Angry (adj.) - 1. Feeling or showing anger; incensed or enraged (Hewitt takes on Jonathan Chait)

HH: Joined now by Jonathan Chait, editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times. Jonathan Chait, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

JC: Thanks. By the way, I write columns, not editorials. So I don't write any of those editorials, so your readers know.

JC: I live in D.C., Washington, D.C. I just write a column that appears every week.

HH: Jonathan, to get some background for people to anchor them on who you are and where you're from, you're originally from Michigan, right?

JC: I spent one year at the American Prospect, and then came to the New Republic.

HH: And at the New Republic, of course, you penned your famous Bush hatred article.

HH: Okay, we'll come back to that later. And are you still writing for the New Republic as well as the Los Angeles Times?

JC: Well, that's a bit of an insulting term, and has a little bit of an insulting connotation, but I guess that's correct. I write articles of opinion. I'd rather put it that way.

JC: All right. It's just that the term kind of calls to mind someone who just sort of goes off half-cocked and just gives his opinions on everything without really backing it up. That's sort of what I think of when I hear the word.

HH: I think it's a term of honor, actually, to be a pundit. Jonathan, I called today especially about your piece in the L.A. Times in Sunday's edition, yesterday...

HH: And you're like Joel Stein, you're part of their new bench, or have you been there for a while?

JC: I think I came on slightly before the new bench. I came on when Michael Kinsley was the editor there.

HH: Okay. And yesterday's column is entitled "An Angry Hillary Suits the GOP. That's because Republicans have to open up a new line of attack for a female candidate." Let's put the proposition out there. You don't think she's angry?

JC: I think she's the opposite of angry. I think she's robotic, passionless, dull. Just on the surface, she just comes across as anything but angry. She comes across as someone who would just you know, put you to sleep, and sounds like she's about to go to sleep herself when she's speaking. Just sort of substantively, she has come to the Senate and just made best friends with all her enemies, and she's smiling and patting them on the back, and they're saying nice things about here. So she doesn't really seem to be someone whose motivated by anger in any way. So I think the whole charge is weird.

JC: Whose angry? I think the whole term, the whole notion of anger is just weird and misplaced to begin with. I mean you could say that some people come across as angry when they talk, like Al Gore. There's, you know, a lot of visceral passion in his voice when he...when he's denouncing Bush, it seems, you know, like he's really feeling something, unlike Hillary Clinton, who could just as well be ordering from a restaurant menu when she's talking.

JC: I think...I suppose if you want to put some meaning on this, yeah, he's definitely a lot angrier than Hillary Clinton.

HH: And so when Mehlman, Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the national Republican Party says Hillary is way angry, referring to her conduct during the State of the Union address, and a couple of her speeches. You just think that's rhetoric?

JC: I think it's part of a deliberate political strategy, that they're going to try to...he's sort of signalling what, how they're going to try to tag her, and try to make her personally unacceptable. I think that's something you're going to be hearing a lot...and at the very least, he's trying it out. And if it sticks at all, they're just going to be pounding this anger theme over and over again. And so what I tried to do in my column is say that hey, this is kind of odd. She's the opposite of angry, so why are they calling her angry?

HH: Now I think most people, and we'll open up the phones after we play this interview back during the live show. I think most people do think she is angry, but of course, it's a term of art, so we have to figure out what it means. In your famous Bush hatred piece from September of 2003, you wrote that what infuriates...perhaps most infuriating of all is the fact that liberals do not see their view of Bush given public expression. So there are liberals out there who are infuriated, which is the same as angry, correct?

JC: Oh, I mean, I think there are millions of people, just as there are millions of angry conservatives out there. I mean, I think they're just people who have opinions about politics often get upset that their view isn't prevailing. That's just the normal state of affairs.

JC: Again, I think this whole anger thing is just a weird way of thinking about people who have views about politics. I mean, if you think someone is doing terrible things to the country, it's natural, almost healthy, to feel some sense of anger about that. I mean, I think there are people on both sides of the political spectrum who feel anger in politics, and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it.

