RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Do liberals HATE the President?

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Originally posted by the G-man:
Sigh... did anyone here not notice that, immediately after my comment about Kris Kristofferson and his choice of film roles, I followed up with a paragraph that began "Seriously..."?

As in "Okay, I was kidding before, however..."

Do I have to surround every facetious comment with graemlins to get a point across here?

Oh, and not to put too fine a point on what was a joke to begin with, but if Kristofferson is so damn smart, then why did he need to make bad movies, including "Heaven's Gate," to make money? The guy wrote "Me and Bobby McGee," "Sunday Morning Coming Down," "Help Me Make it Through the Night," and "For the Good Times," for cryin' out loud. Shouldn't the royalties on those songs alone keep him living comfortably for life?

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Originally posted by the G-man:
You need to remember, Dave, that, to whomod, any deviation from his own extreme leftism seems conservative by comparison.

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Actually, the reason that republican presidents are perceived as stupid is because there is a tendency among liberals, including those in the media, to assume that people who don't share their beliefs are either evil, stupid or both.

As an Ithaca College Professor noted earlier this year about anti-war protesters:


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they most frequently rely on what I like to call the "Dupes or Dopes" theory - that is, the conviction that everyone who disagrees with them is either a dupe (brainwashed by the Corporate Media, an evil conspiracy that includes everyone in America who goes near a word processor, microphone or television camera, with the sole exception of Amy Goodman), or a dope, which is to say, too stupid to recognize the clear and obvious truth [and that] "Bush is an idiot/Bush is evil"
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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:

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Originally posted by the G-man:
You need to remember, Dave, that, to whomod, any deviation from his own extreme leftism seems conservative by comparison.

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That's actually what Bernard Goldberg's Bias book explains: that in New York city, where the major news networks are based, and the New York Times, the area is a Mecca of liberalism. They believe that anyone who supports pro-life, or opposes gun control, or any restraint to gay rights doesn't just have an opposing view, but is ignorant, deficient, neanderthal. And that they are the Great Enlighteners who force the "primatives" outside the East Coast to accept their self-proclaimed version of "modernity" and "enlightenment".

Goldberg explains that it's not even consciously that the news media elite do this. To them, their liberal/leftist views are "the mainstream", because everyone in their urban/metropolitan cultural bubble believes the same thing they believe. And anyone even slightly to the right of that self-proclaimed "center" is regarded as "right wing extremist". But despite the liberal media believing that their left-leaning views are "the mainstream", most of the vast region between New York City and L.A. is considerably to the right of that news media "center". THAT's the real "center of America".

There was a Republican map of the U.S. right after the 2000 election with the caption: "BUSH COUNTRY !", that showed voting results by county across the entire United States, the Bush areas in red and the Gore areas in blue, and the nation was overwhelmingly red (i.e., voted for Bush) Except for a few heavily populated urban centers that voted for Gore. And that's what the electoral college was set up for: to allow proportionate representation of all the states, instead of just a few key population centers across the country.

Much of what Goldberg says is what I half consciously already knew. Like the way Republican and conservative pundits are always labelled as such, to clearly mark their separation from the mainstream. While extreme liberals like Senator Ted Kennedy or Tom Daschle or Barbara Streisand are simply identified as Senators, law professors, university scholars and actors, as if their views are objective and credible, instead of the partisan opposite extreme of the political spectrum. The net effect is that liberals are insideously presented as representing the mainstream. Whereas portrayal of conservatives quietly projects their views as outside the mainstream, as opposed to the status quo that conservatives clearly are: the very definition of the mainstream, that conservatives are struggling to preserve.

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You need to remember, Dave, that, to whomod, any deviation from his own extreme leftism seems conservative by comparison.

In fact, I hear he next plans to picket Mother Jones and Utne Reader as pawns of the vast right wing media conspiracy.

