Sunday, April 27, 2008
Views
The toxic thinking of the Right
President George W. Bush (left) stands alongside Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi during a presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal on April 23.
CREDIT: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
By Arianna Huffington
One of the main themes of my new book, "Right Is Wrong," is the role the media have played in allowing the lunatic fringe now in control of the Republican Party—the people who believe in torture but don't believe in evolution—to hijack our democracy. I document how the real problem comes not from Fox News or the likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly, but from a mainstream media (MSM) that has so internalized the Right's framing and messages they have now become a part of its DNA.
The first of the latest round of exhibits proving that the Karl Rove playbook has become the MSM's bible was offered into evidence during last week's ABC debate. The uproar that followed made it seem as if this kind of behavior was an aberration, but, in fact, this has been going on for years—only in a less concentrated form.
Next came a double-whammy in Sunday's New York Times. First up was David Barstow's epic revelation of the unseemly complicity between the Pentagon and the mainstream media in delivering the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq via "a kind of Trojan media horse”—Pentagon-approved, prepped and financially enriched "military analysts" dutifully parroting the Bush party line, with nary a raised eyebrow from the TV stations and newspapers offering these highly decorated sock puppets their prestigious platforms.
The second blow delivered to the media in Sunday's Times was the article about how American military commanders in Afghanistan have been urging a widening of the war to include going after terrorists in the tribal regions of Pakistan. But they have been rebuffed by the Bush administration, despite the fact that these terrorists, including members of al-Qaida, present, in the words of CIA director Michael Hayden, "clear and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular." So much for Bush's endless bleating about listening to his commanders in the field. Once again, the White House's obsession with Iraq has caused it to take its eye off the real threats facing America.
But it isn't just the media that have been infected by the toxic thinking of the Right. It has also been absorbed into the bloodstream of the body politic. The political class has allowed the Neanderthal wing of the GOP to drag the political debate so far to the right, that even Democrats find themselves getting cozy with ideas that not so long ago would have been the exclusive domain of archconservatives.
For example, I was in New York last Thursday giving a speech at the famously progressive New School. In the green room before I spoke, I was talking (in the presence of a CNBC camera crew) about the previous night's ABC debate with New School president and former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey. He seemed genuinely surprised with my negative review, telling me that Gibson and Stephanopoulos were only asking the questions the American people wanted asked. It took everything I had to stop myself from asking him when his spaceship had landed, bringing him back from whatever universe he'd been living in.
Then I saw that dreadful new ad featuring Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, sitting side by side on a couch in front of the Capitol Building, robotically espousing the need for bipartisan agreement on global warming. What was Pelosi thinking? Yes, global warming is a crisis that needs to be addressed. And yes, it is an issue that gives lie to the media-promoted notion that all issues should be viewed through a left vs. right prism.
As it happened, I first saw the Pelosi-Gingrich ad on the same night that I caught Gingrich telling Sean Hannity that "the left wing of the Democratic Party, frankly, kind of admires American terrorists." A more outrageous statement would be hard to find.
Can't wait to tune into CNN to see what new CNN commentator Tony Snow thinks of Nancy and Newt. SP