JC: You know, I think we're going in circles. The term means different things to different people. If you're asking me do I feel that George W. Bush is a very bad president, has done very bad things to the country, and that I don't think of him as a person, an admirable person, or someone I'd like? Then the answer is yes. If you're asking me do I have very strong emotional feelings that prevent me from rationally looking at things that Bush does? Then the answer is no.

HH: But Jonathan Chait, I know when I'm angry, and with whom I am angry whenever I am angry. Are you angry with George Bush?

JC: I think by the way that you mean...again, you have to define what you mean by angry when you're asking me this. I think I'm pretty good at being cool and rational in analyzing what Bush does. And if he's doing something that I agree with, I can say so, even though I feel that he is a horrible president. I mean, for instance, I supported the Iraq war forcefully. I wrote articles, and I took to task some of my fellow liberals for not doing so. So if you're trying to imply that anger is something that makes me knee-jerk hostile to Bush, so clouded with emotion and rage that I can't be fair when I think about thim, then no.

HH: No, I was actually trying to get to the definition, because in this column from yesterday, you write that she's not angry.

HH: And so obviously, there's a definition there that in your view, Hillary is not. And so, I'm trying to figure out what that is, and you've used it in other contexts. So I'm just asking you so I can get a paradigm established...

JC: Am I angry with Bush? Well, I think one of the ways I think people were using it in politics often, especially when Mehlman said that angry candidates don't win, is people who have this visceral sense of anger that comes out when they talk. It's not so much the substance of how they actually feel at the bottom, but when you come across as someone who really has a sort of negative energy coming out of them, rather than you know, seeming smily and happy and sunny. And I mean, I think that's all a bunch of nonsense. I don't really care about it. But in point of fact, I was saying that Hillary Clinton does not fit that definition of angry. And so I was trying to figure out well, is there another definition of angry that she could be angry, and does she seem motivated in her actions by a...kind of grudges against people who have done her wrong, and again, I think her political behavior suggests if anything, the opposite. I mean, what...the complaint you hear about the left is that she has got all the time in the world for her enemies, and none for her friends. We wrote an article in the New Republic, I didn't write it, but we published it, about how she's been incredibly solicitous of the New York Post, which just savaged her when she ran for the Senate in 2000.

HH: And Ryan Lizza's piece, Welcome to Hillaryland this week, talks about how she's worked with a lot of conservatives across the aisle on a variety of things.

HH: But that actually...what I'm really much more interested, rather than Hillary or anything else, is what you define as angry? Because if Hillary's not that, then you must know what that is.

HH: And so I'm trying to figure that out, because if there's a definition out there, I want to test it against my listeners' sense of whether or not it's authentic or not. So maybe I can find it personally by getting...if you're not angry with Bush, or you are angry with Bush, that helps me. So I'm going to go back a third time. Do you think you're angry with Bush?

JC: Tell me what you think angry...I mean, am I angry in the sense that...well, Ken Mehlman's talking about politicians, right?

HH: Jonathan, you said it wasn't...Hillary wasn't angry, so you must know what angry is. So when I ask you if you're angry with Bush, it should be a pretty quick answer.

JC: Like I said, it's a term that means different things to most people. So I was trying to figure out what it means to Ken Mehlman, rather than what it means to me. Right? I mean, I think there's way you could use it...I think there's a way that I might mean angry that would apply to basically everyone in public life. That is, do I have, you know, strong feelings about which way the country should be going? And do I feel aggrieved, or in some ways unhappy that people who have different views are running the country? Yes.

JC: By that definition...I don't want you to quote me out of context. By that definition, by my idiosyncratic definition, I'm angry with Bush.

HH: Well, here is reads in yesterday's column, "In reality, anger at Bush has little to do with ideology. The president is disdained with roughly equal passion by the moderates at the Democratic Leadership Council and the true lefty activists in the party who hate their wishy-washy guts."

JC: I would...by my definition? yes. I would say by my definition, I'm angry, you're angry...

JC: You know, I read some of your book, "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat," and this just seems like well, do we want to turn this into a review about you, or do you want keep on the...

HH: No, I just...there's nothing angry in my book at all. It's actually kind of moderate and happy, but I...

JC: It seemed infused with paranoia about Democrats cheating, and kind of rage that the other side sort of acting in concert, and as one indifferentiated mass is just utterly lacking in scruples.

