Fox Noise

Quite Politically Savvy Man: Well, I think they’ll find some common ground. I don’t know what that is, if that’s tort reform, if that’s dealing with the public option. I don’t know what it is, there has to be a compromise.

Griff Jenkins: Do you support a government run plan or not?

Quite Politically Savvy Man: Whatever it takes to ensure every person. That’s what I think…

Griff Jenkins: There you go! There’s some more folks here. They were at the tea party earlier…

Griff Jenkins stubbed his toe on some sanity at the 28th stop of the tea-party express in Pennsylvania while interviewing folks who’d watched the president’s speech at a local saloon. Either the rational bald fellow in the business suit (whom Jenkins introduced as "quite politically savvy) was a garden variety local rather than a tea-partyer, or he was a sensible Republican doing a little intellectual slumming. Whatever the explanation, Griff’s expression when the word “public option” is mentioned is worth seeing, along with the sly smile of the interviewee, who plainly knows that Jenkins isn’t going to like what he has to say.

Bill Rice: I went out to a local event in, uh, my community, where I was confronted by somewhat of a deranged individual and uh, a scuffle ensured and he ate my finger in the process.

Neil Cavuto: …but reports are from witnesses that you threw a punch at him. What happened, really Bill?

Bill Rice: Yes sir, yes sir I did. He came at me calling me an idiot and whenever he got close within my range, I threw a punch.

Neil Cavuto: Okay, you threw a punch. Did the punch land?

Bill Rice: Yes.

Neil Cavuto: So then, what happened next?

Bill Rice: Then, I threw a second punch and my fist ended up in his mouth.

First of all, I want to go on record with my opposition to biting off the fingers of demonstrators with whom you disagree. Unless you feel your life is actually in danger, I don’t consider maiming an appropriate response, even to being punched in the face.

That said, punching someone in the face, not because he hits you, but because he calls you an idiot, qualifies as an unprovoked attack. And if you then throw a second punch and get the tip of your pinky finger caught in the teeth of the man you attacked – well, I’m sure it hurts and I’m glad you got prompt medical attention, but my sympathy does have its limits.

“What’s weird about this, Bill” says Neil Cavuto, “is that a guy who was advocating for the president’s healthcare reform bit your freakin’ finger off.”

Well, it would certainly be “weird” if the finger-biter had initiated the encounter by hurling himself at Bill Rice, seizing Rice’s hand, and viciously chomping off Rice’s pinky finger before spitting the severed appendage into his victim’s face.

What Mr. Rice has just described, however, is losing the tip of his pinky finger while he, Bill Rice, was assaulting someone.

Which is not really that “weird “at all.

And that, I strongly suspect, is why Rice has said, “no, sir, I don’t wish to sue anybody, I’m not a litigious person.” In a courtroom, a judge is unlikely to sum up what happened by saying, “So you’re with a relatively small group there, protesting healthcare reform, this guy was saying ‘Healthcare reform is the way to go,’ didn’t at all agree with you, and um, and then he, after biting your finger off, up and ran away.” The part about Rice punching the guy twice would at least get a mention. Nor would a judge pat Rice on the head with the observation that “You gave an appendage in the cause of healthcare reform.” Rice “gave an appendage” in the cause of punching a man in the face – something that probably happens fairly frequently in bar-fights.

News of this hit one day after the report of another pro-healthcare reform advocate in Florida being struck in the face by one of the antis. In this case, the punchee apparently did not or could not fight back.

Which, I gather, is exactly as Neil Cavuto and others of his ilk think it should be.

