Over at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, blogger Stage Right complains:
Later in the episode, Anderson Cooper from 4th place CNN, guest stars as a reporter for GNN. He interacts with “Walter Cranky” and “Dan Rather-Not” — Muppets representing real-life liberal news personalities — and they talk about “Meredith Beware-a” and “Diane Spoiler.” But no affectionate nicknames for Fox News personalities; no Spill O’Reilly or Brittle Hume — nope, and the only disparaging characterization of real-world news is reserved for Fox: Fox is a POX. It is trashy. They didn’t even attempt to try “MessyNBC.”
Got that? Sesame Street is unfair and unbalanced because they didn’t come up with silly pun names for Faux Noise anchors. Which if they had, would simply be taken by Stage Right as further evidence of his thesis (see: the Samsara of Wacky™). That MSNBC wasn’t a subject of parody is proof of bias, but that CBS personalities were parodied is not proof of balance. See how that works?
“If Mom and Dad watch cable news,” the pseudonymous blogger continues, “it’s better than 50/50 they watch ‘POX News.’” Who knew there was so much demographic crossover between sex-addled Faux Noise and culture-addled PBS?
So what gives? PBS — a network partially funded with my tax dollars — has the right to tell my kids that their parents watch “trashy” news? The message is clear, I can’t even sit my kids in front of “Sesame Street” without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority. And don’t tell me, “If you don’t like it change the channel.” There are no channels left! It’s everywhere. Just last week I had Obama’s service and volunteerism promoted on every single major network, including Disney and Nickelodeon. (Emphasis mine)
After the ancient “taxpayer-funded TV” charge, Stage Right provides context with the usual assortment of long-debunked evidences, including the president’s back-to-school speech. But the reference to “service and volunteerism” is a giveaway that Stage Right, like most of Breitbart’s bloggers, is a devotee of the Ayn Rand cult.
Stage Right hedges a bit, reminding readers how the Teletubbies nontroversy damaged Jerry Falwell’s credibility — and then proceeds to resurrect the nontroversy by asking: “He DOES seem a little gay, doesn’t he?” Thereupon Stage Right pulls this new nontroversy into the sweep of history:
The fact that this is a re-run from an episode written during the Bush Presidency only reinforces that this is nothing new. The Left has been doing this for years now. All of us have seen it and felt powerless to mention it, because if we do, we’re ridiculed and dismissed (thank you, Mr. Alinsky). (Emphasis mine)
As it happens, I’m writing about Alinsky right now, and I’m impressed by how much the real Alinsky differs from the straw man erected by wingnuts. He was a man with little patience for communists, idealists, or militants; but listening to the right use his name as a curse, you’d think he was an original Bolshevik. Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals seems prescient on this point:
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.) (Emphasis mine)
And that is exactly what Stage Right and Andrew Breitbart do: manufacture anger and fear. They project their hypersensitive reactions onto the media they revile and then attack the resulting straw men.
This is what passes for intellectualism in the modern conservative movement.
