RIP William Safire

Former Nixon speechwriter and op-ed columnist William Safire died of pancreatic cancer at 79. As the obits are noting, Safire was the first conservative columnist employed by the New York Times (Reasonable Right holdout David Brooks now holds what could be called the William Safire chair.)

After last week's rant about the craziness of the modern Right, it's worth remembering how Safire went about his business. Early in the Clinton years, Safire wrote a column complimenting the administrations dialogue on race. During the fallout of the Bush warrantless wiretapping revelations while much of the conservative commentariat condemned the Times for publishing them, Safire condemned the wiretapping. His column was personal -- he had been wiretapped while in the Nixon White House.

Safire both cast the mold of conservative commentators and deviated from it whenever moved to. In today's conservative movement, such deviation from orthodoxy wouldn't be tolerated. But Safire's willingness to deviate from the party line made him more credible to those of us who didn't share his views. Safire, along with contemporaries like Jack Kilpatrick and (before he sold his soul) George Will challenged me. Sometimes I had to think about why I believed differently. Sometimes I was persuaded to change my views.

In contrast, today's conservative "commentary" is easily dismissed cant. The conservatives are right that it does no service to the country when only half the political spectrum is represented in the media. It's a similarly bad thing that half the spectrum has no credibility outside of its core believers.

Not Racist So Much As. . .

Professional Chatterers and bloggers have been going on for a couple of weeks now about whether attacks on President Obama are motivated by race. Pretty much every news¹ story about opposition to Obama includes the question now, though the answer varies. Obama in a show of sportsmanship says it's not about race. Liberals are unmollified. Etc.

I submit that the venom directed at Obama is related to race in the same way that the full political contact directed at Hillary Clinton in the primary and the derision of Sarah Palin in the general are related to sexism. Which is to say that, all other things being equal, a whole lot of that negativity would have been directed against its subjects regardless of group identification, BUT that the passions involved allow various unpretty isms to come to the surface as well.

If, for example, Bill Clinton had an accomplished, RFK-type brother who ran as the establishment favorite against Obama, the Obama faithful would have pushed back. Hard. If John McCain had picked a half-term governor from a small western state who exhibited a Palinesqe difficulty with putting together a diagrammable sentence, that running mate would have been fodder for lefty bloggers and late night comics. In both cases the pushback/sport occaisionally crossed the line into sexist ugliness, but it wasn't initially caused by sexism.

That sound you hear is your False Moral Equivalency alarm going off, and rightly so. I don't mean to suggest that the opposition to Obama is the same as that of opposition to Sec. Clinton and it certainly is nothing like the criticism of Palin.². The flaying of Obama by the right wing is far more venomous, delusional and histrionic than anything that happened in the campaign. My point, rather, is that a white President as liberal as Obama who made the same policy choices as Obama would face a nearly identically venomous, delusional and histrionic flaying. Obama's race didn't drive the far right crazy. They have been that crazy for a while and Obama just walked into it.

A couple of weeks ago during the usual All Things Considered Friday tete-a-tete between David Brooks and E.J. Dionne, Brooks implored Dionne to distinguish between "the responsible right and the Death Panel Right." Sadly, Dionne let him get away with it, failing point out that the Death Panel Right has all but entirely subsumed the right wing in American politics. Serial nut job Glennnn Beccckk hosts the highest-rated show on Fox. Conservative talk radio and conservative media are overrun with birthers, deathers and adherents to every other wack job paranoia. As far as I can tell, the Responsible Right currently consists of Brooks, Joe Scarborough and a nice kid in my Judicial Process class.

I can't claim to have predicted all of this, but none of it has surprised me. Recall that long before he was impeached, conservative mainstays were pushing the most outrageous fictions about Bill Clinton. In the age of Limbaugh, it's not enough to win and argument; a political foe must be destroyed utterly. The Limbaugh construct is that Liberals are not merely wrong, they are corrupt, disloyal, conniving, and evil. They want to take your guns, tax you into poverty, convert your son to Islam and send your daughter's rapist to midnight basketball.

That rising strain of right wing thought took over entirely during the Bush Administrations. Writers and talkers like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter trafficked in such bile with nary of rebuke from anyone on the increasingly marginalized Responsible Right. While many factors account for the re-emergence of a Democratic majority -- scandals, fatigue and the sheer incompetence of George W. Bush among them -- the fact that so many self-proclaimed standard bearers for the political right are patently wet-hen, March-hare, batshit crazy.

