Monday, October 23, 2006
Lie Alert
Ah, yes. The Republican lie machine is spitting out a new one, that “Democrats protest at military funerals,”. I read it printed in the letter column of our local Republican owned newspaper, heard it on a radio call-in and have been told that the august Washington Journal allowed a caller to spread it to a national audience without challenge a few days ago. That last one didn’t surprise me one little bit since back last spring Brian Lamb allowed Larry Craig (R-Idaho) to spread a variation on that theme, only instead of Democrats it was anti-war protesters who he claimed were disrupting military funerals. Funny, I’d always figured Fred Phelps for a right winger who put Ann Coulter’s last screed along side the Bible in his pews. But you know how rumors spread.
This is the bread and butter of conservative politics in our country, lies. We have to put a stop to this one because once it has entered into the realm of Republican talking points it will be repeated endlessly on call-ins and told by hate-talk jocks around the country. It will join everything from “Lady Bird Johnson is the half-sister of Coretta Scott King” to “The JS under Roosevelt on the dime is short for Joseph Stalin,”. Nothing is too clearly untrue or too absurd to not be spread for the political benefit of conservatives.
Unnoticed in this festival of falsehoods, it was Judge Karen K. Caldwell, a Bush appointee, who said that a law barring the Phelps style media stunts from marring funerals was “going too far”. I’ll bet you anything that she been declared a dishonorary Democrat.
Larry Craig, well, no surprise that someone living as big a lie as he has his entire life as a right-wing pol would have any trouble telling one that big. Brian Lamb's willingness to allow it might lead some to wonder why.
Ah, yes. The Republican lie machine is spitting out a new one, that “Democrats protest at military funerals,”. I read it printed in the letter column of our local Republican owned newspaper, heard it on a radio call-in and have been told that the august Washington Journal allowed a caller to spread it to a national audience without challenge a few days ago. That last one didn’t surprise me one little bit since back last spring Brian Lamb allowed Larry Craig (R-Idaho) to spread a variation on that theme, only instead of Democrats it was anti-war protesters who he claimed were disrupting military funerals. Funny, I’d always figured Fred Phelps for a right winger who put Ann Coulter’s last screed along side the Bible in his pews. But you know how rumors spread.
This is the bread and butter of conservative politics in our country, lies. We have to put a stop to this one because once it has entered into the realm of Republican talking points it will be repeated endlessly on call-ins and told by hate-talk jocks around the country. It will join everything from “Lady Bird Johnson is the half-sister of Coretta Scott King” to “The JS under Roosevelt on the dime is short for Joseph Stalin,”. Nothing is too clearly untrue or too absurd to not be spread for the political benefit of conservatives.
Unnoticed in this festival of falsehoods, it was Judge Karen K. Caldwell, a Bush appointee, who said that a law barring the Phelps style media stunts from marring funerals was “going too far”. I’ll bet you anything that she been declared a dishonorary Democrat.
Larry Craig, well, no surprise that someone living as big a lie as he has his entire life as a right-wing pol would have any trouble telling one that big. Brian Lamb's willingness to allow it might lead some to wonder why.