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Originally posted by D. McDonagh:
Yes, but they won't actually provide any specific examples. They don't need to bother because all liberals are evil sorts who want to take conservatives' guns away and have their wives raped by niggers. Therefore, anything liberals say cannot be trusted and is probably a fib.

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• Deleting the race of a rape and sodomy suspect, who was still at large, from a news story so as not to encourage stereotyping in the minds of the readers
• Approving the continued use of inaccurate data regarding partial-birth abortions after it had been shown to be false
• Determining that photos of five black police officers arrested for narcotics trafficking should not be published because it would be devastating to the "commanding need" for black role models in the community
• Requiring that reporters meet specific numerical goals for the number of women and minorities quoted in stories and used as sources, and paying editors in part based on meeting these quotas
• He uncovers stories of newsroom petitions circulated by reporters trying to get colleagues fired for not towing this or that party line.
• reporting on issues like Washington's Initiative 200, a measure to ban race preferences, as being so ludicrously one-sided that it would be funny if it weren't so irresponsible.
• making politically incorrect stories vanish entirely, such as the black anti-Semitism in Brooklyn's Crown Heights riots of 1991

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An ideological press whose reporting and analysis is distorted by double standards, intellectual dishonesty and fashionable cant favoring certain groups over others only poisons the national well...the diversity ethos has dumbed it down, blunting the public's faculties for reasoned argument just when the edge has never had to be sharper.

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Originally posted by Darknight613:
Clearly, a lot of people on both sides of the "liberal vs. conservative" debate are unhappy with the way things are regarding how their side is portrayed, or how the other side is portrayed. Some of you have cited problems with the media that you feel need fixing. Do any of you have any plans to do something about it? Do any of you have a kind of job that would allow you spread public awareness about the issues, facts, and opinions you express here (like, do any of you work in media or marketing, or do any of you write letters or newspaper columns for your local papers?) Because considering the amount of effort some of you put into this debate, you obviously feel very strongly about it and would like to see something done.

I'm not being sarcastic, or taking shots at anyone's postion, or even the debate itself anymore. It's just that with all the energy and passion that goes into the "libs vs. cons" debate around here, I can't help wondering if any of you have any other outlets for these ideas, especially ones that might raise public awareness about facts you feel the public currently doesn't know. Surely these boards aren't the only place you guys discuss this sort of thing.

So do any of you guys try to get the ideas you express here out into the open, or do any of you plan to do so at some point?

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I Bitch-slap Bernie Goldberg

In January of 2003, I was asked to appear on the MSNBC show Donahue with Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS correspondent whose best seller, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How The Media Distorts the News, purports to take on the liberal media bias. Slander and Bias are the right's one-two punch against the effete lefty elite.

The Donahue Show was going to be taped live in front of a studio audience at Rockefeller Center in New York. I was in San Francisco making big money with one of my halarious and well received corporarte speeches, and I hate appearing on these shows via satellite. It puts you at a disadvantage. Still, I had read Bernie's book a few months earlier, and I had a few problems with it. So I said yes.

A couple of weeks after I did the show, i was stopped by a TV news producer (not from CBS) who said " Man, you really bitch-slapped Bernie Goldberg."
Yeah, I did. But I have to admit, I did it a little unfairly. I ambushed Bernie. With His own book.

I asked him about something from his chapter, "Liberal Hate Speech". (Coulteresque, huh?) In the chapter, he cites twelve examples of "liberal hate speech" from the past twelve years. Goldberg admits he got them from the Media Research Center, a right-wing media-watch group which sends out a newsletter chock-full of "outrageous" quotes from the liberal media. Now considering the hundreds of thousands of hours of mainstream media coverage over that period, you'd thik Goldberg would have some pretty choice examples to pick from, right?

