Where did Progressive Values Go?

By SusanUnPC on April 6, 2008 at 1:02 PM
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/

“[I]t’s been a sad and sobering week for ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ values,” writes The Daily Howler, reflecting on the repugnant words of Randi Rhodes that earned her a well-deserved indefinite suspension from Air America Radio.

A week? How about months of incessant attacks from “progressives” on both Hillary Clinton and her supporters on the Internet? The vitriol has far-reaching implications, beyond the hate speech of Rhodes, Obama’s spiritual advisers, and two individuals — Huffington Post’s Allison Kilkenny and talk radio’s Ed Schultz — who I called out last night in “Obama Supporters Take the Low Rhode.” What does this phenomenon really say about progressives? Writes John — it’s a rather severe but noteworthy indictment — in “The Obama infection and the lynching of Hillary Clinton” at the Liberal Rapture blog:

Obama has injected a poison into the body politic of the United States. The ugliness Obama has stirred up is real and severe - all the more damaging because he is so charming. We are past now the dizzying, frothing, mindless adoration from Huffington and the Daily Kos. We are now past the snotty, childish attacks on Clinton by Olbermann and Cafferty. We are into a new realm … The hatred quietly coached and encouraged by Axelrod is now bubbling forth everywhere.

Then John wrote about the real meaning of what Randi Rhodes did to Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton:

Randi Rhodes called Senator Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro “fucking whores” on stage. Do the math with me on this one moment: a liberal female talk show host called the first female V.P. candidate on a major party ticket and the first viable female Presidential candidate “fucking whores”.

For fun.

This is a symptom.

Read all of John’s post, “The Obama infection and the lynching of Hillary Clinton.”

The Daily Howler notes the myth about “progressives” and “progressive” radio:

For years, there was a self-flattering story we liberals liked to tell about the nature of talk radio. Theoretically, liberal talk radio would never work because we liberals are so bright, so intelligent, so independent—such non-ditto-heads, we kept saying. To be honest, this tale never made much sense. But Rhodes, and others, have made this week a time for some sober reflection.

Are progressives really brighter than conservatives? As a group, we tended to believe it when John Dean (who we admire) wrote that book. But uh-oh! This week, we emitted a low, mordant chuckle at one part of this David Sirota piece, to which we’d been linked by the person who has kidnapped Josh Marshall.

Most of us, if not all of us, heretofore considered Air America Radio a good station to tune into. Most of us, if not all of us, thought highly of Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo site.

Did they change? Or were we wrong about them?

At any rate, the viciousness of the attacks is unrelenting, and it has claimed many victims — including people who have been banned from “progressive” Web sites simply because they support Hillary Clinton as well as those who dare to speak their minds such as Geraldine Ferraro.

Where will this hate speech and these attacks take us? I’m worried.

What becomes of a nation when one of its three leading contenders for the presidency of the United States has this man listed on his official campaign Web site as a spiritual adviser to him?



What becomes of a nation when its “progressives” stand silently by while hate speech is spewed at pro-Obama events — as Randi Rhodes did at an Obama gathering in San Francisco?

What becomes of a nation when its “progressives” stand silently by while a priest like Father Pfleger — who is supported by and featured by Barack Obama on his official campaign site — defends Louis Farrakhan, so bigoted that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists his organization as a “hate” group?
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