Andy’s Absurdity

Cowboy Confessional ^ | 01/12/2012 | Guy Smith

[guyshomenet]

Andrew Rosenthal has dragged the New York Times’ reputation to a new low.

I didn’t think it was possible.

Andy pens an inappropriately titled column called The Loyal Opposition. Anyone familiar with the now irrelevant Forth Estate sees the irony of naming a newspaper column The Loyal Opposition, and the side-splitting frivolity for it being under the NYT banner. Most media produces propaganda and the Times has positively made an art of misinformation masking as news. That they pay Andy to mint propaganda is not surprising, though the notion that the Times is loyal or opposes authority makes Three Stooges scripts seem serious by comparison.

Andy wasted a fair amount of ink attempting to brand all Republicans as racists in an awkwardly written article titled Nobody Likes to Talk About It. Andy’s agitprop is instantly unmasked when he says there is a “racist undertone” in the Republican presidential debates. The word “undertone” sets the stage for eight effluvium filled paragraphs where Andy clumsily attempts to make simple statements appear to be racist. For example, Andy’s alleged mind perceives telling Barack Obama “you lie” is a racist statement.

Andy, you lie. And before you claim I am anti-Semitic, allow me to show you my collection of kippah from various friend-and-family events.

Andy’s goal is to amplify the false notion that Republicans, as a group, are racist. This seemingly immortal meme, one that is rapidly losing effectiveness, is an election year gambit to negatively brand the Republican Party, and by such diminish the chances of Republicans winning the senate or White House. Since all decent people (which includes most Republicans, most Democrats, but which certainly excludes Andrew Rosenthal) abhor racism, Andy attempts to leverage The Lie of Association (using invalid associations to demonize a person or position) to create innate loathing of Andy’s personal enemies.

That would be the Republicans, common sense, human decency and rational thinking.

Andy’s list of alleged racist remarks quickly falls past funny and into the realm of senile dementia. He claims that a comment about the size of Michelle Obama’s butt is racist (would the same comment about a Swedish woman with a typical Swedish caboose be racist as well).  Another comment, by a candidate’s family member, heckled Obama for having yet to release his college transcripts, a statement which Andy also alleged to be racist (the connection between non-disclosure of grades and race was not actually explained).  Andy then accuses a candidate that spoke about “poor children” in “housing projects” and assumed that even acknowledging their existence was racist (Andy has never been to white slums available in every major metro area).

Most amazingly Andy asserts that accusing the current (and temporary) president of creating an “entitlement society” was racist, supposedly for the historical fact that some races were more frequent recipients of government welfare. Yet Andy ignores all other forms of entitlement ranging from farm subsidies to subsidized property insurance to child tax deductions, and the union bail-outs that Obama masked as ‘stimulus.’ Somebody better tell Bob King that Republicans hate his race and want to let GM go bankrupt in order to cancel his union contracts.

All in all, Andy made odd allegations and offered no proof. He inexpertly used The Lie of Non Sequiturs (combining vaguely related, or completely unrelated, information to create a false impression or conclusion) to assemble out of newsprint a non-entity, which come to think of it is The Lie of Straw (using seemingly evil entity as a non sequitur point of argument). Andy chases ghosts that aren’t there.

Perhaps he is running away from the Dixiecrat ghosts of his own self-loathing.