The Wanktastics

Your liberal media strikes another blow for appeasement.

Our brand new "Political Correctness" has nothing to do race, gender or religion.

Our new PC is centrism, and if you want to get yourself shunned in the media and shut out of the discussion, all you need to do is express aloud the heretical idea that one side of the political spectrum is in any way more or less reasonable or more or less unhinged than the other side.

NPR's Neal Conan (pictured here) just spent 40 minutes conducting one of his master classes on the the subject, vigorously circle-jerking Kathleen Parker (syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group) and Jamie Kerchick, (assistant editor of New Republic and author of "The Religious Right Didn't Kill George Tiller" for the Wall Street Journal) on the subject of "Right-Wing Extremism".

The panel concluded that while the mouthbreathers on the Right firmly believe a great many stupid fantasies (Obama is coming for your guns. Obama is going to shut down the poisonous teat of Hate Radio with the Fairness Doctrine)...

...both sides are equally bad.

...both sides are equally wrong.

...out of the whole of the people on the Right, crazies represent just an eensy-weensy-tiny fraction of a rounding error.

...Keith Olbermann and "crazy Kos bloggers" are just as bad as Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.

...Teh Internets are just as bad as Hate Radio.

...(Parker) the "real" problem with Conservatives is that they don't have a leader. Democrats have Barack Obama, but Republicans got nuthin'.

And every single fucking time an inconvenient caller or topic threatened to drag those unwanted party crashers -- "facts" and "history" -- in with them and upset the happy horseshit "everyone is equally bad" folie à trois, Conan heroically steered his little raft of NPR opium eaters back into safe waters and away from the scary possibility that someday, somewhere the suggestion that the Right is actually, qualitatively, measurably, more vicious, stupid and wrong than the Left might go unrebutted.

If this all sounds drearily familiar, that is because this kind of pandering to that final Conservative firewall -- that however despicable they may be, they are no worse than those Evil Liberals -- is nothing new for Conan or "Lefty" NPR.

Two years ago when I wrote this, the show was the same, the host was the same, and the subject was "Why the hell has the Senate gotten so damned partisan?"

...

Caller Isabelle from New Jersey chimes in and gets the bullshit rolling.

Isabelle: I think the problem right now is not so much between the Republicans and the Democrats as it is between those with an ideological approach to politics and those with a pragmatic approach.

Isabelle: So when you have people like Alan Simpson or Christine Todd Whitman who have a more pragmatic approach to politics they can discuss [issues] with Democrats, whereas when you have a very ideological person like President Bush or Sam Brownback…it’s more difficult to come to a compromise because their ideology is based on ideology not on reality.

And then, completely unprompted, Conan helpfully leaps in with this:

“I would suspect to be fair that there are at least a few Democrats who have an ideology of their own too…”

driftglass translation: Whatever explicitly Republican high crimes, scandals, lie or treasons are under discussion, Something Very Bad will happen to me if I don’t automatically and doctrinally butt in with no evidence whatsoever and assert that, somehow, Democrats are equally bad.

Later, caller "Jim in Oklahoma City" brought up the effect of Religious Fundamentalism on politics.

Jim: “Reasonable people are willing to compromise their political stances, but it is probably extremely difficult for people to compromise what they believe are their religious principles.”

Got it? The question Jim asked is about the dangers that come when Religious Zealots get into politics.

And since political extremism jacketed in fundamentalist religious fanaticism is a particular disease of the Right, this is a clearly a shot right into Simpson’s Party’s political wheelhouse.

So how does Simpson answer?

First he rambles uncomfortably and incomprehensibly all over God’s Little Acre and back again (for Simpson-watchers, this is a sure sign that he is about to lay out a fat line of bullshit), and then fires back with this:

“I can tell ya, when you have zealots on both sides, and they’re getting’ pumped up on one side by Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken on the other, you got problems in River City.”

...

Progressive Radio arose because politicians like Alan Simpson were, for twenty years, perfectly content with looking the other way and harvesting the electoral fruits of the poison tree that their Conservative/Christopath/Racist Hate Radio, Hate TeeVee, Hate Satellite, Hate Cable and Hate Publishing so lavishly watered and fertilized.

Because the GOP was never concerned with the destruction of political comity…as long as it was working to their advantage.

As long as all of the screeching Orwellian hellfire was coming from the Right, they never said a fucking word.

But now, finally, after twenty years of unilateral disarmament, now that the Left has at last decided to fight back hard, suddenly old Republican loons like Simpson get all gooey for the glory days of cellulose collars, nickel candy bars, whale-bone corsets, heroic cavalry charges and a politics of gentle, ruffled fisticuffs followed by brandy, cigars and top-shelf hookers.

Suddenly it is “zealots on both sides” that have torn his beloved Temple down.

Well fuck you, Alan Simpson. Fuck you sideways for your bogus hand-wringing and crocodile tears.

And a big "fuck you" to Neal Conan and NPR for continuing to serve political expediency at the expense of the public interest.