I Survived the Democratic National Convention

At the Democratic National Convention, Janeane Garofalo -- comedienne, talk show host and liberal pundit -- called me a "house Negro" and a "fascist." Well!

For four days, the Democratic Party put on its quadrennial scare-old-people-and-minorities party. Democrats, of course, rely on the 90-plus percent monolithic black vote. Thus, a black "non-liberal" poses a direct threat to the party's national prospects. When Garofalo agreed to a sit-down, she clearly knew nothing about me. When I defended the administration on the War on Terror, a frustrated Garofalo started to get up and leave, muttering, "This show sucks." After I called her a coward, however, she sat back down and finished the segment.

After our interview, Garofalo began broadcasting her radio show on "Air America." Several of my callers -- I was still on the air at the time -- said that Garofalo called me a "house Negro" and a "fascist." Then something interesting happened. Garofalo's people asked me to appear on her show. Would I agree?

I promptly said yes, after which I was informed that, no, they really had no time for an interview. What? After all, they asked me to appear, and when I promptly accepted, Garofalo's people suddenly decided they could not fit me into their schedule! Here's my speculation: Garofalo assumed that I feared appearing on her show. She extended an invitation in hopes that I would refuse. She then would go on the air, call me a coward and accuse me of fear in the face of hostility. Well, I called her bluff, and somebody backed down.

So, on my show I discussed the invitation/retraction and accused her of fear. Then, another one of Garofalo's people came by, re-extended the invitation, and I again promptly accepted.

On Garofalo's show, her co-host called John Ashcroft a "fascist." "Fascist?" I said, "If John Ashcroft is fascist, what do you call Adolf Hitler -- fascist-squared?" This brings up an interesting window into the mind of a liberal. Liberals frequently call John Ashcroft a "fascist" -- Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, etc. Yet the very same people want gun control. Why is this inconsistent?

The Second Amendment recognizes a right to "keep and bear arms," designed by the Founding Fathers to help prevent tyranny by government. If "fascist" Ashcroft wishes to trample on the Constitution, does this not represent the very tyranny by government that so deeply concerned the Founding Fathers? Some leftists see a movement toward a police state -- the very thing the Founding Fathers wanted the Second Amendment and the armed citizenry to prevent -- yet the very leftists also want further gun control. Some leftists distrust the government as to the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment, yet apparently feel sufficiently secure that we need not fear tyranny from this "fascist" government.

Garofalo used a common tactic when losing arguments -- malign your opponent. For example, former President Bill Clinton, during his DNC speech, said that he, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney all "avoided" serving in Vietnam. That's right. Clinton compares how he avoided the draft after receiving a draft notice to George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

As I sat on "radio row" in Boston's FleetCenter, and criticized Clinton's comparison of his conduct to Bush's, a man standing nearby shook his head from side to side in disagreement. During the commercial break, the man said, "You don't really believe what you just said, do you?" To which I said, "No, sir, I just lied for seven minutes." It went downhill from there. He asked whether I served, and to that irrelevant question, I asked him, "How much do you weigh?" My exasperated questioner ultimately walked away, but he first tossed his business card on my table and then called me an "a--hole." I crumpled the card and threw it at him. Tough day.

How uncivil are Democrats? On the last day of the convention, I waited in front of my hotel for a taxi. Another woman, standing only a few yards away, noticed the media badge around my neck. "Media?" she asked.

"You don't really want to know how I think the convention is going," she finally said, clearly uneasy. After all, she no doubt thought, "Is he one of us, or one of them?"

The woman and I then had an enjoyable conversation about politics, the convention and the prospects of re-election for George W. Bush. "Look," she said, "I'm not afraid to say I'm a Republican. I just don't have the time to deal with the silly, emotional arguments some of these hate-Bush folks raise. They seem to always end up calling names." Aah, the tolerant, open-minded, thoughtful party.

The core of the democrat party…

The democrat convention in Boston was nothing but an exercise in putting a new dress on an old whore. The convention planners had to hide all their extremists from public view. WE DID NOT SEE:

· the hateful gays and lesbians, who in addition to their nights of sinful debauchery, covet our most precious – our children;
· the violent Marxists that hate freedom and individual wealth, yet want to run the country;
· the hateful atheists and Christian-haters who hate Christians and "tradition-only" Jews who hate truly spiritual Jews;
· the educationalists hate parents who would raise children with ethics and morals, who design the perverse curricula designed to indoctrinate our children with hate-America and free-sex ideas;
· the vile and hateful abortionists rejoicing as they kill baby after baby and strive to silence the pro-lifers;
· the hateful feminists whose contempt of men knows no limits;
· the union thugs who shake down corporations and beat up those that just want to work;
· the zombie-like bureaucrats (some dedicated ones excepted) who run the legions of non-performing, paper-shuffling “goobermint” employees (military excepted) who vote democrat just because a republican president might actually expect them to work;
· the bitter socialists who want to sap the productivity of the producers and capitalists by penalizing profits;
· the intellectual elite who hate everything that America stands for, and prattle on and on as to the evils of our society, but, haven’t the capacity to think their way out of a paper bag, let alone be productive members of the American economy. According to them, government control of our lives is “good, ” but individuals choosing their own path and having success is “bad.”
· the hateful racial "dividers" who blame the evil white man for all their cultural problems, and demand more and more of the your hard labors as compensation;
· the open-border racists who invite floods of illegals into this country and then encourage them to sign up for all the freebees;
· the gun-haters who hate the that honest Americans might have a gun in their home, or worse yet, that some of them have license to carry it under their coats
· the greedy (but not so hateful) society-dependent families and individuals who take advantage of every hand-out program in America and vote only for those who promise more goodies for them;
· the confused (but not so hateful,) suburban soccer moms who really have no clue, except that they want abortion to remain unrestricted, and think their most important purpose in this world is to have tea with their town’s Superintendent of Schools so their kids get the best teachers.

