A cautionary tale of badly-misfiring fake outrage.
In a post at Media Matters titled “Why does the Los Angeles Times hate Obama?”, Eric Boehlert writes “Some conservatives suffer from such an acute case of Obama Derangement Syndrome that they can’t even debate the issues of the day with out resorting to childish name-calling.” The descriptions which offended Boehlert, published in the blog posts of one of the Times‘ writers, included “ex-state senator” and “the nation’s top talker.” After asking “Why does one of the largest newspapers in the country allow its political writer to routinely disrespect the president in a casually insulting way?” Boehlert proceeded to, as Matt Welch aptly puts it, “duct-tape this ‘please kick me’ sign onto his rumpus”:
And I don’t even have to do a Google search to know for a fact that when President Bush was in office, there was nobody on staff at the Times, and certainly nobody writing off the opinion pages, who was allowed to so casually insult the office of the presidency on a regular basis.
Whoops. Enter Matt Welch:
As the Internet kidz like to say, let me Google that for you. There you’ll see a Bush-era L.A. Times columnist – one of the most consistently popular among the paper’s stable at the time – who used these phrases to describe (Bush)…”
The listed descriptions include “distracted and incompetent,” “homegrown authoritarian,” and “Torturer-in-Chief.” The columnist in question, Rosa Brooks (who now works in the Obama Pentagon) also said that Bush enabled “the so-called Big Lie theory of political propaganda, articulated most infamously by Adolf Hitler,” and that America was “already well on the way” to having a “Latin American-style military junta.”
Things get even more embarrassing for the non-Googling Eric “I-know-for-a-fact” Boehlert: it appears that he personally cross-posted one of his own L.A. Times columns to a site called “The Smirking Chimp.” Boehlert, for his part, denies it, but Patterico went to the trouble – and it took some – to set up his own account there to see whether someone else could have posted it. The results don’t look good for Boehlert – judge for yourself.
h/t TheoSpark.net
The Dems had Bush Derangement Syndrome.
The Reps have Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Hypocrisy or not, both are realities. In many ways, SDA and its contributors mimic the language and behaviour of far left blogs during the Bush presidency.
Boelhert may be a hypocrite for not calling the LA Times out on the same issue regarding Bush, but the people who point that out are merely earning brownie points that have no bearing on the reality today: Obama Derangement Syndrome is real. Just like the Bush Derangement Syndrome was real.
And the people on SDA who have it are no better than their leftie counterparts. In fact, they’re pretty much a mirror image.
Does it contribute to constructive debate? No. But when has that bothered ideologues and dogmatic hacks, regardless of their leanings.
And now that the shoe is on the other foot, lefties clearly don’t like getting a huge dose of their own medicine. The bright side appears to me that the right won’t have 8 years to develop Obama Derangement Syndrome to any level we were witness to when it was Bush they were bashing.
Obama’s popularity with both the right and now, increasingly, the left, is tanking faster than the ‘other shoe’ can hit the floor.
IF he continues on his path of ruining the USA, (and he clearly is set on that agenda: tonight using the gulf oil spill as an excuse to move cap and trade forward ) he will not have a second term. It could even be argued he should not even finish the first term. It is looking more and more like it is going to get right down to him or the country. Take yer pick. They are going to try to force Obama on the country, but I think the country is suffering from buyers remorse, so the L.A. Times fella is going to be eating his words much more often and with increasing ferocity, if I don’t miss my guess.
fact is, the voters did not like the way Bush spent money.
Now that Obama’s spending it at 10 times the rate, there’s buyer’s remourse.
Any questions, fact?
I guess at this point we should get something straight: Bush Derangement Syndrome could only be described as that because people were not dealing with reality in their ‘fake outrage’ and ‘made up facts’ ala Dan Rather. Made up facts plus leftoid ideas of their own opinions being worth far more than anyone else’s, even if they have nothing whatever to do with what is really going on ( as in Bush was a dummy , inarticulate and stupid) when the facts were completely foreign to what they wanted to put forward. It went on so long and was so far from sanity and reality it could ONLY be called a Derangement Syndrome.
In Obama’s case, just about every criticism is based in fact and demonstrated by Obama’s own words and deeds. He makes it plain that the right’s objections are well founded and the more he does the more alarmed the entire country gets.
The way the oil spill in the Gulf has developed this may well be his Katrina but I suspect it is going to be his Waterloo in many more ways than one. The conservative view more often than not deals in cool analysis and objective opinion. This can hardly be described as anything close to a ‘derangement syndrome’!
Fact is, when push comes to shove, there is no middle ground. What used to be a difference of opinion as to how a nation should be governed has evolved into a struggle between freedom and an Orwellian authoritative state.
I love it when the first commenter marches in forcefully and then proceeds to comprehensively miss the point. The point, “fact,” isn’t that Boehlert is a hypocrite for not calling the LA Times out on their treatment of Bush – no one asked him to – but rather that he said he “*knows for a fact* that –
Boaehlert’s entire case – all of it – is predicated on his assertion that it’s a “fact” that Bush wasn’t called names by the LA Times opinion writers in the same way that Obama is. Matt Welch – and others – proved that what Boehlert claimed to know “for a fact” was not only incorrect, but a bald inversion of the truth: LA Times writers described Bush in far more offensive terms (“Torturer-in-chief”, the Hitler reference, etc.) than the putative outrages that Boehlert cited ( “the nation’s top talker,””ex-state senator”) as being evidence of an unfair and unprecedented “derangement” on the part of LA Times writers.