One of the twelve examples was a quote from John Chancellor, the late, revered NBC anchor and commentator. Here's how it appeared in Bias

It's short of soap, so there are lice in the hospitals. It's short of pantyhose, so womens legs go bare. It's short of snowsuits so babies stay home in winter. Sometimes it's short of cigarettes, so millions of people stop smoking involuntarily. It drives everyone crazy. The problem isn't communism. No one even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages. - NBCNightly News commentator John Chancellor on the Soviet Union, August 21, 1991

After presenting the quote, Goldberg tears Chancellor a new one for " his absurd observation that the problems in the old Soviet Union wasn't communism but shortages".

Hmm. The quote was from August 1991. So on Donahue, i read the quote, then asked, " Do you know what happened that day in the Soviet Union, Bernie?"
He Froze. Then came back with a good one: "Why don't you tell me?"
I had learned how to handle that trick in the schoolyard back in Minnesota. "No, I said,"why don't you tell me?"
Clearly the man had no idea. I persisted, "What happened in the Soviet Union that day?"
Bernie went white. Finally, "Well, I don't know what happened that day."
So I told him. Let's go to the videotape:

Franken: That was the collapse of the coup, the hard-liner coup at the Parliment.
Goldberg: And?
Franken: And that was huge. Do you know that perestroika had been in effect for six years at that point? The point here is Bernie, you regurgitated a quote that you got from some right-wing media-watch group. And you did not care to look into the context of it. Listen to how Tom Brokaw opened that evenings news.

Good evening. Wednesday, August 21, 1991. This is a day for bold print in history to be remebered and savored as the day when the power of the people in the Soviet Union proved to be greater than the power of the gray and cold-blooded men who thought they could return that country to the darkness of state oppression."

Boy, it sounds like a real pro-communist bias on NBC, doesn't it? But you know what Bernie? You didn't even bother to find out what the context of John Chancellor--who, by the way, is dead, and couldn't defend himself. You had no interest in finding out the context of what he was saying.

I was talking into a camera in San Francisco, so I couldn't see Bernie. But when I watched the tape later, I have to admit I got a real kick out of watching Bernie sitting there silently stewing. He knew he looked like a fool, because I was right. He had thrown something in his book without checking it. Frankly, when I had first read the quote in Goldberg's book, I hadn't known the context either. I'm a comedian. But I had a sneaky suspicion that John Chancellor had never been a Stalinist.

So, I the comedian, bothered to look it up and get the transcript for the August 21,1991 NBC Nightly News broadcast. Brokaw had asked Chancellor about Gorbachev's next move. And what Chancellor was saying was that Gorbachev couldn't use communism as an excuse because, by that point, he had completely dismantled communism in the Soviet Union.

Alan Greenspan would have agreed with what Chancellor was saying. And yet Goldberg had accused John Chancellor of "liberal hate speech".
Now I'm on the satellite, asking Goldberg to respond. And he can't. So Phil turns to another guest, a right-wing radio talk show host named Jeff Whittaker, "Now Mr. Whittaker, you wanted to say briefly?"
As many examples as Al can pull out, I can pull out a lot of leads into the nightly news." (sounds like a familar retort to me- whomod ) What the hell does that mean? I was talking about Goldberg's book.
And that's when I started yelling from San Francisco, " I want to hear Bernie. This is about accountability."

But nothing from Bernie. And as Phil goes to commercial, I'm still shouting, Phil, why are you letting Bernie off?" When I watched the tape a few days later, I realized I may have appeared just a bit aggressive.
A little later in the show, Donahue took a caller.

Donahue: Billy from Tennesse. You waited. I thank you for your patience. What did you want to say?
caller: Phil, thank you. I think the main thing I wanted to say is I'm sad the conservatives you have on tonight have done a poor job of articulating our conservative argument, which I think is another bias of the press is that you always pick very smart, astute liberals, like Al Franken, who are very articulate, and then you have conservatives who scratch their heads and can't come back with something.
Donahue Oh, well...
(laughter)