WE DID NOT SEE THE TRUE FACE OF DEMOCRATS at the Boston convention but they were there nonetheless. These hateful people had to sit on their hands and keep their mouths shut; allowed only to clap their hands, flash big smiles and cheer their leaders’ lies. They looked just like you and me at the convention, but they were impossible to spot. But, they were there as certain as the sun rises in the east!

Being “democrat” is synonymous with being dishonest. Except for their core voting base, the only way the democrats can convince people to vote for them is to pretend they are normal people. You can dress them up, but you can’t change what’s inside – they’re rotten to the core.
Now that the convention is over, they’ve dispersed throughout the country to work their destruction. It is no doubt that someone of Kerry’s poor character is the candidate of the democrats.

Some leftists see a movement toward a police state -- the very thing the Founding Fathers wanted the Second Amendment and the armed citizenry to prevent -- yet the very leftists also want further gun control. Some leftists distrust the government as to the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment, yet apparently feel sufficiently secure that we need not fear tyranny from this "fascist" government.

The leftists are not interested in the First Amendment. That seems ironic when leftism itself is derived from the PR power of journalism. But the trouble with the First Amendment, from a leftist perspective, is that while it enshrines freedom of the journalism which is the nexus of the PR power of leftism, the First Amendment also enshrines freedom to compete with that PR power.
Leftists define "the press" as being coextensive with "objective" journalism - they call journalism "the press" - but all nonfiction printing competes with journalism for the credence of the public in telling us "what is going on." The differences between "objective" journalism and the rest of "the press" are:

Deadlines, which give journalism the excuse to distract us from history with superficial novelty.
The entertainment imperative, which excuses "Man Bites Dog" emphasis on what is unusual and what is bad.
The fatuous claim of objectivity, which differs in no essential respect from a claim of wisdom. They obfuscate that because Philosophy 101 explains that a claim wisdom is the essence of sophistry; it is the arbitrary negation of dissent.
Nonfiction books are only written about subjects which justify the investment of far more time than is devoted to a news article. Nonfiction books delve into history; authors have no license from the reader to hide from history in a fog of breaking news.
The longer perspective of the book author means that, for example, the fact that an American secretary is better off than Queen Victoria was is not automatically buried in a welter of trivial factoids of the worst news of each day between Victoria's 1819 birth and today.
And although the book is fact-checked far more thoroughly than a news report is, the author of the book does not have license to arbitrarily dismiss all contrary ideas; his reader is far too critical to be patronized in that way. The author must lay his cards on the table, and if he has an interest in a particular conclusion he must declare it before the critics do.
Much the same can be said of talk radio. The host of the show spends so much time on the air that it is impossible to avoid the critical ear of the audience. In the long run noise and smoke simply dissipates and the actual person will be understood.
The motive of the noise and smoke of journalism is quite simple: it all derives from the power of the printing press to create PR. Nothing should be more obvious that the owner of a press will not willingly subject himself to bad PR, and on the contrary will naturally tend to make himself look good. And not merely within the pages of his own publication, but in others. The person whom the ordinary citizen avoids arguing with because he "buys ink by the barrel" also avoids arguing with others similarly situated.
All journalists tend to herd together for protection from bad PR. And that unofficial guild, that Establishment, protects itself from bad PR by attacking any serious critic. There is no need for orders to be dispensed from on high; any journalist recognizes an attack on the guild, and any journalist knows what to do about it. Journalists naturally avoid giving interviews to talk show hosts because in that milieu they can be put on the spot to justify the "objectivity" con discussed above. And each one knows that to publicly cast doubt on the objectivity of a "competitor" is death by a thousand PR cuts at the hands of all other journalists, not merely the "competitor" himself.
There is of course actual competition among journalists, so the scare quotes above are not perfectly fair. But because of the herding effect of journalism, that competition is limited in a way which is systematically conservative of the herd itself. Journalism focuses like a laser on what may cast anything outside the herd in a significantly negative light. Thus the status quo - the things and people which actually make society function and cohere - are under continuous, tendentious PR assault by journalism. Free, competitive - but free to cooperate - journalism is systematically anticonservative in the political sense.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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"At the Democratic National Convention, Janeane Garofalo -- comedienne, talk show host and liberal pundit -- called me a "house Negro" and a "fascist."