Desperation Row

Today's column for the Daily Banter deals with yesterday's big, booming bombshell -- hyped breathlessly by Drudge, Hannity and Tucker Carlson -- which revealed that the President of the United States is, in fact, black.

Here's an excerpt:

"It borders on tragic that four years into this man’s presidency — a presidency the right has sought over and over again to delegitimize in any and every way possible — this is all they’ve got, not an honest appraisal of his administration’s policies and what they have and haven’t done for the country but a desperate relitigating of the tired claim that Obama was never vetted properly, that he’s got something to hide, that Americans were duped back in 2008, that there are just too many questions surrounding his 'otherness' for him to be where he is right now, much less to be allowed to remain there for another four years."

Read the Rest Here

Magic Paul

"The Ryan selection sent a jolt of electricity, and the conservative base, including myself, are energized by it even as it allows Romney now to also appeal to young voters. In one week, Paul Ryan has become a national sex symbol."

-- Sean Hannity

I'm going to borrow a lot of what's in this post from Cesca, because honestly he put it almost exactly the same way I would've and I think this hilarity deserves to be seen and enjoyed by as many people as possible. What you're witnessing right now is a replay of the sexualizing of Sarah Palin that we saw four years ago. I'm sure you remember the National Review's Rich Lowry basically admitting that he couldn't help himself and began jerking-off while watching Palin in the 2008 vice presidential debate:

"Palin... projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.'"

Well, now it's Paul Ryan's turn. And it sure as hell didn't take long. First came the whispers of Paul Ryan being "Gen X," and with that in mind, Cesca pondered on the podcast recording a couple of days ago how long it would take before the GOP began pushing Ryan -- in the most obvious, shameless and tawdriest of manners -- as some kind of beefcake stud who's suddenly starting to "excite" female voters, if you get my drift. On the podcast, we talked about the prospect of shirtless photos of Ryan turning up somewhere and the near-certainty that those photos would be released by strategists working for the Republicans themselves.


Well, guess what? The "Ryan is Hot" meme has begun on the right -- complete with a set of talking points and, yes, a visual aid.

By the way, one of the questions into this week's Daily Banter mailbag had to do with the chance that the right would try to superficially push Ryan as some kind of sex god. My response was, predictably, just rude as all hell. Free free to take a look.

Oh, and the only upside to this is the possibility that Rich Lowry will truly step up, take one for the team and state publicly and in comically flowery language that he's becoming gay for Paul Ryan. Or maybe, in an effort to keep the Sexy Ryan meme going, the GOP will force Ryan to suddenly and inexplicably pour pitchers of cold water over his head and down his shirt, in slow motion, at all kinds of inappropriate moments -- like when he's speaking to seniors or holding high-level staff meetings. If this keeps up, Ryan will eventually become the Matthew McConaughey of the Republican party: "Uh, ya know, today's vote I think would be a good opportunity to take mah shirt off."

Quote of the Month

"Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord — what are we just a bunch of numbskulls out here in the heartland of America?"

-- Sarah Palin, last night on Hannity

It's just too easy. Anyone? Anyone wanna step up on this?

Bonus Quote of the Day

"Greg frequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas and that are not consistent with myself or the rest of the family, which gets him into problems. I say Fox News, or all of those that are really radical, and he, that's where he comes from."

-- 83-year-old Eleanor Giusti, whose son, Gregory, was recently arrested for threatening Nancy Pelosi

I've said it before but it bears repeating: No, you can't hold a person or organization responsible for the occasional unhinged nutjob who misinterprets -- or simply filters through the voices in his own head -- a particular message, even a controversial one. But when you spout inflammatory, dog-whistle rhetoric through a bullhorn 24/7, and you do it knowing full well that there is in fact a segment of your audience that might be prone to take matters into their own hands in the most extremely prejudicial way possible, if you get my drift, there's no way in hell you should be able to hide behind the First Amendment or a claim of innocent ignorance. Although it's never a good idea to allow the potential misbehavior of the lowest common denominator to curb the right to free speech, it's equally inadvisable, not to mention irresponsible, to act as though you're operating in a vacuum -- as if what you say can't possibly have a negative impact, despite its incendiary nature.

Fox News and the far-right constantly beat the drum of an America that's vanishing right before the eyes of patriotic, often well-armed citizens; sorry, but they don't get to act shocked when somebody actually listens carefully and responds accordingly.

That said, it's gonna be a hoot to hear the Fox talking heads take the traditionally liberal stance of shifting the blame from TV to the parents. Can't you already hear Hannity shrieking, "And where were you when your son was making 48 threatening phone calls to Pelosi's office, Mrs. Giusti? Well?"

Related: DXM: Revolutionary Goad/4.7.09

Quote of the Day

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

-- Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino last night on Fox News

Right. Unless you count the one that killed more than 3,000 people on September 11th, 2001 or the anthrax attacks that killed five people shortly after that.

