The Price Of Breakfast Is Eternal Vigilance!

January 2, 2009 12:34 PM

The Top 10 Rightblogger Stories of 2008. Can it really have been almost two months since the U.S. presidential election? It seems like a long time ago that bloggers on the right were claiming Obama killed his grandmother and denouncing WALL-E, but this list does a pretty good job of summarizing what got them all riled up in 2008.
posted by you just lost the game (76 comments total)

Weird. I didn't hear about any of these stories during 2008. Not on Metafilter anyway. How can so many right-thinking MeFites not be right?
posted by twoleftfeet at 12:45 PM on January 2, 2009

My Dad, who for 64 years of his life voted for Republicans for President, decided instead to pull the lever for Obama this year. When my siblings and I asked him why, he gave a list of seven reasons - the most important being "You guys wouldn't believe the crap I got in my email inbox this year. I couldn't vote for McCain knowing that his supporters were such stupid jerks."

So congrats, Republicans. You're actually drove away my Rotary Club, Promise Keeper father who lives in rural Indiana. Dumbasses.
posted by billysumday at 12:49 PM on January 2, 2009 [33 favorites]

The previous thread on the socialist threat that is Wall E.
posted by Artw at 12:52 PM on January 2, 2009

You have to admit, Obama looks right at home in that Savage Messiah beard.
posted by mmmleaf at 12:55 PM on January 2, 2009

I don't see why we even need to acknowledge these people's existence anymore. Their ideology has been thrown on the dustbin of history, their pet idiot is headed for years of liver-destroying ignominious obscurity. Leave them with nothing but memories of their salad days, analyzing fonts in service of the worst President in American history.
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:56 PM on January 2, 2009 [7 favorites]

My Dad, who for 64 years of his life voted for Republicans for President, decided instead to pull the lever for Obama this year. When my siblings and I asked him why, he gave a list of seven reasons - the most important being "You guys wouldn't believe the crap I got in my email inbox this year. I couldn't vote for McCain knowing that his supporters were such stupid jerks."

Good thing he didn't read Metafilter.
posted by gyc at 12:57 PM on January 2, 2009 [18 favorites]

Personally I'm looking forwards to in a resurgence in conspiracy theories where the US government is conspiring with UN black helicopters to massacre all Christian gun owners just like they did at Ruby Ridge in order to clear the way for a new world order run by the antichrist.
posted by Artw at 12:59 PM on January 2, 2009 [9 favorites]

"You guys wouldn't believe the crap I got in my email inbox this year. I couldn't vote for McCain knowing that his supporters were such stupid jerks."

Yeah, a certain jerkish family member sent a lot of that to me and the wife, trying to convince us to vote Republican. Things have tense since the election results came in.

ACORN was a particularly sensitive point, driving them pretty much insane.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:03 PM on January 2, 2009 [4 favorites]

Good thing he didn't read Metafilter.

OH SNAP. But you're right - the pictures he got in his inbox of Obama's inauguration being a bunch of African villagers eating photoshopped watermelons was TOTALLY the same as people on Metafilter arguing over the benefits and drawbacks of progressive taxation.
posted by billysumday at 1:04 PM on January 2, 2009 [50 favorites]

OH SNAP. But you're right - the pictures he got in his inbox of Obama's inauguration being a bunch of African villagers eating photoshopped watermelons was TOTALLY the same as people on Metafilter arguing over the benefits and drawbacks of progressive taxation.

Right. Because when talking about McCain and the '08 election there were never any posts unfairly attacking McCain.
posted by gyc at 1:13 PM on January 2, 2009

ACORN was a particularly sensitive point, driving them pretty much insane.

I'll never understand this. I guess no one ever explained to them how voter *registration* is different from actual *voting*, but still. It's ACORN. Who are they going to hurt?

