Today's Infernal Triangle 2000-24 watch, media incompetence corner: in 2006, mainstream political media figures began describing to onslaughts of factual debunking of Bush from progressive blogosphere as "reverse Fox." David Broder takes the lead that June:
“The blogs I have scanned are heavier on vituperation of President Bush and other targets than on creative thought. Fortunately, there are others that these ‘net roots’ activists working on the challenge of defining the Democratic message.” tampabay.com/archive/2006/0…
Jay Carney, then Time's DC correspondent (now an Amazon flack), CRUSHED by a fusillade of fact-checking in February of '07, replies that ""the left is as full of unthinking Ditto-heads as Limbaugh-land." web.archive.org/web/2008121717…
At a panel I attended at the second Yearly Kos conference in '07: "The trick, the key commercial achievement of Rupert Murdoch...is to tell people they're not just engaged in a commercial enterprise...you're actually engaged in a crusade." Left sees "conspiracy" on right...
...so sez, ""Therefore let's do it"--devise a conspiracy--"on the other side." It's a reverse Fox, that's to say: "I'm concerned as a working journalist to see people mimicking the things they criticize." Then David Schuster o NBC, who claims...
Chris Matthews is the "reason" there was a debate about going to war in Iraq, concluding: "It's a great benefit to have an extra set of eyes and ears, or thousands of sets of eyes and ears. But it's also useful to have an opportunity to have a mainstream view."
And when New York's firefighters union compiled a careful--and ACCURATE--compendium of Rudy Giuliani's mistakes around 9/11, Newsweek calls it "swift boating"--a reference to the right's MADE-UP attacks on John Kerry's military service in 2004. mediamatters.org/new-york-times…

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More from @rickperlstein

May 12
So I can better advance my SECRET SURPRISE PROJECT, turning off Twitter for the day, with one more reflection about why Randall Balmer's paradigm distorts understanding of how American right-wing theocracy advanced in 70s-8os...
In places like Memphis, Xian schools destroyed court-ordered integration by giving white public school parents an alternative to integrated schools. AT THE SAME TIME as the city's biggest Christian school... actually an entire school system
(many preacher entrepreneurs built their own parallel non-municipal school systems, including, in San Diego, the LeHays of "Left Behind" and Concerned Women of America fame)...
Read 6 tweets
May 12
So the head of the Anti-Defamation League begins this interview going on and on about what a nobly universalist anti-racist organization he runs. Down lower, he's asked about his insistence that anyone who opposes Zionism is an anti-semite. newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/i…
Question: "Is creating a secular state destroying it? A state for Jewish people, but not a Jewish state, if that distinction makes sense."...
Answer: "...These kind of countries exist in the Middle East. I don't think Syria would be a great outcome for anybody. I don't think Yemen would be a great outcome for anybody. I don't think the state of Lebanan would be a great outcome for anybody. I don't." So...
Read 5 tweets
May 11
Truly the most influential wrong article in popular history. NYT's The Daily repeats it today. Most Christian schools weren't segregationist by the late 70s, and that's not why they went after the IRS. And... politico.com/magazine/story…
...they didn't make abortion their main organizing/cover issue. Anti-gay fears--including a Q-like theory that the gov would force gay teachers in their schools--was MUCH more prevalent. Also generalized conspiracy theories about "secular humanism."
And the IRS guidelines WERE poorly drafted; a coalition of private schools including very liberal ones opposed them. Silly--lefty porn--to make it an issue of "segregation academies." I lay out the evidence in the chapter "Christian Soldiers." amazon.com/Reaganland-Ame…
Read 4 tweets
May 4
We really have to force ourselves to come face to face with the insane level to which the U.S. has sunk. Watch this. Really. Trump read in his newspaper that a bunch of historians were having a conference on him, so demanded they give him an audience... findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC230_…
He patiently lectured them for close to an hour about all the ways he's a superhero, including... (19:40)
"doing a favored nations" which will "bring our drug prices from the highest in the world by far to the lowest in the nation by far," if only Biden "holds it which he may not because he's under tremendous pressure from the drug companies..."
Read 7 tweets
May 2
More stunning normalization of authoritarianism: "historic patterns" are the reason Dems need from 5-10 percent more votes than Republicans to win Congress--not the systematized democracy theft known as partisan gerrymandering. But you know this, @peterbakernyt.
How it worked happened in 2010: "Karl Rove ducked in on one of the pitch meetings: "=;People call us a vast right-wing conspiracy, but we're really a half-assed right-wing conspiracy. Now it's time to get serious.'" newsweek.com/how-republican…
"Advice included: Never communicate by email, the better to cover your tracks. ('Emails are the tool of the devil.' 'Make sure your computer is in a PRIVATE location.' Thus the Ohio Republican Party's command post, in a hotel across from the statehouse, was labeled 'the Bunker.')
Read 9 tweets
May 1
Shocking/not shocking. One of RWR's besties, famous for his far-right lunacy and the leverage he deployed as publisher of NH's only statewide newspaper (tho he didn't live there) to destroy the presidential candidacies of Rockefeller (64), Muskie (72), and GHWB (80).
I mean, these people! Note his go-to move for destorying reputations was to impute sexual impropriety: Rockefeller for divorcing his wife and marrying a younger woman; Phil Crane for supposedly being into orgies. (Related: Muskie for not being able to "control" his wife.")
Combine it with the confidence to believe it was his personal obligation to judge every other public figure's moral bona fides. A level of psychological damage that's almost incomprehensible--projected outward onto the world. This, the thing they call "conservatism."
Read 10 tweets

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