Had an interesting exchange with Allen, (AKA the Angry Bear) another LA blogger I discovered through an Instalink.  Allen was debating whether or not to buy Shadow Complex, a new video game, created in cooperation with Orson Scott Card, a devout Mormon who has actively worked to block state recognition of same-sex marriages.  As this blogger notes, Card has not just opposed such recognition but also serves on “the board of directors of the National Organization for Marriage, an organization founded in 2007 to resist the legalization of gay marriage.”

Oh, and the Angry Bear is straight.

I e-mailed Allen telling him of my decision to patronize El Coyote despite the antics of some juvenile gay activists who demanded a boycott of the popular Hollywood restaurant because a prominent employee made a small contribution to the “Yes on 8″ campaign.  To be sure, the circumstances are different.

That said, I was delighted to discover a straight guy who leans right weighing the issues involved in purchasing a product from which an activist against gay marriage would profit.

In the course of our exchange, he articulated the reasons why he is less comfortable with the left than the right, distinguishing intolerant, name-calling left-wingers from their counterparts on the right.

. . . that’s why I have a bigger problem with liberals than I do with conservatives. Even when I agree with the cause (and when it comes to social issues, I’m pretty damned liberal), I loathe the tactics and the mindset, It’s not that the right doesn’t have lunatics and hatemongers, it clearly does, but it always seems to me like the left’s hate and desire to control others is closer to the mainstream of the progressive movement’s thought than those of the right.

The left-wing haters do seem closer to the mainstream of their “movement” than do their conservative counterparts.  I mean, just look at the roster of prominent Democrats who buy into their rhetoric (Ma’am Boxer, Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, Al Franken, to note just a few names in the Senate alone) and attend the confabs of the angry left blogs.

Make sure to this thoughtful blogger’s post (it’s not very long).  He offers some good insights into the nature of the left.

And keep an eye on his blog—particularly if you are a gamer.

As French fades in importance as an international language, my knowledge of that Romanic language serves me less well than it might have when I first started studying it. To be sure, I can still read French literature in the original. And haven’t had to rely on translations of some of the scholarship relevant to my dissertation. But, last night, it came in handy when I watched Nora Ephron‘s Julie & Julia, her new flick starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams–and not  to understand any of the dialogue or read any of the signs.

Knowing the language, however, I could better appreciate how wonderfully atrocious was Julia Child’s (Streep) French.  Every time she tried to speech the one-time langauge of literature, art and love, I laughed perhaps louder than anyone else in the auditorium.  Streep was clearly having a ball showing that despite Child’s mastery of French cuisine, she could never really master the French language.

Streep’s performance was the best thing about a largely haphazard movie.  The blending between the two stories, that of Child learning to cook and becoming the celebrated chef and of Julie Powell’s (Adams) gaining her fame in blogging about her experiences cooking 524 of Child’s recipes in 365 days did not really flow.  Indeed, the movie (like most contemporary comedies) seemed a series of vignettes grouped around a common theme.

Amy Adams made the best of a a clunkily written part with scenes set in 2002-03 New York that don’t seem to represent exchanges that could occur between actual human beings, saved those living in the imaginary realm of feminist writers.  None of the men had lives or personalities outside of their relationship to the leading women.  We didn’t even know that Powell’s husband Eric (Chris Messina) had a job until he walked out on her (for reasons that just didn’t seem believable.)   In short, the tension between Julie and Eric seemed contrived.  And their reconciliation fake.

Stanley Tucci‘s Paul Child seems similarly devoid of personal life or human passions.  And since it was his being posted to American embassy in Paris (he was some kind of diplomat) that led Child to discover the art of French cooking, you’d think they might have explored that a little more. (more…)

In a comment to a recent post, reader Paul expressed one of the standard (but inaccurate) criticisms leveled against the Republican Party:

In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away their rights) 

Many of those who offer this opinion have never talked (for any extended period of time) with a Republican, have never attended a Republican gathering and have rarely (if at all) read essays, Op-eds or blog posts where Republicans talk about their overarching political philosophy or the policy proposals they advocate.  They get their news about us from the MSM and left-wing blogs.

 It’s amazing how misinformed these critics are about the object of their derision.

While there is abundant evidence from the current Congress of Democratic legislation which would push their ideology on others, limiting our liberty and regulating the way we build our homes, run our businesses, purchase our health insurance and interact with others in the marketplace, I wonder if Paul (and others who offer the same criticism of the GOP he does) can he (or others who share his viewpoint) can cite actual legislation Republicans have proposed which would “push” our beliefs on others?