HH: Yeah, you're real good. Okay, let me read the first paragraph from September of 2003.

HH: "There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history"..."The truth is, I hate him for less substantive reasons"..."He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school, the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his 16th birthday, and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks, shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo"..."I suspect that if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more."

JC: That's not...look, what...I don't like him personally. Does that mean I'm angry with...angry suggests almost a kind of temporary state of mind, where you're...where like Bush did something to me just now, and like I feel different...I'm angry with him now that like, in a way, that I'm not going to be angry after I cool off after a few days.

HH: "It is not the slightest bit mystifying that liberals despise Bush. It would be mystifying if we did not." So you despise him?

JC: Let me try to explain. I mean, we're going into some semantic circles here. Let me try to explain. Are you angry with Joseph Stalin?

HH: No. Stalin's dead. I'm not angry with anyone whose dead. I find him to be a moral creep...

HH: I believe Saddam...no. I'm not. I keep my passions in check. I do not get angry. I'm a Christian. I try not to hate anyone, but I think he was a very, very evil man, and I'm glad he was destroyed, and reduced to nothing, and he probably should hang by the neck until dead.

HH: I don't think it is, and that's why I go, when you say you despise George W. Bush...

HH: Given your extreme view about George W. Bush. You hate him, and you depise him.

HH: I mean, not that it is not widely shared on the left, Jonathan. I think it is widely shared on the left. Given your extreme view of him, do you think you're in a good position to judge what Hillary thinks? Because if you're the angriest guy in the line, maybe you're not going to recognize anger in someone whose less angry than you are.

JC: Well, like I said, I don't think I'm the angriest guy in the line. And like I said, I supported the Iraq war. And so, I think one of the ways people use the word anger is to imply that someone is clouded by emotions and is unable to have any judgments about the person that they're "angry" about. And I would say that that clearly does not apply to me.

JC: And I don't think it applies to Hillary Clinton. I would say, look at it this way. If you think Hillary Clinton's angry, and I agree, you could come up with a definition that Hillary Clinton is angry. But by that definition, basically everyone in public life is angry.

JC: He was angry with communism. He was angry with bit government. We was angry with welfare queens who were stealing money from hard-working taxpayers. He was angry about all sorts of things.

HH: I think you've got a problem with the language, that you want to define everything as something that it's not. Angry is a very common sense term that most people associate with out of control emotion, red-face, sputtering, and that sort of thing.

JC: Okay, that's a good definition. By that definition, I'm not angry, and Hillary Clinton's not angry.

HH: But you might just be disguising your anger better given what you've written about Bush. I mean, you think he's stupid, don't you?

JC: No, I think he's incredibly intellectually incurious. And he might as well be stupid. He could be smart. He knows a lot about baseball. If he applied himself, if he was really interested in learning about the world, I think he could be much more effectively smart than he is.

HH: Well now, I've got to go back and find it here. If Bush is so dumb, how come he keeps winning? This drives you crazy, this line of argument.

JC: I...doesn't...isn't the next line something that, or at least his intellectual curiosity is such that the effect is the same?

HH: "Or more precisely, his intellectual incuriosity is such that the effect is the same."

HH: Yeah. "Bush is a dullard, lacking any moral constraints in his pursuit of partisan gain."

JC: Again, I tried to describe that in a more precise way. I think he's got...his sort of intellectual potential is not terrible. It's what he's done with it, is.

HH: Yeah. Here's the sentence. "Bush is a dullard, lacking any moral constraints, in his pursuit of partisan gain, loyal to no principle save the comfort of the very rich, unburdened by any thoughtful consideration of the national interest, and a man who on those occasions when he actually does make a correct decision, does so almost by accident."

HH: And given that, do you really think you're judgment about whether or not Hillary is angry is going to be persuasive?

JC: Well, my judgment is something that I back up with reasons in my columns. I don't just say because I am an expert on anger, you should listen to what I have to say. And even though I'm not giving you any reasons, you should trust me, Jonathan Chait, to tell you what angry means. That's not what I'm doing in my column. I tried to give you reasons. What do you think, what do people mean by angry, and does Hillary Clinton do? Well see? It's a different thing.