Boehlert was hoisted on the petard of his own argument. Your assertions about mutual derangement on both sides may or may not be true, but they are, in the context of the subject matter of the post, irrelevancies.
During the campaign when McCain brushed off Letterman to go deal with a crisis, Obama laid back.
And he continues to lay back.
I watched that speech tonight.
He let this disaster happen so he could promote his green agenda.
A real president would deal with the problem.
Not pull a bait and switch.
Worst president evah.
I guess the thrill up our leg has turned into a tickle trickle-
HopeyChangey teleprompter being read by an empty suit, falling on deaf, lefty ears.
Priceless!
For the first time since Carter (accept for the first 14 months of the Clinton administration) the dems have a leader who is truly following the leftist agenda that the democrats have supported for 50 years. I for one have no anger towards President Obama – I am very grateful that he has decided to be honest and follow through with what he believes. The Dem’s have been exposed as the leftist they are and will lose signifigantly in next years congressional elections. As for Obama, he has the potential to go down as the worst President since Warren Harding.
‘Hypocrisy or not, both are realities.’
I’ll bet you make your ‘facts’ 98% of thge time, fact.
[quote]HopeyChangey teleprompter being read by an empty suit, falling on deaf, lefty ears.[/quote] fearless L
It is boring to hear Obama repeat the words of George Soros, follow the drum beat…. Time for George to step out and sell his own the agenda; A EU Communist solution with Soros & Gore as the puppet masters…AGW without the Science…Kill the Teleprompter…
Destroy America at all costs, a deliberate & calculated failure in the Gulf response, the WH cheering for more damage…Cue the Clown Cars,Van Jones and the Brown Shirts.
What a worthless Turd….
“Why does one of the largest newspapers in the country allow its political writer to routinely disrespect the president in a casually insulting way?”
Maybe the casual language meme was set by the president himself, who considers himself to be “ass kicker” in chief. BO gives his hoodie audiences a constant barrage of Chicago hood talk – but woe unto he that taketh de lawd’s name in vain – the O-bot media will rain fire down upon his blaspheming head.
Obama Derangement Syndrome? You gotta be kidding me. Why does the Left simply mimic things they don’t understand?
Oh wait, there is an Obama Derangement Syndrome. The sufferers voted for him.
Boehlert is not to blame.He is simply following the leftoid way of making new history every day.After all,Bush killed off the dinosaurs.
Maybe somebody can answer this for me: what is it that makes lefties so afraid of facts??
The Left can’t very well accuse the Right of ODS until the Right produces a movie in which the sitting POTUS is assassinated.
The wet dream of the Left,murder the incumbent if he’s RW. The dream of the Right, vote the bastard out of office next election.
They hardly compare.
I think you are all to hard on Obama. You should recognize excellence when you see it.
Obama is a first rate top of the line snake oil salesman.
Obama is a first rate top of the line snake oil salesman.
~Tony RoBC
Breaking News: Congress passes Moratorium on Drilling Snakes, Declares Snakes to be Endangered!
Obama cannot command a change to clean energy. Game changing innovation, like the internet (thank you VP Al Gore…sarc) are free market based. Cap and Tax is more like The Stamp Act.
How about a new term?
MSM syndrome?
Nothing these turds offer is worth your time.
Excuse me, fact, but I have never attacked Obama’s children the way the press went after Palin or Bush’s children. I have concocted no grandiose conspiracy theories concerning the man. I make no secret I think he is a vain, incompetent attention-seeker. I believe he has mishandled everything that has come his way. That is legitimate criticism, not knee-jerk mob hatred.
As for the good people here, read or re-read the posts. You’ll find some very valid observations and criticisms. To accuse in a blanket fashion that anyone- here or not- have contributed to some sort of frothing-at-the-mouth attacks is just insulting.
Magnifico, Patterico. I’m having severe pangs of Fisk-envy.
If I were Boehlert, I would retract my head and leave it there for a month or two. Using “office of the presidency” is a clue that he is a pretentious self-important twit, so of course he can’t.
EBD, yes!!! Anyway, what sort of nincompoop calls himself “fact” in the first place?
For that matter, who wants to (TRY to) enter “constructive debate” with blithering head-up-arse imbeciles? Not me, thanks. Been there, it’s impossible, much more fun to just mock them.
Wouldn’t mind knowing what if anything you stand for, fact.
dance
He let this disaster happen so he could promote his green agenda.
====================================
No, that’s not the situation at all. BP and Haliburton caused this disaster, and the person most responsible is former US VP Dick Cheney. His extreme deregulation agenda allowed this to happen.
You seem to be forgetting that if oil is scarce, is price goes up. So the industry has a material incentive to rule out offshore drilling done in a safe but expensive manner, since profit margins are lower because of the higher costs of working safely. Better instead to sell more limited amounts of oil at higher prices from fields where actual costs are low.