I believe that was a brilliant and historic speech reaching out to the 1.5 billion Muslims around the world whom Al Qaida has thought was their own captive audience. He was attempting, in the name of America, to marginalize the fanatics and to reclaim the middle ground for America and I think he was doing a service, not just to America, but to Israel and the world by doing so. Winston Churchill III, responding to Neil Cavuto’s comparison of President Obama’s recent speech in Cairo with Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler

It’s a pleasure, via Media Matters, to watch Neil Cavuto get put in his place by Winston Churchill III. The grandson of the great British conservative politely drew the line the other day at Cavuto invoking Neville Chamberlain as a way of smearing President Obama. He didn’t go so far as to explain to Cavuto and Fox viewers exactly why Chamberlain was and is still reviled, but perhaps he didn’t want to embarrass everyone. It’s possible he remembers the carnage that ensued in May of last year, when that rude Yank, Chris Matthews, got tired of right wing radio host Kevin James’ histrionic endorsement of President Bush’s comparison of Obama with Neville Chamberlain, and asked him the simple question, “What did Neville Chamberlain do?

The result was five minutes of stream of consciousness babble reminiscent of the dying words of Dutch Schultz

Oh, c’mon, it all…it all goes back to appeasement. It’s the key…it’s the key term, it’s the key term, Chris. He goes, no, it’s the same thing, it puts it all…it’s, it’s talking about appeasement! And…and his actions, his actions enabled, energized, legitimized, it’s the exact same, it’s the exact same thing that we’re… it’s the…Chris, it’s the exact same thing, all right, no… Wha? Thirty-eight, thirty-nine Chris! What year do you want? It doesn’t…It’s the exact same thing that happened, Chris. He’s talking, he’s talking, he’s talking about appeasement. Look…What Chamberlain did…what Chamberlain did that I, what, what, that the President was talkin’ about? You just said the President was talkin’ about Bara…Look, the ans…and I’ll remember about this… I…No, I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t! President Bush…Look, you’re not going to box me in here, Chris, President Bush was making that, I was..I’m glad the President…I’m glad the President…Of course! Neville Chamberlain, yeah, he..he was an appeaser, Chris. He was an appeaser and it energized, and it legitimized, and it...it…legitimized…Chris, Chris, I wasn’t the one that raised the Hitler comment. My point is, what President Bush has done, is that he has taken this shot across the bow, and it’s a shot…No…What do you mean I don’t know what I’m talking about? Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, Chris. Neverlin Chamberlain was a…was an appeaser, all right? I Neville, Neville Chamberlain, but his…his policies, the things that Neville Chamberlain supported…all right, energized, legitimized, eh-energized, legitimized and…and made it easier for Hitler to advance in the ways that he advanced….

Finally, Matthews decided to put James out of his misery and explain, simply and succinctly why Chamberlain is still considered a weenie.

What Neville Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechslovakia in ’38. That’s what he did wrong.

“The early reports we're getting from this so-called infiltration plan is that they're going to try to make it look like these are fringe group efforts, this is a fringe . . . even racist undertaking. Um, Mark, how are you going to handle that if that comes up?” Neil Cavuto offering an explanation in advance for violent white supremacists being attracted to the Teabagging movement. (“It’s all Acorn’s fault!”)

So now the alibi being offered by the tea-baggers is that those dastardly Acorn activists are going to be infiltrating them disguised as white supremacists.

Will those violently insane leftists stop at nothing?

This is yet another case of a Freeper meme bobbing greasily to the surface of cable news, in this case, of course, the Fox network. Last week, in the wake of the horrific, premeditated murder of three police officers by Richard Poplawski, a Glenn-Beck-addled young racist, a few Freepers were darkly insinuating that either Poplawski’s friends or Poplawski himself, were, in fact, part of a liberal conspiracy to make the right look bad.

I wonder if this “informant” is REALLY a “friend” of the person, or if he is a plant? It wouldn’t surprise me, really, it wouldn’t surprise me at ALL for the government to use every such situation they possibly can to paint the picture they want to paint...

And the guy in PA, was NOT someone who thought Obama was going to take his guns. If he was, he would never have called attention to the fact that he had some. He would not have done ANYTHING he did, if that were the case. Nope, it's just a media attention thing, a way to blame it on conservatives, using a young kook to do it.