While the bulk of the electorate has turned away from it all, decades-long loyal consumers have been primed to lose their minds if ever a Democrat won the Presidency again. In a way it's a little silly to imagine racism as a dominant factor in all of this. The Limbaugh Nation has been eating double helpings of CrazyFlakes for breakfast every day for decades now, and we're brought up short that they seem a tad unbalanced? Really? And think it's because of race? Really?

Raising race as a prime motivator offers an implied false sense of hope; if only we can get past this race thing, we will smooth out some of these harsh divisions. In fact, what we are seeing is the inevitable result of a generation of conservatives brought up on the belief that politics is a death sport and political power is their divine right. It's bad for the country, and it's not going away any time soon.

¹I'm not including Fox here; an unnecessary clarification unless you are one of those misbegotten souls who mistakes things on Fox for "news." In which case you may have wandered into the wrong blog by mistake.

²I expect this view would be shared by all but the most rabid Palinistas. If this describes you, please see note 1 infra.

Now I'm a Believer

h, I've certainly believed in Obama's smarts, and eloquence and political acumen. And I've believed that some day he would be a great president. And I've believed that he could be a transformative political figure. And I've believed all along that nominating Hillary could be a disaster come November.

But until last night, I haven't really believed that Obama could actually get the nomination.

Partly I haven't believed because his inexperience genuinely is a negative, and early on in the race it showed. His Houston speech last night dramatized how much he's grown just in the short (by human standards, not by campaign standards) time he's been running.

Partly also, I haven't believed because my guy never wins. Literally, since I've been following politics, my choice even among the last two standing has not gotten to the November ballot. And my first pick over all? Forget about it. Starting with Mo Udall in 1976, I've had an unerring talent in rooting for the also-ran.¹ While I was late-ish coming around to Obama², I'm sufficiently excited about his campaign that it seemed likely the Pho Curse would victimize him as well.

And then there were the Texas and Ohio poll results. While Hillary's firewall strategy is now immolating around her, it was based on some sound ideas at the time. If she can sweep Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, she can pull something close to even with Obama in delegates. As the establishment favorite, Hillary is essentially the House. And if you've ever played blackjack you know ties go to the House.

So I haven't been optimistic.

Last night's 17-point drubbing was the low point in a Hillary Clinton campaign that has already seen deep lows and shows no sign of slowing its descent. She campaigned in Wisconsin, getting poll results showing that she was closing and prompted speculation that her latest charge -- Barack the plagiarizer -- might have traction.

All for naught. She got crushed by the Cheeseheads. The commentariat view last night was that Ohio is "just like Wisconsin" -- i.e. Midwestern and blue collar. That's not entirely true -- Northern Ohio is, but nothing in Wisconsin is like southern Ohio. Still, the exit polling showed Obama with some nice-looking demographics. The Wisconsin win came on the heels of a SUSA poll showing a decline in Hillary's support. That decline is within the MOE, but still, that's the sort of trend that Barack needs if he is to close Hillary's considerable lead here.

And if he does, it's over. If Hillary cannot close here, she's done. Plenty are saying she's done anyway, but she can't lose here where she has the support of the popular Governor and much of the rest of the establishment, where she has been campaigning hard while Barack was keeping fires stoked in the Potomac states, then Wisconsin, and where the demographics are as favorable to her as they will ever be. Even if she lets Obama close the gap, she has a tough time maintaining the argument that she's the stronger candidate to take on McCain.

¹ In case you're interested, Gary Hart in '84 (yeah, I know), either Paul Tsongas or Paul Simon in '88, Bob Kerry in '92, Bill Bradley in '00.

²I really liked Bill "The Resume" Richardson before he started pandering on Iraq. If I could waive a magic wand, Joe Biden would be the nominee. Problem was, with three good guys (those two plus Dodd) in the second tier, none had a chance at the sort of close fourth that might have made for an interesting run.

Thoughts on the Kos/Ford Nondebate

Yesterday’s Meet the Press appearance by Democratic Leadership Council Chair and Fox News patsy Harold Ford, Jr. and DailyKos Ego-In-Chief Markos Moulitsos was billed as a throwdown between the moderate and liberal camps within the Democratic Party. As a Democrat with one foot in each camp, I was hoping for better than we got.

Ford ultimately won on the point he wanted to make which is that the liberal wing of the party can’t ignore the center. Kos won on the point he wanted to make which is that certain members of the DLC are not simply centrist but stooges for people on the right with bad intent. Neither did much to take on the other's point. If Ford had anything behind his Fox News statement about the Kos Nation that "I don't like their politics," he certainly didn't bring it Sunday.

I intended to liveblog the thing, but gave up. How do you write up a “debate” in which neither party will engage the other?