My dad is another lifelong conservative who voted for Obama, basically because he viewed McCain as a person with literally nothing to offer in terms of leadership; the constant attacks drove him nuts too. He and I were talking about Obama at a Christmas party recently, and he said something like "well, Obama ain't afraid to spend money that's for sure." It's tough to get people see why deficit spending is necessary in a recession when we've been doing it for 30 years even in good times. But anyway. I think back on his reaction to Clinton's supposed liberal tendencies, and his reaction to Obama's 1 trillion dollar economic reboot plan, and it's night and day. In 2009, he says "meh maybe it'll work." In the 90s, it was all he could do not to flip his lid whenever the word 'healthcare' was uttered. I think he, like most people, is less concerned about left/right and ideological warfare, and more concerned about doing something right for once. "At least Obama is competent," he said.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 1:13 PM on January 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

Right. Because when talking about McCain and the '08 election there were never any posts unfairly attacking McCain.

Your equivalency is not my equivalency.
posted by billysumday at 1:15 PM on January 2, 2009 [7 favorites]

Tally up five of my family members (parents, sisters, brother-in-law) who pulled the lever for a Democrat for the first time this year, partly because of stuff like this in their in-boxes. These are lifelong Republicans who live in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The holidays this year were AWESOME!
posted by jeanmari at 1:21 PM on January 2, 2009 [3 favorites]

To put it another way: the manner in which conservatives went absolutely NUTS this year did not help them win the election and, I would suggest, actually hurt them with moderate voters and some Republicans. Yes there were certainly ridiculous things that were said about McCain. But I do think that the thrust of the main argument against McCain and the Republicans was based on pretty solid political principles, whereas a lot of arguments against Obama were just ridiculous hyperbole of the sort described in the post. I mean, both candidates had issues regarding where they were born. And whereas McCain was the only candidate to have actually been born in a foreign country, liberals and people on the left didn't give a shit, whereas many voices on the right tried to take the bogus issue of Obama's birth country to the Supreme Court of the United States. Certainly you can see the difference there.

At some point, if Republicans want to be prominent again, they need to stop whining, stop with the guilt by association nonsense, and they need to (I can't believe this even needs to be written in the first place) elect a Party Chairman who doesn't distribute racist songs to party members on his Christmas mix CD. As a Democrat, I find it funny. But I can't imagine there are too many intelligent Republicans walking around feeling all that proud of their party leaders.
posted by billysumday at 1:24 PM on January 2, 2009 [10 favorites]

"I am having a tiny little pang of missing Hillary," admitted National Review's Lisa Schiffren. "Not her, but hating her."

And in one sentence, the psychology of so much of what is wrong with our country is laid bare. We spend so much time hating the other that it becomes who we are; "I'm not a democrat, I'm anti-Bush." and "I hated her husband, and Hillary is just more of the same".

One day I hope we develop more nuance, but it's easier to sell news when it's "them or us", so I ain't holding my breath.
posted by quin at 1:27 PM on January 2, 2009 [8 favorites]

Yay guilt by association. Is there a name for this in politics, where you want to activate your base, but keep the nuts on your side quiet? Similarly for the technique of getting the nuts on the other side so riled up that they make your opponent look bad?
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:30 PM on January 2, 2009

Not to keep piling on Michelle Malkin (though, it really is easy), but I thought the story referenced in the OP's title beared repeating:

#6: The War on Starbucks. For Michelle Malkin, even hot beverages are political. Malkin announced she was giving up Starbucks because they wouldn't let customers put the phrase "Laissez Faire" on their gift cards, and switched to Dunkin' Donuts because they were "unapologetic supporters of immigration enforcement." Then she denounced Dunkin' Donuts because Rachel Ray wore a keffiyeh in one of their ads, but relented when the ad was pulled. The price of breakfast is eternal vigilance!

So, for those keeping track, DD pulled an ad because a blogger got irritated by a scarf their celebrity endorser was wearing.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 1:40 PM on January 2, 2009 [5 favorites]

How many photoshopped images came from each side? That alone might be a telling factor in political mentality. Because it takes some time and intent to paste things together in a vaguely natural-looking fashion. You can cut and paste in MS Paint, but scaling heads to match the size of bodies takes some time. And you have to search for source images, unless someone happened to collect pictures of watermelons and the like.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:41 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

all these anecdotal stories (and I have heard many others as well) of people voting for Obama basically because the Republicans ran such a particularly constant nasty campaign have me wondering if it will change, at least a little, how Presidential campaigns are waged. To be sure, not all of Obama's messages avoided mud slinging, but the disproportionate ratio was on McCain's side, and some of that was out of McCain's campaign hands. So much was just that continual nasty 3rd party email forwarding.

