhere, screaming that Republican leaders are Muslims and anti-American and aren't even real citizens of the United States. I will agree, even though we know it isn't true, that the left has in its corner a network of propagandists every bit as dishonorable and dishonest as Fox News and the goons of talk radio.

[johan helge]

2. Is that true?

"But for the time being, I will play along by conceding that for every Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, Michael Savage or Ann Coulter, there is a voice on the left spouting equally vile and fraudulent sewage."

But is that true? And if it is, I gues these people on the left don't have so many listeners as these rightwingers have?

[IDemo]

3. The statement wasn't intended to convey that he literally concedes 'both sides..spout equally'

That is the entire point of the column: that the left doesn't engage in the kind of rhetoric commonly heard from Limbaugh, etc. The "concession" he makes is just a pretext, a device to make his point.

[Jefferson23]

4. K&R