Why Seanny Can’t Read

Last night on the Faux Nooz™ Hannity and Colmes Show, after the smearing of Al Gore, Live Earth and a REALLY CREEPY video smear of Robert Kennedy Jr., I had the singular surreal honor of being cluelessly smeared by not only that increasingly corpulent studmuffin roué of the Right, Sean Hannity, but also that media chameleon, that spray-tanned Faux pundit, the creepy Brent Bozell, discussing Earth shattering questions such as:

Hannity: Hart Williams is a liberal blogger who went from porn to politics, and is now threatening some of our good friends because he doesn’t like what Rush Limbaugh and Ted Nugent have said about him and his quote friends and peers, Williams said unquote.

[CUT TO GRAPHIC]: (sic, since we’re ‘unquote’) “Now I’ve got dibs on Rush, as soon as it’s legal and lawful to shoot him. Whoever wants Ted Nugent is welcome to him, but I would prefer that you would call it now …

[Next screen]

so as to conserve on ammunition. We will need to manage it prudently.”

Just so’s you can see the context, here’s MY full quote (the dénouement of the 5th of July column, part 2 of 2 from the 4th of July column) [emphasis added]:

I will only reiterate what I’ve said before: WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war (for there is no other place that this hatred of American against American can go), well …

I’ve got dibs on Rush, as soon as it’s legal and lawful to shoot him.

Whoever wants Ted Nugent is welcome to him, but I would prefer that you would call it now, so as to conserve on ammunition. We will need to manage it prudently.

But when the day comes that they have finally set brother against brother, and sister against sister in the name of their pocketbooks, I won’t approach exterminating them with anything approaching remorse. They’ve already told me what they think of me, of my friends and of my peers.

Now, I’m returning the favor.

Put that in your pipe and have the WSJ editorial staff show you how to smoke it, Nugent.

Courage.

Gee, cherrypicking from Fair and Balanced™ Faux Nooz™? Who’d a thunk?

But, without bothering to answer the charges Bozell and Hannity (Should he be arrested? Should he be investigated? Should he be silenced?), it strikes me that people need to understand that I’ve been utterly consistent in my j’accuse! of Rush’s reflexive hatred and its consequences for ten years. A position that’s now being satanically spun BACK at me: that I’m the hatespeaking, I’m the hatemeister, I’m the hatecriminal. Suddenly I feel I’m trapped in a bad Hollywood movie. Or a Kafka short story. (“In the Penal Colony”?)

So, here’s the links to Bozell’s Media Busters (“Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias”) who enthusiastically chronicled their boss’ spray-on tan. Below it is what I wrote about Rush and someone equally far to the “left” and the consequences of the rhetoric of hate that was then (January 9, 1994) taking over our political stage, seemingly for good. Witness Hannity’s KNOWING smear.

And thanks to Alan Colmes who read (albeit haltingly) the portion of the quote that Hannity suppressed (3:36 of the Newsbusters video: “heyuh Brent, I wanna go back to what this uh … what this blogger said …)

WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war (for there is no other place that this hatred of American against American can go), well …

Of course, Colmes, literally reflexively added “I don’t support that; I don’t agree with what he said …” which makes media sense (everything is distorted and turned into bat guano by the sound bite nature of TV and radio, ESPECIALLY writing and long thoughts), but is just an additional kind of smear. If you read the pieces in question, you know what I said. They need no further defense from me. They can defend themselves just fine, thank you.

Seemingly, the REASON for all of this was to “counterbalance” me against Ann Coulter and her vile spewings (The classic: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”) I found myself conflated weirdly with Katie Couric slapping a subordinate, and other weird stuff having nothing to do with why I am, in the words of their kreepy Faux Nooz™ Box headline:

BLOGGER WANTS TO SHOOT RUSH
ALSO CALLS FOR TED NUGENT’S ASSASSINATION

Now I begin to feel like a character in an Orwell novel.

Well, here’s what I thought in 1993, (published on Jan 9. 1994) and here’s the links to News Busters’ media of the show in question. Seanny clearly can’t read. But the question is, because he’s an idiot or because he’s willfully and diabolically lying to give Ann Coulter cover, smear liberals, and, as usual, make Alan Colmes look like the squirrely “liberal” that, well, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes purchased his soul to get. (Colmes’ radio show is syndicated by SURPRISE! Fox News Radio.)

Unreasonable Men

Note: This piece originally appeared Sunday, January 9, 1994 in the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard. At that time, John Stoltenberg was the late Andrea Dworkin’s roommate.

© 1993 Hart Williams

See, I Told You So, by Rush Limbaugh.
Pocket Books. 364 pp., $24.

The End of Manhood, by John Stoltenberg.
Dutton. 311 pp., $21.

While reasonable men may disagree reasonably, unreasonable men may, evidently, only manage to be disagreeable. Neither Limbaugh nor Stoltenberg would be pleased to see his tome laid beside the other’s, but the similarities of approach are far greater than the polarities of viewpoint presented.

Stoltenberg is a “radical profeminist” whose book comes with words of praise from Gloria Steinem, Naomi Wolf and the editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine. Stoltenberg promises–self-reviewing himself in the prologue– “Structured like a sequenced meditation, ‘The End of Manhood’ [sic] comprises diverse voices (from erudite to earthy) and types of text (by turns antic and analytic), but always practical, here and now. I had fun writing it, and I decided to let the fun show.”

Be that as it may, Stoltenberg’s writing is disjointed and tenuously connected, as he constructs fallacious proofs that being a “man” is incompatible with being a human being, or, as he puts it a “Man of Conscience.” Obsessed with rebutting the “men’s movement,” Stoltenberg fashions logical bear traps that “prove” “manhood” to be incompatible with humanity. Elsewhere, he has “fun” with such eloquent “satire” as”: “Ten Ways You Can Fake It If You Fear Your Manhood Act Is Shaky”.