Part of the problem is the matchup between the two. The telling exchange occurred when substitute moderator David Gregory asks what three issues they would advise candidates to make central. Kos immediately bails:

MR. MOULITSAS: Well, you know, you’re starting talking about issues. What I want that candidate to do is to not be afraid to talk about who they are, to be authentic and to tell us who they are so that we can actually make a decision. And not me. I’m not going to make this decision. It’s not my job to decide who the nominee’s going to be. I want these candidates to speak to regular Americans. And for too long they’ve been speaking to the pundits, they’ve been speaking to shows like this one. They haven’t been really communicating to the base because they had to go through this media filter and this political filter, and now we’re destroying those filters. We’re saying go straight to the people, talk to them,

See, talking about issues is so . . . centrist. All you need is to be passionate. Be real. Tell America to wave their hands in the air and vote like they really care.

Ford, on the other hand, is all about talking the issues:

REP. FORD: I hope we can merge all the factions in our party to organize around a clean energy future, developing not only a plan to win and improve our chances of, of instilling stability in the Middle East, but to find ways to, to attract and—new energy, and for lack of a better word, and new investments to find new energy sources for the future. Two, to fight the growing inequality. I give, I give them credit also for highlighting and bringing attention to the fact that there’s a growing gap between people who have and people who don’t and, more importantly, people who want. And the Democratic Party’s longtime tradition has been to address those issues. And finally, we’ve got to find ways to address the health care and education challenge in this country. The next president of the United States, he or she will have the challenge of uniting the country around a common agenda and then working his or her heart out, not only to build support here, but to hap—to help re-establish a marker about this great country around the globe.

And this illustrates the fundamental differences between the institutions the two represent. The DLC, for all time it spends on the Kos pillory, is at its core a think tank. Its an organization of center-left policy wonks, especially those with some working knowledge of economics. I hardly ascribe to all of their beliefs, but have maintained my subscription to their email newsletters long since I stopped visiting Big Orange. DKos, on the other hand, is a big white wall on which the “regular Americans” of liberal bent can scribble what they want.

The DLC is about ideas, and whether you agree with those ideas or not, they are challenging. DailyKos is about passions. If you don't share the passions you don't hang around long.

So the debate went on from there, with Kos stammering and practically jumping out of his ill-fitting suit, while Ford sat there, a study in placid wonkiness. Kos blasting Ford for DLC treason and Ford bobbing and weaving, but for the most part, not throwing punches of his own. If you desire to experience it yourself, the video is up on Crooks and Liars and MTP has the transcript ready. Reaction on News Hounds and, of course, DailyKos.

Crazy Fringe or Rotten Core? You Make the Call

Earlier this week, Powerliner John Hineraker asked rhetorically "isn't it a bad thing for a political movement if its core members are, in large part, stark, raving mad?" Well, generally yes, but . . .

The occasion was his comment on a protest at a Hillary Clinton event in San Francisco by an anti-war group called Breasts not Bombs. As you might guess, this is a group of anti-war activists, mostly women, who protest with public displays of nudity. (If you are thinking of clicking through that link, NSFW. If you are thinking of clicking through for all the wrong reasons, don't. Just sayin'.) So he refers to the protest and drops these questions about the core members of the movement -- presumably the anti-war movement, not the clothing-optional movement -- being crazy.

This is so typical of how the right finds the most extreme instances of left-wing silliness and sprays that same gloss on everyone who disagrees with the administration about anything that I couldn't let this one pass. Hinderacker's post is too target-rich.

First off, I'm not sure I'd go with crazy here. These folks may be crazy, but the particular protest isn't. I'd give it an A for attention-getting -- which is the point -- though it would get a D-minus for actually persuading people. Still, flawed tactics don't equate to crazy.

Still, I'd concede, perhaps daffy. But the daffy Breasts not Bombs protesters hardly constitute the "core of the movement." The movement, last I checked, includes some 66% of Americans. BnB meanwhile is the very definition of a fringe group. San Francisco is the home of the group, yet they pulled together only three protesters (judging from the photos) for the protest at Clinton HQ. A high profile event like that and they manage a mere six breasts. More generally, this protest is the first I've heard of the group, and I read pretty widely about the anti-war movement.

While I concede our daffy fringe, I find it far more disturbing when a conservative mainstay flogs long-discredited Vince Foster conspiracy theories. Isn't it a bad thing for a movement if one of its most visible spokespeople is either persistently dishonest or pathologically paranoid?

