CNN Surprisingly Critical

I don't think the teabaggers are really worth my time, or anybody else's. They're transparent astroturfing by Dick Armey, nothing more.

But I have to admit that I was very impressed when I saw CNN's Susan Roesgen absolutely carve them up over their excesses. An incoherent idiot repeating slogans about how Obama's a "fascist"—without being able to explain why—was probably the highlight, but she dished it out to all involved. It was a very brave act: you can see how they're attempting to vocally and physically intimidate her, but she wouldn't let herself be intimidated. All she had was contempt. And rightly so.

Here's the embed from media matters.



As others have pointed out, it's incredible that the right has been able to get away with such clear and unmistakable attempts to call Obama a Nazi, whereas the faintest intimation of the same from the left a few years ago was met with media outrage. Digby believes that it's because the right works the media better, and I think there's something to that. I think there's something to that.

But I also believe it's a dog-bites-man scenario. Everybody has become so used to the right projecting its own fascist tendencies—and lets not mince words, the rhetoric of the right these days is fascist as hell—that they don't really pay much attention to it anymore. Sure, they could get mad, but they won't apologize, won't stop doing it, and have a series of pat answers if confronted with it. Even if it's as weak as Glenn Beck's "I'm just an entertainer" line, they know it'll be repeated often enough and strenuously enough that it'll simply become boring. They're not in the business of informing or confronting, they're in the business of keeping people from being bored. So they move on to whatever else is interesting, and leave Glenn and his ilk to their tirades.

The problem is that the Obama presidency is less than four months old, and they're already at this stage. What the hell is America going to look like by this time next year?