HH: Okay. Let me ask you, Jonathan, to get you in the ideological universe, are you hard-left, or merely liberal?

JC: (laughter) I would say I'm a moderate liberal. That's so funny. Are you...is it going to be, are you liberal, or are you extreme liberal? I thought...you usually get are you liberal or moderate.

HH: Well, no. I...then I start asking the questions. You voted for Kerry, right?

HH: 33. Okay, so you're 33 years old, you've voted for Democrats your whole life. Have you ever voted for a Republican?

JC: Good question. I live in places where there aren't...where there isn't a Republican Party. I live in Washington, D.C., and I have for most of my adult life. So basically, there aren't any Republicans running, so it's always like you have a Democratic primary, and that turns out to be the general election, like the Mayor's race is really the Democratic primary, et cetera.

HH: And were you against the invasion of Iraq? You said you did support the invasion of Iraq.

HH: Okay, so the other arguments that Bush advanced about invading Iraq were not meaningful to you, did not connect to you, it was all about the weapons of mass destruction?

JC: I think it was the main one. Look, if you told me in advance that we're going to invade Iraq, and we're going to establish democracy there, and you could tell me that there's a really strong chance we're going to succeed, I would have supported it. But I didn't think there was a strong chance we'd succeed at that. I thought we'd probably end up with a government that was better than Saddam Hussein's government, but not very good. Just a less brutal dictatorship. I think that's probably what we're going to end up with, and I don't think that was worth the cost in American lives and money and everything, and the opportunity cost international...

HH: Okay. Now given I think you're pretty far on the left, given those answers, with the exception of some pacifists did not want to go into Iraq, some liberals didn't want to go into Iraq, let me ask you now about your column two weeks ago in the L.A. Times...

HH: ...where you attack Rove. And you attack Rove for lying in I think three respects. The first one is Rove said Republicans want to renew the Patriot Act, and Democrat leaders take special delight in proclaiming they've killed it. And you think that's a lie?

HH: Harry Reid proclaimed, and we've played it on this show, I've killed the Patriot Act. Is he not a Democratic leader?

JC: I've seen that line. I remember there was some context about it in which I think Rove was distorting it. I don't think that statement taken out of context describes the whole of what Reid was saying. Reid voted for the Patriot Act, and has been in favor of extending it on a temporary basis. So to say that he wants the Patriot Act dead for all time is simply, obviously, not a fair description of what he's trying to do.

HH: Well, I think it is, actually. I think there was no context that walked away from the fact he was happy to have killed it, but then it was resurrected, and he forced the filibuster upon it, in hopes of delaying it, and of watering it down, if not killing it completely. And of course, Russ Feingold does not want it extended, correct?

JC: Russ Feingold doesn't want it extended, but Harry Reid does, and virtually every Democrat does. That's why they want to keep extending the Patriot Act, so that they can work out the differences between the two parties without the act ending, and that's why Rove wants the exact opposite. Rove is the one who keeps trying to have the Patriot Act killed so he can have a campaign issue.

JC: He wants it stopped for a period of time so that they can blame it on the Democrats, then he figure's they'll have it passed again at some point. But yeah, he wants to go for some period of time without there being a Patriot Act, yes.

HH: Okay, I think you have not consulted the record on that one closely, but I'll let that stand. How about this one? There's the war in Iraq. Rove implies falsely that Democrats favor immediate withdrawal. Some Democrats do, correct?

HH: And so, it's not...and I would say that Carl Levin offered an amendment on November 15th, for which every Democrat voted which called for a timetable to be withdrawn, right?

HH: No, but they wanted them all gone, and some of them wanted them gone yesterday, like Murtha and Pelosi and John Kerry.

HH: Is it not therefore false for Rove to say Democrats, unless he says all Democrats. It's false, rather, for you to refuse to see the Pelosi/Murtha Democrats, Howard Dean...I mean, Howard Dean's the chairman of the party, right? He wants immediate withdrawal.

JC: Oh, look. What if Howard Dean had come out and said Republicans want to force discriminatory treatment on gay people, they want to end all immigration, etc., etc., and you found a few people in the Republican party who believe those things. Do you really think that that would be an honest statement?

