By Robert S. Siegel
I want to thank reader Marie for bringing Janeane Garofalo’s nasty remarks on MSNBC to my attention. For those of you not familiar with Garofalo’s comments, she called Tea Party attendees, “a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” adding “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.” Garofalo is according to Wikipedia, a stand-up comedienne, actress, political activist, writer, and former co-host on Air America Radio’s The Majority Report.
First of all folks, we have to move political dialog past this childish name calling or we’ll continue to make a mess of our government. Garofalo’s comments and the set up Olbermann provided her were not worthy of our country; certainly not worthy of the Fourth Estate that is responsible for insuring our freedoms.
I am not going to catalog the name calling from conservative talk show hosts (radio, television, internet); that would be too easy. Everyone knows they do it. Most of it is childish but there is also the racism (remember Don Imus?) and raw hate. I have a newsflash for those conservative hosts – You may be thrilling your audience but you’re not persuading anybody else. You’re not convincing anybody to join your cause, in fact, while your ratings may be up, you’re driving other people away (See election results, 2008).
(Stay tuned to my blog. In the near future I am going to do a post on persuasion and how persuasion is better than beating your opponent over the head with your opinions, even when you know for certain that your opinions are the only views any intelligent person could possibly hold).
And now for the liberals. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that two wrongs don’t make a right? What about, “If Johnny jumped off a cliff would you follow him?” That the conservatives go into the gutter doesn’t make it right that you do it. Further, you need to clean up your side before you stand tall enough to criticize others. In just the past few days I have seen the Garofalo quote, and found comments including (but limited here only by space), A Short Citizen’s Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day(Robert Reich, Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley), and Sharing Tea Bags with Right Wing Extremists which included this persuasive comment; “the talkers and bloggers who appear to be driving the post-Bush crazy train,” and Reporting From the Tea Bagger Hate-Fest in Sacramento (by a professor of history – do you know where your children are?). I found all this in just a couple minutes. It was too easy. And this kind of blather is not limited to the Tea Party. It happens on every issue and if you’re not seeing this stuff you’ve had too much of the partisan kool-aid. Both sides drink far too much of it and there is clearly an endless supply.
Note: Like any other issue, the anti-tax crowd has members of questionable intent. There are also many people that believe that either there are better ways to solve the economic crisis or that the solutions being undertaken will make the crisis worse. Until Economics becomes much more of a science than an art we’ll all do well to hold out some reservations against even our favorite economists.
Folks, just because the other guy has a different opinion than you does not make that person a kook, demagogue, a flaming anti-American socialist, or hate filled racist. Disagreeing with President Bush during war time did not make that person a traitor, nor does disagreeing with President Obama make that person a racist. In fact, the default reaction of racism from the Garofalos and Olbermanns shows incredible lack of respect for our president; a lack of respect beyond anything I have yet to hear on conservative radio, TV, and web sites. The Garofalos and Olbermanns and everyone else that reacts to disagreements with President Obama as though the disagreement could only be race based (yes, this occurs a lot) deny our President respect. They deny him the respect due a serious thinker and an individual talented enough to rise to the U.S. presidency. Ours is a pluralistic society. The President’s job is to present serious policy and to make the toughest of decisions; easy decisions don’t rise up to the world’s most powerful person.
Serious policy and tough decisions generate mighty forces of opposition. They always have (see Adams, John President). To label opponents as racists is to deny this President’s ability and willingness to engage opponents and make the tough decisions. In sum, to automatically label opponents as racist is to label the President a token first African-American president and not the intelligent and wise leader so many Americans believe him to be.
I disagree with much of what our president stands for. I respect our president for the position he earned by being elected to the office. I pledge to fight him through this blog and my vote when I disagree with him, and use these same tools when I agree.
Additional note: I try to source my information from multiple sites to draw in a variety of view points. Links are to the right and within the stories. If you have sources to recommend please tell me about them by leaving a comment.
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