Pun Salad

On page one of the Sunday edition of my local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat, (which, on Sunday, is called "Foster's Sunday Citizen") is an article by Adam D. Krauss headlined "Poisoned Politics?".

If you can't see where this is going already, the subtitle gave further hints: "Experts raise concern about angry discourse." Oh oh.

I'm not in the mood for a full-style fisking, but how about a quick Q-and-A about the article?

• Is this yet another Foster's news article that presents unbalanced partisan commentary as "news"?

• Why yes it is.

• Who are the "experts" to which the subheadline refers?

• One is Jim Leach, ex-member of Congress, ostensibly still a Republican although he endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 election. He is currently the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a job widely viewed as a reward for that endorsement; he has no obvious qualifications for the position.

  The Foster's article notes that Leach is currently on a self-styled "civility tour", lecturing Americans on our supposed lack of manners in criticizing our current Federal elected officials. Power Line identifies Leach as "something of a schoolmarm, both pompous and insipid." At National Review's Bench Memos blog, Matthew Franck describes Leach's civility tour as "transparently partisan, an act not of civility but of servility—to the president who appointed him."

• Any other "experts"?

• Yes, the widely noted report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) "Rage on the Right" is quoted uncritically. Specifically, the bit that deemed the Tea Party movement as "shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism." More skeptical readers found the SPLC report to be fearmongering.

• So what's the problem?

• In its implication that intemperate language and actions are confined to the right, mostly motivated by racism and paranoia, and directed against innocent (apparently all Democrat) public servants, the Foster's article displays (at best) a conveniently short memory, and a reading of current events that ignores some inconvenient facts. And it feeds into the ongoing attempt to delegitimize honest conservative/libertarian criticism.

• Is there a good example of blatant bias that is also unintentionally funny?

• Yes. My own Congresswoman, Carol Shea-Porter is quoted sympathetically as referring to some of her more demonstrative critics as "bullies" who need to be taken "out of the sandbox".

  A mere five paragraphs later, when trying to demonstrate out-of-control angry rhetoric, the article refers to a Saco, Maine resident and veteran, Brad Watts, who dared label politicians as "bullies". This was at an "Every Day is Veterans Day" event co-hosted by the Maine Center for Constitutional Studies and the Oathkeepers Project of Maine.

  The article helpfully pointed out that "residents raised concerns" about the latter gathering. Nobody was guoted as raising concerns about my Congresswoman for her similar name-calling language. (Something she's done in the past, also without being criticized by Foster's.)

• But aren't the Maine Center for Constitutional Studies and the Oathkeepers Project of Maine dangerous wackos?

• Perusal of the MCCS website shows they're pretty far out of mainstream, but they're approximately the flipside of 9/11 Truthers, with a heavy Ron Paul influence. There's no indication they're dangerous.

  I can't find a website for the Oathkeepers Project of Maine, but the national Oath Keepers site is here. They are a group made up of current/former military and law enforcement personnel, pledging to disobey "unconstitutional" orders. Not surprisingly, that kind of rhetoric can draw some nutballs. But even there, the group itself is essentially fringy, and the crazoids are a fringe on the fringe.

• Did the article have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to attempt to make its point?

• Of course. One of its prime examples was the reaction of residents of my very own home town, Rollinsford, New Hampshire, to a recent epidemic of flooded basements. A selectman who had to deal with the irked citizenry was spooked enough to be quoted as seeing "parallels at the local level with what's happening nationally."

• Rollinsford? Oh no! Was the basement of Pun Salad Manor flooded?

• "Flooded" would be an overstatement, but we did get more water down there than we've previously seen in over two decades of residence. This is about as much fun as a root canal without novocaine, and my sympathies are with the residents who had it much worse.

• What advice would you give to the quoted Rollinsford selectman?

• Same as Harry Truman would: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And it wouldn't hurt to remember that your job description is "public servant." And (furthermore) you should probably get used to the new Obama-era paradigm: government is supposed to guarantee that nothing bad will happen to us, ever.