Category: Awards

How depressing to see Matt excuse Grayson's behavior:

I think the real issue—and the real import—of Grayson’s statement is that it involved breaking one of the unspoken rules of modern American politics. The rule is that conservatives talk about their causes in stark, moralistic terms and progressives don’t. Instead, progressives talk about our causes in bloodless technocratic terms. This is also one of the reasons that Ted Kennedy’s stark, moralistic attack on Robert Bork’s legal theories are for some reason often cast by the MSM as some kind of illegitimate smear campaign. The reality is that it was just him talking about a conservative the way conservatives relatively talk about liberals. Like Grayson he characterized his opponents’ views polemically, but wasn’t offering any kind of wild factual distortions. But moralism from the left is very unfamiliar to American political debates.

"This is the type of propaganda you would see in Stalin's Russia or Kim Jong Il's North Korea. I never thought the day would come when I'd see it here in America. This is the type of fanaticism Republicans are up against as we fight to stop the Obama Democrats' radical leftist transformation of America," – Michael Steele, in a fundraising letter, referring to a video of schoolchildren singing about Obama.

A reader writes:

I have to take some issue with slapping the Moore Award onto Whoopi Goldberg’s quote. While I find the Hollywood pile on in favor of Polanski’s release to be so morally occluded as to not have any place whatsoever in a matter of law, I really don’t see how Goldberg’s comment qualifies as any of the below:

“The Moore Award – named after film-maker, Michael Moore – is for divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric.”

Have I missed something? Outside a self-selected elite within the film making community (and, well, France), how has defending Roman Polanski become “left-wing rhetoric” beyond the fact that many of those who do so self-identify as left wing? You’ve already cited the vilification of Polanski by red meat conservatives Kate Harding and Ta-Nehisi Coates. But is there a pro-Roman Polanski thread on Daily Kos or any other left wing site of note?

Another reader:

There are people of the political left who support Polanski's detainment and extradition (see Scott Lemieux, TNC, and just about every feminist blogger). Unfortunately, others on the left are calling for his release. It hardly follows that defending Polanski is in and of itself a left wing viewpoint. Cultural relativism could be considered a liberal construct, true, but I would argue that not everyone who recognizes the shifting values and mores between cultures supports rape and pedophilia. I certainly do not (Moreover, I think cultural relativism is an anthropological construct rather than an explicitly liberal one, but that's a different subject altogether).

If The Moore Award's description were, "divisive, bitter and intemperate rhetoric by someone of the left," her comments would qualify (she may not be my kind of liberal, but she's a lefty for sure). But, as it is, I don't think they do.

"Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama’s style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots — the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses, and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. Do we want to become the world’s largest banana republic?" – Thomas Sowell.

So far as I recall, despots are not elected by a clear majority of the people.