It's things like the following article that sicken me. Why would anyone want to associate themselves with liberal Democrats? Talk about the politics of personal destruction! This is an amoral party with an amoral leader.
1998: Another Year of Liberal Slanders
by Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe December 31, 1998
THE WORST POLITICAL SLUR OF 1998, to judge by the media attention it drew,
was uttered by Al D'Amato, New York's Republican senator. In a private
meeting with supporters during his re-election campaign last fall, D'Amato
called his Democratic opponent, Rep. Charles Schumer-cover your eyes,
children-a "putzhead."
Now, it is not nice to call people "putzhead," and I wasn't sorry to see
D'Amato spanked for his boorish language. But it is also not nice to call
people white-sheeted racists, yet so far as I know, none of my media
brethren spanked Illinois Senator Carol Mosely-Braun when she implied that
George Will, the noted commentator, belonged to the Klan.
"I think because he could not say 'nigger,' he said the word 'corrupt,' "
Mosely-Braun offered by way of rebutting Will's columns about her many
ethical lapses. "George Will can just take his hood and go back to wherever
he came from." (In fact, Will hadn't said the word "corrupt.")
Why did Moseley-Braun's vile slander get a pass while D'Amato's crudity
became a national story? Because in one case, a liberal insulted a
conservative, while in the other, a liberal was insulted by a conservative.
I devote a column each December to illustrating the pervasive double
standard by which liberals are permitted to say vicious things about
conservatives-things that would get a conservative beheaded by sundown if he
said it about a liberal.
In Salem, Mass., the superintendent of schools declared that Barbara
Anderson-the state's leading taxpayer activist-"should be tried for murder"
for her opposition to raising property levies. In Berkeley, Calif.,
advocates for the homeless denounced bookseller Andy Ross-who campaigned to
keep vagrants from sitting and lying in the streets-as a "fascist," and
defended the swastikas that were painted in front of his store. In
Washington, Republican foes of a campaign finance bill were likened to
"terrorists" by Gwen Ifill, a reporter for NBC.
This is liberal hate speech, and I choose the word "hate" advisedly.
Conservatives tend to view liberals as people whose views are profoundly
misguided, people woefully in need of straightening out. But liberals are
more likely to see conservatives as hateful-people whose views should be
suppressed, not debated, people who deserve only contempt. (David Horowitz,
the ex-radical who famously had second thoughts about the Left when he
viewed the wreckage of the Sixties, brilliantly analyzes and explains this
phenomenon in his razor-sharp new book, The Politics of Bad Faith.)
This is why Alan Dershowitz, a formidable liberal who defends rapists and
murderers, could publicly curse congressmen who voted for impeachment as
"the forces of evil. Evil. Genuine evil." This is why Tom Shales, the
Washington Post's gifted TV critic, could suggest of Independent Counsel
Kenneth Starr: "Beneath the dullness lies pure evil." This is why liberal
talk show host Phil Donahue could go postal during a conversation about
politics "and begin shouting," as the New York Post reported this month,
"how much he hated Republicans."
Moseley-Braun wasn't the only liberal to sling the racism mudball in 1998.
Charles Rangel, the congressman from Harlem, smeared Republicans in May.
"Don't you believe that they don't want to dismantle the Social Security
system. They are afraid to come out from under their hoods and attack us
directly." The novelist E. L. Doctorow compared Bill Clinton's critics to
the murderers in Jasper, Texas: "The President of the United States [is]
being dragged through the town by a pickup."
Keith Olbermann of MSNBC identified Lauch Fairthcloth, the conservative
North Carolina senator, as "one of the junior Grand Wizards of the vast
right-wing conspiracy."
And then there was the pre-election radio spot aired in St. Louis: "When
you don't vote, you let another church explode. When you don't vote, you
allow another cross to burn. When you don't vote, you let another assault
wound a brother or sister. . . . Paid for by the Missouri Democratic Party."
Repugnant stuff. Yet liberals routinely get away with injecting it into the
public discourse. Just ask Starr, who would have been crucified if he had
hurled at his critics the sickening libels many of them hurled at him.
Olbermann, the MSNBC commentator, announced in August that Starr made him
think of Heinrich Himmler, who ran the Gestapo for Hitler. In February,
Larry King also compared him to Nazis. In October, Vanessa Redgrave also
compared him to Nazis.
Indeed, it sometimes seems as if liberals can't look at a conservative or a
Republican without seeing the SS. The GOP decision to block a vote on
censuring Clinton, US Rep. Tom Lantos of California snarled, is something
one would expect "in Hitler's parliament." When New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
displeased an artists' association, it publicly depicted him with a Hitler
moustache.
But for sheer poison, nothing compares with the diatribe uncorked by Alec
Baldwin on The Conan O'Brien Show. A liberal activist and staunch Clinton
supporter, the actor was condemning the Republicans on the House Judiciary
Committee.
"If we were in other countries," he shouted, "we would all right now, all of
us together-all of us together would go down to Washington and we would
stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! Wait! . . . I'm not
finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes
and we'd kill their wives and their children! We would kill their families!"
That is hate speech so monstrous, the outcry against it should have cost
Baldwin his career. But Baldwin is a liberal. So of course there was no
outcry, and his incitement cost him nothing.
© 1998 Globe Newspaper Company
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