Legislation that they have pushed with as much vigor as the Democratic President and congressional leadership has pushed their statist agenda?

He wants to keep the issue alive as a distraction from his agenda.

The better to smear Republicans.

Sometimes when commenting our posts, our critics ignore our points to launch into diatribes against Republicans.  Such diatribes are particularly delicious when the reader/commenter attaches his criticism to posts where we fault the Democrats for being mean-spirited.  Instead of addresing our points, our critics make our points.

In response to my post wondering if so many on the left were so mean because it’s in their nature, a reader e-mailed me linking an article designed to show that Karl Rove was actually the “scorpion,” that is, the one who can’t avoid stinging because it’s in his nature.  But, the article, written by a self-profesion Bush-hater, is full of innuendo and name-calling and short on actual facts about Rove’s supposed meanness and shows instead the writer’s only “need” to demonize the “Architect” of W’s two electoral victories.

Indeed, the writer himself betrays his own inability to tie Rove to his alleged crimes:  “Rove’s lowest schemes have never borne his fingerprints“.  That’s leftis Newspeak to say that he lacks evidence to back up his accusations.

In their attempts to attack Karl Rove, his critics have had to allege his diabolical creativity to link him to schemes where there is no evidence suggesting his involvement.  Futhermore, they cite allegations and insults made by other Rove haters as source material.  In short, they have had to invent conspiracy theories and twist facts to show Rove’s meanness.  All we have to do to show the meanness of some on the left is to offer up quotes from leading Democrats, including not just top Administration officials, but also the President himself.

Oh, and finally, even if Rove did all those horrible, no good and very bad things he was alleged to have done, nearly all of them were done in the context of a campaigns whereas the point of my recent post is that the Democrats have engaged in nasty rhetoric after winning the White House and increasing their majorities in both houses of Congress, that is, in the context of governing not campaigning.

Back in May, noting the absence of magnanimity about victorious Democrats, Amity Shlaes observed that in the past

. . . politicians and policy thinkers tended to be magnanimous in victory. They and their friends focused, post- victory, on policy and strategy — not on trashing individuals. . . .

Still, somehow, the magnanimity isn’t there. Indeed, the closer the Democrats get to total power, the nastier the commentators friendly to them have become.

Earlier today, wondering how Democrats who “own everything” can get away blaming “Republicans for anything” the folks at tehresistance alert us to a post over on Ace where Drew M. offers a similar observation:

Gee, why the sudden focus on a minority party with zero ability to actually block or even slow down the Democrats? Maybe it’s because his health care proposals are tanking with the public.

While that blogger believes the attacks are designed to divert attention from the shortcomings of the Democrats’ policies, I wonder if something else is at play.  So many on the left, including the supposedly postpartisan President Obama ostensibly committed to a new kind of politics where everybody just stays “focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to,” just “need” to attack Republicans for their own psychological peace of mind and/or sense of self-righteous self-satisfaction.

Just like the scorpion, such venom is in their nature:

The story is simple.  A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across the river.  The frog is afraid of being stung.  But the scorpion reassures the frog that, if stung, the frog would drown, and therefore so would the scorpion.  The frog agrees.  Halfway through, the scorpion stings the frog.  They will both drown.  The frog asks the scorpion, “why?”  The scorpion says, “I’m a scorpion; it’s my nature.”

Every now and again, we get a left-wing reader who will offer regular comments, telling us exactly what Republicans and conservatives think.  When we try to correct him (it’s invariabily a “him”) by articulating our point of view, even linking pieces that we have posted on this blog–or on other right-of-center blogs, it is to no avail.  He has his set view of the GOP, drawn mostly from the “reporting” on MSNBC and the coverage on leftist blogs.

I’ve realized now that it makes no sense to engage these people.  They’ll frequent conservative blogs, chiming in as often as their free time allows, but pay little heed to our arguments.  They have a set view of the world which even reality cannot correct.  These are the type of people who will claim up and down that Obama never said this or never said that, and when provided video or a transcript of the Democrat saying just this or just that will hold forth that he misspoke.

Well. on Sunday, I came face to face with just such a liberal.  This man was convinced that anti-gay attitudes would end if the Republican Party stopped promoting them.  I hated to tell him this, while, the GOP may from time to time appeal to social conservatives by opposing policies popular among the gay left (and even the gay middle and right), our party is not the source of such attitudes.  And this won’t go often, even if the GOP (as I long have advocated) avoids gay issues altogether.

