Race & Racism & BushCo & Wingnuts Posted by JP Stormcrow, 12 Oct 2007 06:29 am

You Say Demagogy, I Say Demagoguery - But We Both Know It When We See It

Demagogue: one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. - Mencken 

This post is going to be short and to the point. I’m pissed off and depressed about enough different things right now - political and not -  that I am not really in the mood to spend too much time delving into the cesspool of Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, Gibson et al.  Y’all can play one round of match the wingnut blowhard to their words though:

a. No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is.

b. The use of Graeme Frost was part of a larger left-wing strategy to hide behind children and use them as cannon fodder in their losing bid to get S-CHIP passed into law.

c. I know the shooter was white. I knew it as soon as he shot himself. Hip-hoppers don’t do that. They shoot and move on to shoot again.

d. You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into.

But we ain’t even stopping there. Scary as these words are (and this is scary stuff - Father Coughlin would have been proud), we’re going to whiz past these jackals to the real culprits here - the cynical enablers in “mainstream” politics and the national political media who give these jokers credibility. The despicable unhinged political mind will always be with us - the indicator of a society’s health and ethical standing is the degree to which those minds are relegated to the margins of society. So with that in mind we get to play match the same four wingnuts to their “mainstream” enablers:

a. has been interviewed at least 194 times on at least 13 individual programs on MSNBC, CNBC, and NBC since April 28, 1997

b.  was named  an honorary member of the 104th Congress in 1994

c.  launched their latest smear based on material sent out from Senator Mitch McConnell’s office

d.  Actually, I could not exactly find anyone actually supporting or enabling this guy … well other than giving him airtime for TV and radio shows.  

<insert informed and witty invective against our broken political and media systems here>

 Better yet, I’ll let James Wolcott do it for me:

Rush Limbaugh and his fellow talk-radio troll dolls didn’t “pervert” conservatism–he didn’t lay siege to some maiden fair and debauch her virtue. Rush Limbaugh didn’t inject an “ideology of hate” into conservatism, he extracted the contemptuous, divisive animosity inherent in the Gingrich doctrine and sugared it up with comedy and his own personal saga for popular consumption. He, like Clarence Thomas, was just what the Republican overseers ordered. Rush Limbaugh is modern mainstream conservatism in all its bullying bluster, hypocrisy, jolly ignorance (global warming etc), slavish submission to military, corporate, and executive power, and slimeballing of political opponents. To believe otherwise is like putting your faith in those few remaining Republican moderates who always manage not to come through in the clutch, who put up a brief show of conscience or faint dissent before the inevitable capitulation. It’s a little late to suddenly look around and realize what sleazebags you’ve got on your team, especially since those sleazebags were there before you arrived. The only difference between Limbaugh and the orc pit of the right blogosphere is one of degree, or perhaps I should say radius.  

 With additional commentary by Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

As such, it makes a certain kind of sense that Rush and Malkin and Coulter can never do or say anything that will get them excluded from the mainstream media platform; they, and not Mitt Romney and his ilk, represent the core of American conservatism. Unlike the “Hollywood liberal”, bugbear of the movement conservatism, Rush and Malkin and Coulter owe their fame and position only to the political vitriol that they spew. Any decent political movement would have discarded them long ago, but in the same sense that conservatism can’t shed itself of the absurdity of supply-side economics, it can’t do without the Malkins; they’re part of the DNA of the movement.

Ideas on how to best combat such entrenched and “legitimized” demagogogogog  hate speech welcome. 

Memento mori  - thank God.

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Responses to “You Say Demagogy, I Say Demagoguery - But We Both Know It When We See It”

  1. on 12 Oct 2007 at 10:39 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …

    You know once you allow the word “demagoguery” to enter your brain - you realize that it is everywhere. Water is wet. From Alicublog - some of the good old combo anti-New York/islam variety.

    I think Jack M. made a good comment in that it is pro-islam propaganda in a city that was targeted by islam at least twice already. This is why often I want to tell NY and New Yorkers to piss off. You want to allow this — then don’t come crying to the rest of the country when they blow you up again. Also, this is a judeo-christian country. Also, I am a total freaking idiot also.

  2. on 12 Oct 2007 at 11:42 am 2. Oaktown Girl said …

    Swamped at work today, but just wanted to say great post, and…

    ARRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!

  3. on 12 Oct 2007 at 12:25 pm 3. christian h. said …

    So I get back from LA and find this. Outstanding post, and I second Oaktown Girl:

    ARRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!

