“But you don’t hear the kind of truly vile hatefulness you constantly hear on the right”

LOL The sad thing is that you probably believe that.

Nice piece Kevin. A bit of quantification goes a long way to yielding the truth (except with folks like Fred, who seem to be impervious to facts they don’t want to hear).

Edwards response to this is interesting. He abhors the use of hurtful words against a group of people. Isn’t this the same person who refused to fire two staff members for their blatant anti-Christian blogs?

Please list the prominent democrats who disowned Jesse Jackson for his hymietown remark.

BTW, Margaret Sanger was a racist.

What was Charlie Brooker supposed to have said. I’ve been forbidden access to patterico for some unknown reason.

Also for anyone unfamiliar with Mr Brooker’s work, I don’t think I can do justice to just how far they’re reaching with this.

Matt:

Yeah, the Brooker thing is strictly from hunger. He’s a kind of catch-all comedy writer, cartoonist, and TV-show reviewer in England. He does comedy shows consisting of weird cartoons and prank phone calls – that sort of thing. Patterico, demonstrating his political discernment, lists him as a “prominent leftist” – just below Louis Farrakhan and the inestimable Julianne Malveaux herself.

Brooker also writes a column which began as TV reviews but expanded into whatever was on his mind. (Clearly a major left-wing ideological outlet: a British TV-show commentary column.) During the 2004 elections, he discussed the US campaign in his column and asked:

“John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

He was widely criticized and the column was immediately retracted; he apologized the next day (something Ann Coulter so far refuses to do).

That was one of Patterico’s Top 21 liberal hatemongers of the past 23 years.

Yes it’s truly amazing that Patterico had to go back 23 years and cast the widest possible net to find “evidence” of lefty “hate” of the kind that we can find literally thousands of examples of in the last year from the biggest names in rightwing media.

You’d think Patterico himself would have realized after hours of searching that to come up with such feeble examples would actually make the case that Greenwald and others have been making themselves of late–that hate speech is vastly more common from the right than it is from the left. The fact that some lefties somewhere at some time said some hateful things does not even come close to showing that the levels of hate from the two sides are in any way equal.

What a rube.

The comments of Bill Maher against Cheney last weekend were about as vicious as it gets.

For hateful speech, please review the speeches of Louis Farrakan and Michael Moore.

Also, note the words of George Clooney, Soros, Tim Robbins.

How about Kerry calling the troops in Iraq dumb?

For other examples of hate speech, review your own blogs.

Good grief! What a bunch of hypocrites you are.

Shorter Fred
Anti-spanish-inquisition= anti-christian

Cute Fred,

No actual links or quotes and the Kerry thing has been de-bunked by just about every outlet except Fox.

“Anti-spanish-inquisition= anti-christian”

What’s your point? I am certainly anti-Spanish-inquistion and I’m very pro-Christian. I don’t support what the Catholic Church has done or does. Try again.

Hi Keith I’m familiar with Charlie Brooker’s work but thank’s for the quote, didn’t Oswald shoot a prominent Democrat?

If anyone is interested do a youtube search for “screenwipe”, that’s his show that’s been running on BBC4 for the last couple of years. He dishes a lot of dirt on the inner working of the TV industry and it’s also very funny (there’s one entire episode dedicated to American TV).

When did Louis Farrakhan become a prominent leftist?

“No actual links or quotes and the Kerry thing has been de-bunked by just about every outlet except Fox.”

If you need links, you must be a very ignorant person.

As to the Kerry thing, he said what he said. I didn’t make it up.

Of course you didn’t, Fred; you just deliberately and dishonestly misinterpreted it. I love how people like Fred persist in proving Glenn Greenwald right by their inability to actually support their case.

Well, why don’t you go back over the 23 years and show the comments of which you mention

“Of course you didn’t, Fred; you just deliberately and dishonestly misinterpreted it. I love how people like Fred persist in proving Glenn Greenwald right by their inability to actually support their case.”

Why waste time? I couldn’t care less whether or not you are too ignorant to understand Kerry’s words. Isn’t it wonderful that the libs fell all over themselves to allow him to revise and extend his remarks and claim he wasn’t speaking about the troops? The effete snob said it and was too chicken to stand by his remarks.

“Well, why don’t you go back over the 23 years and show the comments of which you mention?”

If you are talking to me, would it make any difference?

Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate poor blacks

That one happens to be true.

“Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate poor blacks”

John Doe “That one happens to be true.”

Shh, John. Don’t disturb the liberals with facts about their heroes.

