Tuesday, May 30, 2017

My Political Compression Algorithm-Fu Is Strongest




It took former Andrew Sullivan underblogger, part-time Libertarian and The Atlantic staff writer, Conor Friedersdorf, 2,000 words (fuck you, no, I didn't count them, I approximated) --
How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity 
The Fox News host is under attack as never before because many Americans are now forced to take what he says seriously for the first time.

As Sean Hannity hyped a conspiracy theory about the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer last week, touting it with the zeal of a true believer without citing evidence that justified that belief, the combative Fox News host declared himself under fire and in need of backup. Lashing out at what he called “Twitter snowflakes” and “the liberal effort to silence me,” he took particular umbrage at a campaign by the progressive group Media Matters for America to pressure his advertisers, an effort he called liberal fascism. “They hope to get me fired,” he wrote. “Rush, O'Reilly, Beck, Imus, & now me.”

He may succeed in rallying his fans. But Hannity’s angry claims elide the fact that the progressives at Media Matters have sought the scalps of conservatives like him for more than a decade. The Media Matters website has 3,488 items tagged “Hannity” dating back to 2006. Its latest push isn’t the reason his position is as precarious as it has ever been (nor did Media Matters stop Bill O’Reilly, who was sunk by multiple “falafel talk” allegations, or Rush Limbaugh, who is still on the air).

What’s different today are the growing number of people on the right doing what they’ve seldom if ever done before: taking Hannity and his ilk seriously enough to criticize them...
-- to do what I can do in less than ten:
The Left was right about the Right all along.
Because the truth really is just exactly that simple.

 And I will give Mr. Friedersdorf credit for mentioning the existence of "the progressives at Media Matters".  Because, for most of our Fourth Estate, acknowledging the simple, observable reality that the Left was right about the Right all along remains such a terrifying, career-extinguishing heresy that wormholes have been opened into the 12th dimension to help the American punditocracy avoid mentioning it.

2 comments:

Robt said...

When it comes to Sean hannity,
I have always took him seriously that he is misleading, not factual,a media personality who survives on spreading hate. A hate that constantly hungers and never satisfied.
A Typhoid Mary of the conservative media.


Weslthy tax cuts gives more funding to conservative think tanks. Conservative think tanks are Labs to test brain washing methods the the wealthy can rule.

Note" ever once see a conservative think tank put forth anything that uplifts those below the elite wealthy line?
Controlling the masses with propaganda. And hate is and will be the prime component as it always has been.

Neo Tuxedo said...

Andrew Sullivan underblogger, part-time Libertarian and The Atlantic staff writer

Two big reasons why I'm glad there's somebody willing to read these twips, followed by an ever bigger reason why I only read The Atlantic when, say, someone specifically tells me that Ta-Nehisi Coates is on his usual amount of fire.