Operation Ignore

Posted on 04/13/2009 at 8:55 am by Bob Cesca

In the last few days, I’ve seen various hints that liberals are tiring of the crazy talk — that we should perhaps ignore it and it’ll just go away. But I’m not convinced that ignoring the tea baggers or Glenn Beck is such a great idea.

My serious concern is that the crazy tea bag parties and the inflammatory FOX News rants will begin to resonate and, dare I say, evolve. How often have we watched a crazy Drudge headline turn up in the establishment press as “conventional wisdom?” Once the far-right message makes that leap, it won’t take much for it to stir up the notorious American “gut reaction.” While liberal discourse tends to be smarter and more policy-driven, the far-right is all about the bumper sticker. For better or worse, Americans love bumper stickers.

Think back ten or so years ago. American voters began to buy into the far-right attacks on President Clinton and, during the 2000 election, the same thing happened to Al Gore. Far-right attacks became conventional wisdom, and too many people listened to their “gut” and voted for George W. Bush despite a decade of relative peace and prosperity. What initially seemed like crazy attacks on the president slowly but surely grew into impeachment, accusations about “inventing the internet” and the presidency of George W. Bush.

However unlikely it might seem right now, Americans will surely elect a Republican if the far-right bumper sticker message begins to make that easy leap from Glenn Beck and Drudge over to the real world where it will stimulate enough gut reaction to elect, say, Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich or worse.

So I’m inclined to mock and discredit them now (or at least to do my part) before the crazy talk becomes a serious problem.

Adding… To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the crazy talk will make this transition. Nor am I panicked in any way. But it’s worth it to keep an eye on what’s happening. At this point, it could swing either way: it could remain on the fringes, or it could make that leap.

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  • http://cousinavi.wordpress.com cousinavi
  • jenski42

    I agree, but for a different reason. I think that the American viewing public gets fatigued at stories and then becomes irritated at them. (I do, anyway.) Octomom? Nooooo…..

  • http://www.thenewwearsoff.com Kyle

    Fox News is already planning “All Day Coverage” of the “Anti-Tax Tea Parties”.

    I wonder if they’ll be able to avoid The Crazy™ if they do any interviews on location.

  • Matt McD.

    Just ignore those Swiftboaters. Everyone knows they are liars and there’s no way they’ll keep Kerry from getting elected.

  • http://www.bumperstickerz.com bumper stickers

    Glenn Beck has fallen off the cliff

  • http://www.bobcesca.com Bob Cesca

    >>>Just ignore those Swiftboaters. Everyone knows they are liars and there’s no way they’ll keep Kerry from getting elected.Well said.

  • Silly Anti-Propaganda Git

    I’m with you Bob.I ignored Reagan and his lunatic backers. I really that that there could not possible be enough stupid people to vote for that idiot and his band of neofascist corporatists.I ignored W for the same reason.I should not have made the same mistake twice. There *is* enough stupid in this country to elect these twatwaffles.I’m not ignoring Teh Crazy™ anymore. It must be fought 24/7.We’ll have lots of material Wednesday when Fixed News propagandizes the Tea Tantrums.

  • http://oneceltsview.blogspot.com/ Wolfe Tone

    They cannot be ignored, their craziness must be marginalized.

  • Tom

    When I was in school I had a professor who insisted on telling me never to ignore the obvious. I didn’t always take that advice and it eventually bit me in the ass.I first heard Glenn Beck when he was broadcasting out of Tampa. Then he described himself politically as “right down the middle.” And day by day the guy has drifted further right and until he finally ends up in an underground bunker in Wingnutia. Look at some of the charming comments from the 912ers. How do you ignore that?

  • KenCo

    I agree that we can’t ignore them. But it seems like we need our own proactive message instead of just reacting to their crazy talk.Or will daily news reports of consistent, measured, thoughtful, competent leadership coming from Obama’s White House be enough?

  • http://nanotyrnns.blogspot.com/ Nanotyrannus

    “Just ignore those Swiftboaters. Everyone knows they are liars and there’s no way they’ll keep Kerry from getting elected.”I don’t believe they should be ignored and I do think they should be mocked viciously. But remember, when Kerry ran the internet was there but it was not nearly the political news machine it is now. With the 2004 loss it exploded into something that could immediately address and counter-attack right-wing message assaults. I mean, look at the gains we made electorally in 2008. The use of the internet as a get out the message/vote tool is almost certainly partially responsible for that. Yes, the wingnuts like Drudge use it with great success but we are also able to immediately answer their lies. FoxNews can lie about the Teabagging popularity and turnout and then be discredited literally within minutes by a dozen different bloggers who get the message out much more quickly than the major news outlets. Within hours, it’s on Countdown and Maddow.Where the wingnuts have a temporary advantage is in FOXNews’ willingness to participate. They have no problem evincing a definitive ideology even as they accuse the media of being too liberal. And the rest of the networks give an assist by being too scared to challenge them on their bullshit, lest they be called too liberal. They compound that with inviting Republican Losers onto their shows to offer “balanced “commentary”" which we all know it total bullshit.My pointless is that Americans are not nearly as stupid as the right-wing message machine believes they are. Their base, Appalachia, is eating out of their hands but the rest of the country caught on to their bullshit in the aftermath of Katrina. The Nuts of that party used to be able to operate in relative obscurity, but now their antics are on the YouTubes within minutes of the first tea bag hitting the pond.I think even some of the far righties will wake up to it, too. I mean, I believe that their were a few people at that one coffee house that were truly concerned about that direction the country is going and had hoped to have a reasonable discussion with like-minded people only to have to endure an old codger go on and on about marketing the apocalypse and calls to burn college books. These gatherings get a lot of attention, but they also attract the same old conspiracy theorists out of their bunkers to ruin the whole event and turn it into a “cacophony of crazy”. Oh wow, I like that, a “cacophony of crazy…” (he said immensely impressed with himself). I’d like to believe that their a few reasonable Republicans and Conservatives left and that they will inherit the ashes of their Party.Wow I went on and on with that one.