Some people see the GOP as institution designed primarily to please the straight white male status quo and subjugate all people who are different.  They are as clueless about the GOP as James Dobson is about gay people.

And when those with such an attitude publicly demonize the GOP, all they do is flaunt their ignorance, ironically in an attempt to show their intellectual (and moral) superiority to the rest of us.  Or to cement kinship with their fellow leftists, by denouncing the devil of their shared faith.

The abundance of evidence that the Holocaust shooter harbored strong animosities against the two most recent Republican presidents and  had little in common ideologically with the mainstream of modern American conservatism notwithstanding, certain left-of-center pundits and bloggers have attributed his murderous actions to (what they define as) “hateful” conservative rhetoric.

And yet, as they make the jump from the shooter’s actions to their ideological adversaries, they do little to illuminate his motivations, exposing only their own prejudices against conseratives.  Because, they believe, the shooter hated Jews, he had to be a “right-winger” because the right wing is the source for anti-Semitism in America.  Such an attitude shows that while they accuse those of us on the right of living in the past, their understanding of anti-Semitism dates back at least forty years.

Their views of conservatives have little to do with the reality of the conservative movement in America today, indeed, with the conservative movement as it has been evolving at least since William F. Buckely, Jr. launched the National Review in 1955.  And yet, all too many in the MSM, equally clueless about the ideas undergirding American conservatism, don’t challenge them on their misunderstanding.

And when they do get challenged, well, they don’t know how to react.  Witness Barney Frank earlier this week.   When the unhappy Massachusetts Democrat accused CNBC host Mark Haines of “wanting to do ‘nothing’ about the economic crisis, which isn’t at all what Haines said,” the host tried to correct the record.  Instead of acknowledging his error, the Congressman “played victim and whined his way off the stage.”

It seems this mean-spirited liberal has bought into the propaganda his party has used to discredit the opposition, believing critics of Democratic plans just want to “do nothing.”  When faced with evidence to the contrary, he becomes disoriented, lashing out at the misrepresented party and refusing to engage in any kind of dialogue.

Thus, since conservatives don’t fit their narrative of what we’re supposed to be, they have to resort to name-calling because arguing with us would mean acknowledging our ideas.  And by dint of acknowledging our ideas, they undercut their (at that point, previously) prejudiced worldview.

They might find it easier to talk to us, if they tried to see us as we are and not as their prejudices define us.

It seems some on the left, including the President of the United States, just can’t help themselves.  They seem to feel it necessary to politicize everything, including Memorial Day.  In his radio address Saturday, Obama took time off from saluting our servicemen and women to take a swipe at his predecessor:

Our fighting men and women – and the military families who love them – embody what is best in America. And we have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us.

And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve. That is a betrayal of the sacred trust that America has with all who wear – and all who have worn – the proud uniform of our country.

Even if his predecessor failed to show service members the respect they deserve (and there is no evidence he did), a Memorial Day message is not the place to make political statements.  It is the time to honor the troops.

That’s what I, like so many columnists and bloggers (on both sides of the political aisle), did yesterday.  In my post, I made no political statement, attacked no Democrat, praised no Republican (politician).  I saluted only those who sacrificed, singling out the last surviving World War I veteran for praise.  Yet, one of our perennial critics felt it incumbent upon himself to use the comment section to that post to snap at us and, like Obama, take a shot at the immediate past President of the United States.

With Obama, such cheap shots belie his rhetoric of being a post-partisan leader.  With our critics, is is the mark of a strange obsession.  Some feel they just have to attack us–and by extension all conservatives.  Others feels compelled to badmouth Bush whenever they can, bringing up the former President in comment threads attached to posts where we don’t even mention the Republican’s name nor refer to him in any manner whatsoever.

According to Zarathushtra, the great prophet of Zoroastrianism, “the world is divided into good and evil“, with Angra Manyu, “the spirit of darkness and lies,” ruling the forces of evil.  While today’s left doesn’t have a Zarathushtra, they do have their Angra Manyu, George W. Bush.

Even now, nearly three months after that good man has left the White House, the left is still obsessed with him; some acolytes of that faith eager to prove that we (and others who have defended him) are remain the devil’s W’s disciples.  Even after taking the time to provide several examples of the times we here at GayPatriot (despite our defenses) did take issue with then then-President, it will not alter the creed of those adherents to this new faith.

Despite evidence of our criticism (even a whole category devoted to where he went wrong) of that decent, but flawed man, they refuse to alter their conviction that we are “unquestioning defenders of George Bush and his policies.”  The abundant evidence to the contrary is irrelevant.  Thy do not let facts get in the way of their faith.

