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May 2, 2005 Conservatives are always very quick to offend, and even quicker to be offended. Liberals might be known for tolerance, but they should also be known for being non-passive fighters. Not only are liberals more passionate, they have the added benefit of being correct – more right than the Right on many many issues, with real world working experiments to back up their claims. Now we come to the recent Air America articles. The original author was in error over a basic fact – the gender of Randi Rhodes. In my piece, which wasn't quite a rebuttal, I corrected this fact. An editor saw fit to add that correction to the title of my piece – this was not my choice. I'm not complaining about the editors – hey, they let us speak more or less freely here, and 'Da Rules' do say that titles are their choice, not ours. Another example is my last article – it's about evolution – my title suggestion was, “The Myths of Evolution, Part 1”, instead, “Jehovah's Witnesses Came By” was picked. I honestly thought my title was a better fit, but, I'm not good at marketing, so perhaps their choice will get more reads; so be it – I'm just happy it was posted – I accept the trade-off. My recommended title for this article is, “Touchy Conservatives”, perhaps they will accept it... A read of my article about Air America would have quickly shown that I didn't mock the author for his mistake. However, now that it's been brought back into the fold of discussion, so to speak, is this a trend for conservatives? Perhaps if the author had taken the time to read into the Randi Rhodes pseudo-news story, he would have discovered her gender. I realize that the conservatives have been taking quite a few hits lately, but does this justify getting basic facts wrong? Rush does it all the time. Recently he said that Carter hasn't accomplished anything meaningful in the Third World. This isn't insulting to me – a proper insult requires some care and craft to really sting, no, this amounts to calling a skinny person fat. It's not insulting but rather, annoying. What will happen to political discourse in this country when Democrats figure out that coordinated misinformation tactics seem to work with many ordinary Americans? Finally, let me respond to this: They want a Rush Limbaugh or
a Sean Hannity and the best they can come up with is
Al Frankenstein?
No, we don't want a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity. We want someone that can be both entertaining and slam the Right on the basis of the facts. I realize this might be a shock to some. To whom? Well, let me use a Rush-ism and come up with, “conserva-nazis”. The irony is that Franken gets the facts across without using Rush-isms. It's far too easy to find a good example of Rush and his errors, but let me point out why Hannity is flaky. First, the show, Hannity and Colmes, is a sham. Even some conservatives realize that Colmes always loses, and always will. He was picked by Hannity, and, lets be honest, he was picked not only for his looks but because he rolls over like a good pooch should. It's a shame, really, I've read excerpts from his book, and he has some good ideas – he might be a force on his own. Second, Hannity was helpful in spreading mis-information about John Kerry, specifically about his record. Pre-election, he had John McCain on. McCain defended the allegations that Kerry cut $xxxx from the military and/or that he cut such spending x number of times. McCain defended him because he had also voted against some of the same bills. The bills were loaded down with pork, and/or included non-military spending. McCain then went into a personal story about an attack he endured during a race. His opponents cast him as “hating women” because he voted against a bill which funded breast-cancer research. Of course, the bill was also full of pork, which McCain opposed. Hannity nodded as if to understand. Once McCain left and the next segment started, Hannity repeated his nonsense, now shown to be nonsense by a fellow Republican. There are real philosophical differences between conservatives and liberals where pure opinion is required to make headway in either direction - why then must the “fair and balanced” channel resort to misinformation? I'm rather glad Franken isn't like these baboons, popular though they may be in some markets. I'm also glad that Randi Rhodes isn't like Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter thinks it's unfortunate that women vote, of all things... Both programs can be found on the successful (and highly rated) Air America Radio channel. Hypocrisy, blatant falsehoods (or, merely typos?) and touchy-feely reactions are what has happened to a once respectable party/movement. Maybe the 'touchy-feely' bit explains why so many Republicans are gay? To a tolerant Liberal, that last sentence should not be insulting – take it as you will. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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