Sunday, April 15, 2007

Civilitude

Digby:

I have a few quibbles with what she said about the "Culture of Meanness", however, which I fear will be interpreted as "being rude." On the McLaughlin Report last night Tony Blankley repeatedly brought up the fact that "liberals" say horrible things about President Bush and Dick Cheney as a corollary to the Imus matter. To any sentient person, this is ridiculous, and Blankley is a total partisan so his views are tainted. But I don't think it will stop with him. You have to remember that we are talking about the elite political media, which reflexively seeks an equivalency between both sides as a way of appearing impartial. There is probably going to be a concerted effort among many of these embarrassed media types to find "intolerant" language on the left to show that "both sides do it", even as the right works desperately to hang Imus on us, despite the fact that it makes no sense. Liberals called out the elite media for consorting with jackasses and they aren't going to forgive us for it any time soon. Just a word of warning...


Judging from some of the elite media commentary (cough, howie kurtz, cough), it's clear that they are unable to distinguish (or pretending to be) between racy humor and racist humor, between jokes about sex and sexism, picking on powerful public figures versus picking on powerless private ones, etc. I can never tell if this obtuseness is genuine, or cultivated, but either way it's their story and they're going to stick to it.