The militant miscreant wing-nut James O’Keefe’s latest sting LINK came at the expense of the leadership of NPR and resulted in the resignation of Vivian Schiller, its CEO. Schiller, because of her dumb handling of the controversial 2010 Juan Williams dismissal, probably deserved it. Juan Williams, as well, deserved his ass-kicking. There ought to be a law prohibiting miscegeny between News Corporation and CPR. There are plenty of statutory examples on this subject on display below the Mason-Dixon line.
O’Keefe, one may recall, was arrested last year in a futile exploit against Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. O’Keefe and his posse–in and out of the Tea Party movement–are emblematic of the assault the nation is under from the janissaries of the right involving established areas of progressive public discourse and policy that one presumed were untouchable.
And how easy it has been for these people to mount their campaign.
First, using Dick Armey and others, let’s create a “grassroots” movement– “Americans for Prosperity”–funded by the odd and oligarchic Koch brothers, Charles and David; then combine this alliance (motivated not because of reform of health care, but on racialist indignation at the prospect of a family of African-American Democrats in the White House–just as Ron Schiller suggested in the O’Keefe video) with that traditional source of Republican sanguinity, the tax cut. The tax cut cures everything, including AIDS and dropsy. Sustain tax cuts for the top five percent of earners, enhanced with dramatic effect by a deep recession and a consequent massive decline in tax revenues everywhere, then whine about government spending, deficits, bail-outs and the national debt.
Then, let’s check off, one by one, a conservative’s laundry list of canards: public broadcasting, abortion, integrated schools and public schooling itself), Muslims and sharia law, regulation of banking and other industries, labor unions, the Consumer Protection Agency and the FTC……..and so on.
Third, use as exponents–in addition to the eternal squawk box of the right, Fox News–a freshly-elected crop of Republican ideologues, combined with the usual suspects, career politicians like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.
No one, of course, can trump the demagoguery of Glen Beck, who has recently been the object of scorn of a number of RINOs–to use the tea party’s sobriquet for them–like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. Beck has even surpassed Rush Limbaugh as uber Metropolitan of unorthodox conservative demagoguery and frequently emits gibberish that would make Father Coughlin blush. Fox News will be sure to help us.
As a nation, we now endure an orchestra of hyperbole and cynicism that includes, as the NY Times pointed out LINK , Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, who frequently makes statements that cannot be substantiated; and the vaunted governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker–notably, the son of a Baptist minister–who was caught on tape LINK conspiring in a telephone call with a man posing as Charles Koch. This is not to mention NY’s Congressman Peter King who is holding hearings, HUAC style, on home-grown Islamic terrorism. This hypocrite has been a known sympathizer with the IRA LINK; but one guesses that Irish terrorists are among the good guys. For one thing, they’re white. Can the reader imagine if a Democrat with King’s background was hosting such an event? Where is William Ayers, by the way?
Political grifter Newt Gingrich, he of the five-thousand dollar gavels and numerous discarded wives, is also in the choir, and is traipsing around the country using as a meme the fear of sharia law. Hot on his heels is yet another RW has been: former Senator Rick Santorum.
Ideologues abound at the local levels of government as well. Take note of Ron Margiotta, the chairman of the Wake County School Board and his fellow member, newly-elected, tea-party infused, Jon Tedesco LINK. Margiotta was recently recorded referring to people who disgareed with him at a school board meeting as “animals” LINK. Here is a tape of the actual remark. Right-wing ideologues and business interests are striving to alter the very notion of a diverse public education in Raleigh-Durham, NC LINK–one more detail in furtherance of the over-all conservative agenda.
If one recalls, the attempts made by members of Congress in 2009 to explain the details of the Affordable Health Care Act to their constituents in public meetings–that were frequently turned into raucous shouting matches by tea party thugs and Americans for Prosperity lackeys–became harbingers of our current national dialogue. Right-wingers are unable to compromise on anything and will force their values on the public unless they are met with vehement opposition.