To do so would mean departure from their doctrine.  Bush is the devil.  And those who defended him were are devout devotees of him and his dangerous dogma.

I posted a piece this morning to address our critics’ contention that we never faulted Bush or the Republican for overspending when the Republicans were in charge.  But, to some, the evidence of our mixed feelings for the past president matters little.  They so want to see us not as we are, but as they’d like us to be, so that they may more easily dismiss our ideas more readily hold firm to their faith.

As they repeat their mantra over and over and over again, they further reveal the tenets of that faith. It’s amazing how Manichean is their world view.  Just like the Zoroastrianism, but without its nuance and appreciation for the potetial blending of the cosmic division in the real world.

Bush Derangement isn’t just a psychiatrist‘s term.  It’s a religious creed.

This morning while reading Robert Johnson’s Lying with the Heavenly Woman: Understanding and Integrating the Feminine Archetypes in Men’s Lives, for my dissertation, I chanced upon this passage:

Many men in our culture are permanently stuck in this contamination, and they are constantly fighting a mother.  What a variety of forms there are!  A man’s own mother only begins the long list.  The poor waitress in the restaurant who elicits a man’s rage because she brought the wrong order, the woman office manager, the woman traffic officer, the Republican Party, and the mother in a thousand other disguises incur the wrath of the man who has not made this differentiation between the inner complex and the outer form.

Emphasis added.

It is interesting that he included the Republican Party on the individuals or institutions who elicit certain men’s rage.  Must be that a lot of this psychologist’s clients vent against the GOP.  (I’m sure that some extreme social conservatives with similar psychoses frequently mention “homosexuals”.)

It just all goes to my point about the psychological basis of such animosity.  It’s not the object so much that they hate, but the demon they’re trying to exorcize.

Last night I watched the wonderful (though dated) Mister Roberts on DVD where James Cagney‘s Captain Morton (with a thick New England accent) helps us understood another mean-spirited New Englander, the unhappy Barney Frank.  Cagney, resentful of “college guys” who pushed him around when he was growing up, takes it out on his crew, bullying them, saying he knows “how to take care of smart boys:”

I hate your guts, you smart college guys! I’ve been seeing your kind around since I was ten years old… working as a busboy. “Oh busboy, it seems my friend has thrown up on the table. Clean up that mess, boy, will’ya?” And then when I went to sea as a steward… people poking at you with umbrellas. “Oh, boy!”, “You, boy!”, “Careful with that luggage, boy!” And I took it. I took it for years! But I don’t have to take it any more.

As I’ve suggested before, it seems that in bullying corporate executives and Republicans, Barney’s venting inner demons which built up in his psyche when he was bullied in grade school.

But, just as their are sanctions for the schoolyard bully, it seems there are also sanctions for his congressional counterpart.  Yesterday, when he accused Republicans who criticized of suffering from “psychological disorder,” may have violated the rules of the House.  His behavior reminded me of that of his former Bay State colleague, though he had less grounds for his insults than did Tip O’Neill nearly a quarter-century ago.

In May 1984, then-Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich faulted

. . . Democrats for believing “America does nothing right.” [Then-]House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) called Gingrich’s attack “the lowest thing I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.” But Gingrich and an ally, then-Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), demanded that O’Neill’s attack on Gingrich be struck from the record and it was, marking the first time since 1798 that a speaker had been rebuked in such as way.

Turns out members of Congress “are forbidden from making personal attacks on one another.“  Now, saying your fellow Congressman suffer from a “psychological disorder” certainly sounds like an insult to me.

Seems an investigation is in order.

Is there no end to Barney Frank’s insults?

Can’t a man as intelligent as he express in disagreement in the form of counterarguments?  Will the media continue to let this unhappy man get away with his mean-spirited remarks?

When Texas Republican Congressman John Culberson today “blasted Democrats for passing the stimulus, which permitted AIG to lavish billions on executives after the de facto federal takeover,” the Massachusetts Democrat fired back, saying Republican criticism was part “of a psychological disorder I am not equipped to diagnose.”

This from a man who grandstanded about AIG bonuses even after he had voted to allow them, a man who refuses to acknowledge his own role in the financial meltdown, errors of judgment he made about the financial soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Can you imagine how the media would react if a senior Republican so smeared his partisan adversaries?  They went after Tom DeLay for much less.

Barney Frank owes Representative Culberson and GOP critics the same kind of apology then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey offered him in 1995.