“suspected of gunning down three Pittsburgh police officers Saturday, feared President Barack Obama would take his guns. “
Strange, this is exactly what the ‘friends’ of the Vietnamese guy in New York said.
I’m guessing these “friends” in both cases are fictitious and created by the communist mouthpiece.

The right wing has been spewing covert and not-so-covert racism since the G.O.P embraced the Southern Strategy. As a result, groups like Stormfront and other white supremacist organizations are quite likely to see conservative organizations as fertile fields for recruitment.

As this April 11th quote from the Stormfront website indicates:

How to talk to angry whites

Hundreds of us will take to the streets next week and join the nation-wide Tea Party. This is excellent for WN. If the history of revolutions teaches us anything, is that they begin as one thing and ultimately morph themselves into another.

… Our role is to explain the Great Betrayal and what it means to our white children.

Remember that “taxes” are merely a symptom. Yeah, Americans are angry about taxes . . . but then what? What happens on April 16th? Where do we go from here?

It's up to us, WN, to provide those answers. We do it by simple prodding of accepted dogma. Remember . . . these are brainwashed people we're dealing with. For years, they've though that everything was "O.K." Suddenly, just like Neo . . . they take the red pill . . . and now they're realizing that it's all lies.

You . . . my fellow WNs . . . are that red pill.

Ask questions that will challenge Americans to look beyond the symptoms they easily see. Only when they begin to question the dogma most have accepted since high school (which is no easy task) will they begin to understand the need for a true white revolution.

My advice: Don't even mention "race" or "jew" or even "white." Keep it simple. The point is taxes . . . so stay on point.

Ask questions like these below and then gently and slowly take the discussion where it needs to go. Listen. Share what you know and how you came to your understanding of things. Above all, take your time. There is no rush; time is on our side.

Do you really want to punish hard working, tax-paying Americans for the sake of lazy, non-taxpayers?

We know groups like ACORN and LA RAZA want to change America at its core. Do you really want your tax dollars supporting these groups?

Are you tired of your tax dollars going to liberal/progressive social programs (like Affirmative Action, welfare, etc)?

Are you tired of an economy that rewards foreign capitalists at the expense of your hometown?

Are you tired of illegals taking American jobs and tax dollars?

Are you tired of Wall Street swindlers stealing your savings?

Are you tired of San Francisco progressives wasting your taxes in mammoth budgets that no one reads?

Are you tired of failing schools when we spend more than any other country on education?

Are you tired of public universities taking your tax dollars and turning your children into mindless, anti-American progressives?

Are you tired of a justice system that takes your tax dollars and allows criminals to run free?

Are you tired of progressives using our tax dollars to change our Constitutional political system?

Our country was built on a Christian-European model based on the Protestant Work Ethic . . . are you ready to abandon your roots and waste your tax dollars paying for progressive social experiments (that have never worked)?

Trust me . . . once educated, Americans will quickly connect the racial dots.

To cope with this embarrassing situation, the right has come up with a simple response. Blame it on Acorn. They hope that if people watch coverage of tea-parties and see racist signs being waved, they’ll associate this with the left rather than the right wing.

And of course, if violence takes place – which is quite possible given the rhetoric we’re seeing on right wing blogs – it will be blamed on the liberal “infiltrators.”

I suppose it’s inevitable that Fox News, faced with the legal election of a black, Democratic, liberal president, and the prospect of legislation they dislike being passed – also quite legally -- would turn to the Mafia. Unable to make up their mind whether to hold up organized crime as a role model for Republicans or a slur against Democrats, they seem to have settled for both. Newshounds has a clip of the folks at Fox Business Network first asking an ex-Mafioso turned devout Christian (riiiight) for some business tips. “Because some people say that a lot of what the mob does is legit and pretty well run," says David Asman -- not bothering to tell us who says this and which mob-run businesses they have in mind -- "Are there tips that you can provide for businesses?”