  • http://oneceltsview.blogspot.com/ Wolfe Tone

    To use a page from the wackjob’s playbook:Has anyone pointed out that what Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, and Teabaggers are practicing is, in essence, sedition?

  • http://nanotyrnns.blogspot.com/ Nanotyrannus

    Indeed, Wolfe, but the Wingnuttia would jizz their collective pants if even one of them was charged with such a crime. It would dominate the FOXNews cycle for two full weeks. “Is Obama trying to suppress the First Amendment? Here to talk about that is former adviser to President Bush, Karl Rove. Karl, is Obama turning America into a communist country, and why the fuck aren’t you in jail yet?”

  • Lee B.

    “…Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich or worse.”LOL. Which is kinda like saying, you could get cancer, AIDS… or WORSE!

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    “At this point, it could swing either way: it could remain on the fringes, or it could make that leap.”Bob, that’s exactly what Beck’s show is all about. He’s trying to bring the fringe mainstream.

  • Frateloder

    Excellent thoughts and points in both the main post and the comments – I wonder how long Mr Cesca’s blog is going to be such a hidden treasure.

  • Sara

    Your bumper sticker analogy really hits after reading about the right defending it’s embrace of Twitter as something the ‘left’ hasn’t been successful at. They do like to speak in one-liners versus actual ideas and their base has a much easier time falling in-step when the idea isn’t so complex it takes more than 140 characters. I always like to say that their biggest problem is that they stop listening before the sentance is finished…and usually miss the point.I agree with you, we have to be sure that the largest American public does not miss the point.

  • Kevin

    Spot on, as usual, Bob. There MUST be a counternarrative, but it needs to be one that exploits the bully pulpit and is firmly grounded in facts. Why can’t Gibbs assert the FACT that the GOP-led, lobbyist-funded FreedomWatch has virtually unilaterally organized and underwritten this nonsense? Perhaps the inane MSM takes it up slowly, if at all, but at least the information is out.You know what they call an unreturned serve in tennis: an ace.

  • Kevin

    May I also add that the comments over at the Beck Asylum suggest seed-planting for a imminent narrative about their so-called “peaceful protest” marches on April 15: ACORN volunteers will show up, disrupt civil disobedience, and then incite violence. Thus, once these freaks get violent all by their wittle wonesome, they can cry “ACORN!!” and the burden of proving a negative–that they were neither there nor had anything to do with it–will fall upon ACORN. Guess which story John King and the Wolf will run with?

  • Silly Ratfaced Git

    Good to see so many lurkers commenting.Welcome.

  • Diane

    They ignored Hitler and look what happened.We ignored bush and look what happened.We cannot afford to let them win. They have no ideas other then to tear things down and stomp on them. Their solutions were tried with bush and almost killed this country. This is not a grass roots organization. This is stupidity manipulated by the forces that drove the bush regime.They lost the election and now are fighting back by fake outrage. They will throw this country into another civil war if they are not stopped.Everyday they up the rhetoric and craziness.

  • JimmyJames

    “where it will stimulate enough gut reaction to elect, say, Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich or worse.”There’s worse than Palin or Gingrich?

  • D.c.

    I don’t think Beck and the rest of Planet Wingnuttia should be ignored, but I am fatigued by them. I really don’t know how Bob and others can stand listening to their bile and stupidity every day for hours at a time. I don’t have the tolerance for that.”There’s worse than Palin or Gingrich?”Senator Glenn Beck

  • http://cousinavi.wordpress.com cousinavi

    There’s only one problem with trying to counter the wingnuttery with rational argument backed up with facts…Insanity does not respond to rational argument.When you see someone hollering in the street that the parking meters are CIA brain control devices and there are cameras in his underwear, just what sort of of “Calm down…let’s look at the facts” approach do you expect to employ to gain some ground?The very moment you argue against the propositions of a madman, you simply reinforce the madness – you become one of the evil other against whom the nut is engaged in righteous battle. Your facts are nothing more than propaganda – lies cooked up by the evil “Them” against whom the wingnut flails.There are no brkes on the long descent into madness. You can monitor it, remark upon it, and when it crosses the line into illegality you can stomp it like a vicious rat…but any effort at making these freaks either see reason or conduct themselves according to the rules of fair play is wasted.