In retrospect most of these are funny. The stories that proved to have legs are just sad 9rachel Ray ad pulled)

I hadn't heard of the call to undertip waitstaff.. I almost wish they had followed through on it, and received an awful lot of strangely slimy meals and drinks.

Finally, I'd pony up a 20 spot to Obama if he'd actually grow a beard like that, that my friends would be rad. Perhaps in his second, fuck all y'all, term eh?
posted by edgeways at 1:42 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

So, for those keeping track, DD pulled an ad because a blogger got irritated by a scarf their celebrity endorser was wearing.

To be fair, Rachel Ray is really annoying. They were probably looking for an excuse.
posted by brundlefly at 1:44 PM on January 2, 2009 [4 favorites]

I don't see why we even need to acknowledge these people's existence anymore.

We need to educate them out of existence. Or at least try.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:46 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

There was one day earlier this year where I read two news stories on the same day, one about McCain and the other about Obama. The McCain one came out right before he stopped giving media unlimited access to the Straight Talk Express. He'd done a town hall early in the morning and tried to talk tough about Russia, which was threatening Georgia, and said that he wanted to kick them out of the G8; then that evening, when asked about China, he talked about teaming up with Russia to amplify the leverage on China. The article then also pointed out how he'd said both that he absolutely refused to raise taxes and also that when it came to balancing the budget "no options were off the table". The point being: either he was pandering, or he really had no set idea about either Russia or taxes, because sometimes he was for them and other times he was against them. If he was pandering, he wasn't the John McCain he was supposed to be and since his character was his strongest calling card, he wasn't fit for the presidency; if he had no idea about Russia or taxes, then he wasn't particularly fit to deal with foregin or domestic affairs as president, either.

The Obama article, however, was about how Obama is so much thinner than most Americans, and would we vote for a guy who didn't look like us? Could he share our concerns? It brought up the fact that his daughters don't think he likes ice cream enough, and reminded us of when he made that gaffe about whole foods and the price of arugula in the middle of Iowa, which was reminiscent of Kerry asking for a Philly Cheese Steak with a cheese that wasn't Cheez-Whiz in Philadelphia.

Now, I'm not saying that there weren't pros to McCain, and I'm not saying there aren't cons to Obama. But seriously: the media and its presidential coverage was absolutely insane this year. The things they focused on didn't make any sense and the things they didn't focus on didn't make any sense, and their idea of equivalent coverage for both sides was, to put it mildly, ludicrous given the imbalance between the two candidates. So let's just shove all of this down the memory hole and let's hope that somehow, magically, the United States will become the sort of country where the President's opinion on ice cream is not as newsworthy as their opinion on Russia, or taxes, or Sarah Palin's competence.
posted by Kiablokirk at 1:47 PM on January 2, 2009 [8 favorites]

This bears repeating.
posted by device55 at 1:49 PM on January 2, 2009

Am I the only who finds it highly ironic that the first commenter on the "Wall-E is evil" blog has a Calvin and Hobbes avatar? Talk about overtly liberal cartoons.
posted by papayaninja at 1:53 PM on January 2, 2009

The Dark Knight is "a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war

The ability of right-wing bloggers to see allegory in things that have nothing to do with them is amazing. My favorite was Battlestar Galactica. The loonies on the Corner were convinced that the plot was an allegory for the terrorist attacks on 9/11 (as if a horde of self-creating robots with overwhelming military force was the same as 19 men with box cutters).

Needless to say, they were mega-pissed when their human heroes donned suicide belts and began blowing themselves up in an attempt to defeat the Cylon hordes. The betrayal! Those liberal Hollywood types got them again.

Except now, they have no power and nobody listens to them anymore. My favorite moment was when they announced the win for Obama. Karl Rove and the boys started kissing ass with "I too, welcome our new liberal negro overlords" speechifying. Can't wait to watch those fuckers suck it for the next 4 years.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:54 PM on January 2, 2009

DecemberBoy:
I don't see why we even need to acknowledge these people's existence anymore. Their ideology has been thrown on the dustbin of history, their pet idiot is headed for years of liver-destroying ignominious obscurity. Leave them with nothing but memories of their salad days, analyzing fonts in service of the worst President in American history.

