i understand the politics, partisanship, however we want to label the exchanges that we have seen over the years…

yet it saddens me to see that no one, plainly, has said that no human should be treated/opined/commented in the light that Michael has.

where is the BASIC humanity?

it is not a dem thing, nor a repug thing… it is a human thing, and shame should befallen upon us for not recognizing the most basic element– that humans, regardless of race, life form, gender (whatever) should not treat each other this way.

now i realize that we dems are more likely to call the above argument… yet the thing is, we should not argue with the *other side* with their sordid points. just use the *humanity clause*– something that we are all required to uphold and obige…

yes, rant-ish, yet fed up here. if we started focusing on branding the repugs as those who are against humanity in all facets (by calling them out on their ugliness by tying it to the lack of humanity)… where do you think we would be?

possibly nowhere.. there are too many out there that do not care, so then the argument is: how do we make them care? what value do we need to leverage, one that they hold dear, in order to draw a comparison that will wake them up?

ok, off to bed for this northern european soldier of truth… :)

The cognitive dissonance for middle America …

That’s why the Right needs people like Limbaugh and the rest of the Hate Radio and Faux News hit squad. Aside from creating the fantasy world in which followers of the Right live, the Limbaughs must be ready to ridicule and marginalize all critics and truthtellers, forming what I call a Cognitive Dissonance Firewall, allowing their followers to discount and ignore facts and experiences that might conflict with their ideology and dogma.

Your comment reminded me of my call-in to the Sam Seder Show Thursday morning…

The critic or truthteller must be characterized as ridiculous or biased, in order to give the Right Wing minions a pass on critical thinking that might reveal contradictions to their ideology — providing a sort of cognitive dissonance firewall. As another example of this, beyond what you’ve already mentioned, we’ve been subjected to 25 years of demonizing of news media as “the liberal media” — allowing Right Wingers to comfortably ignore anything they might hear on the news that conflicts with the fantasy world created for them. And yet another example, pulled from this election cycle is “Nancy Pelosi”: the Right must demonize Pelosi to prevent their followers from hearing what she’s actually saying, and learning that they agree with most of it.

George Lakoff or someone else, I’m sure, has a term for this. But I like “cognitive dissonance firewall.”

Leslie Stahl will go on 60 Minutes and tell Nancy Pelosi with a perfectly straight face that she’s the reason we have to restore civility, and the cycle will repeat itself all over again.

Oh so true. That thought has run through my head several times this week, after seeing and hearing the racist ads against Harold Ford and now this nonsense.

We’re truly screwed in this country.

How can he really be a dirty hippie who is supposed to be attacked and mocked? That just twists their racial profiling training all out of whack.

“As a guy who never once took a snap as QB in organized football at any level, he had no grounds whatsoever to have questioned the intelligence of Donovan McNabb.

The sports media did the right thing and ran him out of town.”

Good point.

And to take it one step further……Does this mean sportsfans and sportscasters care more about the state of the game than citizens and mainstream journos care about the state of the nation?

And, if so, does this explain, perhaps, why former Olbermann is the only game in town?

This idea of sports analyts is actually brilliant. They pretty much by necessity are constrained and habituated to objectivity, no matter if they are “type a” or “b” or whatever otherwise loud-mouthed cornball town or country hick. At least, the good ones are.

Any of them have blogs, with comments? ;)

I think it a mistake to interpret the ad that Fox is pleading his own case. I take his coming forward as his taking the opportunity to move the debate forward so others in the future might not suffer his fate.
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