Sometimes, when I bring White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel with conservative friends, they say they want him to stay on because his presence in the president’s office serves to sharpen the distinctions between the parties.  His partisanship sets him apart from the mainstream of America and the unifying message of Obama’s fall campaign.

Democratic partisans like him because he is an unapologetic champion of their side and critic of ours.  With Rahm by his side, the president will continue to steer a left-wing course, pandering to the various liberal groups eager for additional federal handouts and hoping to influence federal policy.

But, if the president replaces Emanuel with a less partisan Democrat adept at Administration and respectful of Republicans, say like former Clinton White Hous Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, he would stand a greater chance of uniting the country and succeeding as president.

The simple question is whether or not the president sees his partisan affiliation as incidental to his Administration or as its defining aspect.  In the campaign, he made it sound like the former.  In the past two and one-half months, he made it seem the latter.

Replacing Rahm Emanuel, a hyperpartisan gunslinger, with a dispassionate administrator, even one, like Panetta, committed to Democratic ideals, would help the president fulfill the promise of his campaign and would put my party on the spot, making it far more difficult for Republican leaders to be confrontational.

With Rahm on the job, however, we have only the promise of a confrontational policy and increased partisan warfare.  And that’s not good for this great nation.

Turns out hyperpartisan White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in the meeting when the language allowing for the AIG bonuses about which Democrats have been grandstanding overmuch in recent days was inserted into the “stimulus” bill”

“Right now, you get the feeling this is all about protecting [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel,” says a former Treasury Department lawyer, who worked in that department’s counsel’s office on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) before joining a D.C.-based law firm in February. “At the time, we were led to believe there were basically three or four people from the Administration at the table when the final deals were cut and one of them was Emanuel.”

“Emanuel isn’t talking” as White House officials try to pass the buck.  Doesn’t sound like the Administration is doing much to follow through on the president’s recent pledge to break “a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”

If the president wants to live up to his campaign pledge of post-partisanship, his commitment “new kind of politics,” he needs to fire Rahm Emanuel, a man who embodies the worst excesses of that old kind of politics against which Mr. Obama ran such an effective campaign.

Not just that, as I’ve said before, given the president’s particular strengths*, he need a Chief of Staff with a different skill set, a man who can serve a kind of prime minister, effectively running the government while the president sets the broad agenda.  A master of scripted eloquence, Obama needs a detail man as his right-hand man.  Not a partisan gunslinger with an axe to grind.

*UPDATE:  Jennifer Rubin suggests Obama might see his new job as preferring to “campaign and hold summits, leaving the governing to others.”  It would then follow that he should entrust that govering to competent and dispassionate indiviuals.

In my preliminary research of presidential chiefs of staff, I don’t think I’ve discovered any as partisan as the incumbent, Rahm Emanuel.  More than any of his predecessors, he has an ideological axe to grind.

He cut his teeth in Chicago politics, his first job in national politics was national campaign director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1988.  Seventeen years later, he would take over that operation which, by definition, is highly partisan.  That job seemed particularly suited to the Chicago Democrat.  Throughout his career, he has shown a ruthless partisan streak, dedicated to electing Democrats and defeating Republicans.

Indeed, he seems to have long harbored a particular animus against his partisan adversaries.

This seems hardly the individual to administer the executive office of the President of the United States, a man elected, albeit by partisan means, to serve the entire United States.

Given that this particular president who had, before taking office, almost no experience as an administrator, it would seem he would want a gifted experience as his chief of staff, someone who could balance the president’s preference for rhetoric with a competence at administration.

Where he needs a dispassionate administrator, the president has instead appointed a partisan gunslinger.  Take a gander at Emanuel’s defense of Obama’s tack of blaming his predecessor:

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, denied that the president has changed his tone toward the previous administration. He said Obama is “not trying to place blame, but he is trying to say clearly: Here’s what we’ve got and here’s our way out of it. He’s offered a positive alternative to their criticism.”

“The truth is that 98 percent of his speeches are about the future, and 2 percent are about inheritance,” Emanuel said. “Whereas I think for Republicans it’s 2 percent about the future, and 98 percent hope that the people have amnesia.”

He just had to offer that dig in against Republicans.

Shouldn’t a White House chief of staff be above politics?

It is revealing that the president would tap such a partisan for the most important administrative job in the White House.  Not a man who whose political experience fits with the new type of politician Mr. Obama claimed to be in the campaign.

