Insane radical pastor endorses McCain, pisses off insane radical anti-Semite

You have to hand it to the Huggy Bear campaign. When they fuck up, they really fuck up.

Just as the wingnuts were cranking up their pearl-clutching indignance about the Louis Farrakhan endorsement of Barack Obama, Huggy Bear not only accepted the endorsement of complete nutjob hyper-Christianist John Hagee, he appeared with Hagee personally in San Antonio (right) to announce said endorsement.

Hagee, you may remember, is the hideous cretin whose appearance in Melbourne, Fla., drew my wrath last fall and who, for example, denied global climate change and named Jimmy Carter as "the worst U.S. president in history" on the odious Glenn Beck's travesty of a talk show.

In a rich bit of schadenfreude, yet another complete nutjob, hyper-Catholicist Bill Donohue, has castigated Huggy for accepting Hagee's endorsement. This is the same Donohue whose bleats about incivility led to John Edwards' dismissal of two bloggers last year; Donohue himself exhibits his civility by such utterances as "Hollywood likes anal sex."

Catholics and evangelicals in open, confrontational opposition, with a healthy dose of hypocrisy thrown in on both sides? Pass the popcorn ...

De-pundit-izing the airwaves

Gaaaahhhhhhh!!

I just looked at the Palm Beach Post's website, and what do I see staring back at me but the unholy visage of Ann Coulter!



Whatever would cause the Post to inflict such pain upon its online readers? What have we done to justify such punishment?

It's a column naming the eight pundits, or as the column describes them, "screaming spin-meisters," who should be banished from cable teevee. And I am in firm agreement with Mark Schwed on this one:

1. Ann Coulter

2. William Donohue

3. Michael Musto

4. Al Sharpton

5. Juan Williams

6. Bernie Goldberg

7. Karl Rove

8. Dennis Miller

Definitely a rogue's gallery if ever there was one. Some of the descriptions are apt as well:

1. Ann Coulter

'I'm here. I'm not queer. And I'm not going away.'

Day job: syndicated columnist

Face time: on Fox, CNN and MSNBC

Her shtick: Verbal bomb-thrower

On 9/11 widows, "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much."

To a wounded Vietnam veteran, "People like you caused us to lose that war."

About the supremacy of Christians, "Jews need to be perfected."

On the planet, "God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.' "

Coulter, who owns a home in Palm Beach, is a verbal arsonist and it's made her rich. She knows what TV hosts want and she happily gives it to them. Even liberals such as MSNBC's Chris Matthews can't resist putting her on the air. It serves her pocketbook, but not her country, or her party.

2. William Donohue

'Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity ...'

Day job: president, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

Face time: On Fox, CNN and MSNBC

His shtick: Hollywood is the devil

Donohue sees conspiracies against Catholics everywhere he looks: movies, music, books, TV. And he's always ready with an outlandish quote, which makes him a favorite of any journalist on a tight deadline. But he's usually wrong.

For instance, he suggested that Hollywood wanted to sabotage Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of Christ. The movie went on to become a blockbuster. Just recently, he called for a boycott of The Golden Compass because it promotes "atheism for kids." Parents ignored him, and the movie shot to No. 1 at the box office in its first week.

[...]

6. Bernie Goldberg

'Journalists ... will go after their liberal grandmother if they thought it would help their careers.'

Day job: Author, former CBS News journalist

Face time: Fox, especially The Factor and Hannity & Colmes

His shtick: Rails against liberal media bias

After putting in 28 years as an award-winning CBS News journalist, Goldberg has found a gold mine in his second career: trashing the media as liberal. But if that's true, how did Goldberg get a job? Even when presented with facts - such as, in 16 of the last 18 elections, newspapers went overwhelmingly for Republicans - Goldberg sticks to his guns.

Actually, it's Goldberg's bias that is showing, as in this quote: "I admire Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly a lot because they're stand-up guys." They also make him a frequent guest in their shows, which helps him sell lots of books. Coincidence?

7. Karl Rove

'I've got to do this for the sake of my family.'

Day job: Unemployed

Face time: Fox and PBS

His shtick: Defender of George W. Bush

The man lauded as the architect of George Bush's presidency has resigned. He's writing a book and popping up on cable news to offer his views. One little problem: Bush's Brain may have amnesia.

Whether it's about who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, or who actually pushed the Iraq war resolution, Rove is confused. Recently, on Charlie Rose's PBS show and again on Fox News Sunday, Rove claimed it was Democrats in Congress and not Bush who wanted to rush a vote on the Iraq war in 2002. "I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong," Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary at the time, told The Washington Post. He's being very polite. Let's hope cable executives will realize that, even on TV, facts do matter.

8. Dennis Miller

'I'm a Rudy guy. I think that Rudy, as far as terrorism goes, is just entering his peak killing years.'

Day job: Radio host

Face time: Fox's The Factor and Hannity & Colmes

His shtick: It's Miller Time!

When Miller did fake news for Saturday Night Live, he could be brilliant. Now that he does real news, Miller has turned bitter. He especially hates Nancy Pelosi, Rosie O'Donnell, John Edwards and all Democrats.

Since when does telling a few jokes qualify someone to be a political expert (or football commentator, for that matter)? Miller is still smart. But he's lost his way. Perhaps he should take a lesson from the late, great Johnny Carson: no matter which political party is in charge, there will be plenty of material to work with.

Preach it, brother!

I haven't seen a lot of Coulter lately, which is always a good thing. Perhaps her tiresome, hateful screeds have been silenced for now, and even the wingnut broadcasters are finding that she's not worth the trouble. We can only hope ...