    And back to work.

  4. on 12 Oct 2007 at 12:40 pm 4. spyder said …

    All the while AM radio spreads these voices across giant swaths of the middle of this nation, making dumb and dumber seem brighter and smarter each day. And, what’s more alarming is that it can and will get worse. Consider the following:

    The Fox Business Network will launch in 30 million homes on October 15. According to Multichannel News, Neil Cavuto, the managing editor and senior vice president of business news for Fox News Channel and host of Your World, will “oversee content and business coverage” on the new channel. Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp., which owns Fox News, reportedly said that the Fox Business channel would be “more business friendly than CNBC.” Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes said, according to The New York Times: “Many times I’ve seen things on CNBC where they are not as friendly to corporations and profits as they should be.” TV Week recently reported that the anchor lineup of the Fox Business Network will include: Forbes on Fox host David Asman, Fox News business contributor Stuart Varney, Bulls & Bears host Brenda Buttner, Cashin’ In host Terry Keenan, and business news correspondent Dagen McDowell.

    So the same company that owns the WSJ, NYSE, various publishing houses, satellite networks, vertically integrated multi-media markets, AND THE PRODUCTION OF THOSE TALKING HEADS mentioned above, will now be responsible for reporting on themselves. I can’t imagine how these fascist bastards could get any more opportunities to control the propaganda leaping over the truth and facts.

  5. on 12 Oct 2007 at 12:49 pm 5. Oaktown Girl said …

    Question: has any “interviewer” ever asked Ann Coulter why she isn’t married? I mean, isn’t that one of the fundamentals of the Christian Right? Isn’t it just unseemly for a “true” Christian woman who should know better to be wandering around single for as long as she has - easy prey for both unscrupulous men and her own untethered (=unmarried) sexual desires?

  6. on 12 Oct 2007 at 1:19 pm 6. spyder said …

    You assume s/he is a real woman???? There is a plethora of Fox-style reporting (you know gossip, rumor, lies, deceptions, etc.) that Ann Coulter is really Arthur Coltrane.

    There is a rumor going around the Press Corps that in real life Ann Coulter is a man. He/she was once Arthur Coltrane from Pickens County, Georgia, who went to Denmark when he/she was a teenager for a sex-change operation to become a woman, the operation being paid for by his/her wealthy and doting mother, Darlene Coltrane, heiress to a hog-farming fortune. The consensus about “Ms.” Coulter/Coltrane in the Press Room is that ONLY a gay man could have such a vicious mouth on him/her. People are saying that his/her stunning blond locks are really a wig, which he/she got in a Copenhagen sex-toys and drag-queen supply shop, when his/her own hair fell out after the hormone shots took effect.

    This name-calling particularly amused Secretary Congoleeza Rice, who has a special dislike of Ann/Arthur Coulter, due to the fact that Coulter tries to “pass” not only as a normal heterosexual, and also as a woman, but also as white, while in fact Coulter’s great-great-great-grandmother was a house negro for the Coltrane family. She was freed from slavery in Pickens County in 1845 with two good-bye presents, a dozen hogs and a half-white boy baby, which is how this branch of the Coltrane family acquired their name and their business. This makes Ann/Arthur’s mother Darlene Coltrane an octoroon, and Ann/Arthur herself what Condoleeza would refer to as a “high yellow” African-American. If all this history is too complicated for your readers to follow, just calling Ann Coulter “Grasshopper” (one of Bush’s nicknames for her/him/it?) from now on will suffice admirably.

  7. on 12 Oct 2007 at 1:56 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

    You assume s/he is a real woman????

    Hell no! Not in the least! But that’s the persona she’s putting out there, and it’s the one she’s using to bash non-Republican women and non-Christians of all varieties. So I’m just addressing the matter on her terms, if that’s the way she wants to play it. (The ol’ give ‘em enough rope method).

  8. on 12 Oct 2007 at 2:29 pm 8. Kiera said …

    I’d like to see an MRI of her throat…it looks a bit odd for a woman’s. And have you looked at her bone structure?

    My “favorite” Coulterism is:

    “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.”

    Um, hello, Ann? You’re a single woman, or at least you present yourself as such.