This quote, which by the way wasn't taken out of context, came during a debate on Hannity about whether President Obama is "playing politics" with the Fort Hood shooting by not calling it a terrorist attack -- which Perino insists it is (to plenty of "harumphs" from that idiot Hannity).

In case you haven't been paying attention, just six days ago Obama nominated Perino to be on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees U.S.-sponsored broadcasting internationally. Now by law the board must be bi-partisan -- but still, while I'd never suggest that an appointment should in some way buy Perino's silence, you'd think that a certain amount of professional decorum would at least compel her to check the thoroughly inflammatory and detached-from-reality rhetoric for awhile.

You'd think, anyway.

Sean of the Dread

Act of Neo-Contrition

So last night, Fox News host Sean Hannity did something many will call shocking, some will call phony and insincere, and I'll call, at the very least, uncharacteristic of his network and those it speaks for: he apologized.

At the end of his show, which as usual featured an hour of unrestrained Obama-bashing and GOP cheerleading, Hannity copped to something he in many ways had no choice but to cop to -- at least if he wanted FNC to be able to maintain the illusion that it's a legitimate news network. He admitted that Jon Stewart was right when, two nights ago, the host of The Daily Show pointed out that Hannity and company had run video of a September Tea Bagger rally on Capitol Hill during a story about last week's Tea Bagger rally. The difference? Maybe 40 or 50-thousand people. Stewart's point was that it looked as if Hannity had used the old footage of the much bigger crowd to try to hype the numbers at the more recent protest; what made The Daily Show staff apparently think that Hannity's deception was deliberate -- aside from the fact that it would take a 6-year-old with Down Syndrome to mix up file footage with brand new video -- were the startlingly obvious differences in the images themselves: leaves still on the trees in the September clip, people in late-summer short sleeves versus mid-fall coats and scarves, etc.

Regardless, Hannity now says he's sorry:

"Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, he was right. Now on his program last night, he mentioned that we had played some inccorect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct, we screwed up. we aired some video of a rally in September along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadverdent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So, Mr. Stewart, you were right. We apologize. But by the way, we wanna thank you and all your writers for watching."

You've almost gotta admire Hannity for managing to come off as both contrite and a smarmy little prick to the end. More on that in a minute, though.

If you're asking yourself right now whether Sean Hannity really is sorry that his show ran a bad piece of video -- one that regardless of intent would've mislead the viewer into thinking that last week's Frootloopalooza was on the scale of September's -- you're obviously not familiar with the Fox News Channel or right-wing punditry in general these days. True, Hannity made the somewhat surprising and magnanimous gesture of admitting to an error and crediting the right's mortal enemies at The Daily Show for busting him on it. Contrast that with Rush Limbaugh's response a few weeks ago when confronted with the news that he'd just spent an entire radio show angrily railing against Barack Obama for writing a college thesis decrying the Constitution, when in reality the paper in question had never even existed -- the article he got the story from was nothing more than satire. Limbaugh didn't give a crap that he'd just made what any well-adjusted person would consider a monumental ass out of himself; "I don't care if these quotes are made up, I know Obama thinks it," was his jaw-droppingly defiant response. So yeah, the fact that simply admitting you fucked up is such a big deal isn't so much a nod to, say, Fox News's reputation for honesty and respectability as it is proof of how far we've lowered the bar when it comes to what we expect from the right's obstinate mouthpieces.

Once again, Hannity pretty much had to man up because he may not have a responsibility to the truth but, unlike Limbaugh, he has a responsibility to the illusion. He couldn't not concede that the video his show aired was essentially a lie because no matter how much we all know that it's bullshit, Fox still goes to great lengths to bill itself as an unbiased news network. There are some things that are beyond the pale, even for a nominal news outlet that slants drastically in one direction: You can't run one piece of video and say it's something else.

Did Sean Hannity's show really make an "inadvertent mistake?" Probably not. Like I said, something like that is a very hard mistake to make. Is Hannity really sorry for the screw-up? No, of course not; he's sorry he got caught, and his less-than-humble admission that he'd been busted -- right down to getting in that last little barb in his retraction, the one that's the trademark faux-genteel "fuck you" of all official Fox responses to critics -- is the tip of the cards that lets Fox acolytes know that while he's conceding this battle to the enemy, it's being done with a wink and crossed-fingers.

Because in the end, Fox News still wins the war.

Partisan Crashers

If you've read this site long enough, you probably know that it hasn't always been this way.

