Tweet
As I discussed the other day, Republicans and right wing leaders thrive on a culture of victimhood.
Developing this meme has meant cultivating a fantasy land where an imaginary liberal media dominates discourse (and Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and the rest are somehow overlooked), it means imagining President Obama, himself a Christian, as being hostile to Christians, it means fantasizing about mythical government plots to confiscate guns and impose martial law. It can even mean pretending that Republican leaders weren’t invited to a state dinner when they actually were.
Facts simply don’t matter when it comes to the right wing persecution complex–it’s ok to simply make stuff up, and then watch as it spreads through the right wing media echo chamber. Here’s how it worked with regard to the imaginary state dinner snubs. The Washington Times blared this online headline "Top Republican lawmakers not invited to State Dinner." Who are the top Republican lawmakers? That’d be Senate minority leader McConnell and House minority leader Boehner. Each was actually invited. They simply declined the invitation.
It looks like the Times has updated its story to reflect the, um, facts.
One portion of the article initially read "Boehner won’t be there; he’s on Thanksgiving break and back home in Ohio. His deputy, Eric Cantor, also didn’t get an invitation to the dinner." (emphasis added). The updated Times story adds this language: "Boehner was invited but won’t be there…" (emphasis added).
However, Fox is running the initial Times piece, with the headline declaring top Republican lawmakers were not invited, and the body of the story suggesting that Boehner didn’t receive an invite. They report, their readers decide. Someone reading an article headlined "Top Republican lawmakers not invited to Obama’s first state dinner" that suggests top Republican lawmaker Boehner didn’t get an invite will logically conclude that Boehner was one of the top lawmakers the headline referred to. And that’s how falsehoods spread.
Chalk up one more grudge for the right wing culture of victimhood, thanks to sloppy reporting and reposting by those well-known liberal media outlets the Washingtin Times and Fox News.
6 Comments
Fox is still running the initial, and highly misleading, WA Times article. It has prompted comments like this one:
“Nice no invites if you make his holiness angry. Attack all disent, divide the nation as never before, spend more than all the other administrations combined double the deficit yep must be one term Mao loving neoliberal leftwinger liar in the oval office.”
or this polished gem: “Simply more proof that the kenyan scum commun-ist is not interested in bi-partisanship or in the welfare of this country, but rather in the destruction of the nation. He is a traitor and a criminal and nothing less.”
well, actually, there weren’t “no invites”. The WA Times just misled you. But we did get the treat of getting another unhinged rant against President Obama, his holiness, who won’t invite Republicans he disagrees with–except that he did. They turned them down. If I had it in me, I’d write up something entitled “Top Republican Lawmakers Snub Presidential Invite to First State Dinner”. perhaps I’d get a comment like this: “nice no going to the White House if you make sanctimonious Republicans angry. Attack president at every turn, hope for his failure, divide the nation as never before, accuse the president of being Nazi, terrorist, illegal alien”
another polished gem from a commenter on Fox, understandably outraged by the great uninvitation scandal of 2009 that never was:
“Simply more proof that the kenyan scum commun-ist is not interested in bi-partisanship or in the welfare of this country, but rather in the destruction of the nation. He is a traitor and a criminal and nothing less.”
geez, what would have happened if he really hadn’t invited McConnell or Boehner?
then there was this pleasantry from one of the more enlightened Fox commenters:
“Who cares,no one wants fried chicken,watermelon and kool-aid anyway.”
well played–is there any baseless right wing accusation that doesn’t provide the opportunity for a racist comment?
Had the economy not been hollowed out by Democrats and Republicans alike over the past 30 years, and folks were not scared shitless about the security of their immediate futures, then perhaps the wing nuts would not be distractable through inanities.
Just because people are freaked out for legitimate reasons and express that unease through inanities does not delegitimate the underlying basis for their concern.
The real solution here is to find populist common ground with the right wing on how the corporate duopoly has connived to sell the US out from under us. Failure to do so will result in exacerbated false polarities which are manipulated by each wing of the corporate party which keeps attention away from those responsible and brings us no closer to resolution.
So long as we continue to look where they tell us to look rather than at the men behind the curtain, we’ll be looking at the wrong things.
that’s a very fair point. I think the Republicans are mainly to blame for the economic mismanagement of the last 30 years as (a) they controlled the presidency for 20 of those 30 years and (b) when a Democrat was in the White House for 8 years in the 90s, the budget was balanced and there was even a surplus left for the next Republican president, who promptly squandered it on tax cuts for the wealthy. But the Dems aren’t exactly covered in glory–they either went along with Reagan and Bush’s reckless fiscal approach, or, at best, were unable to stop the disaster.
In any event, I think you’re making an excellent point. When people are under stress and feeling economic pain, to put it mildly, they are more likely to latch on to paranoia and scapegoating. and you’re absolutely right that, even though this is manifesting itself in inanities, that doesn’t mean there’s not a legitimate basis for the underlying anxiety. Democrats need to figure that out and develop a spine that enables them to (a) pass meaningful health care reform that really helps people who are camping out overnight to get health care and (b) take action to help people who need jobs and are struggling financially (action (a) also goes to this, but more is needed).
The Dems are leaving the populist turf to Rs, which is a big mistake. I agree with your big picture thinking.
The Dems have been there hand in hand with the Republican since they adopted an “if you can’t beat em, join em” philosophy in the mid 1980s. We could argue about the extent of that if there weren’t bigger fish to fry.
The big nut to crack here would be to figure out how to align progressives and conservatives on an economic populist base. Just like we could argue about share of responsibility for corporate dominance and the decline of working Americans but aren’t, we need to figure out how to deal with those on the right who are open to rational discussion to put aside the distractions and open up an economic dialogue designed to do what it takes to undo the damage and put America back to sustainable work.
In my local political work, I’ve learned that in working with folks “on the other side,” when our interests occasionally align, that just working on common cause alongside someone with whom one might disagree a lot allows us to see our common humanity through how we agree. This works much better than focusing exclusively on difference.
The Dems will do everything to prevent the rise of independent progressive, labor or liberal power. Their destruction of the Green Party shows that. And they will neutralize any progressive or liberal inclinations within their ramparts. The Progressive Caucus is the largest in Congress, yet Stupak passed a Democratic House, and that is, Iraq War, hardly, PATRIOT ACT, an isolated, FISA, incident. Any questions?
Media and the parties are dividing us in order to conquer. Tough as it might be, we can laugh at the most idiotic of the tea bagger lot, but we need to figure out what we have in common with them on a variety of issues and try to figure out how to “go rogue,” off the reservation of liberal and conservative in promoting solid American values like a sustainable, clean economy, an immigration policy based on sound economics and rational trade offs rather than demonization and tech wage dilution and with the libertarian crowd, identify common ground on a foreign policy that is not based on pretensions of empire.
We get to hear how they think that all of us are marching in lockstep with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. They criticize us by attacking us for supporting Pelosi. We don’t have a venue now to offer up another story on how progressives are as disgusted with the Democratic Party sell out as they are with the GOP.
“progressives are
asdisgusted with the Democratic Party sell out”And how do you suppose Conservatives feel about a GOP that grows government like a fungus on steroids, outspends the Democrats, expands unfunded entitlements, etc.?