A Jab at Rightmarch.com
So I was listening to an NPR interview with the founder of RightMarch.com on the way home, hoping to hear a thoughtful counterpoint to MoveOn.org’s stance and getting a little annoyed at Terry Gross’ bad interview style. I was pretty severely let down by the guest though and decided to take a look at RightMarch since I actually hadn’t heard of it before. I was greeted with this image on the homepage:
… referring to the couple of Hitler-related entires to the “Bush in 30 Seconds” competition of course.
Now I’m the first one to dismiss anybody using an argument that involves Hitler, but the visual argument made by that image on RightMarch’s homepage was exactly the kind of logically worthless “common sense” criticism that the founder was indulging in on the air. So in response, I give you (un-photoshopped):
January 22nd, 2004 at 10:54 am
I agree. That is a silly piece of “proof” that Bush isn’t evil.
January 22nd, 2004 at 11:32 am
Brilliant! Thanks, John.
January 22nd, 2004 at 11:52 am
I agree about the brilliance, but it wasn’t mine. ymatt gets all the credit for posting that item.
January 22nd, 2004 at 12:54 pm
Oops. My apologies to ymatt.
January 22nd, 2004 at 5:41 pm
You liberals don’t understand. Bush is holding a non-white infant with pierced ears. Brown and probably from some foreign country, like Puerto Rico. How can he be a Nazi then? Hitler invaded Puerto Rico, until Kennedy blockaded him and they had that boatlift when all the people came here.
January 22nd, 2004 at 9:57 pm
Grassfire.org actually did air an ad on FoxNews tonight during the debate, accusing MoveOn.org of their Bush/Hitler comparison (which MoveOn.org already denounced). Good job Grassfire. You made the comparison for us, at your conservative right wing expense.
January 26th, 2004 at 9:26 am
I heard part of that NPR interview. Terry Gross would ask a question which would come close to calling the guy a hypocrite, but then would accede to his most ludicrous and internally-inconsistent rationalizations. She also failed to call him on something rather obvious. He argued that to accuse somebody of “betraying” their duties is the same as accusing them of “treason” – an obviously absurd and false claim – to defend his miscaracterization of the statement. But Gross didn’t ask him about Ann Coulter’s willingness to call just about everybody on the left “treasonous” or a “traitor”. Heck – she’s even written books and columns patting herself on the back for accusing patriotic Americans of treason.
January 26th, 2004 at 1:26 pm
Dictators with babies! Totally cute!
January 27th, 2004 at 5:30 am
“Now I’m the first one to dismiss anybody using an argument that involves Hitler, but I think I’ll indulge in this banal crap because, after all, Bush is a totally bad person. He deserves the comparison, which I would shoot anybody else down for making, but since that would be them, and I’m me, I’ll make an exception.
“Besides, this is a really cool picture of Hitler, and posting it might get me more attention than even the ‘Rush Limbaugh: Drug Addict ‘ headline did, and – let’s face it – this site isn’t getting a lot of attention at the moment.
Besides, why should I spend all that time constructing an argument against RightMarch’s stance and proofreading it and typing it out and all that boring stuff, when it would be so much cooler just to post this picture of Hitler that will delight any Pacifica Radio listeners who might mistake this site for Commondreams.org?”
I usually have a lot of repect for what goes on around this blog, but this particular post constitutes some of the most blatant shark-jumping I’ve ever seen in a while. Posts like this, the “Is Cheney Senile?” piece, and a few other recent posts are pointless and silly. This is as insulting to the intelligence as is the RightMarch item it satirizes.
John, this is beneath you.
January 27th, 2004 at 7:15 am
Thanks for missing the point. I think the Hitler comparison crap is useless and MoveOn has rightly denounced it. What I was attempting to point out (and thought I had explained) was that RightMarch’s approach to shooting down the Hitler comparison was to basically say “gee, look what a good guy Bush is — you’d be stupid to think he’s bad” which I found to be an even more insultingly stupid argument, much like amost everything on their site apparently.
January 27th, 2004 at 8:35 am
A point is easily missed when someone finds the most hamfisted, inflamatory way to get it across. Just because RightMarch has taken a simple-minded approach to some simple-minded crap on MoveOn.org doesn’t mean that anyone here has to follow all those losers down the rabbit hole.
January 27th, 2004 at 10:49 am
I dunno, I thought this was a pretty clear and concise way of making the point. I’m not saying Bush is Hitler, I’m just providing the relevant counterpoint to their argument. Their image says “this man could not be Hitler based on this picture” so I found a picture of Hitler doing the same damn thing. I thought it was funny.
January 27th, 2004 at 1:05 pm
I agree with you ymatt. I’m usually on the other side of the opinion fence from most of the contributors at this site, but I found the counterpoint picture to be the right response to the doltish message being suggested by Rightmarch. You don’t have to believe that Bush=Hitler garbage to appreciate an effective response to such a starkly simple-minded rationale being used as proof of Bush’s humanity.
And yes, the “Cheney is senile” posting was an unnesessarily slanderous accusation to make, as I pointed out in the comments section.
January 28th, 2004 at 11:31 am
die
January 28th, 2004 at 12:25 pm
For the record, I didn’t say “Cheney is senile”. I asked, “Is Cheney senile?” And I realize that, like a picture of Hitler kissing a baby posted next to a picture of Bush kissing a baby, it was probably prone to misinterpretation by Cheney supporters. But I really did have a moment of wondering about that (whether or not he’s senile) after reading his latest comments on the ironclad evidence for extensive Iraqi WMDs and close ties between Saddam and al Qaeda. I mean, those things are simply not true, and the evidence for that is increasingly abundant.
What do you call an aging man, with a history of serious health problems, who repeatedly, and apparently sincerely, professes a belief in things that are demonstrably false?
January 28th, 2004 at 1:11 pm
Generally I call them “politicians”.