Not too busy celebrating Domenech's warp speed demise to appreciate the follies of other conservatives, I hope. Here's my response to Ann Coulter's latest column
http://www.anncoulter.com/...
in which she drags out that favorite Republican canard in order to scapegoat it for her President's problems.
The liberal east-coast author, columnist and blogger Eric Alterman calls it "working the refs." Alterman graciously credits the term to Republican activist Rich Bond, who invented it, unless anybody happened to think of it independently first.
This essay is about clichés, some of them truisms, some of them myths. Some are self-evident; some are doublethink. In an interesting juxtaposition of timing, if hardly a coincidence, a popular progressive website hosted an informal contest: of all the misleading conservative talking points, which is your favorite?
There were lots of entries. While the FOX News (who else?) caption "Civil War in Iraq: actually a good thing?" was deemed the most hilarious, the winner by overwhelming consensus was "the liberal media."
The tired old boogeyman was recently revived (if indeed it ever went away) by increasingly desperate Republican politicians, operatives, and one Ann Coulter, who is nothing if not unoriginal. That would be the same liberal media intimidated into not questioning, not demanding, not objecting to shoddy "intelligence" forming the basis of a God-forsaken, counterproductive, intractable war. That liberal press, which understands that in order to maintain access to interviewees quoted in its articles, it must be generous with its benefit of the doubt.
And that liberal press, which, recovering from countless instances of timidity toward the administration, now belatedly races to catch up with public disgust, finally allowing the question, "What do you believe, our insistence that it's not as bad as you think, or what you can see for yourself?" To which the thunderous answer is "We believe ourselves." We believe we're worse off than we used to be; we believe vital social programs we may rely on, or know someone who does, are being defunded as a result of skewed priorities. And, as for what we can't experience directly (that would be the war), we believe the footage we see, the reports from returning soldiers, the expert analyses of military personnel, particularly those demoted or discharged for their frank, pessimistic assessments. In this case, we even believe the President, who, in his admission that the troops won't be leaving Iraq anytime soon, all but acknowledged the mess he created.
In times of trouble, count on Ann Coulter to resort to underhanded tactics. (In flourishing times, she'll use them as well.) Flip the action and reaction, reverse cause and effect. A weary, skeptical citizenry became so not through its own observations, but through a manipulative, undermining, liberal media determined to accelerate the administration blundering its way to irrevocable failure. Pretend that the media didn't bail out, lest its remaining credibility mirror public disapproval of the nation's leaders. And by all means neglect to point out that if a majority of journalists voted for Gore and Kerry, journalists aren't in charge. Editors, governed by the corporations which literally own them, decide what is said, how it is said, and what is omitted, guided by their best judgment of what will sell. When the public supports the administration, the media becomes the echo. When the public revolts, here come Ann Coulter et. al. to allege that it's the media's fault.
Confusing the issue further is the phenomenon "working the refs." As Alterman describes, appeal the case to the person arranging the debate. On a political talk show, for instance, you can't have one opponent declaring that the earth circles the sun without the other retorting, no, it's the other way around. (Yes, it's almost that ludicrous. For a real-life parallel, look no further than the pending legislation requiring raped women in South Dakota to bear their rapists' children.)
Scream "liberal media" at the newspapers until every last editor balances every perceived liberal columnist with a conservative one, every left-leaning letter to the editor with a right-leaning one. Now hurl the accusation even louder, until the offending editors, hopefully consumed by liberal guilt, neutralize every liberal with two conservatives, and on and on, to adjust for the fact that the media itself is liberal. Need I mention it's the same media who tread lightly on the administration for five full years?
Is it ever enough? No. Are they ever satisfied? Of course not. What ref-workers work assiduously to prevent the refs from realizing is that the game they're actually playing is what I call "Kiss my fanny; I'll kick yours harder." The more you try to please me, the more I condemn you for not trying hard enough." Which, by definition, never ends.
Coulter, of course, plays her own games. This one's called "I'll keep fooling my dwindling fans until there's no one left to fool."