Athenae, So Called Liberal Media

Today in Total Asshole Digest: Mark Halperin

Mark Halperin, everybody:

What political good has come out of the tragic Arizona shooting so far?

Yes, by all means, let’s make sure we know the answer to THAT question.

Amoral jackass.

Who has failed to rise to the occasion?
Those liberals (particularly on the Internet) who instantly blamed the right for effectively instigating the assault and those conservatives (particularly on talk radio) who turned cherry-picked examples of liberal overreach into sweeping generalizations.
Liberals on the Internet, most of whom are just that guy who types stuff occasionally onto a message board, and talk radio conservatives who have billion-dollar businesses and books to their names and tables at wherever they want and invites onto talk shows and profiles in the New York Times about how they’re “controversial” and cover stories in Time about how maybe they’re just kidding with the genocidal rhetoric. Those are totally equivalent groups. Absolutely. Why, I deplore them completely equally.

What should an optimist hope for next?
That politicians will move from denouncing hostile rhetoric broadly to the steeper step of calling out members of their own clan. Bipartisan cooperation on real issues like jobs, taxes and trade. And a respite from tribal and unforgiving new-media politics.

Guys, if anybody needs me … I mean, a respite from tribal and unforgiving new-media politics? Yes, by all means, let’s return to the hallowed days of old-media politics, in which Richard Nixon was gleefully ratfucking his political opponents and most of official Washington couldn’t be bothered to give a damn.

Let’s go even farther back than that and yearn for the gloriously civil broadcasts ofRev. William Coughlin, who used that venerable instrument, the wireless, to downplay Kristallnacht and talk shit about FDR and his “Jewish conspirators.”

Let’s go even farther back than that, and model ourselves upon the supremely civil discussion of our founding fathers, who may have called one another crooks and whoremongers, but they did it on rag paper with those funny characters that made s look like f, so it was all fine.

Halperin gets invited to parties where they introduce him to impressionable youth as a political journalist, so I think it should be pointed out here that he has no idea what he’s talking about on either subject. I get everybody gets to be a little history-ignorant, I mean, I had to look some stuff up for this post after all, but COME ON.

Though he did phrase all of his misconceptions, false premises and dubious equivalencies in nice civil language without saying fuck once, so I’m pretty sure that means he wins the morning and the afternoon.

Schmuck.

A.

7 thoughts on “Today in Total Asshole Digest: Mark Halperin”

  2. Haven’t you figured out that you can pretty much get away with saying all sorts of stupid and fact-free shit if you just attempt to sound nuanced, and attach a bunch of $64 words to your useless drivel? Ever read George Will?
    Yeah — and I really like the “P” in “The Page” dressed up like the American Flag. It means his stuff must be wholesome, right? What a douche whistle…

  4. “Let’s go even farther back than that, and model ourselves upon the supremely civil discussion of our founding fathers, who may have called one another crooks and whoremongers, but they did it on rag paper with those funny characters that made s look like f, so it was all fine.”
    I LOLed.
    Tommy

  5. This on a day when Tina Brown called David Brooks “the consummate intellectual thinker”. Head. Hurts.

  7. Well, as they say, the best defense is a good offense, so when your side is obviously guilty of creating a toxic political climate,through fearmongering,invective and violence-laced speech, what you do is yell, “Hey! You liberals! You need to stop dong that(too)!”

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