It's time to fight the right's new (and weird) battle cry that liberals and Democrats are the standard-bearers of hatred, intolerance and name-calling.
There are quite a few loudmouths on the right who simply cannot, will not or (by their own values) should not declare ANYTHING off-limits if it means diminishing ANYTHING that doesn't align with their twisted world.
Ann Coulter is a screaming example of this. Here are some gems from her latest column. This is the kind of crap which must be outed and fought tooth and nail in the streets of the new "discourse." It can't be ignored anymore - this hideous protein-based life form is considered a legitimate pundit by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and just about every national talkshow. Put on your brass knuckles, because this is what we're fighting.
...the Democrats have discovered a surprise campaign issue: It turns out that several of them have had a death in the family. Not only that, but many Democrats have cracker-barrel humble origins stories and a Jew or lesbian in the family. Dick Gephardt's campaign platform is that his father was a milkman, his son almost died and his daughter is a lesbian. Vote for me!There's punditry. Then there's just being an asshole. Coulter has taken the low road enough times to put her fairly and squarely into chronic, and this latest affront to decency seals the deal. Shameless. Disgusting. Obnoxious.
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In the current campaign, Gephardt has taken to spinning out a long, pitiful tale of his son's near-death three decades ago. If a lingering family medical tragedy is the main qualification for becoming a Democratic presidential candidate, what's Michael Schiavo waiting for?
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John Edwards injects his son's fatal car accident into his campaign by demanding that everyone notice how he refuses to inject his son's fatal car accident into his campaign.
If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident" bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent's criminal record for partisan political advantage. I absolutely refuse to mention the name of my dearly beloved and recently departed son killed horribly in a car accident, which affected me deeply, to score cheap political points.
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Howard Dean talks about his brother Charlie's murder at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. Bizarrely, after working on the failed George McGovern campaign, Charlie Dean went to Indochina in 1974 to witness the ravages of the war he had opposed. Not long after he arrived, the apparently ungrateful communists captured and killed him. Hey fellas! I'm on your s-- CLUNK!
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In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats' other big idea - too nuanced for a bumper sticker - is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew - along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering.
And sadly, all too typical.