I used to put a very high value on my ability to evaluate each issue on its own merits. Although I often tend to be center-left in my politics -- rarely if ever going the extreme liberal route -- I spent many years frequently siding with the right on a whole host of topics. I'm all for being strong on defense; I could care less about the political correctness that was a ridiculous liberal cause celebre for quite some time; I don't believe capitalism to be inherently evil; I want to see the poor and helpless in this country treated with dignity and everyone afforded good health care, but I think it requires a more efficient and vigilant government -- not a big one willing to just throw money around; I think that paying extra attention to certain ethnicities at airports is a natural concession to reality in this day and age and amounts to basic police work; I hate hippies; I can occasionally be as jingoistic as your average Toby Keith fan and freely admit that right after 9/11, I too had the knee-jerk reaction that wanted to see us annihilate a random city in the Middle East, just as an object lesson; I pretty much laughed out loud when those Navy snipers took out the Somali pirates who held an American captain hostage back in April.

Yes, sometimes I'm the first one to get all "America, fuck yeah."

For months and months on this site, I skewered Democrats in much the same way I skewered Republicans, believing that working backward in any argument to make the "facts" fit a predetermined point-of-view -- no matter that point-of-view -- was the most intellectually dishonest thing imaginable. I still think that I'm capable of sticking to that ideal, because if I don't, then my already somewhat inconsequential opinions are rendered utterly worthless since they're the product of nothing more than partisan prejudices.

But lately it's no secret that I have actually been more outraged by the actions of the right as a whole than those of the left. And I think the reason for that can be summed up in one simple question that may seem trite but which kind of needs to be asked: When did the primary voices of the American right become so shockingly dumb -- so shamelessly willing to jettison every last vestige of rational thought? True, during the Bush years stupid seemed to reign -- but the reality was always that those at the top were very smart people using very gullible people as stage props to further their agenda. I also get that this still happens regularly -- on both ends of the political spectrum.

But something has changed recently; maybe it started with the introduction of Sarah Palin to an already toxic mixture of paranoia and ignorance coming to a boil within certain segments of the population. Either way, over the last year it seems as if all logic and reason within the Republican party and its champions on talk radio and Fox News has gone completely out the window. It's like these people have lost their fucking minds. I'm not simply talking about their tendency to embrace and perpetuate half-baked conspiracy theories of the most mind-bogglingly outlandish variety; I mean their lack of shame at making arguments that not only don't hold up within the context of an extended timeline -- the kind of bewildering shit that can easily be proven hypocritical by comparing it to their comments of just one year ago -- but make no sense at face value.

Last night on Fox News, Sean "I Can Put You Into a Car Regardless of Your Credit History" Hannity made a comment and an implication so inflammatory and absurd that it's shocking his brain didn't rip the top of his head open to get some air. He pondered, "What does (it) say about Barack Obama and our government," that apparently the U.S. military knew that Major Nidal Nasan had contacted al Qaeda and was a growing threat yet did nothing to stop him? In other words, Hannity tried to link the fact that the military may have dropped the ball in devastating fashion on the Fort Hood shooting to the fact that Barack Obama is in the White House.

Do I need to remind you -- since reminding an obviously thick-headed ideologue like Hannity wouldn't do a damn bit of good -- that in the months leading up to 9/11, there were intelligence failures left and right within the CIA, the FBI and the Bush administration, including one in which Bush himself seemed to flat-out ignore the warnings of an intelligence report that all but spelled out the coming attack? I'm not saying that governmental agencies shouldn't be held responsible for their failures when a national tragedy happens that could have been prevented by them; I'm saying that you can't keep a straight face and castigate one president of the United States for an avoidable catastrophe that happened on his watch after singing the praises of another who was much closer to the fuck-ups that led to the avoidable catastrophe that happened on his. Well, you can't keep a straight face unless you're either a modern right-wing pundit or the lead character from Memento.

This is just another example of the kind of bald-faced, completely-detached-from-reality hypocrisy that the people who've hijacked the Republican party have trafficked in now for months into years -- the same people who spent almost eight years ranting and raving about how criticizing the president during a time of war amounted to treason, but who now conveniently add the caveat "Unless that President is Barack Obama -- That's Alright."

Crackpot conspiracy theories, circular reasoning, selective memory, insane arguments that go nowhere, the complete abandonment of logic and reason, the canonization of the craziest and most farcical among its lunatic fringe -- this is why it's become impossible to defend the GOP these days. It's gotten so bad that even taking an occasional stand for the ideals of conservatism, some of which I happen to agree with, makes me feel like I need a shower -- because those who are supposed to be advancing these ideals have instead allowed their party to meltdown from the inside out.

It's almost impossible to imagine that conservatism was once the domain of unapologetic intellectuals like William F. Buckley.

Now look at it -- it's the soapbox from which Michele Bachmann shouts gibberish.

Who with a brain wants to in any way be associated with that?