Apparently 23 years old is too recent. John Doe + Fred’s favorite example is Margaret Sanger, someone who died in 1966. Are these guys honestly trying to advance their right wing cause or are they deliberate parodies? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Re “want[ing] to eliminate poor blacks”: Instead of reaching back a half-century or so why don’t you look at the current editor of the Washington Times, one of the preeminent conservative American newspapers today (not that that’s saying much). He is opposed to the reversal of Roe v Wade on precisely such grounds.

Oh Fred, you’re missing the point. It isn’t that liberals are perfect — the point is that you have to troll the annals of history to come up with good examples of liberal “hate” speech, yet you only have to go back a week or so to find countless examples of convervative leaders spouting off ignorant, bigoted crap.

By the way, Margaret Sanger was born in 1879. Good luck finding ANYONE from that period in history that wasn’t a racist of some kind. It’s 2007. We (should) know better, regardless of our political affiliation.

“Oh Fred, you’re missing the point.”

Oh, Zoom, you’re missing the point. Your contention is untrue. As stated earlier, all you have to do is look at any interview of Bill Maher, Tim Robbins, etc. to see people who are so full of hate that they make Ann Coulter look benevolet.

“Apparently 23 years old is too recent.”

I’ve already mentioned others who have spouted hate in the recent past. Grow up.

Fred,

your assertions without evidence are simply assertions, devoid of intellectual content, and suggesting that you are devoid of an intellect. Give us some quotes, with verifiable citations, child. Or go to bed and no dessert for you.

I’ve already given you the names of the people. Look it up yourself. I’m not your researcher.

BTW, I’m intellectual enough to get my own name.

Reading Patterico’s posts on the subject, I do have to say that he does catches Glenn in a mistake or mistatement: such remarks can be found on “the left” beyond anonymous blog comments. Especially, as KTK points out, if one reachs back two decades and include Chris Rock, Spike Lee, Louis Farrakhan, and what is essentially the real-life version of anonymous blog comments, like random tv columnists for the (UK) Guardian or some incredibly obscure “St. Petersburg Democratic Club” as “prominant leftist figures,” and treat calling someone a “fruitcake” as an example of hate speech.

The thing is – well, this is kinda like a certain kind of domestic argument, viz.:

Spouse #1: I feel like you’ve been treating me in a cold, callous, and disrespectful manner, to say nothing of doing nothing to help out around the house and treating me more like a maid than a spouse . . .
Spouse 2: Spends half-an-hour arguing in obsessive detail that this is completely ridiculous because they took out the garbage Wednesday last.

And I – er, I mean they – would be right: they did take out the garage last Wednesday, and hence to say that they’re doing nothing is entirely inaccurate. They also would be entirely missing the point, like Patterico and Fred here are doing. The argument isn’t that “the Left” is completely pure and good; it’s that, as mentioned above, CPAC star and conservative darling Coulter packs almost as many hateful remarks into a single column as Patterico’s entire list manages in over twenty years.

(Cue cries of ‘It’s not almost as many, it’s half as many! You lie!/Those remarks aren’t that bad at all, if you’re calling that hate speech than lefties do that every day!/But global warming is a plot by elite mansion-living liberals, just look at Al Gore!)

One way to put it, perhaps, it that for the left, these sort of remarks are an acute condition, like getting the sniffles every year or so. It happens, but it’s minor and self-limiting. After a few days the immune system takes care of it, and it’s done.

Notice, after all, that almost all those quotes are single dates/events – the exception, Farrakhan, is rather telling: as somewhat of an actual hatemonger, he just keeps on spewing. I don’t know what the reaction to Malveaux’s gross “eggs and butter” 1994 comment was, but after a genuinely Coulter-like start, she hasn’t ever repeated such behavior – just beavered away writing dully serious liberal commentary on economics, poverty, and race. In many of the other cases- Jackson, the St. Peterburgians, Brooker, for example, the people involved were faced with a storm of criticism from both sides, and backed off.

The constant spew of hatred coming from Coulter, along with others of her ilk like Limbaugh, etc. is more like a chronic condition, and one that is quite far along. Indeed, it has spread throughout much of the GOP body politic; rather than attacking, the conservative immune system has mostly not just failed to recognize it as a problem, but actively helped it spread and reproduce, although recent events have triggered a few lymphocytes of the right.

I should stress, though, that Coulter isn’t the disease, but only one symptom of a much wider problem – not just because the metaphor of disease (like that of vermin) has such a sordid and dangerous history in eliminationist discourse, but because it misrepresents her role.

Poor widdle liberals. Someone needs a hug. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. Wah! Wah! Someone change their diapers please. They are stinking up the place.

How long has idiot-child Fred been haunting this blog?