HH: No, it wouldn't, but I think that's not what we're dealing with here. I think that the heart and soul of the Democratic Party is cut and run, is John Murtha...he got huge applause. He's appeared now with other people like Moran and others at various rallies. Cindy Sheehan is supported by Democrats. Michael Moore sat with Jimmy Carter in the box.

HH: But I think, is it not true that a significant, if not majority of the Democratic Party, well represented in their leadership, like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry and Russ Feingold...

JC: Wait, now hold on. John Kerry's for phased withdrawal. He's not for immediate withdrawal, and it all comes down to timetables. And the truth is, it's really hard to draw a firm line between what those Democrats are saying and what Bush is saying.

HH: Oh, I think it's very easy, and I think it's delusional not to actually see the huge difference between the parties here, and the fact that no one stepped out and criticized Murtha's call. Are you aware of any Democratic Senator who said of John Murtha that's wrong?

JC: The ones who...I don't remember which ones, but plenty of them were...every major Democrat was asked about what Murtha said, and the ones who disagreed with it, which is most of them, said no. I'm not for that.

HH: I'm sorry. I don't recall a single Democrat other than Lieberman saying no, I'm not for that. What about in terms of...on the Judiciary Committee, all of the Democrats there...did you favor the confirmation of Sam Alito?

HH: And so, do you think the Democrats are significantly to the left of the Republicans on judicial nominations?

HH: Okay. So you're...that party is way to the left is where I'm getting to, right, Jonathan?

HH: Is it way to the left, historically, compared to say John F. Kennedy's administration?

JC: I would say on social issues, the Democrats are way to the left of where Kennedy was, and most of the Republicans are, too.

HH: And on bearing any burden, paying any price, are they way to the left on that?

HH: Preserve and extend liberty in the world. I mean, they want to cut and run from Iraq.

JC: There are Democrats who want to get out of Iraq right away. But I don't think that's because they don't want to pay any price or bear any burden to extend liberty. What the argument they're making is that we are less likely to have a good outcome in Iraq by occupying Iraq, than by not, which is not an argument I mean I agree with, but it is a reasonable and plausible argument to make.

JC: They're not saying we're not willing to pay the price. They're saying what we are doing is counter-productive.

HH: Do you support striking Iran if, in fact, they're on the brink of acquiring the capacity to arm, with nuclear warheads, their missiles?

JC: That would depend entirely on how likely I thought they are to succeed. Given that I don't...given what I know, I don't think that they are to succeed. What I've read is that Iran's capabilities are way too disbursed and protected and underground, et cetera.

HH: All right. I'm taking advantage of your time. Can I have seven more minutes?

HH: You're a columnist for them. Do you consider it to be a very liberal, a liberal, or a moderate newspaper?

JC: I would...well, I don't think you can really apply one phrase to describe a paper with its news pages and its editorial pages. For instance, the Wall Street Journal, would you call that a conservative paper? No, I would say it's a paper with sort of a non-partisan, non-ideological news pages, and a very, very conservative editorial page.

HH: I would agree with that, but I would think the L.A. Times is a very ideological, agenda-driven news pages, and a hard-left editorial board.

JC: Okay, I wouldn't really agree with either one of those. I would say it's a moderate-liberal editorial board, maybe a little bit to the left of me editorial board, and a down the line news pages. I have to admit. I don't read the L.A. Times news pages as much as I read the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. I do read it, but not...

JC: No. I think people who write for mainstream news publications are overwhelmingly liberal. But that doesn't mean that their product is overwhelmingly liberal.

HH: Okay, well then, let's expand on that. We're talking about the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe. Set aside the Wall Street Journal. It's a different sort of beast. Those four big newspapers. Of those people working there, if you were able to see their voting records, do you think they'd pretty much vote like you, Jonathan Chait?

JC: I think most of them would, and I'd include the people at the Wall Street Journal news pages as well.

HH: Okay. So basically, the people who are putting out the news are overwhelmingly liberal to hard-left.

HH: Now do you think that there's any chance that Hillary will be given any kind of close scrutiny as she gets close to running for the election, running for the nomination in 2008?