The sorrow and the pity is that, in preaching to the converted, Stoltenberg carefully defines the “enemy,” ascribes hateful qualities to him, and, by turns, moves to the eventual conclusion that ANYONE who disagrees with him is the stereotype he’s generated. The term for what’s being done has yet to be invented, but it is precisely “racism.” He’s’ just moved the defining characteristics from melanin content to gender and political outlook. This, Stoltenberg implies, makes him a martyr, like all women everywhere at all times.

Rush Limbaugh does exactly the same thing. His enemy, however, is not “manhood,” but “liberals.” Limbaugh does have the advantage on Stoltenberg of occasionally making sense, and he’s somewhat funnier. But, like Stoltenberg, he reserves his humor as a weapon to be used against his enemies, the evil “liberals.” To classify either gentleman’s humor as “satire” would do a disservice to the word. “See, I Told You So,” comes with words of praise from William F. Buckley, Jr., Fortune Magazine, and Malcolm Forbes, Jr. in Forbes magazine.

Self-reviewing HIS book in his introduction–is this a trend?–Limbaugh crows: “prepare your mind to be challenged as it has never been challenged before. Don’t be surprised if your brain is stimulated to the point that genuine human thought takes place. This is normal for nonliberals. You are making progress.”

This reviewer’s mind was not vaguely challenged, except, perhaps, by Limbaugh’s continual self- congratulatory assertions of protean intellect. It is tempting to go further, but that is not the point.

“See, I Told You So,” is a book that reads like Limbaugh’s radio show. The use of language is close enough to the show, in fact, that it is likely it was dictated, transcribed and edited. A series of chapters on various themes–“Punishing Achievement,” “Algore: The Technology Czar” (sic), “The Case For Less Government” -the book relies on a tried and true method of logical subversion that has become commonplace in public debate: begin by finding the most outrageous positions of the opposition, use fact and reason to rebut, break at any point for tirades, claim that you are being “common sense” and logical, and then ask weighted rhetorical questions that lead to inescapable conclusions, such as “With such a great start (founding America), why did we allow liberalism, moral relativism and secular humanism to poison our nation’s soul?”

Limbaugh alternates between telling the reader how smart he is and how humble he is; between how God, mom and apple pie works great, and how “Modern-day liberalism is like a disease or an addiction that literally has the power to destroy the character of the person who falls under its spell.”

This the frightening banner under which BOTH authors wage their battles. Both characterize themselves as victims of a homogenous opposition. Both use the appearance of logic to make emotional and self-serving points. Both create semantic monsters–Stoltenberg’s “manhood,” Limbaugh’s “liberals”–that they invoke at every opportunity, for any purpose. If you don’t precisely agree with either, you’re a monster. If they have been oppressed, it was by monsters. If either is unable to make his point, he launches into scathing mud-clinging (which both call “humor”) about their monsters.

And this is the true monstrousness of these books: Both may have valid positions. But that is not important to them. What IS important is to pursue the opposition with witch hunt tactics; to smear and revile all who disagree; and to imply that their radical positions are the only positions that may be taken.

No room is left for moderation. And, in a nation in which public policy is, increasingly, determined by talk-radio debate, the lack of courtesy, the absence of reason and reasonableness, and the monkey-throwing-feces brand of humor is a dangerous indicator of the future. Although we should fight to the death for these gentlemen’s right to speak so hideously, we should also be able to reasonably disagree–reasonably and intelligibly.

— Sunday, January 9, 1994

Here’s the NewsBusters writeup on their boss’ smearing of l’il ol’ me:

MRC/NB’s Bozell on Hannity & Colmes Re Blogger Advocating Killing Rush*; Couric’s Slap
Posted by Brent Baker on July 9, 2007 – 21:58.

[*GEE! Isn’t there some BIAS in that little distortion?]

Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center which publishes NewsBusters, appeared Monday night on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes. Topics: The liberal blogger who wants Rush Limbaugh and Ted Nugent killed*, a posting reported by WorldNetDaily; and the New York magazine profile of CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric which reported that, frustrated with her low ratings, she had “slapped” a colleague: “Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested — ‘sputum’ — and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him ‘over and over and over again’ on the arm…” On the blogger, Bozell pointed out how the media and liberals pounced on Ann Coulter, distorting her comment about John Edwards into how she advocated assassinating him when she said no such thing. NB’s Coulter items. MRC CyberAlert on NBC’s distortion. MRC’s June 28 press release.

Video clip (5:25): Real (4.1 MB) or Windows Media (3.4 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.9 MB).

So, who’s now physically endangered by all of this?

The irresponsibility of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid news style (see “sex teacher shockers!” on The Hannity & Colmes website) now endangers my family.

I never “advocated killing Rush.” But some wingnut with a gun who watches Faux Nooz will never know that. (Which is, perhaps, what Joseph Farah intended, his little feelings being hurt and all when he ego-googled himself and found my Ted Nugent articles. To this day, I wonder WHO wrote the no byline WorldNetDaily piece that started this auto-da-fé.)

nd my comrades “on the left” will probably offer me the same support and solidarity that Alan Colmes did. Alas, he IS, in too many ways, a typical modern liberal. Me, on the other hand? I say that now’s the time to shout these bastards down. They’ve had 21 years without being challenged. Right Rush?

I say it’s time for this bullshit to stop.

Fuck you, Hannity. And I mean that without physical threat of any sort, because I know that you’ll cry yourself to sleep and wet the bed if I don’t assure you that you’re safe.

But now I go to sleep tortured by the Kreepy Kwisling Kwestion: AM I the ‘Ann Coulter’ of the Left?

Naw. My adam’s apple isn’t big enough.

Courage.