Figuratively speaking, just because the symptoms are in remission doesn't mean that the disease is yet cured. It would be best to continue the antibiotic regimen for a while longer.
posted by PsychoKick at 1:56 PM on January 2, 2009 [4 favorites]

"This election year does look quite a bit like Hoover vs. Roosevelt (and given that choice, I'll take Hoover)," said National Review's Jonah Goldberg, setting off a little avalanche of rightblogger warnings that "electing Obama and the congressional Democrats will be like electing FDR in 1932."

Nice of all those rightwing bloggers to reach across the aisle and campaign for Obama like that.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 1:59 PM on January 2, 2009

Finally, I'd pony up a 20 spot to Obama if he'd actually grow a beard like that, that my friends would be rad. Perhaps in his second, fuck all y'all, term eh?

Before that, he has to grow his afro back. When he meets with some world leader sporting an afro, I will literally take the day off to laugh heartily and troll the net for media. If he then uses a fist pick then shapes it with his hands, I will turn that supreme moment into a poster/bumper sticker/tshirt/wallpaper/thong/tattoo and probably turn into one of those people who walks around smiling non freaking stop. That day I will high five every single person I see.
posted by cashman at 2:00 PM on January 2, 2009 [12 favorites]

Finally, I'd pony up a 20 spot to Obama if he'd actually grow a beard like that, that my friends would be rad. Perhaps in his second, fuck all y'all, term eh?

My money's on a mustache. A sweet, Lee Smith style bushy mofo.
posted by billysumday at 2:02 PM on January 2, 2009

I don't see the big deal in the Megan McArdle one. Here's the original post they refer to; you could well expect to see such a comment here at Metafilter. And I don't really see a 35-year-old woman playing the Wii as a case of conspicuous consumption.
posted by Clandestine Outlawry at 2:03 PM on January 2, 2009

... reminded us of when he made that gaffe about whole foods and the price of arugula in the middle of Iowa.

Arugula is grown in Iowa. Those farmers knew what he was talking about; it was everyone else who was all "why is Obama talking to people in Iowa about arugula (when we all know they are corn-fed yokels who only eat iceberg lettuce for the ranch dressing)". Unfortunately, being classist is far better than being elitist, apparently.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:08 PM on January 2, 2009 [23 favorites]

My extremely conservative uncle sent me a link to one of the Batman = Bush screeds a while back, which also dredged up the whole 300 as conservative thing. "Conservatives in Hollywood are speaking out!"

I cautioned my uncle about hitching his horse to a movie that opens with a pile of dead babies, killed by the "good guys." This, of course, led him to switch gears immediately to abortion... how millions of babies are being killed and B. Hussein Obama supports it whole-heartedly. No segue. On to the next talking point.

My uncle, who used to be a very thoughtful, conservative fellow, has over the past 8 years turned into the very worst the Republican party has to offer. It's just sad.
posted by brundlefly at 2:10 PM on January 2, 2009 [3 favorites]

Their ideology has been thrown on the dustbin of history

Do not bet on that. It, and Sarah Palin, will be back.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:10 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Wait, what happened to the comment I was referring to? Now I look like a crazy person. Time to start a right wing blog, I guess.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:11 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

From the Voice article: It's like King Lear played out in a madhouse with hand puppets. Awesome!

I sort of wish my mom kept a blog. Then she could have regaled the world with her ideological dismay that when she gave me a J. Crew gift card, I used it to go out and purchase a bouclé jacket in the style of -- ugh -- Jackie Kennedy. (True story.)
posted by scody at 2:19 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

eponysterical?
posted by geos at 2:32 PM on January 2, 2009

Right. Because when talking about McCain and the '08 election there were never any posts unfairly attacking McCain.

After the last eight years, it's a sick joke for a Republican to whine about fairness. Any post or comment anywhere on the web that is barely critical of McCain would be considered unfair, anyway, from a right-winger's perspective. No one is obligated to tolerate Bill O'Reilly-like whining.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:43 PM on January 2, 2009 [10 favorites]

Now I look like a crazy person.

But are you wearing a tiara?
posted by quin at 2:47 PM on January 2, 2009

Any post or comment anywhere on the web that is barely critical of McCain would be considered unfair, anyway, from a right-winger's perspective.