  9. on 12 Oct 2007 at 2:34 pm 9. Arnaud said …

    Well, the first time I only read the “fast” version of the Coulter interview and, surprisingly, I didn’t find it that shocking.
    I mean, the premise, the whole of christianity, is ridiculous but, if you really believe that your deity talked to mankind and will inflict hellfire and eternal tourment on everyone of us unless we convert and worship him, well… yeah, obviously, you’d want everybody to convert!
    It is actually the only valid ethical position.
    Because, you know, ecumenism is very good and all but, come on people, didn’t god show you the true and only path to eternal life?

    Still, isn’t free speech great when it allies itself with a facile contempt for all things intellectual?

  10. on 12 Oct 2007 at 3:04 pm 10. Oaktown Girl said …

    Kiera - thanks for reminding me of that vile Coulter quote. Thanks, that is, for making me throw-up a little inside my mouth.

    And the question remains, “Ann - why are you still single? And what will you do to remedy that situation and cease being an abomination before almighty God?”

  11. on 12 Oct 2007 at 3:29 pm 11. James Killus said …

    I view Coulter as the immoral equivalent of a car crash beside the road, slowing down traffic and making me late to work. It’s the “gawk effect” and I just try to get by the traffic jam as quickly as possible.

    Limbaugh, on the other hand, has been at it for much longer and is much more dangerous. He needs to be squashed like a bug. Since he is very well connected at the top, I think it better to concentrate on his pedophilia, though ultimately, it may be his drug habit that does him in.

  12. on 12 Oct 2007 at 5:12 pm 12. spyder said …

    Well just when i was thinking that the depths of the shit hole that is GOP politics couldn’t get any deeper, this latest out of DC makes me look for my passport.

    White House Embraces Right-Wing Blog That Called For ‘Destroying’ Graeme Frost

    Much of far right’s smear campaign against 12-year old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost was driven by the right-wing blogosphere. One blog in particular, Redstate, featured particularly vitriolic comments. A poster there wrote of the Frost family:

    If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. […]

    I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I’d do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.

    Rather than distancing themselves from the smear campaign, the White House today decided to embrace RedState and reward the blog with an official White House posting.

    In a post entitled “Democrats’ SCHIP Budget Gimmick,” Nicholas Thompson, a staffer in the White House’s Office of Strategic Intiatives, rallied the conservative troops around Bush’ hard-line stance, reminding them that “we are less than one week” from Congress’ veto override vote.

  13. on 12 Oct 2007 at 5:36 pm 13. Oaktown Girl said …

    spyder - please post a link for that blockquote when you can.

    If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. […]

    It really makes me wonder what’s the mind frame behind people spewing this kind of vitriol. It’s more than merely anonymous internet “let’s see how extreme we can be” speech, there’s people who really feel this way (see: Rush Limbaugh fans - most). Did they have parents who pounded “bootstraps” fantasies into their heads non-stop? Are they simply so insecure they’ll do anything to feel superior to someone else?

    And don’t you just hate how as soon as you put a real, human face to the results of their hateful, harmful policies, they cry “foul”?

  14. on 12 Oct 2007 at 5:40 pm 14. JP Stormcrow said …

    Well, the first time I only read the “fast” version of the Coulter interview and, surprisingly, I didn’t find it that shocking:

    Yeah, this far from the best/worst Coulter, I just grabbed a few that had caught my eye this last week. I think my “favorite” Coulterism was hte “Murtha is why they invented fragging”.

    And I agree with James that Limbaugh is in some regards the real “problem” of the group, given his longevity, audience and the fact that guys like Cheney go on his show. The media just seem to be in awe of his audience size (not the first time one of these guys has had a huge following - I think at one point a quarter of the country listened to Coughlin.) The fact that he is allowed to play on Armed Forces Radio is particularly galling.

  15. on 12 Oct 2007 at 6:51 pm 15. spyder said …

    spyder - please post a link for that blockquote when you can.

    Of course then there is Scarborough somehow quoting Jesus on the matter of Coltrane:

    Well, you know, I think Jesus had a different take than Ann Coulter, which he quite clearly says, time and again, that Christianity is about helping — feeding the poor, visiting those who are sick in hospitals, visiting those in prisons, giving hope to the hopeless, doing all the things that have nothing to do with condemning other people like Ann Coulter just did.

    Then there is this apologetic stunner from CNSNews.com editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey:

    Well, you know, first we’d have to get into a pretty serious — first of all, we’d have to discern what actually Ann Coulter said and what Ann — actually Ann Coulter meant. And then, are we really going to get into a debate in presidential campaigns about people’s theology? Everybody’s trying to say that we don’t have a religious test for office in this country. Are we going to go to each candidate and ask them, “OK, we want to know exactly what you think about the nature of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christianity, the nature of Judaism?” No, I don’t think we want to get into that.

