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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
The right wing offers its charitable condolences to Kerry supporters.
Nov 9, 2004 | So much for the healing. After some brief post-election chatter about extending an olive branch across America's great partisan divide, numerous Bush supporters this past week reverted to a generous display of nasty rhetoric and full-throated gloating.
There is "so much to savor" about Bush's victory, wrote the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, who called it "a big win for America," while deeming the "biggest loser" of the election the mainstream media. For her, the demise of "the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle," didn't happen to include the Bush-boosting Fox News Channel and its 84 million weekly viewers. But her analysis did make room for a breathless tale of how right-wing bloggers single-handedly saved election '04 by rescuing the nation from the "liberal" big media's malfeasance.
"Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief -- CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's '60 Minutes' attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election -- the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country."
A few savvy denizens of the Web undoubtedly made an impact this year, but Noonan's version of the blogger revolution comes up a bit short itself in the research department -- she seems to have missed the lefty bloggers who busted Fox News for publishing a fake report ridiculing John Kerry, and others who exposed the Bush campaign for using phony images of U.S. troops to beef up a TV ad at the peak of the race.
And what did some of those invaluable pajama-clad pundits of the right have to add about the election outcome? Self-styled firebrand Adam Yoshida (a citizen of the freshly popular liberal refuge of Canada, no less) envisioned a special new role for Dems and liberals -- especially for the women:
"If anyone needs to work to 'bring the country together' it's those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we'll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life's goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like [Democratic Rep.] Stephanie Herseth [of South Dakota] who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.
"That's the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women.
"Let's face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There's no point in trying to reach out to them because they won't be reached out to. We've got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out [sic] boot above their head. Now's the time to curb-stomp the bastards."
The deep thinkers who blog pseudonymously over at Fraters Libertas thought Yoshida's take apt; they, too, dispensed with magnanimity in favor of a Bush-style one-fingered victory salute:
"To the sneering punks who called Bush a smirking chimp, the conspiracy nutjobs who couldn't say four words without Halliburton dribbling out of their mouth, the goons who tried to shut down GOP campaign offices, the morons who think Bush is an idiot, the defeatists who encourage our enemies while demanding that we don't dare question their patriotism, the thugs who painted swastikas on Bush campaign signs, the sophists spouting 'regime change begins at home', the historically challenged fools who compare Bush to Hitler, the 'It's all about oil' idiots, the 'Fahrenheit 911' watching simpletons, the delusional paranoids who claim that fascism is now upon us, the self-important nobodies who fancy that their dissent is even worth crushing, and the disaffected expatriates who trash our president and country overseas to curry favor with their Euro buddies, I have a simple message using the straightforward words of Dick Cheney:
"Go fuck yourselves."
Turns out there's an extra-exclusive A-list for some extra-deserving offenders:
"I also want to extend my one fingered victory salute to some specific individuals and groups. So here's a big Fuck You victory shout out to:
"Michael Moore, The City Pages, Al Franken, National Public Radio, Bruce Springsteen, MoveOn.org, Barbara Streisand, the a-holes at The New York Times (big-time!), Dan Rather, Rock The Vote, Garrison Keillor, CBS News, George Soros, The Guardian, Michael Stipe, The Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board, P Diddy , Minnesota Public Radio, Nick Coleman, CNN, Paul Krugman, Kim Ode, the eastern half of Canada, Molly Ivins, Whoopi Goldberg, and France.
"And I have a further message to all those (especially relevant for Michael Moore) who claim
Looks like Noonan may have had it right, after all: Who needs the New York Times or CBS to set the record straight when we've got these bright lights on the beat?