I believe I've said it here before, but it's really hilarious how the Republicans have gone from being the party of "personal responsibility" and being against "the culture of victimhood" to being a bunch of whiny little bitches.
posted by brundlefly at 2:53 PM on January 2, 2009 [14 favorites]

Right. Because when talking about McCain and the '08 election there were never any posts unfairly attacking McCain.

Show me half a dozen undeleted FPPs that you think meet this criteria or shut up.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:57 PM on January 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

I just hope the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2012 is Sarah Palin. I want Obama to get the full eight years to work some of his mojo, and that'd basically guarantee that he does.
posted by jamstigator at 3:10 PM on January 2, 2009

Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove are still around. Rush is still a steaming pile of ... humble pie, while Karl's site spits no venom, but still comes off as slightly pompous. Rush wasted no time in blaming Obama, with an article on Nov. 6th titled "Obama Recession in Full Swing." The image of him is an orange sleezebag, and his "Excellence in Broadcasting" logo reminds me of Bad Company (a drum'n'bass group, which have nothing to do with dirty politics). He is by no means quiet, and his listeners aren't gone. I remember seeing a bumper sticker on a truck that said something like "bury your money, hid your guns, Obama's coming!" - it was a few days after the election was over. It wasn't a fancy sticker, just orange backing with bold black text. I was sad for that person, because they might end up being very angry for the next four years. Hopefully they'll see the world doesn't end, and they aren't taxed to oblivion. And guns? Way down on the Urban Policy page is a little something about Address[ing] Gun Violence in Cities. I hate the hype.

Fun side-note: I run NoScript with FireFox, and the first attempt to load RushLimbaugh.com results in an empty, white page. By temporarily allowing scripts on that page, I am then lead to rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html, which has content. I was amused.

re: MeFites are Lefties - of course there were no FPPs declaring Republicans unfit for office or whatnot (beyond their own doing, of course). And note that no one is standing up for Sarah Palin in this thread (and probably few elsewhere). Just sayin'.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:12 PM on January 2, 2009

DecemberBoy: "I don't see why we even need to acknowledge these people's existence anymore. "

You gotta admit that they're way more entertaining than liberal bloggers. Go read Kevin Drum or Matthew Yglesias and you'll get boring well-researched posts on transit theory or economic reform but go read RedState or The Corner and you'll get awesome posts about how Sarah Palin shoots rainbows out of her winking eye or that Obama's mother secretly flew back from Kenya to Hawaii with her baby to make sure that he could be president 45 years later.

Liberal bloggers are handicapped by living in the observable empirical world, the right are unencumbered by any such restraints. I don't want them anywhere near the controls of government but you have to admit that they're great performance artists.
posted by octothorpe at 3:14 PM on January 2, 2009 [8 favorites]

"Obama Recession in Full Swing." -wow. Isn't it traditional to wait until they've been in office for at least a day brfire doing this?
posted by Artw at 3:14 PM on January 2, 2009 [5 favorites]

It's never too soon for the Party of Personal Responsibility to blame liberals for everything bad in the world!
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:25 PM on January 2, 2009 [8 favorites]

It's never too soon for the Party of Personal Responsibility to blame liberals for everything bad in the world!

Tell me about it. Did you know that Obama and the evil Democrat (sic) Congress should be frog-marched out of Washington, then tried and executed (!) for treason for destroying the American Free Enterprise System? And that the congressional hearings on the auto industry bailout were show trials, and that those poor, unfairly maligned auto execs have been completely victimized by the Democrats, exactly like the Jews under Hitler and Stalin?
posted by scody at 3:33 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Paul Krugman: As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.
posted by homunculus at 3:46 PM on January 2, 2009

I found "the year in NSFW photos" (from the link in the original FPP here about Obama or whatever) to be a little more interesting, especially the photo "Whorecraft" leading into an slideshow about the men and maidens of Whorelore: Swords, Sorcery, and Sex, a web-porn series based on the immensely popular massive multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft.

