Rick Perlstein has a great piece in today's Washington Post that compares right wing rage of yesteryear with the carnival sideshow we're seeing today. He notes that the media enables such insanity today in ways that it didn't used to do:
The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American
paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style,
against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally
labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist"
-- out of bounds.
TPM has posted a reader's note about the reaction this should engender among those who are currently so befuddled by this crazier-than-a-shithouse-rat ranting that keeps getting so much play in the media:
Obama isn't saying the right thing. He should be saying, "Stop lying."...
All the broadcast MSM does is report what politicians say. They don't fact check them. Afterwards, they have blowhards sit around in panels and have disingenuous spin-meister discussions about whether or not what was said is playing well with the general public...
If the Republicans are lying -- and they are -- we have to call them on it. If we don't, no one will. And by "we", I mean our politicians. They have to say, "Stop lying." If they say that, the blowhards will say, "Do people like it when the president calls his opponents liars?" And after that, they'll say, "Is it a lie to say that there will be death panels?"
This is exactly what Kerry did when he got swiftboated. The whole, "This is so stupid, and so insulting, I won't even dignify it with a response," response. It's why he lost. If you don't dignify something with a response, the other side controls the entire discussion.
All the broadcast MSM does is report what politicians say. They don't fact check them. Afterwards, they have blowhards sit around in panels and have disingenuous spin-meister discussions about whether or not what was said is playing well with the general public...
If the Republicans are lying -- and they are -- we have to call them on it. If we don't, no one will. And by "we", I mean our politicians. They have to say, "Stop lying." If they say that, the blowhards will say, "Do people like it when the president calls his opponents liars?" And after that, they'll say, "Is it a lie to say that there will be death panels?"
This is exactly what Kerry did when he got swiftboated. The whole, "This is so stupid, and so insulting, I won't even dignify it with a response," response. It's why he lost. If you don't dignify something with a response, the other side controls the entire discussion.
That's exactly right, and if Democrats don't start doing something about getting over the Stockholm syndrome that makes them refuse to "dignify" such lies with a rebuttal, they'll cede the discussion and lose the argument...again.
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