Elizabeth Edwards on Why She Bothered with Coulter

Since I'm on the Edwards campaign mailing list, I got an email "from" Elizabeth Edwards. While all campaign emails should be taken with some dose of skepticism, I liked this one and choose to believe it reflects Ms. Edwards' thoughts:

Last night I had an important talk with Ann Coulter and I want to tell you what happened.

On Monday, Ann announced that instead of using more homophobic slurs to attack John, she will just wish that John had been "killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

Where I am from, when someone does something that displeases you, you politely ask them to stop. So when I heard Ann was going to be on "Hardball" last night, I decided to call in and ask her to engage on the issues and stop the personal attacks. I told her these kinds of personal attacks lower our political dialogue at precisely the time when we need to raise it, and set a bad example for our children.

How did she respond? Sadly, perhaps predictably, with more personal attacks.

John's campaign is about the issues—but pundits like Ann Coulter are trying to shout him down. If they will not stop, it is up to us cut through the noise. [Emphasis mine.]

I like it. I like the notion of Elizabeth Edwards as the genteel southern lady trying to talk reason to Coulter's gum-snapping floozy. Of course, Coulter isn't actually foul-mouthed down home trailer trash, she just plays one on TV. Still, as dramatis personae, I find it agreeable.

But since I'm not a genteel southern lady, I have to ask: Just how f*cking batsh*t crazy do you think our friends on the right would go if, say, Cindy Sheehan had publicly fantasized about George Bush meeting violent death? I think so too.

Joe Hallett and Connie Schultz Not Really in Lockstep About Blogs

In Sunday's Dispatch, columnist Joe Hallett wrote about Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz and her upcoming book. He had participated in an ethics workshop with Schultz and used that as a hook to discuss the book and Schultz's discusison of political journalism in it. In the course of talking about Schultz and Sherrod, Hallett took a couple grafs to talk junk about blogs:

On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.

Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics.

This sounded different than what Connie Schultz had said at the Akron Press Club. At the Press Club she reiterated her belief expressed in interviews that bloggers have a positive role to play in the process but that we need to aspire to a higher level of citizen journalism. Specifically she says we should call to confirm information before posting, that we should not traffic rumors and that we shouldn't post anonymously. More detail on all this in my reaction post.

Because of the divergence, I emailed her last night. She confirmed my suspicions that Hallett did not accurately convey her views about blogs. She understood the ethics seminar to be off-the-record, but did say that her views expressed at Kent were essentially the same as those expressed at the Press Club. She does not dismiss blogs out of hand, she reads blogs, but she has some misgivings about how people blog.

Sadly, the episode is another example of her criticism of blogs. Hallett's anti-blog mini-rant doesn't quote Schultz. What he does in voice his views and assert that she agrees with him. That should have thrown up a warning flag. Nonetheless, both RAB and DailyKos accepted Hallett's piece as an accurate summary Connie Schultz's views, without reservation. Each then moved on to criticize her, she being a higher-profile target.

(Bryan at BSB mentions her in passing, but correctly directs his criticism solely at Hallett.)

Sadly, Connie Schultz tells me that no other bloggers contacted her for confirmation or clarification of the information in the Hallett piece. So RAB rehashes the outdated "Sherrod vs. the Blogs" tiff, DKos rants at the wrong person and all for the want of sending an email. She deserves better than that from Joe Hallett and from us.

Newt Gingrich Cuts and Runs on Diane Rehm UPDATED

I was in the car today shuttling Kid T about and listening to the Diane Rehm show. Her second hour guest was former House Speaker and current politcal commentator Newt Gingrich promoting his what-if novel about Pearl Harbor. I caught about the first half-hour which prominently featured one of the multible personalities living under that white Beatles mop: Respectible Conservative Intellectual Newt.

T and I went shopping for a bit and when we came out at ten till, Ms. Rehm was barely containing her anger that Newt had bailed around twenty till, leaving her to vamp the rest of the hour. From what she and the callers were saying, it sounds like Mortal Partisan Kombat Newt took over once the calls started coming in and taking on his position on Iraq. Tonight I'll try to listen to the podcast and find out exactly what sent Newt scurring under a rock.

The last thing I heard him say before we got to the store was that the US needs to stay in Iraq, seemingly at all costs, because if we are perceived as losing, it will be devastating. But when faced with an insurgency of irate NPR listeners, Newt apparently decided that losing isn't so bad after all.

If Newt does decide on a Presidential run, let's try to remember that the guy who's supposed to face down Al Queda couldn't stay in the box against a bunch of tweedy NPR intellectuals on the phone.

UPDATE: Diane Rehm has spoken again about the incident. Details in a new post.