Bonnie Ruberg of the Voice is supposed to have written an article about it in March 2008, but nothing comes up.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:47 PM on January 2, 2009

The crazy stuff like the Obama bin Laden in a beard, the skip the tip scheme, the alleged Michelle Obama remarks, the ridiculousness of the whisper campaign emails -- it's fascinating to me to see reflection (and even surprise in some circles) on how this stuff hurt the Republican party this time, and I'm going to be interested to see how this plays out. We're already seeing, as has been noted, Rush Limbaugh call this the Obama Recession, so it's clear that this kind of thing isn't going to be abandoned, but I wonder if it might get dialed back. Or not. Maybe it would have worked just fine if McCain had been a little better loved, or Obama a little less together, and it'll be tried again.

But more interesting to me than seeing the ugly side of things rolled out along the edges by email and by blog, more interesting to me than the gymnastics of transparent entertainer/mouthpieces like Limbaugh is that the rot here reaches to some supposed centers of right-wing thought. I can't understand why conservatives can't find people at least for the National Review who don't write the embarrassing and tortured stuff that Jonah Goldberg comes up with. The two examples have their problems but they may not be the least sane. My favorite was when he tried to take the inverse correlation between Obama's increasing poll numbers and the plummeting confidence in the economy and suggest that this meant the business world was losing confidence in the markets as they saw the socialist candidate pull ahead. The guy was literally saying that the prospect of Obama's election was what the cause of fear in the capital markets.

That's more sophisticated bullshit than the idea Obama is a secret muslim, but that other stuff has to at least skulk about in shadows and personal email boxes, avoiding the glare of incredulity that's cast on it in the sunlight. Seeing bullshit like Goldberg's high on the menu of what's supposed to be a better quality buffet of right-wing thinking is one of the reasons I have trouble embracing the GOP, despite the fact I'm sympathetic to some of the principles the party is supposed to stand for.

There's probably several kinds of confirmation bias in a judgment based off these kinds of statements, and I might just do better to pay attention to conservative thinkers I find more sane. Even understanding that I can't shake the feeling of unease generated by the pulpit granted to this stuff.
posted by weston at 4:38 PM on January 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

LOLPOLITICS
posted by koeselitz at 5:02 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

LOLPOLITICS

LOLATICS
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:04 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Is there a name for this in politics, where you want to activate your base, but keep the nuts on your side quiet?

Dog-whistle politics.
posted by mike3k at 5:31 PM on January 2, 2009

I remember seeing a bumper sticker on a truck that said something like "bury your money, hid your guns, Obama's coming!" - it was a few days after the election was over. It wasn't a fancy sticker, just orange backing with bold black text. I was sad for that person, because they might end up being very angry for the next four years.

The sad part is he'd probably end up paying less taxes with Obama.
posted by mike3k at 5:32 PM on January 2, 2009

I can't understand why conservatives can't find people at least for the National Review who don't write the embarrassing and tortured stuff that Jonah Goldberg comes up with.

They don't replace him because they don't thing there anything wrong with him. Seriously, not a damn thing. They think Jonah is smart, savvy and a great writer. His ridiculous book was a huge best seller.

How fucked up is that?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:34 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Wow, a strange parallel universe. Is Jeff Jarvis right-wing? I only know him as an anti-print fanatic.
posted by WPW at 5:41 PM on January 2, 2009

...a Party Chairman who doesn't distribute racist songs to party members on his Christmas mix CD...

omg, link pls?
posted by DU at 6:12 PM on January 2, 2009

distribute racist songs to party members on his Christmas mix CD...

Wait... does the RIAA know about this?
posted by porpoise at 6:19 PM on January 2, 2009

Ooohhhh, that's what all these "Magic Negro" references I've been seeing are about. Man, I'm off the Internet for a couple days and I miss everything.
posted by DU at 6:26 PM on January 2, 2009

No Daily Show either.
posted by Artw at 6:33 PM on January 2, 2009

So, if Obama makes it though 4 years with a competent administration will all those insisting he is a Muslim now have an open mind about electing Muslims to office? (yeah.. I know)

Fwiw MN just re-elected a Muslim to congress, the first ever (as far as we know), and he just went on the Hajj . Kind of funny that the same state (my state btw) would both elect Michelle Bauchman and Ellison. But, in a way, that is quintessential Minnesotan.
posted by edgeways at 8:14 PM on January 2, 2009

If you really want a sense of what kinds of emails went around during the election, just check out snopes.com - Obama versus McCain or Palin.
posted by jb at 8:18 PM on January 2, 2009 [3 favorites]

My 68-year old Republican mother voted for the second time in her life to support Obama (her last vote was for Reagan), and my 89-year old Republican grandmother voted Democrat for the first time in her life, also to support Obama.
posted by Chasuk at 9:29 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

My born-in-Mississippi-to-a-blatantly-racist-family father wanted Hillary and then bit the bullet and voted for a man of color... something I would have bet all my money against.

