’)Incidents like this continue to fuel my belief that liberal bloggers need to really think of their role as journalists/commentators and get over the activist thing. Yes, the GOP infrastructure is clearly more advanced than the DNC’s, but at some point you have to just let the party be the party and do your work from the outside. Republicans benefit from having conservative voices in the media that they can rely on, but ones who are not just adjuncts of the party. This also helps in the offseason because you’d think liberal bloggers are dead in the mid-election years.
Jane Hamsher has plenty of fighting spirit, but, as she’s demonstrated dozens and dozens of times, really poor judgement. As a blogger — well, she’s just not very good. Throw in a lack of maturity and minimal political savvy, and she probably hurts liberals more than she helps. It’s too bad. Perhaps she could be persuaded to just organize phone banks, or something.
Did Ms. Hamsher miss the whole uproar about Mr. Gilliard’s exercise in the same sort of “satire”? Did she forget?
Rationalize (like Arianna does) all you will. There may be no racist intent, but there’s just nothing good that can come from running that kind of cheap shot.
Sorry, friends. That’s me posting above as qiab.
I wonder Oliver do you feel the same way about Rush Limbaugh that you do about Jane Hamsher. Do you feel the same way about Hugh Hewitt that you do about Jane Hamsher. Do you feel the same way about Bill O’Rielly, Michelle Malkin, The Powerline cretins, and Roger Ailes (the real Roger Ailes), Hell do evan feel the same way about Paul Begala & James Carville that you do about Jane Hamsher. You see because I’am curious, does this apply equally across all media and ideologies or does this apply to just the liberal bloggers. If it’s the former then at least I can respect your point even if it is wrong (which it is). But if it’s the ladder ,which by the looks of it seems to be, then honestly there really isn’t even the fig leaf of respectablity to this post. All of those people I just named are just as much activists as they are “journalist/commentators”. Rush says things a thousand times worse everyday and somehow still remains an active participant in conservo/repub activist goings on including taking an active role campaigning with the Bush/Cheney’04 “reelection” while still saying outreagously hateful shit on his radio show and no one ever called Bush or Cheney on it. So why all the fainting and crocodile tears over a blogger who is not even officially linked up with the lamont campaign.
To be perfectly blunt, I believe this post illustrates precisly what’s wrong with self styled “centrists”. It’s all vapid preening towards some mythical center that doesen’t exist and superficial outrage that anybody with a functionning brain can see through, just so you can appear more reasonable. It’s exactly that behavior that has landed lieberman in the prediciment he finds himself in today. You Sista soulja your own supporters/base for selfish personal gain one to many times and you won’t have anybody but nitwits and enemies by your side which is why getting the rightwing to admit wrongdoing is like pulling teeth. It’s sad to see that behavior here although I really shouldn’t be surprised after all you are a self styled “centrist” it’s par for the course for someone like you.
The irony is that while you “centrists” are fretting over a campaign you never really had an affinity for (Lamonts), your boy Holy Joe has basically dispatched the goon squad to yell and start physical confrontations in order to disrupt Lamonts campaign, Go figure.
Oh and by the way using racist imagery in an ironic fashion to expose, highlight, and ridicule bigots/bigotry is not the same as bigotry. Alot of people (especially the rightwing)love to conflate the two in order to feign outrage just like lieberman and the rightwing (same difference) are doing.
I’am gonna let you “centrists”, conservatives and anyone else who doesn’t know in on a not so hidden secret. We Black people call other black people (and panderers) Uncle Tom, Step’n Fetch’it, house niggers and an assortment of other racist names to denigrate self-hating black people who would rather jump through hoops and be white america’s subservient boy-servant than to be an advocate for the improvement of black people. Black conservatives like Michael Steele and racist condascending panderers like Joe Lieberman diserve the kind of ire they got. Even tho Jane is white She was still using the imagery to highlight Joe’s embarrassing, condescending, and ultimately racist pandering so that people might get shocked an think about what a racist tool lieberman really is. Of course the media being inept like always ended up treating the ironic imagery as sincere racist imagery thus making it seem that Jane is the real racist. It’s a conflation the rightwing knows the media loves to make thus you have feux outrage all acroos the wankosphere.
“It’s a conflation the rightwing knows the media loves to make…”
Exactly the point, TLLLLL. Everybody, Hamsher included, should have known how the media and the Lieberman crowd would react.
“…thus you have feux outrage all acroos the wankosphere.”
Not feux, not faux. Real outrage on the left side because Hamsher has served up a made-to-order diversion that allows Team Lieberman to evade the real debate. Yes, phony outrage on the right from racists hollering “racism!”
I thought it was pretty funny, myself. You know, in keeping with the whole satire thing…
I wondered how long it would take for someone to call me a centrist or some other such insufficiently pure thing. Look, the role I want liberal bloggers to play is the same that conservatives play on blogs, tv, and radio. Too many Dems are obsessed with being activists and raising money and signing petitions, etc. The way for progressive blogs to be effective is as a noise generating tool, amplifying the voices of our progressive pols in order to break through to the msm. You’ll get a lot farther doing that as your own pundit than as just another campaign volunteer.
Limbaugh & Co. are given a free hand to attack Dems and boost Repubs precisely because they are not just a bunch of election year supporters, but rather members of the conservative movement.