Still later, Donahue turned to Bernie and said, "you know, i think you've been wounded tonight, kid."
He had been wounded. But unfortunately, because I was three thousand miles away, I wasn't able to shake hands with him after the show and take him out for a drink. If i'd been there, that's exactly what I would have done. And sipping my sake bomb, I would have explained to him what a travesty his book is.
It really should have been called Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How CBS didn't give him the Career He wanted. On 72 of the books 232 pages, Goldberg settles scores with is old boss Dan Rather. A representative sample: " If CBS News were a prison instead of a journalistic enterprise, three quarters of the producers and 100 percent of the vice presidents would be [Rather's] bitches."
Besides settling scores, Goldberg draws upon his twenty-eight years of broadcast journalism experience to relate a few telling anectdotes in which people in the newsroom said something liberal-sounding. Apparently at 12:36 P.M. on April 14, 1999 during a routine CBS Weekend News conference call, producer Roxanne Russell had the temerity to jokingly refer to Gary Bauer as a "little nut from the Christian group" (Full disclosure--Gary's a freind of mine, is small, a christian, and not a nut.) That was unfair. Thank God CBS didn't broadcast the conference call bacause that would have been very biased.
I'll admit that, from among the hundreds of thousands of hours of broadcast news over three decades, Bernie is able to cobble together a few instances of liberally slanted reporting. But even when Goldberg seems to have a point, it still feels just the teensiest bit selective. It's like accusing a library of having a murder mystery bias after only going to the murder mystery shelf. They're all murder mysteries!
Worse, most of his examples are as well researched as the John Chancellor quote.
Why Bernie asks, if CBS identifies the Heritage Foundation as a "conservative" think tank, does it not identify the Brookings institution as a "liberal" think tank?
I don't know. Bias? Or could it be because the Heritage Foundation's website says their mission is to "promote conservative public policies" while the Brookings website says it's committed to "independent, factual and nonpartisan research"?
Why, Bernie wants to know, is Phyllis Schafly always labeled as a "conservative"? Maybe because the official biography on her Eagle Forum website calls her a "national leader of the conservative movement."
Why Bernie asks on page 57, is Rush Limbaugh referred to as a "conserevative" talk show host, but Rosie O'Donell is not always labelled a "liberal" talk show host? At first, I thought that one was a misfire. Rush spends three hours a day delivering his patented brand of right-wing folderol. But when I remebered a Rosie show where she interviewed Haley Joel Osment. The kid was supposed to be promoting The Sixth Sense, but he just wouldn't shut up about the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Bernie has a chapter called "The Most Important Story you Never Saw on TV". It's about latchkey kids and working moms. And it is an important story. But if you haven't seen it on TV, it's because you haven't been watching CNN (11 stories), CBS (11),NBC (3), or ABC (10). When I see something only thirty-five times, i know the liberal media is trying to keep a lid on it.

You know, if there's one thing I associate with liberalism, it's anti-semitism. And what else could explain the shocking media cover-up of the fact that many Arabs dislike Isreal? Goldberg has the goods on this one. His smoking gun:" I learned much more about the atmosphere that breeds suicide bombers from one short article in Commentary Magazine than I have from watching twenty years of network television news." The Commentary article discusses a hit song in Cairo, Damascus, and the West Bank, entitled " I hate Isreal".
"Why didn't I know this?" Bernie writes indignantly. A computer check soon answered my question. On television only CNN reported the " I hate Isreal " story. On radio, NPR did a peice. So did The Christian Science Monitor and The Chicago Tribune. The Los Angeles Times ran a short news Wire service story.
So in other words, except for CNN, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the wire services, not one of the liberal media outlets let us know about this important story-not FOX, not the Wall Street Journal, not the Washington Times, not even the National Review? Where are you, William F. Buckley Jr., you liberal anti-semite? (Actually, a Nexis search reveals that the story was also mentioned in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun Times, Buffalo News, Miwaulkee Journal Sentinel, Pittsburg Post Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, etc. But still, William Buckley's silence on 'I hate Isreal' speaks volumes)

As I said, one of Bias's biggest problems is selectivity. The book came out in December 2001. Now maybe Bernie doesn't follow politics, but there was a big election the previous year. looking at the coverage of a presidential election might be a good way to test theories of media bias, don't you think? Say the media was liberal. Which canidate would it be nicer to? The Republican George W. Bush or the Democrat, Albert Gore?
There's not one word in Bias about the 2000 Presidential election, in my next chapter, I wil ltry to fill in this gaping hole with a scientific analysys of just how liberal--or, perhaps, how conservative--that coverage was.

