Friday, August 7, 2009

CNN Smears 'Wingnuts on the Right'

First it was CBS slamming citizen protesters as "teabaggers." Now we have CNN smearing conservatives as "wingnuts." Actually, it's young wannabe commentator John Avlon, who is clearly way behind the curve on what's happening with town hall protests.

Avlon, parroting the widely discredited leftist meme, attacks regular activists and concerned citizens as unhinged extremists. Avlon's key piece of "evidence" is the linkage of the town hall protesters to the obscure local Connecticut activist Bob MacGuffie. As Avlon notes at the CNN piece, "The curtain was pulled back on these organized efforts in the form of a wingnut memo written by Connecticut grassroots conservative activist Bob MacGuffie." Avlon is simply recycling the bull we saw earlier this week at Talking Points Memo and Think Progress - that is, he's recycling leftist desperation.

Rick Moran eviscerated the left's line on the "McGuffie memo" a couple of days ago:

This is one of the most dishonest, despicable things I’ve ever seen in politics. TPM and Think Progress published a purported “smoking gun” memo from an anti-health reform group that they were pushing as a blueprint for action that protestors at town hall meetings were following to disrupt the proceedings.

There’s only one problem: The group that is responsible for writing the memo are a bunch of bush leaguers with no more influence than my pet cat Aramas on demonstrators protesting anything ....

There is no “memo” that tells protestors what to do. If anyone else besides this guys mother, grandmother, and maiden aunt saw this “blueprint” I would be enormously surprised. It was a wholly manufactured piece of “evidence” - along with the ridiculously tenuous connections - by TPM.

Josh Marshall bragged to high heaven about the George Polk Award for journalism he received. I am going to write the award committee and ask them to rescind it. This isn’t even yellow journalism. It is propaganda, as Marshall and the rest of the left (who are, in fact, the ones who receive instructions on a daily basis about how to frame issues through their exclusive email list) can’t be bothered with the facts, can’t be bothered with the truth, and are only concerned about demonstrating their rank partisanship and shocking demagoguery.

Well, Avlon's pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel along with Marshall.

Avlon's a regular writer at the far-left Daily Beast, and yesterday he attacked the right for hammering the administration as "socialist." See, "The GOP's Ugly Jokers." Actually, the latter piece makes a couple of decents point, but Avlon's leftist agenda is totally transparent, and his more absured smear-marketing certainly goes over well on CNN.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Avalon talks too much. He is mushy just like his supposedly centrist philosophy. His book, that I was forced to buy in college, Independent Nation, lays it all out in boringly general terms and grossly overstates his "moderate myth" to national renewal with what are otherwise obvious points. It really shows his weak grasp on American politics.

I can't believe he gets paid to think, and then takes those thoughts and puts them into words.

I'm in the wrong bizz.

science fiction writer said...

What makes you think that he thinks?