Just a Little More Coulter [UPDATED]

First off, it you clicked through comments on the last post, you saw a New Jersey editorial cartoonist posted a link to his Ann Coulter cartoon. When this happens, you bite your lip as you click through the link. If an East Coast editorial cartoonist finds my humble little state/local blog sufficiently compelling to invite to come look and comment, I'm gonna do it. But I'm gonna be honest.

So I'm happy to report that Rob Tornoe's work is . . . good. I thought his Coulter cartoon was just OK, but partly that's because I don't know I Love New York beyond the fact that the show exists and is on Vh1. His other cartoons are more clever and the art is great. He brinks a graphic novel sensibility to the work, with detailed backgrounds, carefully drawn figures and interesting, unique lettering. He has both a blog and a website. He's a young guy and definitely a hot prospect for leading the next generation of cartoonists. In fact I wonder if he could come to Ohio in a trade for Chip Bok and a reporter to be named later.

Some Coulter reaction from the big boys. The main story line is conservatives beating a pell-mell retreat as far from her as possible. Hotline's Blogometer has a sampling. I neglected in my first post to acknowledge that The Boring Made Dull stated this weekend that he's done with Ann. He may or may not be the first Ohio conservative blogger to have done so, but he's definitely the one who I personally like best so that's good enough for a shout-out.

JMZ reports that a conservative sponsor of CPAC tried unsuccessfully to keep Coulter off the bill. Also, her syndicate is at this point making noises like they will keep her on, at least until the client papers start complaining.

Which brings us round to the boundaries of taste when dealing with people like Coulter. Mark this. It's not OK to slam Ann Coulter with misogynistic insults. When Alan Keyes says something stupid you don't make n_____ jokes, slurs against Hispanics are not legitimate when directed against Alberto Gonzalez and you can't go after Coulter with lines of attack that objectify and denigrate women. So Jolly Roger? Not OK.

Generally I include in the Not OK category any jokes along the lines of "She's a man, baby!" But I found an exception while doing research for the first post. On a humor site called Hoolinet, I found a page purportedly from a group of Ann Coulter's "former friends and co-workers" called -- and don't read forward if you have delicate sensibilities -- Strap-on Veterans for Truth. The truth, as they tell it, is that:

Ann Coulter is actually a former drag queen from Key West named Pudenda Shenanigans. Ms. Shenanigans was famous for her renditions of “Dude Looks Like a Lady” “I will Survive” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” as well as an extensive Barbra Streisand repertoire.

The name "Pudenda Shenanigans" by itself is worth the price of admission, but they keep the joke going from there. Maybe I'm drawing a distinction without a difference here, but I found Strap-on Veterans genuinely funny and only hated myself a little for laughing.

ADDITIONS/CORRECTIONS: In the original post I neglected to embed the links for Hollinet and Strap-On Veterans for Truth. If you didn't Google your way there before, go now. Trust me, it only gets better.

Jill is hot on the Coulter beat and provides a number of updates including the first known paper to dump her. As for Jill's wish/hope for a Judith Regan-style meltdown, I'm not feeling it. Regan pissed off everyone but OJ's agent with "If I Did It." Coulter still has plenty of fans as the hooting and cheering on the tape shows.

Of all the MSM reaction, this Jack Shafer piece is my favorite so far. He explains the basis of the faggot/rehab juxtaposition which I had missed (comes from some Grey's Anatomy flap.) At the end he invites people to nominate their favorite examples of Coulter's not-at-all-calculated outlandishness.

Ann Coulter's Real Sin

I’m going to disregard Jill’s suggestion and write about Ann Coulter. If you haven’t heard, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conferece Friday, she said toward the end of her bit that she had some things to say about John Edwards but couldn’t because she would have to go to rehab after using the word “faggot.”

I have to wonder how many liberal bloggers used some variant of “I’d like to talk about Coulter, but I’d be in big trouble with my female readers for using the word [fill in blank].” Anyway, when Michelle Malkin says you’ve stepped over the line, maybe it is time to check into rehab.

The "faggot" line was offensive and cheap and made me, well, cringe. But it didn’t get me as swearing-at-the-monitor enraged as this bit I learned from Media Matters. This is while she is endorsing Mitt Romney as “the best” Presidential candidate:

By the way, before I let that slide, I do want to point out one thing that has been driving me crazy with the media, how they keep describing Mitt Romney's position as being "pro-gays, and that's going to upset right-wingers." Well, you know, screw you, I'm not anti-gay. We're against gay marriage. I don't want gays to be discriminated against. I mean, I think we have, in addition to blacks, I don't know why all gays aren't Republicans. I think we have the pro-gay position, which is anti-crime and for tax cuts. Gays make a lot of money, and they're victims of crime. I mean, the way -- no, they are. They should be with us. But the media portrays us. If they could get away with it, they would start saying, you know, "Mitt Romney, he's pro-civil rights, and that's going to upset conservatives."

