Atrios thinks that Margaret Carlson calling the Wellstone memorial/rally "outrage of the year" is in itself worthy of outrage.
Except if one were to take the partisan blinders off, it was the Outrage of the Year, even more so than the Lott debacle (which would be a close second). If you’re a Democrat, it tarnished Wellstone’s good image and lost Minnesota and Missouri for the DNC, and likely impacted other races as well. For the GOP, it was a shameless display of partisanship.
If Atrios, Neal Pollack, and the like honestly think that any criticism of that shameless "memorial" is "so beneath contempt that I can barely muster the energy to write 1,000 furious words about them" one has to wonder if their absolute sense of partisanship has overwhelmed all logic and common sense.
If the characterizations of the Wellstone Memorial were accurate, you might be right. But I sat through every minute of it on CSPAN and I found 99% of it to be touching, loving and utterly appropriate. I would think the greatest outrage here was how Republicans (and hacks like Jesse Ventura) managed to sell the idea that the 1% was what the event was all about.
<STRAW MAN>
If Atrios, Neal Pollack, and the like honestly think that any criticism …
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Jay,
If that’s the best you can do then your money for a weblog is wasted.
I find it interesting that you find more to be upset about at a liberal’s funeral than you do in segregation and lynching.
At least we know just how truly bigoted you are now…
Sorry, no.
Only when one’s “absolute sense of partisanship has overwhelmed all logic and common sense,” would you classify the Wellstone memorial as the “outrage of the year.”
There are far more deserving candidates.
For example, take the several thousand people massacred in the Congo.
Think that might be a tad more worthy of the title “outrage of the year?”
Or perhaps the scant to non-existent coverage of same in the U.S. media qualifies?
Please don’t waste electrons trying to convince anyone that you aren’t a partisan hack of the first order.
Have you no shame?
Jay’s standard means that when Michael Jordan dies, you can’t talk about basketball at his memorial service.
I’m soooo waiting for the hypocrisy meter to bend its needle when time comes for the Ronald Reagan memorial service.
It’s a good thing nobody would ever think to boo a liberal at a memorial/tribute to victims of a tragedy, not even Hillary Clinton!
Funny how the wingnuts can’t seem to get enough of pissing all over Wellstone’s grave… I’m sure they won’t mind when everyone else does the same to Drooling Uncle Ronnie…
(1) Outrage of the year? Your standards are kinda warped–you don’t think, for example, that the DC sniper’s behavior was more outrageous?
(2) And by the way–Pollack writes satire–you seem to be taking him literally!
The wingnuts can’t piss on Wellstone’s grave, the Democrats put a concession stand on it where they sell hot dogs and beach balls. Jay is right on this one and we have the senate to prove it.
It looks as if all the loons from the atrios shite have come to deposit a load of their usual bile and crap. The Wellstone “memorial” will clearly go down in American history as an event similar in nature to other disgraceful events, e.g. O.J.’s acquittal, Clinton’s presidency, etc.
If you want to talk outrages of previous presidents, how about the Christmas pardons to hide Bush pere and Ronnie’s manifold transgressions against the laws and the Constitution.
Actually, I think the hiding of the people’s business in the Cheney Energy Policy debacle is right up there…
Hey Jay, don’t sweat the lynch mob from Atrios’s site. Your post was right on target, and exciting the outrage of Eschaton’s zombies should actually serve as a feather in your cap.
Thank you Barney, for your prescience… for noting in advance the hypocrisy over turning celebrity political deaths into campaign rallies when Reagan passes on. It’s gonna be quite a spectacle for the Republcans and the various Republican-owned news networks.
Schools and businesses will close and life as we know it will stop. There will be wall to wall coverage of Reagan memorials for a month or two, and every one of them containing multiple stump speeches by Republicans. Every GOP’er in a local, state or federal race will be propelled to victory by the public grief and total absence of all other news. And in fact Reagan’s death will be such an opportunistic event for his party I wouldn’t be surprised if half the Democrats tried to change parties to soak up some of the vibe (those few who aren’t already Republicans in all but name).
Now before anyone flames me for wishing death on Ronald Reagan, let me say au contraire…. I wish for his good health every night in my prayers. May he live long and prosper, if possible long past the 2004 electi0ns.
