November 5, 2007

Did Linda Hirshman Call Tim Russert A Nazi At TNR?

What exactly have they put in the water at The New Republic? First its leadership can't seem to find an exit strategy with both hands and a flashlight for publishing fabulism, despite TNR having written the book on it in 1998 with Stephen Glass. Now Linda Hirshman, in defending Hillary Clinton from the big Y-chromosomed meanie at Meet The Press, decides to go the Pastor Niemoller route and winds up implying that Tim Russert is some kind of Nazi:

Last summer the Nevada Democrats pulled out of a debate sponsored by Fox News. Loaded, racist and all the rest, the Dems decided it was incoherent for them to pretend Fox was a media outlet like any other.

Tim Russert is worse, because he has the mantle of the venerable NBC, network of Nipper, the radio dog. Bulletin to Democrats: Just Say No to Russert. ...

Oh, and for you Obama and Edwards supporters, remember the story about the man who didn’t stand up to the Nazis when they came for his neighbors.

How utterly appalling. The Left has begun a meltdown that may not end until they lose the 2008 race.

What qualified Russert for stormtrooper status? He asked a couple of tough questions of Hillary Clinton in a presidential debate -- in a race she leads by a substantial polling margin, or at least did. Apparently questioning the Queen crosses the line from journalism to jackbooted thuggery, according to Hirshman.

Hirshman has a history of dishing out what she can't take. Last year, she shrieked about "mommy rage" after criticizing stay-at-home moms for valuing their children more than a career. Rather than acknowledge that she'd gone too far, she accused her critics of secretly belonging to cryptic religious groups out to undermine women:

I learned something people really need to know. The aggressive domesticity is not coming only from a bunch of women who can't manage all the demands on their time. Time and again, when I could identify the sources of the most rabid criticism and Google them, male and female, they had fundamentalist religious stuff on their Web sites or in the involuntary biographies that Google makes possible. A lot of the fundamentalism behind the stay-at-home mom movement is overt, such as the letters worrying about my soul that appeared after the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary suggested his followers chat me up. But a lot of it is covert, such as the identity of the authors of manuals disguised as tips on frugal housekeeping, but actually proselytizing women to stay home, as the Bible suggests.

Even institutions that don't present themselves as coming from the world of revealed religion turn out to include an impressive percentage of religion scholars, students of divinity and advisers to the Vatican. Brad Wilcox, the most visible "family" scholar on the Family Scholars Blog of the Institute for American Values , is revered in the world of religious culture for his writings about how evangelical Protestant husbands make their wives happier than other guys, even though they won't wash a dish. He also wrote a long article about how the Catholic Church is right to forbid the use of birth control . Nothing on the Web site would clue you in.

Much worse than the roofing-and-barfing and salvation crowds, though, were the relativists, who criticized me for trying to give feminism some context and boundaries. My favorite was the woman who dissed me for defining feminism and then said, "Supporting other women's choices is the very essence of feminism, at least as I define it."

Hirshman exemplifies the soul of TNR these days. Write something outrageous, and then when criticism arises, accuse opponents of belonging to secret conspiracies designed to turn America into a fascist state. No wonder she supports Hillary Clinton, the author of the "vast right-wing conspiracy"!

As for the others she links accusing Russert of something just short of Naziism, they will soon run out of excuses. This debate took place on Democrat-friendly MSNBC, home of Keith Olbermann and his lunacy. Russert hasn't exactly made his career on tossing softballs at Republicans. When the Democrats get too frightened to appear on both Fox and MSNBC, where will they find their next Nazi boogeyman? (via Michael Goldfarb)

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/tabhartas.cgi/15916

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Did Linda Hirshman Call Tim Russert A Nazi At TNR?:

» The fallout from Hillary’s victim card playing: The week after from Sister Toldjah
The discussions over Hillary Clinton’s use of the victim card after her poor performance at last week’s Democratic presidential candidate debate haven’t died down. In fact, they seem to be intensifying. There’s been some div... [Read More]

» Some Things Never Change from Ed Driscoll.com
Four years ago, Dennis Miller told The American Enterprise magazine:The Left is so busy saying John Ashcroft is Hitler, and President Bush is Hitler, and Rudy Giuliani is Hitler that the only guy they wouldn’t call Hitler was the foreign... [Read More]

Comments