One "Bad" Speech And 4,083 Casualties Later...

Via HuffPo, it seems that James Poniewozik of Time Magazine has a problem with Keith Olbermann’s latest takedown, that of Hillary Clinton for her incredibly ill-advised remark about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy taking place in the same month during 1968 that husband Bill wrapped up the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1992, which would be June (and while that’s factually correct as noted here, we’re talking about two completely different contexts between Bill and Hil).

Here is Poniewozik…

The substance (or lack thereof) of the controversy notwithstanding…Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument—that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed—every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

What strikes me as I read Poniewozik here is that he doesn’t comment on a single word of what Keith said, in which he shares what I would consider to be K.O.’s utter disgust and revulsion at the barking mad farce that the Hillary Clinton campaign eventually became (the relentless moving of the goalposts – “No, it’s the delegate count! No, it’s the popular vote count!”…is there a more annoying individual worthy of revulsion from her campaign at this point in time than Lanny Davis?…the perpetually mind-numbing, foot-in-mouth gaffes by Hillary and her sycophants dutifully captured on YouTube for consumption and parody for all time – at this point, Geraldine Ferraro should be disavowed by the entire party, though I know that won’t happen – the continual ‘back of the hand’ treatment given to Barack Obama who, this being politics, isn’t completely innocent either, etc., etc., etc.). Poniewozik also apparently doesn’t feel it’s important to note that the topic of shooting the soon-to-be nominee of the Democratic Party for president has already been mentioned, so Olbermann could possibly be excused for having a case of frayed nerves.

No, Poniewozik apparently feels that he, as a mainstream corporate media journo, has the right to lecture Olbermann for showing something that I would call genuine populist rage as opposed to something more polite, like the airy condescension Poniewozik appears to have perfected.

Well, just to refresh our memories, I should note that Poniewozik has displayed this attitude at least once before, and it was here in the wake of Michael Moore’s speech at the Academy Awards in 2003. Here is some of what Poniewozik had to say…

If Moore really wants to end the war? — and not just boost the spirits of his Upper West Side neighbors — then mightn't he also want to win over people who oppose the war and yet don't believe that Bush is an illegimate (sic) president swept into office by skullduggery? Is he so insulated that he doesn't realize people like that exist? Or are people like that simply not simon-pure enough for him to want them in his antiwar movement?

That's the really annoying thing about Moore's speech. Moore often casts himself as a populist, and sometimes he's even convincing. He often makes a strong case against other progressives who (are) out of touch with the hoi polloi — who can't lower themselves to listen to talk radio, can't identify a NASCAR driver or country singer, can't in any sense understand how the mass of America lives and thinks. This kind of liberal attitude, he has rightly argued, has kept the Left from building broad-based movements. But Moore's own clubby, we-all-know-Bush-is-a-liar attitude suggests that he's not interested in a broad-based antiwar movement.

I'm going to get a lot of e-mail from people who believe Bush stole the election in Florida, but before you press "send," at least consider this. A lot of smart people agree with you. But if someone disagrees with you, are they not worth allying with against the war? Would you rather have a war in Iraq than pass up a chance to bring up Florida again?

Now, let’s flash forward to the present day from March 24, 2003, a few days after the war started (another reason why Moore’s outrage was fresh and unrestrained, as well as that of a few people who grew in number over time as it turned out).

Doesn’t it look kind of pathetic to criticize Moore’s opposition to the war because he conflated it with the results of the 2000 presidential election? Isn’t it worse than infantile that Poniewozik and far too many others thought that Moore should not have been taken seriously because he and other liberals/progressives “(couldn’t) lower (our)selves to listen to talk radio, (or) identify a NASCAR driver or country singer, (or) understand how the mass of America lives and thinks” (like this numbskull, for instance)?

Yet, as many of us recall all too well, this is the demonizing rhetoric that ran rampant everywhere in this country, particularly when the war began. As Atrios and many others have noted, though, we can forget about Poniewozik and his brethren ever acknowledging the fact that Moore and those who shared his view (including your humble narrator) turned out to be 100 percent right; instead, any “serious” discussions of the war should be left to “experts” like Tom Friedman here and here as opposed to people who actually knew what they were talking about.

So let’s let Poniewozik lecture K.O. again now as he did with Michael Moore for being sooo impolite, sooo shrill and bad-tempered for actually caring about the damage inflicted on our political dialogue and our institutions of government by demagogues of any political stripe whatsoever (though I would hardly lump Hillary’s escapades with the nightmare of the foul, fetid Bushco reign).

And let Poniewozik be wrong once more now as he was then.