(more…)

Whenever a prominent Republican does something which offends the sensibilities of the politically correct gay élite, they rush to release a statement condemning said individual in particular and the Republican Party in geneeral. At times, they do with good reason as a number of Republicans over the years have said some pretty obnoxious things about gay people and proposed some pretty odious policies.

But, when a Republican shows a degree of tolerance for gay Americans, indicating perhaps that he (or she) believes we should welcome gays into the party’s ranks, he is met mostly by silence from the major gay organizations. Yeah, a few might say something ever once in a while, especially if the MSM picks up on it, but their words seem forced, perfunctory.  And to be sure, some of the left-of-center gay blogs will pick up the story. Towleroad and Queerty have a pretty good record on things like this.

How many gay organizations, for example, praised Mary Cheney for giving more money to defeat Proposition 8 than did Matt Foreman, the immediate past executive director of the far left National Gay and Lesbian Task Force?

On the whole, any openness a prominent Republican shows to gay men and lesbians does not draw the attention as does intolerance. It simply doesn’t fit their narrative of narrow-minded Republicans.

And sometimes, Log Cabin, an ostensibly Republican organization, eager to join the chorus of criticism of a politically incorrect Republican, remains silent when a prominent Republican reaches out to gays.

In today’s Washington Blade, two former Log Cabin officials, Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, provide yet another example of this phenomenon. After the new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele indicated opposition to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage and his support for “legal protections for gay couples,” he was met by silence from leading gay organizations:

(more…)

A blog reader emailed me a link to his post where he offered some insights into the left’s attacks on Rush.  He contends that “emotionally, leftists are stuck in middle school.“  I’m not sure that I agree with this hypothesis, but believe he may well be onto something.

I grant there is this adolescent nature to their attacks, focusing on Rush’s physical attributes and personal failings rather than the quality and content of his argument.  To this reader, Rush’s critics are like the popular kids picking on the outsider.

Perhaps, I link the post because it called to mind a theory I’d been toying around with about why the left, particularly those who considered themselves intellectuals, so hated (and still continue to hate) the immediate past President of the United States, George W. Bush.

The people who, in that blogger’s parlance, now pick on Rush were themselves not the popular kids.  They were more likely to be the geeky kids whom the popular kids (the cool crowd) picked on.  And they so hated George W. Bush because he reminded them of the guys who seemed to glide through high school socially while they struggled.  And as such guys glided, they taunted those less popular.

Their anger, their wishing failure, humiliation, impeachment and imprisonment on W was for them, a sort of revenge of the nerds.

Again, I’m just throwing this out there, as much for discussion as anything else.   My reader makes a point that, I believe, is definitely worth consideration.  Given the nature of the rage of the left against any outspoken conservative who gains a foothold in American politics or popular culture, I am convinced that their animus has a strong psychological component.

(more…)

On Wednesday after first blogging on the eagerness of the Administration and its MSM allies to attack Rush Limbaugh personally rather than address his criticisms of their policy directly (or just plain ignore him), I realized they reacted to this outspoken entertainer in the same manner as many on the gay left (alas)  react to any opposition to gay marriage.

In both cases, those on the left side of the political aisle demonize their opposition in a manner reminiscent of a political campaign where the goal is to prevent an opponent’s election.  In short, they seem to see politics as a battle of personalities not ideas.  They always need a villain.  Yes, I grant this is true for many on the right, especially certain extreme social conservatives.

Why is it they believe they can best advance their argument not by taking apart their opponent’s case, but by taking that opponent apart (or defining someone as their opponent so as to eviscerate him)?

In the case of gay marriage, the adopt-a-villain strategy is backfiring, in large part, because they lose support from many otherwise sympathetic to the villian du jour.  But, when you make a case for gay marriage, some of those “sympathicoes” who might otherwise be turned off by your rhetoric might end up listening to your argument.

In my post yesterday, The Prejudiced Minds of Those Who Call Us, “Self-Hating,” I mentioned the appearance of Janeane Garofalo on Keith Olbermann’s show where the one-time comedienne used the “self-loathing” slur most to describe Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. She told Olbermann that there had to be “something wrong” with people who follow the GOP.

Well, the folk at FoxNews Channel’s Red Eye with Greg Gutfield had fun with that as they wondered why people on the left just have to use the Hitler reference. With great humor, they took on the humorless duo, noting how easy it is to marginalize a group when you don’t know anyone who belongs to it. (We’re talking about liberal attitudes towards conservatives here, not social conservative attitudes toward gays.)

Via Olbermann Watch via RedState.