Two Wrongs and the Right: Overreaction to Conservatives
Leads Liberals to Hypocrisy
By TIM PADGETT | March 12, 2012
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[…]
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They were at it last
week when commentators like my former TIME colleague Karen Tumulty of the
Washington Post or Kirsten Powers of The Daily Beast dared suggest that male
media personalities on the left – like Matt Taibbi, Keith Olbermann or Bill
Maher, who called Sarah Palin a “c—” on his HBO show last year – are themselves
guilty of misogyny. Rather than swallow their ideological pride for a moment,
too many liberals, including more than a few leading feminists, have dug in
like the Vatican and refused to acknowledge that their side too can be wrong or
unfair. Or, as in the case of Maher, who just gave $1 million to a super PAC
backing President Obama, as boorish as Rush Limbaugh.
Yes, there are
qualifications. Limbaugh is a powerful gazillionaire radio show bully who beat
up a powerless student on the air, while Maher targeted a powerhouse political
celeb who was almost one heart-beat from the presidency and blasts her own
opponents as if they were so many moose. Maher, like Limbaugh, apologized for
his remarks last week while defending their right to speak their minds. But
this isn’t about the First Amendment; it’s about the ugly loss of civility in
American discourse. The bottom line is that publicly calling any woman the “c”
word is the sort of knuckle-dragging stuff for which Maher so sanctimoniously
lambastes the gun-loving, NASCAR-watching, church-going heartland on “Real
Time.” Maher’s left-wing defenders, meanwhile, argue that he’s an entertainer –
seemingly oblivious to the fact that right-wing presidential hopeful Rick
Santorum made the same excuse for Limbaugh… http://swampland.time.com/2012/03/12/two-wrongs-and-the-right-overreaction-to-conservatives-leads-liberals-to-hypocrisy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Journalists Tim Padgett
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