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February 26, 2005

Hatred is as hatred does

I have a great deal of affection and respect for our good friend Tom Carter. Having had many personal conversations with him I find him to be funny, smart and interesting.

That said, his blog post from today entitled The Politics of Hate is one of the most one sided, inequitable mischaracterizations I have read in quite some time.

Tom begins:

I've been thinking about how often the word "hate" is used in a political context these days. It almost always comes from the left, directed at George W. Bush.

Apparently stuff like this from Ann Coulter doesn't count?

"Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Or Bill O'Reilly Nazi-izing Michael Moore:

O'REILLY: I believe that he [Michael Moore] has power now. He has more power than probably anybody else other than [Senators John] Kerry and [John] Edwards. It's scary. It's scary. You know this happened in Nazi Germany. ... Who was the most powerful person in Nazi Germany other than Hitler and Himmler and Goering, who? You guys know? ... Goebbels. The propaganda minister. That frightens me when truth no longer exists, gentlemen. It doesn't exist for Michael Moore, it doesn't.

O'Reilly went on to further compare Moore and radio host Al Franken to Goebbels, incidentally.

And then there's rightwing radio host Michael Savage..also on the Goebbels train:

In addition to labeling Soros "a dangerous crazy man" and a "lousy snake," Savage also compared Soros to "Hitler's media man" -- in reference to Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels -- and repeatedly called Soros "Goebbels". (Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Communist Budapest.)

Savage also called MoveOn a bunch of "rat bastard communists".

And then there's Sean Hannity...who has given this fan a reason to spew hatred toward liberals.

And here's the rightwing blog Little Green Footballs namecalling embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, "Little Eichmans".

Tom goes on to say:

The depressing reality is liberals may be so committed to their hatred of the President that they can only rejoice in American failure and disgrace. Is their hatred of Bush so deep and personal that anything is acceptable to justify it? Since they so delight in beating up the President with each new American casualty in Iraq, seemingly in the inane belief that he doesn't care, would they actually be disappointed if fewer and fewer American soldiers were killed and maimed?

The politics of hate has no place in America, and I have no respect for those who embrace it. Ultimately we have only one president, and no matter how much we disagree with him we must respect and support him. Any American who feels otherwise has seriously lost his or her way.

Perhaps Tom might consider what liberals have had shoved at them from the rightwing for the last two decades. The vitriol and hatred spewed out against our ideology and our leaders has been thick and constant. We've had it..and we're fighting back.

I notice Tom give the rightwingers a free pass..despite years of nasty, mean, hatefilled rhetoric toward the Clintons, the Democrats and liberals in general.

If one is going to write a piece about hate filled politics...it's unfair to begin and end with liberals. In fact it's more than unfair...it's dishonest.

Posted by Carla at February 26, 2005 05:34 PM