You know, one of the joys of appearing on TV is going through the e-mail you get when you bitch-slap a Bernie Goldberg or a Bill O'Reily. And boy, I got a lot of great e-mail from that Donahue appearance. Most of the comments were of the "way to get him" or " i liked your tie" variety, but quite a few were, shall we say, slightly negative.
One of my favorites:

Saw you on Donahue with your liberal shit. Blow it out your ass dickhead

I've composed a standard response to e-mail like that:

Thank you for your kind e-mail regarding my appearance on Donahue. As you can imagine, I've received so many poisitive responses that I cannot possibly answer them all personally. But once again, thank you for your kind remarks.

The idea is to frustrate them. It's especially gratifying when they respond to my response. Like the "blow-it-out-your-ass" guy did:

Hey asshole. I know you read my e-mail because you mentioned Donahue. Blow me.

So I e-mailed him back again.

Thank you for your kind e-mail regarding my appearance on Donahue. As you can imagine, I've received so many poisitive responses that I cannot possibly answer them all personally. But once again, thank you for your kind remarks.

Sure enough, a few hours later, another e-mail from my new freind.

Franken, you're a joke

So I e-mailed him back:

Thank you for your kind e-mail regarding my appearance on Donahue. As you can imagine, I've received so many poisitive responses that I cannot possibly answer them all personally. But once again, thank you for your kind remarks.

Unfortunately, that was the last of our little correspondense.

From chapter 6 of Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them



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Hopefully, this book is next on your list after you're done gleaning insight from "Bias". After all, It would be the kind of balanced reading list I'd expect from someone who voted for the Green party. Sorry though, but that one is a bit hard to swallow considering the
Greens are slightly to the left of Timothy Leary. And not one post or opinion i've ever read would lead me to picture you voting Green.

By the by, I wouldn't be content unless G-Man appears soon to sidestep the actual points and FACTS brought up by Franken and instead attack Franken and Donahue for being part of the "liberal" conspiracy and then crack wise about how this proves nothing and that if that's the best the left can muster then blah blah blah blah... ad naseum.

Darknight>> As you can imagine, i try to raise awareness of news that most of my peers are completely oblivious to. I try to present the facts and let people think for themselves afterwards, although sometimes it just gets tedious when some of the dimmer bulbs don't even know who the
Attorney General is or even what an Attorney General is. So in circumstances like that when they ask me "what are we?" I simply say "Democrats" and move on. For most people though, i try to get them out to vote on Tuesday by trying to make it into something that is actually "cool" to do and try to explain the issues and the stakes involved. You'd be surprised at the amount of people who don't vote because they think it doesn't matter or that voting is 'dorky'. That's why you get this vocal minority deciding the fate of women's bodies, minority opportunity, and of gays. I've written a few letters to columnists and to the letters page of the Times in the past as well. I've been in one protest march and I hope to help out if the Clark/Dean or even Kerrey (if worse comes to worse) ticket comes to fruition. Otherwise it'll just be pure Bush derailment.

I would heavily recommend Franken's book. He does a lot to dispel some of the common myths being perpetuated by the extreme right such as Clinton not doing anything about terrorism while Bush actually is the one who started the wheels in motion with an actual timelines and quotes from both sides of the fence (he uses a lot of sources such as TIME, that i've mentioned before), he dispels some of the attacks on Gore inventing the internet and being a habitual liar buy presenting those stories' origins and the actual facts behind them. You're being duped hardcore by some pretty damn nasty people on the right, folks. Even I beleived some of those Gore stories initially. He dissects "Treason" and other Lies and liars. Well worth the few bucks you'll spend. And finally, i would like to thank FOX and Bill O'Reily for bringing this book to the forefront with their publicity. Thanks guys! By the way, contrary to what Bill O'Reily claimed often, Inside Edition never won a Peabody award. :lol: And yes, he DID in fact claim this despite what he now says. LIAR.