Seriously, he used to put on horribly racist puppet shows with a black puppet when I was a child, and the 'N' word was thrown around like confetti when I went to visit the family. Hearing that word come out of a 6-year-old's mouth is pretty confounding.

His vote made me happy.
posted by Huck500 at 11:12 PM on January 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yes there were certainly ridiculous things that were said about McCain.

The most ridiculous thing I heard said about McCain was that he was a Manturian candidate who was brainwashed in North Vietnam by the Communists and Jews. I'm kinda thinking this guy wasn't a long time supporter of the democrats.

I'm also kinda thinking he's got a different take on geopolitics than, oh, the folks at The Economist
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 2:11 AM on January 3, 2009

But seriously: the media and its presidential coverage was absolutely insane this year. The things they focused on didn't make any sense and the things they didn't focus on didn't make any sense, and their idea of equivalent coverage for both sides was, to put it mildly, ludicrous given the imbalance between the two candidates. So let's just shove all of this down the memory hole...

I see that you are not aware of all "liberal media" traditions. They do this crap every four years. They did it to Clinton. They did it to Gore. They did it to Kerry. They're probably going to do it to Obama again in 2012. Which is why "shoving it down the memory hole" is not the best approach. We should be remembering this idiocy, and letting those jerks know we remember it. If Chris Matthews gets his lame sycophantic ass elected to office, we'll know that too many people have forgotten.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:35 AM on January 3, 2009

racist songs to party members on his Christmas mix CD

Actually, it wasn't a mix CD. He gave them all a copy of Paul Shanklin's album We Hate The USA, which also features the no-doubt hilarious "Star-Spanglish Banner."
posted by EarBucket at 5:35 AM on January 3, 2009

Sorry, but as usual, there's another side to the story that's not being told here. I read plenty of batshit-insane rantings and outright lies about the GOP at Kos, Huffpo, The Atlantic, and Democratic Underground prior to the election. Lowlights include:

- the ever-popular "Bush/Cheney will lead a coup to overturn the election and install a fascist state".

- Andrew Sullivan's (ongoing) obsession with "Trig Trutherism"...insisting that Palin was actually the mother of Bristol Palin's child, not the grandmother.

- McCain birthers who insisted (just like the Obama birthers) than McCain isn't a US citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal zone.

- The deliberate misquoting of McCain's "100 years in Iraq" remark.

- Howard Dean suggesting that the US was behind 9/11.

- The Palin rape-kit smear.

Anyone looking to get some perspective outside of their respective hyper-partisan echo-chambers would do well to pay an occasional visit to FactCheck.org and Reason.com.
posted by MrBaliHai at 5:42 AM on January 3, 2009

- Howard Dean suggesting that the US was behind 9/11

Buh? Dean said the US did it? Not that we bore some responsibility for the attack because of our past actions, but that we were in on the plot? Source?
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:59 AM on January 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

What Dean said that caused controversy was that Bush had prior warning of the attacks, which was, of course, incontrovertibly true. It doesn't mean that Republicans won't attack it as a smear, of course.

I read plenty of batshit-insane rantings and outright lies about the GOP at Kos, Huffpo, The Atlantic, and Democratic Underground prior to the election.

So you're suggesting that BushSuKKKs2008's diaries at DailyKos should be given the same weight as prominent, professionally-published conservative thinkers like Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin? Really?

The only prominent blogger you've pointed to is Andrew Sullivan, who's a self-identified conservative and (as even his fondest fans would concede) a bit of a nut. I don't see anything on that list that even approaches, say, claiming that Malcolm X might be Obama's biological father. Or that he plans to overthrow the government to institute a socialist utopia. Or, hell, that we need to overthrow the government if it lets the homos get married.