The “faggot” remark is offensive in the standard way but this schpiel is offensive in so many ways I don’t know where to start. First off, the idea that the only objection conservatives have to gays is just laughable. I’m not going to find links to the following because it’s all well known. Conservatives have:

• Blocked gays from serving in the military.

• Blocked laws that would make it illegal to discriminate against gays in the workplace.


• Criticized a Supreme Court decision that decriminalized gay couples having consensual, private sex.


• Criticized gay couples for having children.


• Provided safe harbor for people who express virulent and unequivocal hatred.

And let’s not forget that her Edwards slam, together with those against Clinton and Gore, reminds us that she will be on the lookout for any man who is a fraction less than full-chested, gravelly-voiced, square-jawed, hairy-backed macho. And will denigrate that person with a slur that celebrates the history of burning gays at the stake. (But only if that person is liberal, no matter how pretty Tucker Carlson is.)

Aside from all that, Coulter insists that she is down with the gays. As long as they don't get married, raise children, serve their country, work for a living, have sex or mind being called names that carry an implicit threat of violence, gays are OK with Ann.

Reading Coulter’s words brings on images of old-time Southern segregationists insisting that they love Black people, then waxing about their nannies and housekeepers. I half-expected Coulter’s next words to be “Why, my decorator . . .”

But more than anything, Coulter’s sudden pro-gay stance illustrates her fundamental intellectual, as well as moral, bankruptcy. She cares little about actual debate. She is all about schtick. What she does is call attention to herself. At the same time, her politics is entirely of expediency. If her friends can win elections by bashing gays, gays are evil. If her guy has a soft-on-gays history, gays are actually OK. Both conservatism and liberalism are mutable depending on circumstances, so long as one stands poised to gain power and the other serves as a convenient boogey-man.

Somehow I hate hypocrisy more than I hate hate.

Ohio Roundup

A necessarily incomplete survey of reaction on other Ohio blogs. As expected, Jill is all over it with two posts prior to the just-ignore-her-she'll-go-away take. Anthony at Blue Ohioan had a reaction to the Edwards fundraising appeal hooked on the incident similar to mine. The breathless tone of the email made Team Edwards sound all verklempt about the slur. Rule of thumb: If someone calls your candidate a fag, make sure the response doesn't make him sound like a sissy.

Joseph Hughes finds a pro-Romney site that defends the remark and draws a bizarre false equivalency with remarks by Howard Dean. You can find that cross-posted at AOG and ProgOH. BSB has the video up. Also reaction from Stubborn Lib, Bill Sloat, Blue Bexley and OhioDave. Sorry if I missed anyone.

Developments in the Julio Pino Saga and Questions for the Other Guys

Earlier today I opined about the story of Julio Pino, a professor of Latin American History at Kent State University and convert to Islam. At the time, I had some rhetorical questions about the story. Some odd things have happened that have me asking a new set of questions.

First, a little more background. Bill Sloat linked to KSU's press statement about the matter. It includes the following:

When the issue came to our attention, we investigated the issue and found the following:


n We have no evidence that this Web site is authored by Pino – that is not his picture on the site, and it contains no reference to him or to Kent State. In any case, there is no connection between this site and the university.

Which is what I noticed surfing through the site today. As it happens, I had lunch today with a fellow blogger and we got to speculating about how Pino got linked to the site in the first place. Red speculated that someone must have found a Pino-penned story or op-ed through a Google search and jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a Pino operation.

So I searched for Pino to try and figure it out. And at the same time I went back to the website itself. (The FireFox tabs are both a blessing and a curse to someone with ADD.) That's when the weirdness hit. When you plug in or click-through the link to the site -- globalwar.bloghi.com -- you get about a second of this:


Then this:

That's DefendAmerica.mil, the Department of Defence's news website for the Global War on Terror. No matter how I try to get to GlobalWar, it shifts over to DefendAmerica.

I did some more searching. Google is now lousy with right-wing blogs denouncing Pino, calling for his head, exhorting the villagers to take up pitchforks and torches and march up to the castle. About what you'd expect. I also noticed a bunch of blogs denouncing Pino on BlogHi.