But Fred, you still don’t get it. We’re not really dishing it out – at most, every now and then we flick a little in your guy’s direction, which isn’t good, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, Coulter and others are constantly emptying their diarrhea-splattered chamberpots over our heads. Someone ‘dishing it out’ would be constantly saying things like: ‘I just wish the 9/11 terrorists had also hit the Wall Street Journal building, and someone needs to put rat poison in Justice Thomas’ dinner, and we need to execute Libby in order to intimidate conservatives and let them know that they can be killed, or else they’ll ruin the country, and there’s no point talking to conservatives, I’d rather use a baseball bat, and all this conservative squealing about how we’re repressing their speech, I say go ahead, let’s repress it, I’m not big a fan of the First Amendment anyway . . . (to paraphrase some of Ann’s comments in just the last few years).

“But Fred, you still don’t get it.”

And I hope I never will get it. The disease of liberalism is something to be avoided.

This stuff barely goes back 8 weeks, let alone 8 years.

“[President Bush] is a rube. He is a dolt. He is a yokel on the world stage. He is a Gilligan who cannot find his ass with two hands. He is a vain half-wit who interrupts one incoherent sentence with another incoherent sentence.” – Bill Maher on The Tonight Show 2/20/2007

“[T]he recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary — oops sorry, volunteer — force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.” – WashingtonPost.com columnist William Arkin 2007

If the Democratic Party refuses to confront this administration in a meaningful way on the issues that are threatening the very survival of our nation, then they’re no better than the people ,strong>committing these crimes. – CNN’s Jack Cafferty 01/04/2007

“[You] have taken money out of the pockets of every American, even out of the pockets of the dead soldiers on the battlefield and their families, and have given that money to the war profiteers. Because if you sell the Army a thousand Humvees, you can’t sell them any more until the first thousand have been destroyed, can you? The service men and women are ancillary to the equation. This is about the planned obsolescence of ordnance, isn’t it, Mr. Bush? …At least the war profiteers have made their money, sir.”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a Special Comment directed at President Bush, January 2 Countdown.

And as to the repeated nasty comments as I write this Bill Maher’s HBO show is on and in his “New Rules” segment he said, [paraphrasing]“If President Bush wants to meet any more Pro basketball players he should in line with the rest of the retards.” 03/07/2007

KaosKlerik:

Your stuff seems awfully lame. Maher’s criticisms are harshly worded but accurate (excepting possibly the bit about his ass – I have no information on that point); it can’t be out of line to say a person is stupid when they are stupid, or that they routinely embarass themselves in public or speak incoherently when those are the unmistakable facts, especially if that person is the president. Arkin’s statement is legitimate commentary, whether you agree or not. Cafferty’s is not even inflammatory – the administration is pervasively criminal and they ought to be called on it, and it is the most minimal form of patriotism to say so. Olbermann’s accusations are sensational but not unreasonable; if he’s right then that’s just the sort of thing that should be said, and it’s far from difficult to think he’s right. I don’t know what Maher’s second quote says, since you don’t quote it, but it seems like a personal jibe. So that’s one out of 5 for you, and nothing like what comes out of Coulter, Limbaugh, or Mike Savage in a single breath.

As for the rest, Bush is stupid, criminal, and contemptuous of the constitution, and has created and run a needless war in ways that hugely redound to the benefit of military contractors, the largest of whom still has Dick Cheney on its payroll! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pointing that out. Whether you approve of a “volunteer” military largely recruited with extravagant (often false) promises of financial benefits is neither here nor there, but it’s not illegitimate to raise the question.

Compare this with Coulter’s witless slur – it was completely contentless, bore no relation to the facts, raised no legitimate political issue, and consisted of nothing more than rank bigotry for its own sake. Compare Limbaugh, who consistently engages in similarly bigoted and inexpressive rhetoric (“feminazi”, “Half-rican American”) and whose distorted factual claims are routinely debunked (entire books, literally, have been written about his falsehoods). Compare Mike Savage, whose rhetoric is simply deranged (a gay caller should “get AIDS and die”). You can’t seem to distinguish between purely hateful and violent rhetoric and substantive commentary on the shortcomings of hateful and violent people.

Orcinus does a good job tracing the history of conservative rhetoric aimed at the deaths people they disagree with, going back over a longer term, here and here.

Okay, okay. We get it. Liberals are lovely people who are the sweetest people on earth. They love everyone. They are special people.

The fact of the matter is that name calling and hate speech are unacceptable and childish, regardless of what side of the political fence you happen to be on. At what point did it become acceptable to call someone a faggot? Instead of debating the issues we spend time defaming the person.
To say that the left spends time acting childish and calling people names is not an excuse/reason for the right to do so, or vice-versa. That kind of arguement is specious.
We need to spend more time focussed on the issues, and not the people.

eliminating bad breath…

Great health posts. Did you know that gum disease is the most-hated…