I'm not taking the fucking pledge!

I'm proud to declare Blast Off! an Officially Certified Incivil Blog™.

There's been a code of conduct promulgated for bloggers, and I'm defiantly opposed to it. Instead, I prefer this non-pledge from a non-blog:

We fucking celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces words like 'fuck' and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean we can't have fun and swear like sailors. We present this Holy Fucking Pledge in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation. One can say naughty words and insult one's mom without losing points in the discussion.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to call stupid people names when they fucking annoy us.

2. We won't tell anybody to fuck off if we wouldn't tell them to fuck off in person.

3. If tensions escalate, we will start a metablogpissingmatch, if only to generate traffic.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we escalate and get more personal and nasty.

5. We allow anonymous comments because who the fuck really cares? It's a goddamned blog.

6. We troll other sites for shits and giggles.

7. We encourage parody sites because if you can't take a fucking joke, you're a goddamned moran and shouldn't be blogging.

Look, a blog is a blog. Nothing more. It's a place for a blogger like me to rant about anything I want. I'm fortunate to have some regular readers (and commenters, which I lurrrrrrrve), and blogging has given me a chance to meet some really terrific people in places like Nashville, Tallahassee, and New Orleans.

But it's a blog. Whether or not I'm civil has nothing to do with anything. Besides, why should I be civil when the Vice Fucking President is telling a senator to go fuck himself and when the Fucking Preznit is referring to a member of the press as a "major-league asshole?" Bill Donohue might have gotten John Edwards to kowtow, but not me, ace.

Fuck civility. I'm uncivil, and that's the way it goes. Deal with it.

A blogger energy crisis?

Interesting commentary posted today by Ari Melber of The Nation, discussing the recent John Edwards blogger beat-down and how "Democrats should focus on tapping bloggers' energy while managing their passion ...."

The fight was not so much about religion or online obscenity as power. The netroots are the most aggressive, ascendant force in progressive politics, wielding more members, money and media impact than most liberal organizations. In the 2006 election cycle, MoveOn alone spent more than every other liberal political action committee except the prochoice EMILY's List. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, online donors gave Kerry $82 million in 2004, and Democrats expect much more in 2008. (Bush pulled only $14 million from the web.) And now top bloggers--like Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas and Glenn Greenwald--have hundreds of thousands of readers, successful books and a bully pulpit in print and broadcast media.

Republicans cannot stop the donations or pressure the media into ignoring liberal bloggers. Instead, the GOP has tried to drive a wedge between Democratic leaders and the netroots by attacking bloggers--and their readers--as an extreme vitriolic embarrassment. During the midterms, the Republican National Committee repeatedly attacked Democratic candidates for accepting netroots donations and working with bloggers, even distributing a six-page "research" brief maligning Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos. Conservative operatives recently floated smears of anti-Semitism at MoveOn [see Eric Alterman, "No Comment," October 30, 2006], Republican donor Bob Perry sank $1 million into a new group devoted to battling MoveOn and Bill O'Reilly regularly denounces the "far left websites." The strategy is to scare Democratic politicians away from tapping their motivated base.

Some Democrats are falling into the trap. Reviewing the Edwards affair, a former aide to Joe Lieberman advised the party to refuse bloggers access and "deny them jobs that confer party approval." Somewhere, Bill Donohue was smiling. As it turned out, the netroots were not upset with Edwards, but plenty of Democrats were upset with the netroots.

Of course, the staffers' blog entries were uncivil. [Catholic League president and certified asshole Bill] Donohue used them precisely because they were offensive to disinterested people. But the same goes for Donohue's past slurs, or Vice President Cheney dropping f-bombs on the Senate floor. Political debates are fierce, online and off.

I'm not sure I'd agree that "the staffers' blog entries were uncivil," at least not by the standards of the blogosphere. Indeed, I think most disinterested people would find Donohue's statements (such as "Hollywood likes anal sex" and that Catholics who vote for John Kerry "cooperate in evil") even more offensive.

Here's the thing: like all media, you tailor your message to your audience. I and many other liberal bloggers operate in an environment where it's okay to say "fuck" and to call people like Donohue an "asshole." In short, we are adults, and if you don't like what you read here, go somewhere else. Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan surely wouldn't have written on Edwards' blog in the same manner as they did on their personal blogs, nor would I in a similar situation.

In short, what Donohue was doing, and what Edwards tacitly (or not so tacitly) supported, was censorship ... not prior restraint per sé, but certainly the bloggers were punished (Don't tell me "they resigned, they weren't fired." You know that dog won't hunt.) for views they had expressed before there was even a scintilla of suggestion that they would be working on Edwards' campaign in an official capacity. Sure, it may have been politically motivated, but censorship is censorship, regardless of the impetus.

Where were all the pearl-clutchers when Cheney told Patrick Leahy to fuck himself? Or when Drunky McStagger called a reporter a "major-league asshole?" The purity gauge cuts both ways, doesn't it? Or is it okay if you're a Republican?

While I don't agree with everything Melber says, I do share his basic premise, which I interpret to be that the benefits of bloggers supporting a candidate or an issue outweigh the negatives, and that Democrats -- who historically have made far better use of blogs and bloggers for issue advocacy and fund raising than have Republicans -- ought to stop bowing to right-wing pressures and, as Melber puts it, "disregard the self-serving complaints of their opponents."

Thus does Melber write for his audience. On the other hand, I would word it differently, for my audience: Democrats need to strap on some balls and stop taking it up the ass from the Republic Party.

(Well, there goes my chance to be a campaign blogger.)