Pay attention

As a rule, I really quite enjoy learning new things. It keeps me on my toes and serves as a solid reminder that despite outward appearances, I really don't know everything.

Most of the time, the new things learned register little more than a check mark in the box beside "Well, I did not know that, but now I do." But I learned something last week that I still can't quite wrap my mind around.

Seems there are significant numbers of my colleagues who have no fucking clue what the right wing extremist radio and television hosts are actually saying.

I know. How could they not know? Mostly it appears that my very busy colleagues just don't have the time to keep up with the specifics of what's being said on the airwaves. More importantly, though, is what they tell me about how they set their priorities regarding what they pay attention to and what they ignore.

They don't have the time, they say, for the fringes. And those right-wing bloviator dudes, they're the fringes.

Coulda knocked me over with a feather, I'm tellin' ya. So let me get this straight. My beloved colleagues are so busy parsing what it means for the president and the first lady to take a date night and run up to New York for a show that they don't know that the talkers are poisoning the air waves with the most vile and ugly shit since, well, the presidential campaign. And apparently my collagues missed all that nastiness for the very same reason.

They think it's coming from the fringes, and therefore should be ignored.

What my colleagues seem to have overlooked is that the radical right -- the doctor killers, the gay bashers, the anti-immigrant crowd -- has taken over mainstream conservatism. They're not the fringe anymore, but my studious colleagues are still mired back in the 70s or 80s when the whackos were still considered whackos by all sides.

And that, my friends, is why we all know that Scott Roeder was an isolated individual acting completely on his own. Just like all the other right-wing idealogues who have taken their leaders' rants to heart over the years and taken a gun or explosives to take care of the situation.

"But how many times has that happened recently?" one colleague asked. They mean, of course, that violence has only rarely burst through the thin membrane that keeps it contained, and they're right about that. For now.

But if they're not paying attention to the Glenn Becks and the Lou Dobbses and the Bill O'Reillys and the Sean Hannitys and the Rush Limbaughs and the Michael Savages and the Michelle Malkins and the Ann Coulters, then they're missing something crucial. They did not just suddenly snap one day.

Theses guys who go shoot up a liberal Christian church one day because they don't like liberals aren't acting in a vacuum. They're acting on the what they've been told by their spiritual leaders about the vile, un-American and anti-Christian ways of the liberal. What choice do they have if they believe that they are right, absolutely right, and are backed by none other than god on this one?

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Pat Bagley - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

But my colleagues, they're waiting for proof, solid evidence that when a right-wing extremist kills a doctor who provides abortions it was anything other than he was a disturbed individual who just went over the edge one day.

They might make a half-assed attempt to figure out what made the guy "snap," but the second they find something -- he lost his food stamps, his wife filed for divorce, he got in a fender-bender with a car bearing an Obama sticker -- that search is over. They found their reason.

My colleagues don't look at the atmosphere these people are breathing every day of their lives. These extremist attitudes would die off if they were truly isolated. They thrive on reinforcement from like-minded individuals -- particularly pronouncements from on high, coupled with a political leadership that won't challenge the bullshit and often participates in it.

We heard this same shit during the campaign, when my colleagues, deathly afraid of looking at their own participation in the creating a toxic atmosphere, signed on for the "both sides are doing it" campaign regarding the incredibly racist anti-Obama rallies that McCain-Palin rallies. And yes, there are some losers on the left who play those stupid games. But until I hear the liberals are stockpiling weapons and ammunition, stalking Operation Rescue employees and harassing them with images of women who died because they were not allowed to have an abortion and assassinating Randall Terry, then that argument has no standing here because there is no comparison.

I still don't know what to do about my ill-informed colleagues. Sadly, I guess it's just gonna take more violent death to bring them around.


AWOP Political Contributing Editor

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Morally Exceptional

When last we discussed torture, we were talking about a survey that showed 75 percent of the respondents endorsing the use of torture in some situations. I find it utterly appalling that anyone would endorse torture under any circumstances, and I'm pleased to note, so do the people I consider friends.

But there's a group of people on both the right and left -- who would generally oppose torture -- who have bought the bullshit "ticking bomb" scenario. That's one where something Really Bad is about to happen and Many People Will Be Killed, and you have in custody The One Guy Who Can Tell You Where The Bomb Is and he's not talking. The question, of course, is, "Do you torture him?"

There are several variants of that ticking bomb scenario, including that most ingenious of variants, the one where you harken back to September 11, 2001, invoke the people killed that day and their children, who had to be told that mommy and daddy wouldn't be coming home. In that variant, the only answer, of course, is "Hell yes" I'd torture to stop that from happening.

That, too, is bullshit, mainly because if we'd only had, say, a competent government that was really interested in national security instead of justifying an invasion of Iraq, 9/11 might have been prevented -- without torture.

See, here's the thing. If you're really gonna portray yourself as a moral or an ethical individual, you don't justify torture. Period. That may mean, theoretically or perhaps even realistically, making the hardest decision you'll ever have to make in your life. But you don't torture living creatures. Not bees, not mice, not cats, not monkeys, not human beings.

It's interesting, though, as that survey showed, that the more "morally right" one considers oneself, the more one is likely to endorse torture. There's a group of people out there -- a sizable group -- that believes it has a lock on morality, that they -- and only they -- know the difference between right and wrong. And yet, when we look at what they actually say, it's not so clearly black and white.

