For a very long time I received my news exclusively from CNN. I used to watch Aaron Brown every night. However, I lost interest in Anderson Cooper almost right away and Lou Dobbs sealed the deal; I was gone. As the campaigns for President geared up in the spring of 2007 [remember, Obama announced in February of that year] I began to listen to some talk radio with my initial fix being Alan Colmes. I was hooked.
Since then I’ gravitated to Fox News. Not so much because of how the reported the news but because of what news they reported. I’ve never felt that the actual content of the stories they cover was skewed, rather, the stories themselves trended right.
Then I started blogging and needed to rely on sources not just Fox. I now read Reuters, NPR, The NY Times, The Hill, The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC. As I continue this hobby, I wanna start reading more liberal main stream “media” types and so have found myself hitting Slate, TPM, The Nation, Salon and Mother Jones. Now I know what the left must feel like when they read what they consider conservative sites.
Just consider this article from The Nation:
The idea of Mitt Romney in the White House is a scary, scary thought after his bungling of the Libya crisis, and the Stormin’ Mormon just keeps making it scarier—including putting out Liz Cheney as spokeswoman for his anti-Muslim bigotry.
I get that this is a liberal outfit, but really? Stormin’ Mormon? But it continues:
So far, not a word from Romney about radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots, including: Florida’s Terry Jones, the nutball, Koran-burning preacher who promoted the film; various extremist, Egyptian Copts; Steve Klein of California; and the mystery man who supposedly made the film.
So, I think there should be a message from Romney about the film and the folks that created it. But I find it wonderfully ironic that Robert Dreyfuss is asking Romney to call out “radical right Christian anti-Muslim bigots” even going so far as to label them nutballs and extremists. I think that if we wanna ask people to stoop calling people names, we should start by not calling those people names. And not for nothing, but making a crummy YouTube movie is hardly considered “extremist” when compared to the extremists who protest and breach embassies, burn flags and kill people. In fact, some liberals might even find making movies wonderfully “artsy.”
Moving on, Dreyfuss critiques Romney by saying:
To recap: after the Libya attack, which killed four American diplomats, Romney found himself compelled to attack President Obama for supposedly expressing sympathy for the terrorists. His statement:
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
So, what Dreyfuss is saying is that Romney is wrong to criticize the response from the Cairo embassy. After all, that is the origination of the statement in question. And in retrospect, that statement is NOT sympathizing but rather acting as a calming note. But it’s important to remember two things:
- Obama criticized the EXACT SAME STATEMENT and he did it 30 minutes before Romney issued his release.
- Everyone, so it seems, was acting as if Cairo released that statement AFTER the attacks, not before.
Not a word from Dreyfuss.
Last I’ll leave you with a case study in tolerance from the gentle left when engaging in discussion with those in whom you may disagree:
Liz Cheney, satanic offspring of the ex-VP, was trotted out by the Romney campaign for her Wall Street Journal screed, which said in part:
Nothing like being lectured by the tolerant left.
