Leftbloggers are not perfect. We have faults. We sometime overextend the hyperbole. Our outrage over right-wing bigotry can cross the line once in awhile. We lack the cohesion and teamwork of our right-wing counterparts. It is the last quality which is also one of our greatest.
While right wingers tend to repeat talking points, usually verbatim, from Republicans and Conservatives, leftbloggers and the few progressives in the MSM at least attempt to be original. Sure, we quote from the MSM. But we also interpret, make fun of the media and provide our own perspective. We make up our own titles and headings. The right loves to act as stenographers for the big boys like Fox News and National Review. Hell, they don't even bother changing their post titles from the original source!
That's why today it's a little discouraging to see much of the media and the rightosphere locked in a kind of cruel embrace, with a single message spread far and wide. The new meme is that the left is persecuting Romney for daring to challenge the president on his response to the Libya attack and Cairo demonstrations. Of course, that has nothing to do with it. The reality is that some in the media, and many key foreign policy experts in the Republican party for that matter, objected to the disgusting timing of Romney's outburst.
At first it was just a few of the more prominent right wingers - Kristol, Krauthammer, New York Post, Wall Street Journal - who not only voiced support for Romney's words but kept the lie alive that Obama apologized (I know, again with the 'apology' ruse) and worse, that he and the media have criticized Romney for speaking out against the White House.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The criticism leveled at Romney from Republicans as well as the media, is that he used the moment of a national tragedy to attack the president, disgracing both those who bravely died fighting terrorists and the living at the Cairo embassy. Of course, a presidential contender is welcome to criticize and point fingers. But that does not give him the right to politicize a tragedy, inflame an already combustible situation and endanger the lives of American living in the Middle East.
Today, the entire right wing of the media and the blogosphere has taken those initial clueless and premature comments and duplicated the sentiments and verbiage, as usual almost word for word. That there is no truth to these accusations - Obama did not apologize (neither did the Cairo embassy, to be exact) and he and the centrist media (and many Republican foreign experts, remember) are not criticizing Romney for being critical of the president but for his premature ejaculations on the night of the tragedy and the puzzling doubling down the next day.
It was the timing, stupid. That and the cold-blooded use of an ongoing tragedy to politicize an erroneous account of the actions of the Obama administration and embassy staff in Cairo and Libya in the wake of the news.
Most disappointing is the Ben Smith-edited site, Buzzfeed, which is increasingly becoming a tool of the machinery of the right-wing echo chamber. You remember Smith, don't you? He was a savvy, close-to-progressive voice at conservative Politico (and don't get me started on right wing vs. progressive charges - both Buzzfeed and Politico have a 90% wingnut stable of commenters - I'd say that makes them conservative) but has crafted Buzzfeed to be a megaphone for every crazy distortion the rightosphere can invent.
The irony of right wingers, so full of free speech bravado, claiming that the media and Obama don't want to be criticized, is just another line of BS. (This is how the right really reacts to criticism and more importantly facts themselves.) You can see that today with a widely-disseminated Buzzfeed 'article' that says in effect, Obama did it too! But Obama didn't do it, too. Yes, he criticized the Iraq war and Bush. BUT HE DIDN'T CRITICIZE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IN THE OPENING THROES OF THE INVASION.
Got that, wingnuts. And media, smarten up. Get with the program. You're embarrassing yourselves, deliberately falling for lies and then gleefully spreading them. Stop it. Just stop it.
X-posted at Let Freedom Rain.
