To: Little Joe who wrote (501593 ) 8/6/2009 4:44:42 PM From: tejek 1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) | Respond to A SHIFTING DEFINITION OF 'MAINSTREAM'.... Rush Limbaugh told his audience today, "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." Around the same time, Glenn Beck tried to link health care reform to Nazis. It was, in other words, a rather typical day for talk radio. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, at the time called the anonymously submitted video "the worst and most vile form of political hate speech." Traditional news outlets ran with this, charactering MoveOn as being extremists, and Democratic officials/candidates were pressured to distance themselves from the group. Some Dems did just that. These days, everyone from Republican senators to talk-radio hosts to conservative writers make the comparison with such frequency, it hardly registers as interesting anymore. Whereas the fake ad MoveOn had nothing to do with was considered scandalous, prominent Republican voices compare Obama to Hilter/Nazis with a routine casualness. It's just one of the standard conservative talking points, and no effort is made to keep Republican officeholders away from the extremists who use the line regularly. No one thinks Limbaugh, Beck, and their ilk are engaging in "the worst and most vile form of political hate speech," because we've all just become accustomed to their irresponsible rhetoric.
