Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Moose Droppings

Scott Lemieux:
The DLC likes to complain about its reputation, but having people like Wittmann--somebody with reactionary positions on most economic and cultural issues, whose positions on foreign policy aren't so much liberal or conservative as living some kind of blood-drenched double life, and whose schtick consists almost entirely of uninformed, broadly drawn smears of actual moderate Democrats--act as a public face means that they've made their own bed.


In this sort of thing, Garance is correct. Pulling quotes from open forums is truly the stuff of wankers. Wittman's crocodile tears about anti-Semitic blog commenters are doubly ridiculous given that Wittman worked for the Christian Coalition when it was building itself on a foundation of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

As Michael Lind wrote:

In the 1990s, televangelist Pat Robertson, in the manner of the demagogic radio priest Father Coughlin in the 1930s, put together a powerful grass-roots political movement, the Christian Coalition, while disseminating the familiar ideology of the far right: a conspiracy theory blaming wars and revolutions on a secret cabal of Jewish bankers, Freemasons, Illuminati, atheists, and internationalists.


So, Wittman working for a guy pushing long-existing anti-Semitic nutjob conspiracy theories to build a political movement - no problem! Politicians failing to support Joe Lieberman when some unknown anonymous commenters on the internet with unknown motives are making anti-Semitic comments - the horrors!

Wittman is perhaps the most ridiculous figure in our contemporary political discourse.