HH: I don't see how that stands to reason. He got a free pass on so many different things. I don't see how that's an indictment of...I mean, they had to cover Monica. But other than that, I don't think he got a scrutiny on most of his...I mean, the L.A. Times sat on the troopergate thing for what? A year?

JC: Again, you know more about the L.A. Times than I do living in Los Angeles, and me living in Washington. If we're talking about the media as a whole, to say that Clinton got a free pass from the mainstream media is I think

HH: I said on many things. I think...for example, Kathleen Willey. Do you think she got...that was investigated thoroughly?

JC: I don't know. You know, there are a lot of stories that I just don't care about and don't follow.

HH: Well, that's...so you're defining it...the free pass that I see on Juanita Broderick, for example. Do you think that got scrutiny?

HH: Well see, that's where...we're just looking...you're looking at the glass that's almost empty, and you're saying it's half-full. And I'm looking at the almost empty glass and saying it's almost empty. That's just a difference of perception.

JC: Well no, it's not. You're picking stories that you think should get more coverage, and I don't necessarily. If you read the left-wing blogs, there are all kinds of stories that they...this isn't in the media. Oh, why not? This is getting free pass. Look at all this. You know, again, I don't read those blogs all that closely, but everytime you go there, they've got tons of stories like that.

JC: And again, I would put it in the same category as your book. It's angry, yeah.

HH: Again, my book has absolutely no vulgarity, absolutely no profanity, absolutely no kind of personal deep-seeded attacks.

JC: Oh, well if vulgarity and profanity is the stain of the note, Daily Kos is not angry. Very few of the posts there have vulgarity or profanity.

HH: Again, I think you're a little bit wrong on that one. I check it pretty regularly, and in fact, I'm certain you're wrong about that. Jonathan, last couple of questions. Michael Moore...is he angry?

JC: By my definition, most people who care about politics are angry, and he definitely is angry.

JC: If, you know, if you feel that...if you have strong feelings about which way the country should go, and you especially feel that there are people in public life who are doing wrong things with their power, sometimes for ignoble motives, then I would say you probably have some anger.

JC: By my definition, Hillary and everyone in the Senate is somewhat angry, yeah.

JC: Along with everyone else. That's correct. But again, my definition is an idiosyncratic one. It's the one that...

HH: But now I'm really confused, because yesterday you wrote a column saying she wasn't angry, and here it's 24 hours later, and she is.

JC: Right. I'm talking about the definition, and my column's talking about the definitions that most people use of angry, not my own personal idiosyncratic definition, which is very different than the common definition.

JC: (laughing) This is funny. I know Hillary's angry. In my definition of it, but again, not the way that most people are using it. I think, yeah, in her heart of hearts, do I think she thinks there are a lot of bastards in the Republican Party and some of these are bad people, and boy, I'd like to see them all just get voted out of office? Yeah, I think she thinks that. I think almost everyone in public life thinks that. I think Joe Lieberman has a lot of anger, too.

JC: I think my statement stands for itself, so if what you're looking for is for me to give some more concise view that you can somehow take out of context, I'm not going to...

HH: Oh, no. I'm going to play the whole interview, Jonathan. I'm not going to take it out of context. I just want to know. In your heart of hearts, she's angry.

JC: She, along with everyone else, is angry by my idiosyncratic personal definition of what anger is, which is not the definition that most people use, yes.

JC: What Ken Mehlman said is that Americans don't typically vote for angry candidates. But by my definitions, that's crazy, because everyone in public life is angry by my definition, so obviously, Americans do vote for people like that. So what Mehlman is talking about is something different than what I'm talking about.

HH: All right. Last question. Where'd you go to high school, by the way? Because I want to know the kids who had the car and thought they earned it.

JC: I went to Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, which is every bit as snooty as it sounds.

HH: Okay, so they did have cars that they thought they earned. And I've got to ask you about Joel Stein before I let you go, because I've got to get off of here. I hope you'll come back. This is kind of fun.

JC: I can't remember if I read just like the excerpts of it, or the whole thing.

HH: Okay. He didn't know anyone in the military. Do you know anyone in the military?

HH: Do you know anyone whose been back and forth to Iraq and been deployed there?

JC: I know people who've been back and forth to Iraq, but not as part of the troops. No, they've been...done so as part of the media.

