Every now and then a Republican makes sense. Earlier this week, Mayor Mike Bloomberg:
On Monday Bloomberg weighed in on the JFK bomb plot -- the one where a few Trinidadian ne'er-do-wells who didn't understand how the jet fuel pipelines worked thought they'd blow up the whole city.Bloomberg's lucid moment:
"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist."When a Republican puts a realistic spin on the wah on terra and goes off the GOP fear-mongering script, mark it down.
Sometimes a light flips on and ugliness scurries into view. Via Kevin Drum, two snips from reactions on the right to Tuesday's GOP presidential debate.
First, Andrew Sullivan slams Mitt Romney:
It's rare to see a fraud exposed quite as clearly in real time as the Republichameleon. So he's for making English the national language, but runs campaign ads in Spanish: an almost perfect representation of the plastic one's bullshit.Yup. Romney's actions don't match his words. Others have also noticed Mitty flip-floppery but full disclosure: They have another candidate in mind.
John Derbyshire inadvertently doubts the sincerity of John McCain:
It's getting really annoying hearing you call me your friend, John. When did I become your friend? "My friend" is what Third World bazaar traders call me when they want to sell me overpriced tchotchkes.Derbyshire in so many words described Mr. Straight Talking Express as a huckster. Shazam. Sometimes pundits on the right say the darndest things but somehow the media emphasize anger from the left side of the blogoshpere, not the right. Bias?
Back in the 1990s, Repub insiders spilled the beans about the so-called liberal media:
There is some strategy to it [bashing the liberal media] . . . . If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is "work the refs." Maybe the ref will cut you some slack on the next one. [GOP Chair Rich Bond, WaPo, Aug. 20, 1992, p.C1]
I've gotten balanced coverage, and broad coverage–all we could have asked. For heaven's sake, we kid about the "liberal media," but every Republican on earth does that." [Pat Buchanan, LATimes, Mar. 14, 1996]
I admit it. The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures. [William Kristol, New Yorker, May 22, 1995]So remember these insider admissions when you hear Repubs complain about liberal media bias. The record shows:
They know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across--or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs.As the saying goes, "All is fair in love and war," and politics is war so anything goes. Isn't it a shame? I have to open my pocket Ouija board to figure out WTF the political news reports really mean, to sift the spinology from the verifiable facts, to consider the history of the reporter--professional ties, ambitions, relationships in government, affiliations--and to parse what the cited sources anonymous or known are stating for the record. Who is also saying the same line? To whom? Why? Who can you trust?
...there's a reason why Billmon called [The New York Times] Pravda on the Hudson: we have to spend way too much time these days deciphering the news pages as if they are a bunch of ancient druid runes. I spend hours here and at other blogs trying to read between the lines and figure out what these reporters "really mean" because the conventions of modern journalism are so arcane that you have to be some sort of insider or psychic to know what the hell is actually going on. Just as I can't understand why I have to try to interpret why certain anonymous sources might be saying saying [sic] certain things and who they might be and what their real agenda is...And consider this:
The right has mau-maued the press by going aggressively in their face with everything they've got every time they write a word that can cause them trouble. And back in the day, they carefully fed the press the kind of tabloid scandal stories that made good copy and caused ratings to rise. They work this stuff from all angles.The Libby trial exposed how well Republicans "work the refs." That's what makes Lucid Moments™ so...
Sanely refreshing but, alas, so fleeting.