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Originally posted by JQ:
I'd like to hear an example of the those 'darned liberals' in the media altering the facts for their own agenda. You guys talk alot about polls that show that the majority of journalists are liberals. What does that show? Sure, it supports your claim, but you need a LOT more to prove some sort of 'vast left-wing bias.'

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Point/Betterpoint

I think Goldberg's most valid point is that reporters tend to have more liberal views than the public on social issues. In one case Goldberg cites an eigteen year-old Los Angeles Times survey of three thousand journalists nationwide showing that they have more liberal views than the the general public on things like gun control (78 percent of journalists favored tougher control eitheen years ago, while only half the public did), prayer in public school (74 percent of the public said yes eighteen years ago; 75 percent of journalists said no), and the death penalty (eighteen years ago, 75 percent of the public supported it, versus only 47 percent of journalists)
He fails however, to explain that editors and publishers --who have the final say over what goes out--tend to be conservative. According to a study made in this century byEditor and Publisher Magazine, more than twice as many newspapers endorsed Bush as endorsed Gore. Bush endorsing papers accounted for 58 percent of all national circulation.

From chapter 6 of Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them"

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Originally posted by the G-man:
The standard liberal argument on Bush's intelligence is that his verbal misstatements indicate a lack of intelligence.

However, there are, of course, different types of intelligence. This is why, for example, standardized tests often test verbal and mathmatical skill separately.

A person can be possessed of a great verbal dexterity and woefully incapable of analytical thinking. A person can have the soul of a poet and be completely ignorant of, for example, basic economic theory.

In fact, some theorize that the two types of intelligences rarely go hand in hand.

So this is hardly a proper gauge of Bush's intelligence.

And Bush is hardly the only public officer to make verbal gaffes. For example, in one interview, Howard Dean meant to say, in connection with how to govern a postwar Iraq, "the problem now is how to govern, and that's where the real rubber is underneath the road." instead of "that's where the rubber meets the road." You don't see jokes about that everyday, or Dean's "enemies" using it as sigs on message boards.

No, it boils down to what was pointed out earlier: if you don't agree with the elitists on the left, you can't simply have a difference of opinion. You have to be either evil or stupid.

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"I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003

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"This very week in 1989, there were protests in East Berlin and in Leipzig. By the end of that year, every communist dictatorship in Central America had collapsed." —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2003

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To paraphrase Treebeard. " A President should know better".

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Originally posted by JQ:
I'll have to read Franken's book; it seems funny and informative.

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Originally posted by Darknight613:
Are there any conservative comedians or humorists out there? (And by that I mean people who actually try to be funny, not people that are considered ridiculous and an object of mockery).

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Originally posted by JQ:
I think you're right. The right does have Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter though.

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Originally posted by Darknight613:

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Originally posted by JQ:
I'll have to read Franken's book; it seems funny and informative.

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Something just occured to me. Is it my imagination, or do there seem to be more liberal humorists than conservative humorists?

I can't vouch for one side being more accurate than the other, but the liberals have Al Franken and Michael Moore. Whether they're accurate or not, I can't really say, but they are funny (or at least they try to be.) I can't think of a single conservative with a reputation as being funny. The only exception I can think of is Truman what's-his-name from "Crossfire," (they guy who wears the bowtie - I heard him speak, and he was pretty funny) and Bob Dole's appearance on SNL and that credit card commercial where he's asked to show his ID.

This is not a value judgment or anything. Just an observation. Are there any conservative comedians or humorists out there? (And by that I mean people who actually try to be funny, not people that are considered ridiculous and an object of mockery).