Torture is bad, they say, except ...

Discrimination is wrong, they say, except ...

Bombing civilian sites is wrong, they say, except ...

Brutal dictators are wrong, they say, except ...

Taking a disputed election to the Supreme Court is wrong, they say, except ...

>There's just an awful lot of exceptions, dontcha think? And if the exceptions really do delineate some clear differences, then the exceptions have a purpose. But these exceptions are much more arbitrary. In fact, it'd be perfectly reasonable to finish off each of those sentences up there with "when we do it."

Likening the president of the United States to Hitler is wrong, except when we do it.

Now, before you get all apoplectic on me, please go reread my second sentence, the one that starts "But there's a group of people on both the right and left ... " Actually, that's all you need to read. Just wanted to make sure you remembered the "both the right and left" part, because this next part doesn't fall in that category.

Along with those who can find ways to justify torture, there are others who can find ways to justify murder. Or at least justify fantasizing about it. Take one David Feherty, a CBS golf analyst who apparently lives "about a par 5 away" from GW in that formerly all white Dallas enclave, Preston Hollow.

Feherty, the golf analyst, says he generally hates his neighbors, apparently on principle, especially "the ones that want to talk to me who aren’t doctors or gun dealers or who don’t have their own airplanes."

Oh, or GW.

But here's the point I'm getting to. Feherty, the golf analyst, was asked to write about his new neighbors in D magazine, which I think is something about Dallas, only where most cities have magazines named after the city, Dallas apparently thought just "D" was enough. I have no idea what Detroit and Denver think of that.

Now, apparently, we're all very late getting this news, since the story was published on D's Web site in March for the April issue. I guess nobody of any import actually reads D, but hey. GW probably does.

But anyway, Feherty, the golf analyst, writes about how history is gonna absolve GW of all the crimes he committed and all. He was just "dealt a rotten hand," he says. And then he says this:

From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.

I'm guessing the speaking fees for Feherty, the golf analyst, just went up considerably in certain circles, and I'm betting he'll be talking a lot about free speech too. Because, you know, the first amendment guarantees his right to be a fucking idiot in print.

Now, while cracking what I'd be willing to bet Feherty, the golf analyst, will say is a joke -- because that's what the right does when one of them says something so completely moronic that there's no reasonable explanation for it -- he's also displaying the very same arrogance of those folks who justify torture, except he's actually talking about murder. Murder of people he doesn't like. And the number one person he doesn't like? Apparently Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House.

Not Barack Obama, because that would bring the Secret Service on his ass, and besides, Obama is black and Feherty, the golf analyst, probably didn't want to have to go through the "that's a racist thing to say" bullshit. Now, I don't know if Feherty, the golf analyst, is racist, anymore than I know if he is misogynist since he happened to name the first woman to ever be third in line to the presidency as the one who will take the two bullets. It is true that an awful lot of folks on the right are scared to death of the black guy in the White House, and just hate like hell that a woman has finally settled into her place in the House.

But the truth is, Feherty, the golf analyst, didn't make his statement out of some racist place, or some misogynist place. Instead, it's about his complete conviction that he and others like him -- and no one else -- know the score around here. The rest of us shoot bogeys, literally and figuratively.

But it also does something else. It attempts to taint all U.S. soldiers with his ugly disease. Richard Smith, a veteran who writes for had something to say about that:

Evidently, Feherty believes that we are mindless machines of death, who would without hesitation accept a loaded weapon from a stranger in civilian society, and then use that weapon to assassinate political leaders of the country we have sworn to defend. ... Feherty, who to my knowledge has never served his country or ours in uniform, makes the assumption that he knows Soldiers and Veterans, and that 'any U.S. soldier' has such hatred for (again) the political leaders of the country we have sworn to defend, that we could not be professional enough to help ourselves from committing murder on the spot. What Mr. Feherty might not understand is that there are few Americans who have been as loyal to Veterans and Soldiers as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. If I found myself in that proverbial elevator, the first thing I would do is thank them both profusely.

Honestly, that little statement of golf analyst Feherty was kinda outta the blue. Was it really necessary in an article about having the former president become his neighbor to insult soldiers and let us know that he wouldn't mind seeing the top two Democrats in Congress dead?

And sure, he has the right to say whatever he wants. But it's kinda interesting ... here, I'll let Mustang Bobby from Bark Bark Woof Woof say it:

The point is that the people who complain the most about their restrictions of free speech rights are the ones who both abuse the right and have no compunction about restricting it for other people. They also don't get the basic concept of taking responsibility for your own actions. The right of free speech includes the responsibility for using the judgment to know when to not say something that might come back and bite you in the ass. A mature and responsible person would know that and not blame the consequences on someone else.

There's more to the right of freedom of speech than just saying something.

And more than stamping the ground and screaming "I'm right, I know I'm right."

And that's the real thing about morality, see. It's consistent. People aren't arbitrarily dropped into groups of "good" people (not to be tortured) or "bad" people (can be discriminated against). That way of thinking is, well, it's medieval. And it has no place in the 21st Century.

So, for those of you who agree with Feherty, the golf analyst, say whatever you want. But do us a big favor and step out of the way.

After all, if you're not for us, you're against us. And you get to decide -- the moral path, or the one with all the exception clauses?


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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