As it turns out, blogHi is a free bloghosting service that appears to be based in Germany, though all the pages I found were written in English. Incidently, check out what's number one in their Most Popular Blogs tonight:

Not surprising, given the publicity. What's a little more surprising is that the next five blogHi blogs in the list have anti-Pino postings from last year. Apparently Lover of Angels, the screen name of Global War's proprietor was making quite a name for himself in the blogHi community. You can check out posts from Soccer Mom, MovingOut, and SmallDoseofReality. The last one is especially revelatory as it includes an extensive comments war between Lover of Angels and everyone else in which Lover is acting, well, quite unprofessorial. And frankly doesn't sound very authentically jihadi, either. All this leads up to a petition for Pino to be removed based on his work on Global war. Again, this was all happening in 2006

And I would also point out that someone took the trouble to reserve the domain juliopino at blogHi to construct a one-post satire site.

But in all that, I can't find an original piece of evidence saying that the real life Professor Julio Pino is the man behind the online entity Lover of Angels. All I find is a bunch of people on an obscure bloghost saying that it's so. And they might have been prompted to by whoever was running Lover of Angels. In his spit-flying comments to the Small Dose post, he refers to himself as a college professer and makes it clear he has done so in the past.

Even the page about Pino on David Horowitz's Discover the Networks -- a website that can make the mooniest bat look sane by comparison -- mentions nothing about the GlobalWar site. So did Pino get linked by anything other than the postings on blogHi?

Did anyone ask any questions about that? Like did they ask Prof. Pino if he was in fact Lover of Angels? Did they attempt to compare the rantings on Global War with Pino's writings which apparently run to the intemperate?

And did anyone think it odd that this guy:












Used as an avatar, this guy:

(Incidently, Little Green Footballs reports that the photo on the site is of a 9/11 highjacker of Flight 93.)

People are saying, over and over and over, that Pino was the guy behind the site. Where does that come from? And by the way, who has hijacked the site now? This time, I'm not just asking rhetorically. I have emails out. Let you know if I find out anything.

Muslim KSU Prof Needs to Answer Some Questions

I would love to report that the right wing fulminating over Kent State prof. Julio Pino's work on a jihadist website is completely specious. I would love to post something like BREAKING: MATT DRUDGE IS FULL OF CRAP!

But I cannot. Prof. Pino has apparently done some work on behalf of the site and should be called on to account for his actions.

The controversy started when a TownHall columnist identified the blog as as belonging to Pino and broke down its contents. Drudge picked up the story and it was on. According to the Beacon Journal's report today, the blog is not Pino's, but he has done some work there:

Pino, 46, a Muslim convert and associate professor of history at KSU, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

His department head, John Jameson, defended him as a good teacher and said the allegations in the story appeared to have been blown out of proportion.

He said Pino told him he provided news stories to the Web site but didn't accept any ownership of it.

The Web site does not name the originator, but a photo of a bearded man there is not of Pino, the description of the originator does not fit Pino and none of the postings on it can be tied to Kent State, Jameson said.

So, Adam's story is overblown. Still, Pino has contributed in some way. Even a free speech and academic freedom zealot like me has a few problems with this. The blog in question carries no defensible content. It looks like this:


Less a blog than a jihadi headline writing service, it reproduces full-text news stories from all over, with original headlines spinning the story for the greater good of Allah. Every headline glorifies jihad as holy war and mass murder as a legitimat tactic. Every story is infused with that mindset. The blog is shot through and through with the most vile rhetoric justifying the murder of pretty much anyone who is not a particular stripe of Sunni Muslim.

In other words, this isn't like some liberal blogs where reasonable essays appeared side-by-side with 9/11 conspiracy nonsense or worse. One cannot aid the Global War website without at least implicitly endorsing its message.

So, I want to know, what did the professor contribute? How did he get linked to the blog, given that none of the stories are attributed? Does he endorse war against the West, against Isreal and against non-Sunni Muslims?

And what the hell is he thinking? I love this nugget from the ABJ story:

While Pino did operate a pro-Palestinian Web site in the past, he told Jameson he gave it up ``when the hate response got to be too much,'' Jameson said.

Will he call this a hate response as well? Because I try not to hate and all, but I don't love advocating the murder of civilians.

Whether a tenured professor should be dismissed for propagating these views, apalling as they are, is a close question for me. But at the very least, Citizens of the State of Ohio have a right to know.

UPDATED: The original version contained some editing errors and did not make clear my position that Adams overstated Pino's involvement with the blog. I've updated accordingly.

Hounding Fox

I've been waiting for this. Liberals have been complaining about Fox New (or Faux News or Fox Noise or Fox Spews or whatever) since it debuted. Aside from boutique outfits like MediaMatters or News Hounds documenting Fox's fluid understanding of the truth, the left has done little to counter the influence.

