Monday, August 29, 2005

despicable bs from the conservatives

Jonah Goldberg: Sheehan’s Message “Resonates” With Nazis
Jonah Goldberg just posted this on the National Review’s blog, the Corner:

GOOD FOR CINDY! She’s rallied the Nazis to her cause (obviously unintentionally, but it’s interesting how her message resonates in such quarters nonetheless).

Sheehan is a mother who lost her son in Iraq who has a principled, anti-war message. It’s not “interesting” that this message is being manipulated by neo-Nazis to advance their cause of white supremacy. It’s despicable.

Goldberg’s use of the phrase “obviously unintentionally” doesn’t absolve him of anything. He asserts without qualification that “her message” — and not a perversion thereof – appeals to Nazis.

This is the guy NPR chose to fill in for Daniel Shorr.


---

Jonah Goldberg Is Bad At Apologizing
Jonah Goldberg has written an “apology” for being “too glib” earlier post about Cindy Sheehan and Nazis. Here’s an excerpt:

I don’t think agreeing with Sheehan on the need to pull out of Iraq makes you akin to Nazis or racists in any meaningful or significant way.

That’s reassuring. Goldberg goes on to make further comparisons between Sheehan and white supremacists:

But, I think Sheehan’s PR operation — including her water-carriers in the liberal press — should no [sic] be surprised that they’re attracting a broad Popular Front which includes a lot of disreputable and unpleasent elements. If you leave yourself no room, rhetorically speaking, between yourself and the crazies don’t be surprised if the crazies respond to your rhetoric.

So Goldberg’s argument is that Sheehan isn’t like the Nazis, she just uses the exact same rhetoric. Nice. In a subsequent post, Goldberg reprints a letter from a fan who says Goldberg is being too “defensive about your original reference to Cindy.” Goldberg includes a link to an article on David Horowitz’s website which notes “Cindy Sheehan’s newfound, seemingly mutual love for anti-Semitic, racist, and neo-Nazi
extremists.”

Goldberg’s strategy is to feign an apology to insulate himself from criticism. At the same time, he continues to advance his smear against Sheehan.


---

Goldberg’s Double Standard
Jonah Goldberg of the National Review’s the Corner went after Cindy Sheehan, stating that, “She’s rallied the Nazis to her cause (obviously unintentionally, but it’s interesting how her message resonates in such quarters nonetheless).” And his so-called apology for the statement still likened her rhetoric to that of white supremacists.

In the same post, Jonah brings up (and defends) the Minuteman Project, a group that even President Bush labeled as vigilantes. The efforts of the Minuteman Project drew “major interest on White supremacist Web sites and in their chat rooms. An Aryan Nation site [linked] directly to the Minuteman Project home page with the words: ‘A call for action on part of ALL ARYAN SOLDIERS.’” Jonah scolds Sheehan for using “rhetoric [that] is appealing to a wide range of groups who practice similar rhetoric…” and yet claims the Minutemen “have been working hard to weed out the nuts and goons rhetorically and practically.”

He’s talking about the same Minutemen Project that absolutely used rhetoric laced with venom — claiming the nation is being “devoured and plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens” and predicting “political, economic and social mayhem.”

Now that he’s received some critical email, Goldberg doesn’t want to talk about the issue anymore. This morning he announced that he’s “not going to spend the day discussing this whole thing any more.

Good call.


---
All from Think Progress.
If you ever want the answer to the question of how low a person can sink or how vile someone can be, just visit a conservative blog! Bile-inducing!