The born-again mobster assures Asman that really, his generating “8 to 10 million dollars a week” had nothing to do with either employees' or competitors' fear of ending up buried in pieces somewhere in Long Island, and everything to do with “having somewhat of a street business sense.” They then switch gears, with Asman observing:

“You wrote a terrific piece about how Congress is just like the mob and, in fact, the bailouts are a perfect example of that. you say when you were in the business, ‘I would often ‘bail out’ a failing company. When a boss had nowhere to go and no legit lender would lend him a dime, when his suppliers were threatening to throw him into bankruptcy, he came to me. Once the owner took my money or used my name, I owned him.’ And that’s exactly what we’re hearing from members of Congress about the people who took TARP!”

To which this convicted felon replies:

“Without a doubt, and you know, really, to not make light of this, it really concerns me because its, uh, it’s so mob-like in their approach…”

You see? Congress is exactly like the mob because certain conditions are attached to the government propping up a failing corporation with massive infusions of public cash. Oh the horror!

No doubt it’s only a matter of time before Edward Liddy is awakened at 1:00 am by two hatchet-faced goons in expensive suits with a body they need to chop up in his shop’s meat-grinder.

They can’t help it. Really, they just can’t. Bigots may try to veil their attitudes, but their assumptions about whatever “other” it is they loathe, whether it’s Jews, Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics, women, etc., inevitably come out. In this case, the all-too-revealing quote comes from Sean Hannity near the end (at about the 2.25 minute mark) of his exchange with Deepak Chopra. Chopra, some may recall, made some waves last week when he pointed out on CNN the role United States policy in the Middle East – in particular the invasion of Iraq – has played in exacerbating rather than subduing the rise of terrorism. Yesterday he appeared on Hannity and Colmes along with former Clinton administration Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

The good doctor is a spunky and uncompromising debater, refusing to allow Hannity to talk over him and insisting on finishing his points. He pointed out that among those people Hannity boasts about being “liberated” in Iraq were some 400,000 to a million dead Iraqis.

“I’m saying it’s a very complex issue,” Chopra went on to say:

I actually totally support Defense Sectretary Cohen when he says we have to go after these barbarians and get rid of them. But there’s an analogy here. You know, the Defense Secretary is an expert on counter-terrorism. He knows how to target terrorists and get rid of them…but here’s an analogy. Cancer is like a terrorist disease. When you treat cancer over-aggressively what happens is that cells that normally participate in the healing process scraps get diverted to the cancer cells where they are hijacked to become co-conspirators that aid and abet cancer formation.

Chopra was simply pointing out something that should be obvious to any thinking person. If the pursuit of terrorists results in killing, torturing, and destroying the lives of numerous non-terrorists, those surviving non-terrorists are likely to be radicalized into terrorism.

Hannity did what inept, unthinking debaters frequently do when they find themselves losing ground in an argument with someone who has the facts on his side and won’t back down. He turned to someone else present, in this case William Cohen, and misrepresented Chopra’s arguments. And in doing so, he revealed his own inability to distinguish being a Muslim from being a terrorist.

You called them barbarians, Mr. Secretary. They were at war with us. They attacked us and Deepak is calling for a Marshall Plan for Muslims. That sounds like we’ve got to buy safety from people who want to destroy us.

In response, Cohen quoted Tony Blair’s statement that “this is not a clash of civilizations, it’s a clash within a civilization,” and talked about the need for reducing “collateral damage” in the war on terrorism just before Hannity drew the discussion to a close. In short, he pretty much confirmed what Chopra had said, and I appreciate that. But...

I wish Cohen had reacted more forcefully and directly to Hannity equating “Muslim” with “barbarians” and “people who want to destroy us.” Naked bigotry needs to be pointed at and called precisely what it is. It shouldn’t merely be accepted as a passing point in the course of a discussion.