But now that's changing. Fox Attacks, a website erected by producers of the documentary OutFoxed, is sounding the clarion call. They have a new web video up. You may have seen it on AOG or this excellent article on Alternet. They are also partnering with MoveOn to petition the Nevada Democratic Party to cancel plans to let Fox air the first Dem primary debate.

Here's the video:



The website explains the need for the petition as follows:

The Democratic Party of Nevada just announced plans to team up with Fox News for a presidential primary debate. But Fox isn't a legitimate news channel. It's a right-wing mouthpiece like Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report—repeating false Republican talking points to smear Democrats.

Surf on over to MoveOn and sign. In addition, the FoxAttacks folks have suggestions for leading boycotts of local businesses that advertise on Fox. (I wonder how fair that is -- lots of cable companies seem to just sell time and your ad shows up wherever.)

Another potential action I'd like to see -- document businesses like hotels and restaurants that turn on Fox as a default and start a letter writing/boycott campaing against one or more of them. It drives me nuts to roll into a hotel on family vacation after a day of driving and have to tune out Billo and company as I'm checking in.

Flawed Iraq Poll Being Flogged by Noise Machine

Apparently the NY Post ran a front today that a new poll, conducted by a national Republican polling firm, shows much greater support for, well, hanging around Iraq and hoping for the best, when you really look at the results. Here's how the Post put the best gloss on it:

The poll found that 57 percent of Americans supported "finishing the job in Iraq" - keeping U.S. troops there until the Iraqis can provide security on their own. Forty-one percent disagreed.

By 53 percent to 43 percent they also believe victory in Iraq over the insurgents is still possible....

Only 25 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, "I don't really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home." Seventy-four percent disagreed.

Despite the breathless reporting of the poll results on various Noise Machine nodes, I find myself underwhelmed by that description. But wait, there's less.

Some liberal blogs launched some from-the-hip criticisms. Then TPM went over the questions with a Republican pollster of their own. His opinion: the poll is hopelessly biased. For you polling geeks (yes, Red, talking to you) the details are a must read, not only to debunk this particular poll, but as a window into the science of drafting good questions.

TNR Editor 's Odd Appraisal of Ohio '04

Lately I’ve been reading The Spine, a newish blog by New Republic co-owner Marty Peretz. TNR has drifted noticeably to the left in recent years, but Peretz has done his level best to rein it back. Peretz is the embodiment of the cold-war era, crabby liberal TNR I grew up with; as Mickey Kaus puts it, right on warfare, left on welfare. Also fiercely Zionist and allergic to the cultural left. This Peretz description of Joe Lieberman could as easily be about himself:

[M]uscular on defense, assertive in foreign policy, genuinely liberal on social and economic matters, but not doctrinaire on regulatory issues . . . He has qualms about affirmative action. But who, in his hearts of hearts, does not? He is appalled by the abysmal standards of our popular culture and our public discourse. Who really loves our popular culture--or, at least, which parent? He is thoroughly a Democrat.

Peretz through and through. While he has his opinions and enforces them with, at times, Stalinist efficiency, he’s a smart guy with mostly thought-provoking things to say.

Mostly.

Today he presumes to explain why Ohio voted for Bush in 2004. It was Michael Moore. And George Soros. Seriously, in a post about Democrats lining up Hollywood supporters he makes both claims.

The Michael Moore claim is the sort of simple-minded shibboleth we expect coasters to say about flyover country. Granted, since Kerry’s lost by a fine-edge margin any number of factors could have made the difference. But there were so many big ones, singling out the little ones just seems silly. Saying Kerry lost Ohio because of Michael Moore is like saying he lost because of his “Lambert Field” fumble.

The Soros claim, on the other hand, is just bizarre. All Soros did was poor millions into a canvass and GOTV effort that helped turn out record numbers of voters. He was vilified as a result, but it’s hard to imagine that people who watched the dire reports on Fox Noise were going to vote for Kerry in any event. He didn’t personally appear in Ohio, he didn’t make a documentary featuring debunked conspiracy theories, and he certainly didn’t waddle around after Wesley Clark like a homesick gosling.

What makes me sick about this is that the right loves to play the game called "You Are Who Supports You." This despite right wing candidates being supported by plenty of unsavory candidates themselves. It's enough of a challenge staying out of that game when baited by the right. We really don't need people on the left signing up to play.

Ironically, if there was one factor outside of John Kerry being a stiff that tipped the balance in Ohio, it was arrogant East Coasters presuming to know what does or doesn’t play here. Peretz’s post indicates we still have plenty of that.