HH: Did anyone from your high school or college, that you knew, go into the military?

JC: I've only kept in touch with like three people from my high school, and none of them are in the military.

JC: Do I think people in the media are less likely to know people in the military than are most...the average American? Yes.

JC: You could have just asked me that instead of going through the progression, but go on.

HH: No, I like to know before I go there what opinions are based on. That's why I asked, and why I ask a lot of journalists and writers if they know anyone in the military, or if they spend any time with military families. And I ask it open-ended, so I'm not trying to cut you off. Is there anyone that you want to bring up, like your aunt or your uncle, or the guy down the street...we heard about him. But do you know anyone whose really lived the life?

JC: Whose currently in the military? Well, my grandfather was in the military. He's a former Marine, but he's not in the military.

HH: Because generally, I honestly believe this, they're not angry people by your definition, by any definition. I think Democrats, Jonathan, are intensely angry, and it's because they're out of power, and they're not getting back anytime soon, because they're angry. I mean, it's sort of a self-refining thing. Last comment to you.

HH: I'll tell you when I was angry...in Florida, when Democrats attempted to suppress the military ballots. I was fuming, you betcha. I thought that was one of the low points of American politics, when Gore-Lieberman attempted to have disenfranchised military serving overseas.

JC: I thought it was one of the low points when the Bush campaign was completely changing its standards to try to get those ballots in, even though by the letter of the law, they shouldn't have been, because all of a sudden, the letter of the law wasn't important to them.

HH: So you were not upset by the attempt to throw those ballots out? You thought it was legit?

JC: I mean, yeah, if that's what the other side is doing, is saying no, the letter of the law, we don't care about the intent of the voter, then all of a suddent saying oh, the intent of the voter is clear, and who cares if they didn't dot every i and cross every t.

HH: No, Bush V. Gore doesn't say that, and we could go there. Maybe we will next time. I hope you come back. Beinart used to come on once a week. I think you're much more fun than him, so...

HH: We've got to get you back. Jonathan Chait of the New Republic and the Los Angeles Times, thanks for joining me today.

In keeping with your statement, I agree with you technically and from a very narrow point of view.

HH managed to show that Chait agrees that the media are a large majority Democrat, that he and they look at a given set of facts and see them differently than we do (like the definition of liberal), that definitions are fungible, that they routinely practice projection/transference, and that despite all that they still feel as if they are being objective.

Granted HH seemed to be trying to show a contradiction by Chait by using the definition of anger, and suffered the consequences you stated, and by that may have failed, but he did bring out a lot of other things about Chait and liberals in general. Therefore, I think it was worthwhile rather than a waste of time.

It clearly (I hate that overused word but that's all I can come up with now.) points out that we all are affected by our ingrained beliefs and
attitudes when we evaluate things and that conservative beliefs and attitudes are so different from liberals as to produce parallel realities. They routinely ascribe their beliefs and motives to us. Since those are their beliefs and motives rather than ours, and they are often the opposite of our own, we are often amazed that they think we are doing certain things for the purposes, usually very negative ones, they ascribe to us.

In wrestling with the definition of anger, HH did reveal a lot of other things, not the least of which is that words have flexible meanings to liberals. We all know what anger means, I assume, and to try to deny its meaning and then to down play their effects, revealed a lot.

I think the most fascinating part of the interview was about Clinton. Jonathan said he didn't think Clinton got a pass on issues. Then Hugh brought up several issues, and Jonathan said for each that the issue wasn't important, didn't interest him, etc.

Which is exactly what makes the liberal media so biased. Their liberal viewpoint makes some issues important to them, and others not important. And they ignore the issues they don't care about, which are the issues that conservatives think are very important.

By doing so, they even get some otherwise good republicans to think they should drop the issues, because "the people" don't care -- when in fact the people don't know enough to care, they are in the dark, because the media doesn't cover those issues, or covers the issues only in the ancillary way that interests them.

You will never see the liberal media discuss what it means to be a child raised in a loving, christian opposite-sex two-parent family, because the liberals don't really think that is important OR interesting. What you WILL see is regular stories about how great children are doing with a single mother, or a lesbian or gay couple.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.