MATTHEWS: But isn't this a defeat of the leaders? I mean, you had Harry Reid working in league with the People for the American Way, the most pro-choice, most fanatical liberal groups in the country, who are pestering all members like yourself with this absolutism.Dobson supports theocracy. PFAW has never sought to undermine the very foundation of the republic, and has (to the best of my knowledge) always expressed its views in a moderate, understated fashion. Any attempt to posit PFAW as a counterpart to Dobson's "Focus on the Family" is odious. (Thanks to a reader for this one.)
On the other side, you have people like James Dobson, the same kind of right-wing, if you will, absolutism from the conservative church groups, demanding 100-percent loyalty, “We have to have pro-life judges.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Fanatical?
Chris Matthews -- one of the few cable newsmen to gain a reputation as a non-propagandist -- recently refered to People For the American Way as "fanatical." That's a little like referring to Caspar the Friendly Ghost as a "violent hothead." Worse, his recent comments lumpPFAW together with James Dobson:
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4 comments:
I don't believe Matthews is a fair reporter. I consider him to be pretty slimy.
However, I don't know that PFAW has always been moderate in tone.
I like them, I like Ralph Combover Neas, but it's not clear to me that they always play it down the line.
Matthews may not be a propagandist, but he's as doctrinnaire and self-intoxicated as the worst of them. If PFAW is a radical group of the left -- last time I checked, they weren't advocating an end to private property or the revocation of corporate charters -- you have to ask where the center is, according to him. Somewhere between Bill Frist and Trent Lott?
The truly funny part is, mainstream American Republicanism is to the right of neo-fascist parties in Europe (and virtually anywhere else in the world). By contrast PFAW is barely a few ticks left of center, if that.
sofla said...
Matthews, a reputation as a non-propagandist? On what alternate universe Earth was that? Matthews has been in the forefront of the anti-Clinton, anti-Gore, anti-Dean, and anti-Kerry right wing propaganda efforts, with extremely few exceptions.
He repeatedly shows reckless regard for the truth or evidence, often stacks a panel entirely one way, and is generally a font of disinformation and slander.
Bob Somerby's site, dailyhowler.com, has the chapter and verse on Chris 'The Screamer' Matthews, which see.
The sloppy broadbrush error or intentional smear you see here is typical of his commentary. It's hard to know if he's doing it on purpose, as he may be genuinely that stupid.
Never forget that the right wing's primary weapon is PROJECTION: attributing its own worst traits/fears to its opponents, whom it thinks of as enemies.
This is how fanaticism works. It started with "PC"---one of the cleveresst pieces of political propaganda of our age. The right, which itself is in lockstep and enforcing a rigid political line, accuses the divided, uncertain, mushysoft left of being "PC"---the very thing the left is not.
Follow it through all the other accusations from "feminazi" to "fanatic":
the right is projecting onto us all its own worst characteristics. And because people are uninformed (TV sees to that), they're getting away with it.
That's what Hitler & Co. did to the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and their own liberals, remember. It got 8 million of them killed (or whatever the real number may have been)and took twelve years, including a four-year World War, to straighten out.
Only it never really got straightened out. We imported the Nazis in Operation Paperclip, saw to it that they went to work for the right wing, and now they're called the Republican Party.
As for the political center, they've shifted it somewhere into the Joe McCarthy bandwidth...remember former Sec. State John Mitchell said, "This country is going to go so far to the right you won't believe it." What did he know, way back there in the 70s, that we didn't?
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