The Media's Pathetic Double Standard
I think Joe Wilson is a boor (both Joe Wilsons, for that matter, the Republican House member from South Carolina and the former diplomat). I can't watch Glenn Beck for two minutes without being repulsed by his equal parts maudlin and pompous shtick. But members of Congress who are strangers to decorum and polite discourse, unfortunately, inhabit both parties' caucuses, in roughly equal numbers. President Bush labored through his state of the union addresses through loud and persistent boos by Democrats. Maxine Waters recently called some senators "Neanderthals," a term she reserved for moderate members of her own party. She's considerably less charitable to her Republican colleagues. And the ratings wars on cable television are won by self-aggrandizing, close-minded, loudmouthed conservatives and liberals, unless one thinks Keith Olbermann built his audience share on the strength of his good manners and tolerance.
Incivility by the left is treated differently in the press than incivility on the right. That's old news. When Bill Clinton was accused of having Vince Foster murdered, liberals went nuts blasting every conservative as a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Yet constant attacks on President Bush, including the disgusting claims that he (a) knew about 9/11 before it happened and let it happen to consolidate power, (b) led a war for oil, (c) wanted to jail dissidents and (d) pick your favorite nutjob argument, were considered simply being "energetic" and even informed.
Salter gives a variety of examples of the media's double standard when treating conservatives and liberals, but it allcomes down to this: if liberals protest, namecall, prosecute, slime, smear and blame Republicans for things, it's because they deserve it. If conservatives do any or all of the same, it's because they themselves are racists/xenophobes/haters/selfish/homophobes.
We have a word for this double standard here: Democrisy.
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