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Originally posted by JQ:
I'd like to hear an example of the those 'darned liberals' in the media altering the facts for their own agenda. You guys talk alot about polls that show that the majority of journalists are liberals. What does that show? Sure, it supports your claim, but you need a LOT more to prove some sort of 'vast left-wing bias.'

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page 133:

"It's not just that so many journalists are so different from mainstream America. It's that some are downright hostile to what many Americans hold sacred."

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Originally posted by britneyspearsatemyshorts:
I would equate Limbaugh to Franken, they both warp the facts and try to wrap it in comedy that only appeals to either the far left or far right.

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posted by Whomod, 11-27-2003 11:47


Hopefully, this book is next on your list after you're done gleaning insight from "Bias". After all, It would be the kind of balanced reading list I'd expect from someone who voted for the Green party. Sorry though, but that one is a bit hard to swallow considering the
Greens are slightly to the left of Timothy Leary.

And not one post or opinion i've ever read would lead me to picture you voting Green.

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It's short of soap, so there are lice in the hospitals. It's short of pantyhose, so women's legs go bare. It's short of snowsuits so babies stay home in winter. Sometimes it's short of cigarettes, so millions of people stop smoking involuntarily. It drives everyone crazy. The problem isn't communism. No one even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages.
-- NBC Nightly News commentator John Chancellor on the Soviet Union, August 21, 1991


After presenting the quote, Goldberg tears Chancellor a new one for "his absurd observation that the problems in the old Soviet Union wasn't communism but shortages".

Hmm. The quote was from August 1991. So on Donahue, I [Al Franken] read the quote, then asked, "Do you know what happened that day in the Soviet Union, Bernie?"
He Froze. Then came back with a good one: "Why don't you tell me?"
I had learned how to handle that trick in the schoolyard back in Minnesota. "No," I said, "why don't you tell me?"
Clearly the man had no idea. I persisted, "What happened in the Soviet Union that day?"
Bernie went white. Finally, "Well, I don't know what happened that day."
So I told him. Let's go to the videotape:

Franken: That was the collapse of the coup, the hard-liner coup at the Parliament.
Goldberg: And?
Franken: And that was huge. Do you know that perestroika had been in effect for six years at that point? The point here is, Bernie, you regurgitated a quote that you got from some right-wing media-watch group. And you did not care to look into the context of it. Listen to how Tom Brokaw opened that evenings news.

"Good evening. Wednesday, August 21, 1991. This is a day for bold print in history to be remembered and savored as the day when the power of the people in the Soviet Union proved to be greater than the power of the gray and cold-blooded men who thought they could return that country to the darkness of state oppression."

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Again, looking at Franken's "facts" that allegedly "bitch-slapped" Bernard Goldberg, I still have no idea WHAT John Chancellor's editorial means. Even with Franken's explanation.

I mean, how can a political coup on Moscow's democratic government by former Communist hardliners be said by Chancellor to NOT be a problem caused by Communism? Communism is exactly what tried to re-seize power in Russia from the existing democratic government.

Franken repeatedly voices his malicious glee at making Goldberg squirm. That is the driving point that is clear in your (Whomod's) quoted chapter of Franken's book.

Once again proving the liberal hate that drives their rhetoric.

Franken's other points are equally skewed and hate-driven, and laden with half-truths.
A year or so ago, I saw Bill O'Reilly answer the one about his allegedly lying about receiving a Peabody Award. He clarified that it was either an award he shared with others, or where he mindlessly meant to say another award and mistakenly said Peabody. Similar to how I once said in a topic that Art Spiegelman won a Nobel Prize, and then corrected myself later to say Pulitzer Prize (Spiegelman not having made any recent breakthroughs in mathematics or physics).