Sound and Fury

I know how everyone hates it when I use a news item -- especially a big and depressing news item -- to illustrate the validity of one of the opinions I'm regularly espousing around here. It's admittedly a pretty exploitative tack to take, but I never claimed to be above that sort of thing.

Which brings me, once again, to James Von Brunn and yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

There's a decent piece in Salon.com this morning, written by Joan Walsh, that asks the same question you've heard here and a lot of other places recently: Does crazed right-wing rhetoric bear any kind of responsibility for the rash of far-right extremist attacks that have left more than a half-dozen innocent people dead since the inauguration of Barack Obama? Walsh succinctly expresses the implications of the paranoid fantasy-world nonsense that the right-wing echo chamber has been amping up lately:

"There's clearly been an uptick in rhetoric suggesting that white men are having their rights abridged by the Obama administration, especially since his pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In a debate with (Pat) Buchanan a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence?"

That last question is, of course, one worth asking -- and I'm not going out on a limb of logic by saying that the answer is inarguably "yes." But the setup for Walsh's column wonders aloud whether right-wing media bullhorns like Fox News and talk radio, being ostensibly responsible broadcasters and taking into account the potential dangers of riling up the conspiracy-minded loonies, might finally ease back on the crazy talk in the wake of the violence. The answer to that question, of course, is "no." They won't change a goddamned thing because as far as they're concerned they're not responsible for any of this -- the murder of an abortion doctor, five cops and a security guard (so far) -- in any way. You can't make someone tone down their dangerous and incendiary rhetoric when they refuse to acknowledge that what they're saying is dangerous or incendiary. If anything, I'd be shocked if blowhards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and so on didn't respond to this latest attack by shouting even louder (if such a thing is possible), their increased volume a natural reaction to having been persecuted by their political enemies for something they obviously had nothing to do with.

The real question though is: if they won't cut this kind of malignant shit out, what can anybody do?

We've come to a truly unprecedented moment in the evolution of the American media. Throughout history, the writers and broadcasters who practiced journalism and offered commentary in this country were, for the most part, responsible adults who understood the awesome sway they held over the public's imagination. They adhered to a gentleman's agreement that was largely unspoken because it didn't have to be spoken: You don't just go on the air or off to press spouting completely ridiculous, inflammatory crap without the slightest concern for the facts or for the potential consequences of your claims. You weren't running Fisher-Price's "My First Television Network"; the airwaves and print outlets weren't your own personal goddamned sandbox where you were king and could say whatever you pleased. Yes, you had the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, but you knew full well that with that came responsibility -- and since you were a grown-up and not some asshole schoolyard bully obsessed with the sound of his own voice and drunk on his own power, you behaved accordingly.

Not anymore, though. The Limbaughs and Fox News Channels of the world don't behave responsibly. Very much the opposite, in fact. But what can be done about it? What do you do when someone stands there in front of you, like a bully does so well, a smug look on his face and his chin raised high, taunting you with the fact that there's nothing you can do to make him behave like an adult? The entire Republican platform these days seems to be based around the notion that you can't force somebody to do the right thing. So what can you do?

I honestly wish I had the answer, because if somebody doesn't come up with something quickly -- if average people don't stand up and tell these clowns to knock it off -- things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better.

It's one thing to have a dissenting, even controversial, opinion and to express it. But if you can't do it responsibly, you don't deserve the forum that allows you to shout it to the masses.

Quote of the Week

"Our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize, certainly that is so far from what the founders of our country had in mind for us."

"Socialism?"

"Well, that's where we are headed."

-- Sarah Palin, still inexplicably allowed to speak, offering her sage prophecies (and by sage I mean "completely ridiculous") to Sean Hannity, who at that moment was slyly using the scripts in his hand to cover his erection

Quote of the Week (Early Contender)

"I'm a happy, single guy. He's a repressed, typical Republican. I'm sure just terribly sexually repressed and it comes out in all their sorts of hatred and vile and bile -- why would I be bitter? First of all, our side won."

-- Bill Maher on Sean Hannity, who recently claimed that the Fox News Channel doesn't like Maher because he's become "bitter"

Hannity & Clowns

Chances are you can hear me laughing from wherever you are.

The Huffington Post: Hannity Replaces Colmes with Al Sharpton, Debut Show Also Includes Michelle Bachman, Meatloaf/1.8.09

Related: DXM: An Open Letter to Al Sharpton/12.4.07

No Left Turn

In other words, nothing about the show will change.

The Huffington Post: Alan Colmes Leaving Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity to Host Show Solo

Stupid Is the New Smart

I love it when I don't really have to do anything -- just put a couple of recent stories side by side.

The New York Times: Turmoil at The National Review Sees Traditional Conservative Intellectualism and Erudition Threatened/11.16.08

The Huffington Post: Billy Ray Cyrus, Charlie Daniels Band to Headline Sean Hannity "Freedom Concerts"/11.18.08