No one's saying there aren't batshitinsane people on the left. But you can count the number of really crazy prominent lefty bloggers on the fingers of one hand, while the conservative nutjobs are almost without number.
posted by EarBucket at 7:17 AM on January 3, 2009 [3 favorites]

What's hilarious is that the worst shit ever thrown at McCain was done by Republicans in 2000, not Democrats in 2008.
posted by billysumday at 7:44 AM on January 3, 2009 [2 favorites]

What's hilarious is that the worst shit ever thrown at McCain was done by Republicans in 2000, not Democrats in 2008.

Yes. Obama's people didn't make any phone calls accusing McCain of having an illegitimate black child, they didn't call him the "fag candidate," and they didn't hire the guy who ran those smears against McCain in 2000. But then, he was busy.
posted by EarBucket at 7:50 AM on January 3, 2009 [3 favorites]

Andrew Sullivan's (ongoing) obsession with "Trig Trutherism"...insisting that Palin was actually the mother of Bristol Palin's child, not the grandmother.

Actually, you've got that backwards. That reminds me, when is Bristol's wedding?
posted by graventy at 8:11 AM on January 3, 2009

After the last eight years, it's a sick joke for a Republican to whine about fairness.

IMHO when this becomes about equivalence, instead of about facts and reality, progressives lose. In other words, just because some conservatives lie about the other side, and make a big deal about stupid BS like the Starbucks story, doesn't mean the left does better by coming up with better lies, or better ways of twisting facts, or better ways of pushing irrelevant crap as opposed to issues that matter.

How many photoshopped images came from each side? That alone might be a telling factor in political mentality.

Um, 50000000000 Photoshops of Sarah Palin to thread. I didn't agree with her on anything but some of the really nasty stuff making fun of her on the Internets was pretty sickening to me. Such as the MeFite who sought advice on finding a suitable frame for a painting of a naked Palin. Keep it classy guys.

I read plenty of batshit-insane rantings and outright lies about the GOP at Kos, Huffpo, The Atlantic, and Democratic Underground prior to the election.

There were indeed plenty of lies and misleading posts on all of these sites (does Sullivan blog at The Atlantic still? he counts - but Marc Ambinder is quite good and very fair IMHO). Again my basic problem is, they hurt candidates and issues they claim to support, when they take the approach of flinging as much shit as they can at their opponents, just to see what sticks. As a big Hillary supporter I quit reading Kos, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, many liberal blogs, simply because they'd run absolutely anything up the flagpole (no matter how misleading or trivial) if it helped them smear her. In fact, the #1 reason why I came around to being a supporter of Obama (as opposed to someone who'd just pull the lever for any Democrat), was that I tuned out, almost completely, from everything posted on forums and blogs by his online supporters.
posted by citron at 9:24 AM on January 3, 2009

IMHO when this becomes about equivalence, instead of about facts and reality, progressives lose. In other words, just because some conservatives lie about the other side, and make a big deal about stupid BS like the Starbucks story, doesn't mean the left does better by coming up with better lies, or better ways of twisting facts, or better ways of pushing irrelevant crap as opposed to issues that matter.

This is not about equivalence, but about how Republicans have demonstrated they are functionally incapable of deciding what is fair and unfair criticism.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:32 AM on January 3, 2009

I don't really understand what you're saying. I work in progressive politics and frankly, I'm exasperated and dismayed by the crap that loud voices on the right shovel on a daily basis, exasperated by how it works its way into the public dialogue, and disgusted by how smearing the opposition in the worst ways possible, becomes acceptable behavior in some conservative circles.

But I also don't see it as either helpful or logical to make that kind of generalization about the entire party and everyone in it. It's the tone that suggests to me this sort of black-and-white thinking, the GOP is all bad and wrong about everything, terrible evil people or "whiny little bitches" who must be destroyed, the Dems (or Obama, or the left, etc) are smarter and better and superior in every possible way. I personally do think I'm right and they're wrong, but also think it's not healthy for our democracy when both sides become about destroying each other instead of, you know, focusing on how to run the country.
posted by citron at 9:51 AM on January 3, 2009

That reminds me, when is Bristol's wedding?

I don't know but he's already got the tat.
posted by saul wright at 11:15 AM on January 3, 2009