Schiller's stepping down is the latest in a string of victories for the right. Well, at least in that they firm up their base, not that it makes any difference to the general public at all.
O'Keefe is one of the types of people I've grown all too familiar with over the years. For some reason, they just become full of joyless venom. They become so obsessed with their own viewpoint and agenda that the only thing they can do is seek the destruction of others.
Of course, O'Keefe is probably well-funded by people like the Koch brothers in their headlong quest to quash everything on the left.
O'Keefe came to the attention of the media during the 2008 presidential campaign when he almost single-handedly brought down ACORN. Dressed in garb I guess he considered to be de rigueur for the average white, twenty-something, preppy pimp, he caught some ACORN employees saying some compromising things on hidden camera.
The thing is that O'Keefe is obviously so out of touch with what real pimps and prostitutes are actually like, the statements from the ACORN employees could be nothing less than people just playing along with the joke. No matter though. Through editing and the aid of Drudge, FOX "News", etc. it caused ACORN's demise.
This time he and his buddies were trying to pass themselves off as some kind of pro-Muslim group in order to get PBS and NPR people to show their true colors as the anti-American voice of the left that all good conservatives know them to be.
The problem was that the PBS and NPR people weren't biting on the group's validity but were still caught on camera dissing the idiots in the Tea Party and everybody knows you can't call an idiot an idiot and still be considered fair and balanced.
Everything about the right wing these days is about killing the messenger and ignoring the message. We're in the middle of a war of dirty tricks and character assassination the likes of which this country has never seen. Seriously, even in the days of the Ken Starr investigations of the Clintons, the tactics were nothing like this.
On the right, since apparently they're in total disarray now having to battle the fringe in their own midst and being incapable of getting anything done in Washington, they're putting out talking points, circling the wagons, and trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do about 2012.
They're having to rely on shock troops like O'Keefe to work Machiavellian magic behind the scenes in order to bring Obama and the left down since they are finding it impossible to bring themselves up.
PBS and NPR are the latest paper tigers for the right. You might remember several years back that it was the National Endowment for the Arts and Andres Sorrano's "Piss Christ".
For the right, there's always some sort of smoke and mirrors campaign going on. In the battle to destroy the unions in Wisconsin the new Republican talking points are all about "freedom". Every Republican I've seen discussing the matter in the past week has used that term to describe their efforts to destroy collective bargaining and castrate public sector unions. Seriously, freedom.
Of course the dolts on the right suck that up. They're like (speaking in robot/zombie voice of someone under hypnosis) "Yes, I like freedom. Union bad. Union don't like freedom." As if freedom were being held hostage by people seeking honest wages and retirement benefits.
There was an amazing poem by e.e. cummings, one of my favorite poets, in which he coined the term jingoism. Jingoism is a term you rarely hear these days, I would suspect because most journalists aren't educated enough to have heard of it. It has applied to the right for several years now, going back to the days of Reagan. The term means political speech devoid of substance that is all about wrapping yourself in the flag and hitting a few hot button terms here and there.
Nowhere has the jingoism of the right been more prominently displayed than at recent public events in the lead up to somebody actually throwing their hat in the ring for the 2012 Republican presidential bid.
It's all been about the rights of the unborn, the dastardly unions and their anti-American Muslim friends, the communists who control public media, etc.
And, in the meantime, they're relying on a hack like James O'Keefe to do their dirty work.
The problem is that they're losing in the court of public opinion. Still. After all the money from the Koch brothers and all the dirty tricks, they just can't bring their numbers up.
People are becoming more sympathetic to the unions and Republicans like Wisconsin governor Scott Walker are getting caught up in the same type of O'Keefian smear campaigns they love so much and are coming out looking like villains.
I think that, ultimately, the majority of Americans will realize that their best interests aren't served by people like the Koch brothers and all of this money being spent to destroy the left will have the opposite effect. Now, if Obama would only grow a pair and take advantage of that, I might rest a little easier.
I'd like to include here the poem, "next to of course god america i", by e.e. cummings in which the word jingo first appeared and also "Piss Christ" which is still a beautiful piece of work.
“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