I've seen Franken interviewed, and on another occasion saw Franken debating O'Reilly at a conference, and it only solidified my lack of respect for the man. I find him highly partisan, opinionated, deliberately misrepresentative, and outright malicious. Since he left his 20-year career writing comedy for Saturday Night Live he's devoted his life to bitterly lashing out at Republicans at every opportunity. Franken is in the hysterical Michael Moore category. Someone so incredibly partisan I can't imagine him ever honestly exploring the facts. And not someone whose writing I would ever trust to give me the facts.

I can see why you like him so much

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Originally posted at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-11-30-liberals-usat_x.htm

Rep. Robert Matsui, a California Democrat who has been traveling the country to raise money and recruit candidates for House races, says feelings against the president are running at near-vitriolic levels.

"I've had really intelligent people say, 'As soon as he gets on TV, I turn it off. I just can't stand him,' " Matsui says. "It's kind of stunning."

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But anyway, that's how I voted, that's how I have consistently documented my voting, and your presumptuously calling me a liar on how I clearly voted just further convinces me of the fallacious logic of liberals, and of their tendency toward personal attacks, slander, venom, and general spitefulness and maliciousness, in debate tactics.

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HOLLYWOOD DEMS GATHER FOR 'HATE BUSH' MEETING AT HILTON

Top Hollywood activists and intellectuals are planning to gather this week in Beverly Hills for an event billed as 'Hate Bush,' the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Laurie David [wife of SEINFELD creator Larry David] has sent out invites to the planned Tuesday evening meeting at the Hilton with the bold heading: 'Hate Bush 12/2 - Event'

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Originally posted by D. McDonagh:

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But anyway, that's how I voted, that's how I have consistently documented my voting, and your presumptuously calling me a liar on how I clearly voted just further convinces me of the fallacious logic of liberals, and of their tendency toward personal attacks, slander, venom, and general spitefulness and maliciousness, in debate tactics.

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Right. One liberal can't be bothered wading through everything you've ever posted to double check how you claim to have voted, so therefore all liberals are liars who make false accusations. Presumably anything with four legs is a table as well.

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Originally posted by D. McDonagh:
Could it be that Republicans are impressed by Bush's wit and intelligence because the majority of Republicans are themselves thicker than pigshit?

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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:
And he objects to liberal agenda-pushing (which he says has largely replaced any attempt at objective non-partisan reporting) on a variety of liberal cause issues, such as minority image/stereotypes (even when blacks and other minorities commit crimes, while at the same time the media gleefully parades footage of white, wealthy criminals), gay rights, AIDS (hiding the fact that AIDS was and remains primarily a gay/I.V.-drug/prostitute disease in the U.S.), and the homeless (making the homeless look a lot less scary than they truly are, and of course, blaming their largely self-imposed homelessness on the Republicans, and wilfully exaggerating the numbers... up until Clinton took office).

"It's not just that so many journalists are so different from mainstream America. It's that some are downright hostile to what many Americans hold sacred."

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G-Man, the liberal hate you describe liberals having of Bush is painfully obvious, but your giving examples from media sources and politically active liberals and Democrats only adds more confirmation to the obvious.

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Originally posted by whomod:

Give me another few minutes to give a detailed accounting and timeline of Bill O'Reiley's "peabody" LIE.

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Originally posted by whomod:

But of course It's Franken and not O'Reiley as well who are irrational hate mongers, eh??

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Originally posted by whomod:

As for your status as a Green. Yes, I do beleive you are lying. You cited reasons for voting Green. Guess what? Bush embodies NONE of those reasons. It'd be like me being a Jew put off by the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians so I decide to renounce Judaism and become a Nazi. And the reasons you give for being a Bush supporter? Because you're put off by the left's 'hatred' of him?? LOL!

It's the old right-wing ploy of declaring yourself something other than Republican in order to present yourself as impartial while all the time shilling for the far right wing. Larry Elder does it all the time all the while declaring himself an impartial Libertarian.

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Originally posted by JQ:


I fail to see any of the "attempts to slander Bush" in the mainstream media. They rallied behind him for the war, and then stuck with every party line given.

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