The point of the outrage over the Wellstone outrage is that the outrage wasn’t outrage until someone up top of the Mimickry Party deemed it so. I watched most of the Wellstone event on television, and as one poster said it was mostly positive and constructive.
But more to the point here today all of the television commentators (Juan Williams, et al) were well into it and had no criticism at the time. Not a word about the inapproproateness of the rally, and in fact they were excited that “this is what politics used to be like”… “that this sounded almost like an old time populist rally”… and in fact generally seemed thrilled that a routine news night had uncovered a major moment of national enthusiasm for a politician who struck everyone as truer than most. Even Republicans were loving it and feeling the spirit…. that is until it occurred to them how the polls were shifting because of those couple of hours the Democracts finally wrestled away from the media.
Those same commentators who thought it was just swell the night of the memorial wrote op-eds blasting it a day or two later once the Republican talking points came down.
That lack of spine, that duplicity, is why Carlson’s outrage rings untrue.
The rally was shameful in the way it did exactly what Wellstone would not have wanted: it put politics front and center. The tone was simply wrong and extremely disrespectful to Wellstone’s memory. It was supposed to be a celebration of a good man’s life, but it turned into a giant campaign commercial. When even Jesse Ventura leaves in disgust, you know something has gone very, very wrong.
That being said, as some have said, I believe Carlson was talking of the political outrage of the year. As far as real outrages go, there were plenty to go around.
How bout outrage of the week!
Altho the war is obviously not about oil (wink wink) the US very quietly signed a pipeline agreement this week in Afghanistan.
Let’s take a quick look in broad strokes even the readers of this site can understand…
1. US and Unocal negotiate for Pipeline with Taliban for years despite fact they are not recognized gove2rnment and guilty of hideous human rights abuses.
2. Then US ousts Taliban in war that accomplishes none of its objectives and installs former Unocal official as Afghan president (well, it did accomplish one objective apparently).
3. Then US and Afghanistan sign an agreement for the pipeline (while Afghanistan still lies in ruins), and allows as cosignatory the president of a third country, Turkmenistan, who’s leader is an authoritarian, killer dictator who makes Saddam Hussein look like a liberal democrat.
And how many hours of coverage did this get on the Axis Of Conservative Owned News Networks? None. Too busy talking about the alleged clone baby.
Outrage.
Shall I go back to the week before last for another one, or do you want to continue bitching about Paul Wellstone?
Once again, what makes more sense: we go to war against Afghanistan to remove al-Qaeda who had just committed the worst terrorist attack on US soil or that we go to war for some piddly oil pipeline?
Just because oil is involved does not correlate that oil is the raison d’etre for action. (More on that in a post coming shortly.)
You know something, if at the funeral of Ronald Reagan, Republicans take the opportunity to call upon Democratic politicians to honor Reagan’s legacy by abandoning their principles and working for the election of Republican candidates, and if some vapid moron gets up on the stage and repeatedly screams “WE WILL WIN! WE WILL WIN!” I can assure you that Democrats will not be the only ones outraged at the macabre spectacle. This Republican certainly will be as well.
Until that happens, however, it is best for all of Atrios’s shock troops not to speculate too much. After all, we Republicans handled Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell’s death without lapsing into paroxysms of self-mockery and partisanship. If Democrats had followed that example in Minnesota, perhaps we would be talking about “Senator Mondale” in a few days. Instead, we will be preparing for “Senator Coleman.” And if that isn’t enough to prove that the Wellstone memorial was a disaster, nothing will be.
You gotta love Pejman’s insults – they come straight from an Encyclopedia Brown book. Well, a really mature Encyclopedia Brown book.
Besides that silliness, the Wellstone memorial was simply symbolic of the conservative attack mentality. Conservatism is not so much an ideology as it is a rhetorical fighting style, a way to demonize those who disagree with your nebulous ideas without ever confronting them honestly. Pejman does it, Jay does it, the Republican Party does it, talk radio hosts do it…great for them, but after the spittle’s stopped flying, it’s left to liberals to clean up their sorry little messes.
Oh, well.
Let me get this straight: At a memorial for a beloved politician who considered politics so important that he left his career to fight for the things he believed in, those who come to remember him urge others to carry on his fight – and you think that’s a betrayal of what he stood for?
