than it used to be. But they don't talk much about how conservatism
itself has become more... hmm, how to put this politely -- let's say, detached from traditional American beliefs and standards of behavior.
We're not talking about their claim to want to shrink government. That
is very mainstream, and popular with voters (though once in office,
conservatives usually don't do much actual government-shrinking).
No, we're talking about their new tendency to promote ideas from the
furthest fringes of their movement -- ideas that, were they proposed by a
guest at your dinner table, might cause you to doubt his sanity, or
perhaps ask him to leave your home.
Take, for example, their recent defense of a fire company that refused
to save a man's burning house because he had not payed the firefighters a
fee.
by Steven Thrasher. The story has drawn at this writing more than a
thousand comments, many of them devoted to proving Thrasher's
proposition by example.
Among the more choice reader contributions:
"Of course white people have lost their minds. they have to live with
inferior niggers and leftie white trash..." "You've just proved to
everyone who reads this that you and your fellow members of Diversity
Gang are anti-white morons..." "The Democratic Party is an anti-white
hate party... Look folks, if you're white, the left and the Democratic
Party HATE YOUR GUTS..."
Surprised? We weren't. In the years we've been covering rightbloggers,
we've seen these themes come up time and again, though usually in
subtler forms.
The means of expression are diverse, but they tend to stick to three
basic approaches which over time become easy to recognize. We'll lay
them out for you after the jump:
-- have taught us that if there's anything conservatives hate more than
Big Gummint and homosexuals, it's someone making fun of them. The
outrage that Boss Tweed expressed over "them damned pictures"
of himself drawn by Thomas Nast is as nothing compared to that of your
typical right-winger who suspects he, or his idol, has been mocked.
So the moment it was announced that TV satirist Stephen Colbert would be testifying before Congress
on behalf of a migrant farm workers' rights bill, rightbloggers soared
to the highest of dudgeons. How dare this comedian sully the seriousness
of a legislature where Michele Bachmann hoped to be joined by Christine O'Donnell? Had he no sense of decorum?
In this cause, rightbloggers received some extra help from big-time
media outlets who may have their own reasons for wanting Colbert and
people like him out of the picture.
last week to become the GOP nominee in the Delaware Senatorial race, a
clown car pulled up and several bizarre O'Donnell quotes came piling
out. The most famous of these, so far, are probably her remarks on the
sure-fire comedy topics of masturbation and Satan worship.
In another era, these might have caused O'Donnell to be laughed off the
public stage. But O'Donnell's a tea party VIP, and rightbloggers defend
such people unquestioningly.
Their rapid response: There was nothing wrong with what she said, but if
you think there was something wrong with what she said, it's not her
fault, but that of the liberal media.
But most of them were their usual belligerent selves. Amid their howling
one could make out a theme, appropriate to the era of the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque and Quran-threatening Pastor Terry Jones:
That Americans were getting soft, and must man up and acknowledge that
all Muslims, from Sheik Mohammed down to that guy who makes your bagel
at the deli, are trying to kill them.
On Labor Day, you were probably thinking about picnics or sales, rather
than about Joe Hill, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, strikes,
solidarity, and such like.
That's OK. You probably enjoyed your day off -- which, like any other days off you
may have, was won for you long ago by union people getting their brains
beat in by cops.
Besides, rightbloggers are happy to pick up the slack on the history
front, and tell you that Labor Day honors the thugs and parasites who
destroyed America by fighting for the five-day work week and child labor
laws, thus leading to our current recession which is Obama's fault.
Michelle Malkin opened the Labor Day festivities by celebrating "Big Labor's Legacy of Violence."
Last week we considered whether conservatives and their host body, the GOP, were attacking non-white Americans so much that they now constituted America's Honky Party.
We did not then spend much time on the almost-not-quite-at-Ground Zero
Mosque controversy. But President Obama's recent defense of the
builders' religious liberties has made it hard to avoid.
Responses by junior-grade rightbloggers were as one might expect: "Obama has Surrendered and Submitted to islam," "Obama is in favor of desecrating Ground Zero," etc ad nauseum.
Normally these yahoos provide the biggest laugh lines in this column.
But this week we'll let them alone, and limit ourselves to the big-time
rightbloggers -- the kind who write for major publications, get big
traffic, write op-eds for the New York Times, etc.
Because those guys were basically saying the same thing as the yahoos -- just more fancy-like.
Last week, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision setting aside Prop 8 in California unleashed plenty of grumbling from rightbloggers. As it involves gay people, this was to be expected.
There was also rightblogger outrage, also expected, that Michelle Obama and her daughters had a swell, privately-funded vacation in Spain, instead of maybe just going down to Wildwood, New Jersey or something else better befitting their station.
And of course rightbloggers were not-unexpectedly enraged that Muslims were planning a mosque in a spot in downtown Manhattan where you could almost see Ground Zero.
All this raises a question: Is conservatism in America today basically a white people's movement?
Psst, brother! Are you down with the revolution? No, we don't mean the
revolution of the Sixties -- though some of the star players in this one
do dress like Paul Revere and the Raiders (and most of them are
old enough that -- who knows? -- they may have have gotten stoned and
marched on the Pentagon back in the day).
We're talking about the new revolution, man. In this one, the Tea Party people rouse the populace to revolt against "America's Ruling Class" -- which includes both parties but mostly means the Democrats and their Kenyan pretender Obama.
The latest Spurt of '76 began with a shot heard 'round the world -- a hallucinogenic rant at Investor's Business Daily called "Will Washington's Failures Lead To Second American Revolution?"
You may have heard something about former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod
last week. She's the civil-rights veteran who got forced out of her job
after rightwing provocateur Andrew Breitbart released a video of her remarks before the NAACP, edited to make her look anti-white. You may also have heard that the tape turned out to be a con-job.
But if you follow only rightbloggers for news (and why wouldn't you? MSM
lies!), you'd know that the real villains here are President Obama, the
NAACP, black people in general, even Shirley Sherrod -- everyone and
anyone but the people who smeared her.
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