Sometimes, it merits a moment to consider the source of attacks. Where is DLC Chair Harold Ford getting his material about Daily Kos as harboring anti-Semites and is there anything that we can do about it?
Almost certainly, this dates from something that is ancient history for most Americans and outside the remembrance of that astute bunch, the political reporter: a Wall Street Journal article just over a year ago by Lieberman supporter Lanny Davis.
Liberal McCarthyism: Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore.
That OPED tarred Daily Kos and other Lieberman opponents / Lamont supporters as anti-Semites. Perhaps it had things that were true, but it certainly was not truthful, as per the discussion after the fold, Davis relied on abusive mis-representation and cherry-picking to support his truthiness.
Davis' OPED appeared 8 August 2006 and, as might be expected amid the passion of the Lamont-Lieberman contest (as if anyone here was paying attention to that sideline item), it sparked a number of excellent diaries, such as this one by Dump Terry McAuliffe.
In his OPED, Davis (an attorney) cherry-picked from Daily Kos' millions of comments to find anti-Semitic ones and to tar 100,000s with the words of a few. Defense of the site has been, basically, that this is a large community, a democracy/democratic conversation as per Markos facing a flustered Harold Ford this morning:
REP. FORD: But, but, Markos, in all fairness, your site has posted awful things about Jewish-Americans. ...
MR. MOULITSAS: It's called democracy. If you don't like regular people--hundreds of thousands of people...
Because I don't control hundreds of thousands of voices.
This is true and truthful, but it is not the full truth. Because a fuller truth is (a) that the citations to the community were false in representation and (b) the community (not Markos) acted to remove the hateful material from the discussion.
Let us follow the trail of several comments. From Lanny Davis's truthiness OPED:
My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.
Perfect opening for a WSJ OPED which, let me remind you, came from a man identified for the WSJ's right-wing community as an arch partisan Democrat because he is a "former special counsel to President Clinton". So a partisan Democratic Party leader (sort of like Ford publishing in the WSJ and appearing on Fox) thinks those "liberals" are nasty. (By the way, note that Davis is a careerist at attacking Daily Kos, as per his appearance on O'Reilly before Yearly Kos.)
In any event, as proof, Davis quotes five anti-Semitic comments, three from Daily Kos:
- "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).
- On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).
- "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).
Guess what, these are real quotes. They did appear here. Adonai, I thought, when I first read them just over a year ago, what is going on here. Well, as a Kossack, I decided to check them out. From my posting to Dump Terry McAuliffe's diary:
But, the true disgusting nature of Lanny Davis is that he totally quoted Tomjones out of context. Check the post with its parent:
Why Should Joe Care (0.97 / 40)
....about a bunch of goyim dying in Iraq?
It's not like anybody he cares about is suffering as a direct result of the war.
by greenskeeper on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 01:53:09 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
right (3.63 / 11)
because as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on
by tomjones on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 02:04:20 PM PDT
In other words, TomJones was responding with sarcasm to a post that was troll rated!!! [NOTE: Massively troll-rated.] Talk about selective quotation!!
PS: Should speak for him/herself, but I see "TomJones" is probably Jewish based on some of the posts that I saw.
The other comment that Lanny Davis quotes, of course, was Greenskeeper's response to TomJones sarcasm:
Lieberman Marched for Lieberman (1.57 / 28)
....because he saw political advantage. More recently, he has supported the racist views of Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve.
In 2000, while running for VP, Lieberman made public statements to the effect that belief in god is the only basis for morality and ethics.
Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot.
And as I have argued elsewhere, Lieberman is as representative of Jewish people as Strom Thurmond was of white Christian Americans. No more and no less.
White Americans of good faith publicly separated themselves from Thurmond and his ilk. It is incumbent on Jewish Americans of good faith to publicly distance themselves for Joe Lieberman, lest they wish to be thought apologists for his racism, religious bigotry, and callous indifference to torture and carnage.
by greenskeeper on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 02:12:04 PM PDT
Note that this had a 1.57 rating with 28 raters (can't get to the list to see who gave recommend). [NOTE: For you who were not around with this system, it was quite hard to get that low a score. The .97 was a massive TR and this was a heavy Troll-Rating under the old system. Non-TUs could give as low as a 1, thus non-TUs actually were uprating the first comment by giving it the lowest possible score.] And, what were responses to Greenskeeper, how about:
so let me get this straight... (none / 0)
...you're suggesting that since you believe Lieberman is a bigot, that makes it okay for you to be a bigot right back???
Brilliant.
by odum on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 02:21:01 PM PDT
and
There was no mention of Lieberman's merits or lack thereof, just a throwaway post.
The post didn't make the case that Lieberman was a bigot, it simply put his jewishness front and center as a standalone attack in-and-of-itself.
When challenged by the suggestion that this wasn't an adequate basis for an attack, he then justified the post with the after-the-fact argument/suggestion that Lieberman was a bigot, and therefore the attack was justified. Again, the original attack was based ONLY on his ethnicity. It was one line.
...and then, he further demanded that all other Jews should stand up and be counted against Lieberman lest they be judged harshly.
This aint good.
by odum on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 04:59:27 PM PDT
and
Wrong. (4.00 / 5)
Once upon a time Joe literly risked his life by going down South to help register black voters so your Strom Thurmond remark is particularly disgusting.
Joe is a great disappoint to us all on Iraq but that doesn't mean that he is a bigot or a racist.
by Sam I Am on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 03:27:57 PM PDT
or
I think (none / 0)
that this is an utterly reprehensible comment. There should be no place for anti-Semitism on this site.
by mattinla on Wed Dec 07, 2005 at 07:27:54 PM PDT
Lanny Davis merits a factual counterbalancing -- with serious letters to the WSJ calling for fact checking against their deplorable OPEDs.
Yes, Lanny Davis quoted real words. Thus, his writing was true. But it certainly was not, in anyway, truthful in its truthiness to make 'the case' for his client Joe.
And, well, perhaps like an attorney in the courtroom, Davis does not seem to care about the collateral damage from his truthiness in defending that client, that day.
Sadly, of course, there was no space in the Wall Street Journal for corrections.
Ford is almost certainly relying on Davis' truthiness claims of blog anti-semitic attacks on Lieberman. Where Davis published in the WSJ an OPED pulling out-of-context quotations and (massively) troll-rated comments to argue that Daily Kos was anti-semetic, that 'mainstreaming' of a lie (truthiness) masquerading as honest discourse, Ford (and, others, such as O'Reilly) continue to peddle such disinformation without a factual counterbalancing.
Mea culpa for this long set of quotes, but it is important to thread back to where these lies originated. And, well, O'Reilly's people clearly learned from Lanny Davis as to how to abuse Daily Kos. And, from what I can tell, Davis has not suffered due to his dishonesty in creating a truthiness that simply is not truthful. And, we should remember -- while finding it interesting -- that the DLC is most comfortable not just appearing in the pages of the WSJ and on Fox shows, but in using those as their sources of information.
With friends like Davis and Ford, ...