Do you think Rupert Murdoch's propaganda operation actually made a mistake? Do you really think this corporate behemoth let its guard down, booking you even though you're so dangerous you can help bring destroy structures Rupe desperately wants to see in place?And frankly, if Hamsher's not smart enough to see that, then she deserves scorn like this. New, long, long, long overdue tag: Useful Idiots Are Useful.
Don't be naive. Fox books liberals for two reasons: to be punching bags or to help reinforce messages Murdoch wants to deliver. I watched your clip and you weren't treated like a punching bag -- so that leaves only one choice: you were there to play "Even the liberal..." -- that is, you were there to deliver the message "This bill is so awful even some liberals loathe it."
No one on the right is "uniting" with you on principles. The Fox audience doesn't want to join you to help make a good bill. The Fox audience wants to kill this bill, brutally and mercilessly, and then get every single Democrat out of office. (And if Big Medicine really didn't like the idea of seeing this bill killed, it would tell Fox and the GOP to call off their dogs, and they'd dutifully comply. Big Medicine loves this bill compared to what it could have been, but no bill at all is still the fat cats' preference. Watch this report in its 2 1/2-minute entirety if you doubt that.)
I agree that the bill is rather awful, and I've been vacillating on the question of whether it's worth voting for, so I respect your intentions. But if you think left and right are meeting right now, your vision field is almost as warped as that of the we-love-Hillary-and-Sarah PUMAs. The Fox audience doesn't hate the fat cats -- the Fox audience hates you, Jane, and everything you stand for, and your readers and everything they stand for, and Barack Obama and everything (they think) he stands for. But they'll suspend their contempt when they can use you as a stick to beat Obama with. You know the old saying: "Let's you and him fight!" That's what they're saying to you.
You were used, Jane. If you weren't of use to the right, you wouldn't have been booked.
[UPDATE 11:37 AM] And Kevin K.'s beaten me to it. Take his advice and read Matt Bastard's piece, too.
Pssst, Zandar, that was me, not Betty.
ReplyDeleteIrony's not lost on me.
ReplyDeleteOn December 22nd in http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2009/12/something-is-rotten-in-state-of.html you say "I understand why Jane says this bill has to die. I don't agree with her, but I respect her sticking with her guns."
ReplyDeleteOn December 23rd in http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2009/12/zandars-thought-of-day_23.html you say "I don't want to think of Jane Hamsher as being in the "useful idiot to Wingers" category, but ..." and go from there to "And frankly, if Hamsher's not smart enough to see that, then she deserves scorn like this. New, long, long, long overdue tag: Useful Idiots Are Useful," because she said what she believed on a Fox show.
It looks unfortunately like your position that it's okay for her to hold a belief as long as she keeps quiet about it, or that the problem is just that she said it in the wrong place, in which case you risk looking like the righties who fulminated that young Bill Clinton had spoken against the Vietnam War in England or that Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks spoke badly of President Bush in front of a foreign audience (gasp!).
Oh nice.
ReplyDeleteNo. My problem with what Jane has said is that she's allowing herself to be so obviously used by people who do not respect her opinion.
She is, quite frankly, much smarter than that.