  16. on 13 Oct 2007 at 9:37 am 16. JP Stormcrow said …

    The subject certainly deserves a more thorough treatment than I provide in the sketch above. In particular in looking through some information on the characteristics of demagoguery, what struck me is that in some sense they are precisely the characteristics of the argumentation and public discussion style of the entire modern “conservative” movement. I know this is hardly news, but what struck me is that it really is demagoguery without a focal demagogue (there are folks like Limbaugh who “stand out” - but it is not the traditional focus on one loquacious self-promoting nutjob). This is useful to the movement (and disturbing), it immunizes it against the inevitable time when any individual demagogue is shown to have feet of clay. In fact a cipher like Bush is the perfect candidate/leader for such a movement, the inarticulate grunts and whinings that serve as his speech acts such as they are, are demagogic in content - but he leaves the heavy lifting to the willing acolytes. And rather than critique the style of discourse, media has instead chosen to descend into the mud with the beasts.

    Here is a good lists of the characteristics of demagoguery taken from this useful article. Anything sound familiar?

    Demagoguery is polarizing propaganda that motivates members of an ingroup to hate and scapegoat some outgroup(s), largely by promising certainty, stability, and what Erich Fromm famously called “an escape from freedom.”

    - polarization
    - Ingroup/outgroup thinking, a rhetoric of hate
    - slipperiness on crucial terms; god and devil terms
    - demonizing, dehumanizing, and/or scapegoating the out-group
    - simple solutions
    - motivism (ascribing ulterior motives)
    - entitlement, double-standard, rejection of the notion of reciprocally binding rules or principles
    - martyrdom of rhetor, personalizing of criticisms
    - rhetor is synecdochic of larger group
    - apocalyptic, eschatalogical metanarrative (Holy War, jihad)
    - denial of responsibility for situation (except lack of vigilance).
    - refusal to redeem claims
    - an ethos of sincerity
    - heavy reliance on fallacious arguments
    - internal contradictions
    - tendency toward conspiracy theories
    - metaphors of cleansing, disease, and war
    - pandering to popular prejudice and stereotype, often - racist
    - bad science
    - anti-intellectualism
    - misogyny/ appeal to “traditional” gender roles
    - nationalism

  17. on 14 Oct 2007 at 2:01 pm 17. spyder said …

    Anything sound familiar? Dick Cheney???? Oh sorry, Lynne.

    The other day i was pondering a post that tried to reflect what i thought it would be like to be one of “them.” As in reflecting the inherent and incipient fascism that must necessarily arise from the base assumptions/axioms of those who advocate this empire. Then i read Alexander Cockburn’s post on Gore and realized that being that insane is not an exercise worthy of any time or effort.

    I can visualize the nihilistic objectivist selfishness that underlies their smugness. I just can’t comprehend the complete lack of awareness that they are human beings who are utterly and completely dependent on others and other species for their continued survival. Maybe they already have Soylent Green somewhere, and have built the biodomes to survive the climate crises??

  18. on 15 Oct 2007 at 10:05 am 18. spyder said …

    Are we all good little Germans choosing to ignore the gravest constitutional crises in our history?

    “But I can guarantee you my absolute knowledge of one thing: Each and every one of us believes we’re doing what’s best for ourselves, no matter how we arrived at that belief. And in this country — in fact, it is by now a worldwide phenomenon — that means consumerism, and with it, boatloads of distraction from humanity’s common condition.”

  19. on 17 Oct 2007 at 10:34 am 19. spyder said …

    Demogoguery of the unenlighted:

    “Like a mammoth vacuum cleaner in the sky,” Blum documents, NSA’s continuously orbiting satellites “sucks it all up:home phone, office phone, cellular phone, email, fax, telex∑satellite transmissions, fiber-optic communications traffic, microwave links∑voice, text, images.” These are then processed by high-powered computers at Ft. Meade, Md., NSA headquarters.

    Billions of messages are sucked up daily, Blum writes, including those by presidents, prime ministers, the UN Secretary-General, the pope, the Queen of England, transnational corporation executives, and foreign embassies. It’s been estimated “E” sifts through 99.9999 percent of all global communications to get at the 0.0001 percent that is of interest to it.