Paul Wellstone stood for something, and that something was precisely the opposite of letting the Republican Party do what it’s doing. I don’t believe for a minute he would have felt in the least bit offended by the tribute his admirers and friends gave him. He had put politics front and center in his life, and to do so at his memorial was indeed to honor that man’s life and work.
“Conservatism is not so much an ideology as it is a rhetorical fighting style, a way to demonize those who disagree with your nebulous ideas without ever confronting them honestly.”
Okay Jesse….now you get a no prize.
The ‘nitpick’ crowd is always poised and ready to pounce:
LBJ picks his beagle up by the ears. Looks cruel. The nitpick crowd pounces.
Ford gets handed a tamale served in a corn husk, accidentaly takes a bite of both tamale and husk. Looks clueless. The nitpick crowd pounces.
A rabbit swims by Jimmy Carter’s boat. Looks like a wimp. The nitpick crowd pounces.
Dukakis puts on a helmet without a helmet liner. Looks like a dufus. The nitpick crowd pounces.
Bush Sr. (at a trade show, not a supermarket) makes meaningless nice comments about a supermarket scanner. Looks clueless. The nitpick crowd pounces.
Dole denounces violent movies, citing a violent movie then in wide release. Turns out he never saw the movie. Looks clueless. The nitpick crowd pounces.
20,000 Wellstone fans gather in a stadium. VIP’s entering are put up on the Jumbotron. Trent Lotts face appears…
"Conservatism is not so much an ideology as it is a rhetorical fighting style, a way to demonize those who disagree with your nebulous ideas without ever confronting them honestly."
For someone who’s done nothing to disprove my argument, that’s one hell of an accusation. In order to say that Carlson was completely out of line in her comment, you have to say that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the Wellstone memorial. That it had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the Minnesota election or the Missouri election. That it didn’t help fuel the Republican victories in those states. Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to see how you can brush that evidence aside, I’m starting to wonder if that takes a level of intellectual honesty that isn’t present on one side of this debate. If you’re so right and I’m so wrong, show me some solid evidence that disproves that contention.
Joe B.: I didn’t catch Mr. Williams or much of the rally until after the fact. But the coverage I did saw was shortly afterwards, and it was exceptionally negative. It was clear that a lot of people were turned off by the rally, and it showed in the ballot booth. Remember, this is the same rally where Gov. Ventura walked out in disgust, and the look on Rep. Ramstad’s face as he was asked to campaign for the Democrats was one of shock and horror.
Again, the proof is in the Senate, where the Democrats were punished for the hubris of the Wellstone rally.
Conservatism is not so much an ideology as it is a rhetorical fighting style, a way to demonize those who disagree with your nebulous ideas without ever confronting them honestly.
Actually, Jesse, pace Tacitus, I will be more than glad to give you a prize for this comment–Most Outlandish Display of Projection.
And the funny thing, of course, is that the hypocrisy inherent in your comments doesn’t even register with you. How pathetic. I don’t think you are in any position to clean up any “sorry little messes” considering that you made a mess of your entire argument.
Then again, to call your comments an “argument” would have to imply that you actually argued something, instead of engaging in fifth-rate juvenile invective.
jesse said”..but after the spittle’s stopped flying, it’s left to liberals to clean up their sorry little messes.”
This is a little off topic, but what has been happening in American politics this last 24 months in large part is cleaning up after a great many liberal messes. Mistaken directions and directionless mistakes that have done great harm. This is a resiliant nation and system, and the cleanup of the liberal detritus is well under way, but jesse and the other usual suspects from Atrios’ site are conceptually unable to see this.
As an example, Atrios just put up a post concerning the Wellstone memorial and concludes:
“I say, as I have always said, anyone who pissed on a man’s grave and trashed his family and closest friends in the middle of their grieving is beneath contempt. Disgusting, hideous, insults to human decency. ”
I don’t believe that Atrios, jesse, nor any other usual commenter on that site sees the moral dissonnance or cognitive disconnect in that statement.
Before anyone jumps on it, I will give my opinion of what would likely be the basis of an argument against my contention that they are liberal messes being cleaned up right now. The Lott affair was no more than another legislator hoist by his own petard as happens continually in any political climate and to members of both parties. The sort of thing that is cured by an incision, not the long term theraphy that curing 30 years of liberal tinkering with the country requires.
Just my two cents.