I haven’t exactly jumped on the bash-Ward-Churchill bandwagon, taking the position that it’s a mistake to refer to this professor, who referred to the victims of 9/11 as “Little Eichmanns” as anything but the pathetic, inconsequential figure he has always been.
I believe Churchill-mania is primarily a Republican construct, meant (as usual) to discredit anyone to the left of, say Joe Lieberman, by associating them with loony America-bashing. It’s just the latest from the people who spent most of the 2004 campaign pretending that Michael Moore was the Democratic nominee for president. After all, is it any surprise Bill O’Reilly has devoted 31 segments to Churchill in the past three months?
This factoid, along with numerous other great stuff, comes from this standout cover story in the Weekly Standard by Matt Labash, who is fast turning into the Gary Smith of center-right political writing: only a handful of pieces each year, but they’re always lengthy and always worth the time. In the piece, a tour-de-force that brilliantly weaves high- and low-brow conservative humor, Labash goes after the Cult of Ward, attempting to understand the man and tearing apart both his rhetoric and his dumber-than-him cult of personality, all the while remembering to engage in plenty of hippies-smell-bad humor. The centerpiece is an hours-long barroom confrontation between the two men that I would’ve paid about $1000 to have witnessed in person.
As for less honorable conservative rhetoric? Time did a cover story on Ann Coulter that was entertaining, but contained just about nothing new. But get this- Coultergeist and her allies are OUTRAGED because Ann’s cover photo was supposedly “unflattering.” Oh, my heart bleeds for her- for a woman who has built her entire career on unfair, cheap-shot denunciations of her political enemies, seems like she’s got a pretty thin skin.
A bloviating right-wing harpie is being mistreated by a mainstream media that only cares about her legs? No wonder Michelle Malkin is upset.
Buy a ticket to a Churchill lecture, you're a Republican tool...
...yeah, I like that. That flies.
Posted by: Gib at April 20, 2005 02:37 PMWhile Kerry did not directly acknowledge Moore's role, the party itself sure did.
Moore was seated next to Jimmah Carter at the DNC convention. Not in rafters with press like at the RNC, but seated next to a former dem president as a guest of honor. Not surprising given Al Sharpton's prominent role, but certainly not a fringe party crasher.
Democratic candidate Wesley Clark was touring and touting Michael Moore's wacky conspiracy theories on the campaign trail for the democratic nomination.
Moore's connection to the democratic party, as much as you personally disagree with him (as do some other democrats), cannot be denied as much as you wish it were so. He has certainly not been marginalized the way the anti-semite Pat Buchanan was from the Republican party (and now he has left the party). Until Moore gets that kind of treatment (which he richly deserves) the link is inexorable.
Posted by: J. Lichty at April 20, 2005 02:56 PMSteve, find a better link for the Coulter cover pic where you can actually see how it looks.
http://i.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/2005/1101050425_400.jpg
