1 Boring Old Man

There came a time back in the Civil Rights days when the right thing to do when the Klan had a rally was completely ignore it. This coming weekend, the Love Won Out ex-gay arm of Focus on the Family is having a do in a place called Woodstock, a small town currently being eaten by Atlanta Sprawl in a Baptist mega-church. My inclination is to ignore it. It’s an obvious attempt to arrouse the Religious Right. I hope it bombs like the Family Research Institute’s rallies are bombing. But I kind of think proests call attention. The ex-gay movement is gasping. I say, let it have the fate of the KKK, a closely allied but much more colorful group.

There are a couple of people out there who propose to be leaders, but I don’t think actually recruit anyone. I’m thinking here of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly. I would doubt they are much of a recruitment force, they are more "Maintenance" poison by the faithful. I can’t imagine any reasonable person flipping on the radio and hearing Rush Limbaugh’s contemptuous rhetoric and saying, "Now there’s an interesting fellow I’d like to hear more from." Or running across either Ann Coulter or Biull O’Reilly on television and thinking, "I’ve got to get those names in my Tivo so I can watch some more."

I think all three are only for the faithful who would be impervious to anything we said, no matter what. So, I’m thinking we’re getting close to the time when the best strategy would be to ignore them. So when Rush pulls a stunt like his current Michael J. Fox series, I’d love to see a day soon when people will be able to just say nothing, or say. "I don’t listen to him."

I’m beginning to feel that with Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. I started this blog at the same time a lot of others were started, and one of the reasons we all started raving a year ago is because the real news wasn’t on the front page. Downing Street Memos, Plame stories, the Bush Doctrine, N.S.A. spying, Signing Statements, the list goes on and on. Maybe the NYT’s editorial staff, sometimes the post, particularly Froomkin, but mostly not. It’s not true anymore. The "MSM" is now back in the reporting business. Not like we’d like. But they’re closer. But I think the message is out there.

So I think we’re moving towards a place when ranting about the Religious Right, Bush’s incompetence, the Congressional Corruption, is just keeping them in the news. "We’ll need a new strategy," I thought today. I think the blogs will continue to be important in terms of oversight of the right wing sheenanigans and the Religious Right. But I kind of think there’s a new task – something like changing the divisive climate that actually brought us into existence. In the last two times when we had a Democratic President, Carter and Clinton, the Right Wing Media and the Republicans have hammered and hammered with their contemptuous Liberal-Baiting and story-spinning, sort of like Rush is doing with the Fox story.

The blogs have done a good job of reacting to spin quickly and decisively in the last few months. In the coming days, if we have a Congressional presence, I think that’s our job – constant attention to the spin machine. If there’s a Democratic power base, they’re going to go wild. Our job is to make sure that the hate media spin doesn’t infect the "MSM" like it has for the last few years.

I’m just thinking out loud. I’m pretty sure that this will happen on its own. We have been burned twice now by these people. I expect most bloggers are ready and able to attack spin as it rolls off the line with a ferocity bespeaking a "free-form" media. What I want us to do is ignore everything "they" say except to point out the distortions [spin] and why the distortions are there. There’s no need to respond so defensively to the content as before. They’re "outed." I’m kind of looking forward to it as a matter of fact [though somebody else is going to have to listen to Rush because I just can’t stand more than a few minutes].

So what I want to say about Rush this time is: "Failing his attempt to smear Michael J. Fox as deliberately undermedicated, Rush Limbaugh is now trying to smear him as deliberately overmedicated. With his usual disdain, Limbaugh neither considered the fact that Fox’s disease is progressing nor did he address the question of stem cell research." and be done with it. And what I want to say about Bush is simply: "To the amazement of everyone, President Bush  today tried to undo his failed Talking Point on his strategy in Iraq, "stay the course," by lying, saying he never said it in the first place. In other news…"

And if the MSM fails to include any comments about the "spin" when reporting on Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld, I think it’s our job to raise unholy hell…