Media Push False Equivalency Between Left and Right Rage

[kentuck]

The media would want us to believe that tea-baggers, Joe Wilson, and people carrying guns to townhall meetings is the same as Move-on.org.
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http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/480199/media_push_false_equivalency_between_left_and_right_rage

<snip>
Nearly every morning for eight years, my husband would go into the shower with the news blaring on the radio, and I could hear him over the rush of water grumbling, "I hate George Bush. I hate George Bush." And, occasionally, "Won't somebody kill George Bush?"

Don't call the Secret Service, Newsmax: My husband was, of course, simply filled with rage that Bush had seized office with fewer votes than Al Gore, invaded a country that had never attacked us, killed thousands of our soldiers and scores of thousands of Iraqis, legalized torture, allowed comprehensive government eavesdropping, shipped jobs overseas, and encouraged Wall Street to enrich the few while impoverishing the rest. You gotta yell something sometimes, and who hasn't?

The thing about liberals is they do this standing naked in a shower and come out merely wet and spluttering. The thing about rightwingers is they work themselves up into a similar rage, strap on a .45 loaded with dum-dums, and go to political meetings screaming that something must be done about Adolf Obama--or maybe write columns seriously suggesting a military coup "to resolve the 'Obama problem.'"

<snip>

Look, I don't want to whitewash all the left's overheated rhetoric. Antiwar demonstrators carried signs depicting George Bush as Hitler, too (maybe a few more at European demos than at American ones, but still, it happened), and the British fictional documentary Death of a President did stage an assassination of Bush. But when it comes to dangerous rhetoric, any media-borne equivalency between conservatives and liberals is transparently ridiculous.

And not just when Maria Bartiromo (the CNBC anchor who apparently doesn't know you have to be 65 to qualify for Medicare) says (around 4:30) that corporate-sponsored townhall craziness is "exactly what is happening on the other side. I mean, who's directing MoveOn.org?" As soon as polls started coming in showing that Tea Baggery has made the GOP look like a bunch of loons and driven away the center, the Republicans set off on a mad scramble through their Googles to find even the dimmest suggestion of liberal excess against the Bushies to provide a Fair'n'Balanced fig leaf. But it's pretty thin stuff, compared to signs reading "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" and "We Came Unarmed--This Time." Right now, the Republican leadership is actively pushing the idea that Florida Rep. Alan Grayson's saying the GOP health plan is "Don't get sick and if you do, die quickly," is identical to South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's shouting "You lie!" during President Obama's health care address to a joint session of Congress.

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[CrispyQ]

1. They certainly never bring up the free speech zones at Bush events.

Or that you weren't allowed near a Bush event if you had an anti-war tee shirt on. Or that you could be arrested if security at one of those events saw that you had a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker on your car. I can't even imagine what would have happened to someone who attended a Bush event with a gun strapped to their leg. Probably Guantanamo for some water boarding, just to show who's boss.

Good article. Thanks for posting.

[spanone]

2. they also want to equate rep grayson with rep bachmann....the media IS the problem

[PerpetuallyDazed]

5. I might agree with that sentiment

if Grayson were to say bat-shit crazy things EVERY time he was in front of a camera... but I don't think he's reached those levels yet.

[Bjorn Against]

3. What also bothers me is that the "center" always gets a free ride...

People always compare the right to the left when there really is no comparison, but what is just as troubling to me is that the "center" always gets a free ride even though they are every bit as ideological. Look at the blue dogs right now who are refusing to compromise and give us any sort of public option, look at the "free-trade" advocates who call themselves centrists and refuse to put in any sort of environmental or labor protections in any circumstance, look at the Joe Lieberman's who refuse to abide by the results of a primary election, why do these people get a free ride all of the time?

[TheKentuckian]

4. Because they are what the media actually wants

Corporate toady conservatives fiscally and social moderates, aka country club Confederates.

[anonymous171]

6. +1. nt