So here I am. I watch Rev. Jeremiah Wright yesterday, and think he gives an excellent speech that makes him a much more human and well rounded character than he's been portayed as in the media. I guess I was watching something else. MyDD's Jerome Armstrong, a bitter Democrat posing as an "outsider" when he hasn't been anything like that for the past four years, who hasn't had anything useful to say since 2007 and who demands puritanical purity from fellow netizens, stated that Obama was now going to throw Rev. Wright under the bus, because Obama is clearly just a terrible person who pulled the wool over our eyes. Never mind that Obama put his career on the line by sticking with Rev. Wright.
Ok, I can dig that. Then I come here, and see Obama excoriated by Kos for giving succor to the enemy. To which I can only say:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU ARROGANT SONS OF BITCHES?
Now, before I get into full on rant mode, let me state straight up that I'm not a huge fan of Obama going on Fox News, from a legitimizing and from a tactical campaign perspective. That being said, the reaction to this apostasy is ludicrous, and is further evidence to the fact that bloggers are becoming just as big (but different) wankers as the folk they love to hate on in the media and inside the beltway.
What is most depressing about this sort of eating our own is that by every account Obama is a fairly progressive senator. He's voted for some not great bills, and his health care program isn't "universal" in the sense that health insurers will get to gouge everyone in America for coverage. He defended people who don't have our best interests at heart. He's still likely to be the most progressive president we've seen in the White House since Carter, if not since LBJ. So the hate for him isn't because he isn't one of us, he is. The hate is because he went on Fox News for a short period of time for the first time in a year, after having stonewalled them for a year after the Islamic Madrassa story broke. So Barack Obama is now Joe Lieberman in the eyes of Kos, Stoller, Armstrong, and their blind followers. He's committed the ultimate sin, talking to someone we don't like...
Which, if anyone has been paying attention to anything Obama's been saying over the course of the past 4 years, wouldn't be all that surprising. This is a man who has repeatedly defended a statement that he'd meet with dictators in North Korea and religious zealots in Iran without preconditions, because if we don't engage we have 0 chance of success. This is a man who has said throughout his campaigns that we need to go beyond the type of 50%+1 politics that has divided our nation since before watergate. He believes, correctly or not, that if you don't talk to the people who disagree with you (even the people who might not give a flying fuck about being fair, whether that's Brit Hume or Kim Jong Il) you're not going to have any chance of persuading them to work with you, on anything. And he believes that is simply unacceptable in the world we live in.
Of course, this won't be acceptable to those who view Republicans as something to be crushed and destroyed, and that people with an R next to their name are either the devil or savages to be converted to the light. Just like it's unacceptable to some who feel the same way about Muslims in Iran. And both groups have ridiculously inflated opinions of themselves, that their way is THE way and there is no other. Which makes for eerily similar mirror images. I'm sure some of us out there are proud of this.
If Kos et al want to be George W. Bush and rule without the consent of half of a nation, they should be open about it, instead of viciously turning on someone who steps out of line. Then at least he wouldn't be dishonest about his overall goals of maintaining a divided nation that focuses more on the tribalism of political affiliation than solving real problems. Until then, they're as false as Karl Rove's "compassionate conservativism." But if we actually want to improve every last persons life in this country and on God's green earth-
We should all get the fuck over ourselves.
