The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.

The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar

2009/05/15

Right-wing commenters

In response to a Inky piece about the Army Experience Center, we get comments like:

Posted by ark 06:00 PM, 05/14/2009
I can envision one day the use of real people as targets. The protesters, code pink, ACORN, MADD. Well, one can dream can't he!

followed by:

Posted by steimel 08:27 PM, 05/14/2009
ARK, I share your dream.

shortly before that:

Posted by steimel 08:25 PM, 05/14/2009
Do you protestors ever take the time to protest a cop killer, or a video game? ... Its about your hate for the armed services of the USA.

Erm, okay. We peacenik lefties are the ones consumed by hate. Right. Sure. Okay.
We then see in comments for a piece about Speaker Pelosi and the CIA's briefings on waterboarding:

Posted by STEVE5444 03:13 AM, 05/15/2009
Damm Nancy.. You were kept out of the loop,, shucks, Everyone knew except you.. maybe because you have a BIG MOUTH and don't know when to shut it...

Posted by blombard 06:14 AM, 05/15/2009
This woman should be convicted for stupidity. How in the world did she get elected. Ohhh..now I remember she used the millions of dollars her husband stole from military contracts to fund her political agenda. Off with her head.

Posted by nuggett 07:06 AM, 05/15/2009
Yeah right ????? What a crock !!! She and her party will bring down Obama with their greed and pork....Not hard to believe that this woman is a politican.....She lies and back stabs and must have pictures and lots of money to get wehre she is.....If George and Chenney are the best the republicans can produce....they should not be embarrassed as Pelosi is the cheese of the Democrats......NOW that is embarrassing....

Posted by snad264 07:17 AM, 05/15/2009
This broad is an idiot! The fact that she is House Speaker is quite disturbing. She is an embarassment to the Democrats, and drags down the Party in a similar way former V.P. Cheney hurts the Republican Party.

Posted by PhillySteve21 07:24 AM, 05/15/2009
Actually, it sounds as if she knew about it the WHOLE time and is only now trying to distance herself! This woman is absolutely insane.

Have to say, though, that the funniest comment came a little later than these first five:

Posted by tr88 07:38 AM, 05/15/2009
Good to see the Inquirer getting on this story a month after the Drudge Report isnt it? And Drudge is free. The difference is Drudge is a real news source, not an advocate.

Drudge is not an advocate - Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!! Heh, that's a good one. As if Drudge was ever anything other than a partisan hack. Now do online sources like Drudge out-scoop traditional news sources like the Inky? Unfortunately, yes. That happens all the time. The blogger emptywheel displays her impatience with the traditional media:

Mark, Mark, Mark. I spelled this all out here, back when it became apparent to anyone with a command of the English language that Goss' dispute with Pelosi had nothing to do with her contention (which was clear even then) that the CIA hadn't told Congress that it had already been using waterboarding.

And here's an interesting one:

Posted by TylerDurden 08:32 AM, 05/15/2009
If she [Pelosi] were a Republican, the media would be outraged. Since she's a Democrat, it's ok that she's clueless.

Um yeah, sure, I remember the outrage over there being no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As the WaPo put it in
June 2004:

The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found."

Problem of course, was that there was no documentation for any such connection. Had there been any substantive outrage over the conscious and deliberate deception, why did so many Americans believe as late as this that there had been such a connection?

Unfortunately, a lot of this unhinged hatred for progressives results in eliminationism, a desire to simply eliminate whole categories of people. It's very distressing, but the tendency is far more widespread than most folks would like to believe. I'm pleased to note that the author of the piece I linked to is a bit of a free-speech fanatic. I share his belief that the answer to bad speech is better speech. Ignoring the bad speakers or trying to suppress them is a losers game. It's far better to put a spotlight on them and to show people what we're battling than it is to try and sweep everything under the rug.


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