File this diary under "false equivalences". I just finished watching an interview with author John Avlon on CNN regarding his new book, Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Destroying America. I've linked you to the Amazon page not so that you can buy the book necessarily, but to see who is featured on its cover: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and, yes, that's Keith Olbermann. Keith Olbermann is now categorized as a "wingnut".
Avlon is a contributor to the Daily Beast and is apparently now a regular commentator on CNN, with a feature called "Wingnut of the Week". (See the American Morning page and look on the lower left side for this feature.) I suppose that this is CNN's attempt to market itself as the moderate voice, poised between MSNBC and Fox News, both of which are implicated in Avlon's book.
I have not read Wingnuts (nor will I read it, in all likelihood), but I can summarize very briefly for you here the author's comments on his work. Avlon maintains that the demagoguery espoused by pundits on both the right and left is destroying any possibility for dialogue between the parties. What we need, he says, is a new push for moderate voices to take over the center. I am not going to take up this central premise of the book: it's his opinion, and a boring one at that. What I'd like to examine is his definition of a "wingnut" and his need to appear even-handed to include left-leaning figures like Olbermann.
The very term "wingnut", as I recall, was invented by us folks on the left to describe the irrational followers of right-wing ideology. Common usage of the term gives us a clue to its recent invention. The fact is that people on the right do not use the term "wingnuts" to describe us. Last I heard, they were calling us "moonbats", but that was at least 3 or 4 years ago. Indeed, if we look at the wiki entry for the term "wingnut", it says in the second sentence, "In American politics, the term is more often aimed at members of the political right than those of the political left." More often? I would say "almost always". The page also provides a link to the term "moonbat" which provides the simple definition, "Moonbat is a term used in United States politics as a political epithet referring to social liberals or leftists." Going back to the entry on wingnuts, wiki suggests that the term is used primarily to describe those on cable television and talk radio." The entry does not discuss the term's invention or use in the blogosphere.
Am I just nitpicking? No. Avlon has purposely appropriated the term to refer to people of extreme views on both the right and the left in order to make his book palatable to that mythical "center". Because as we know, the well-known voices of progressive politics, those denigrated as "wingnuts" by Avlon, can be counted on one hand, and most of them work for MSNBC. And if those people are left extremists, then I've got a commune for you to join.
So let's get to Avlon's prime example of lefty wingnuttery, our dear Keith Olbermann. Yes, he is polemical and confrontational, aspects which I assume do not appeal to Avlon's ideal of political discourse. But are Olbermann's views really extreme? Let's face it, he spends most of his time bashing Republicans, but only to point out the lack of rationality or the hypocrisy in views on their part. What does Olbermann actually promote as his views? Since I'm a regular viewer, I'd say that he's a strong supporter of a national health care plan and he wants to end the war in Iraq. These are the two issues featured most frequently on this program. I fail to see what is "fringe" about either of those views, considering that a majority of Americans recently elected a President to deal precisely with those two issues. How is this remotely comparable to the views of and the rhetoric by the extreme right, those we've traditionally called "wingnuts"?
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and a host of bloggers and elected politicians have earned that title because they regularly suggest ridiculous and irrational ideas, ranging from our country's fall into a Communist state under Obama, to the evils of illegal immigration, to the refutation of climate change and other scientifically-proven theories. Further, and perhaps more importantly, it is the right that occupies the majority of political attention in the media. The emergence of a handful of commentators like Olbermann is a recent event. They simply do not have the political sway that those on the right have. Oh yeah, Alan Grayson is featured in Avlon's book as well. As much as we'd like him to have a great influence on Democratic politics, unfortunately he just doesn't yet. I don't see any Democratic politicians apologizing to him or Olbermann, as Republican politicians do on a regular basis to Rush Limbaugh.
I'm not outraged about this book or its premise. I just think that Avlon is being disingenuous about who is responsible for the decay of political dialogue in the U.S.