Balance!
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Ladies and gentlemen, the centrism cult in action, courtesy of Dana Milbank at Fred Hiatt's rag:
The time has come in the debt-limit fight for all Americans to declare their loyalties: Are you with the bank robbers, or are you with the dirty old men?
This unpalatable choice is as good a way as any to frame the debate in these last days before the default deadline.
On one side are House Republican leaders who, facing a rebellion of Tea Party conservatives, appealed for party unity by screening for members a clip of the 2010 film “The Town,” in which Ben Affleck’s bank-robber character tells the Jeremy Renner character: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people.” Renner replies: “Whose car we takin’?” The clip ended before the shooting and beatings that followed.
On the other side are House Democratic leaders, who had to decide how to handle Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.), accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a teenage girl (he claims it was consensual). Wu, who previously attracted attention by sending staff members photos of himself in a tiger costume,had no choice but to resign. But leaders accepted his plan to stay on the job for the debt standoff, thereby giving them one more vote against Speaker John Boehner’s debt plan.
It’s hard to decide which wins the craven crown: Exhorting colleagues by playing for them a call to criminal violence? Or trying to thwart the opposition by tolerating a 56-year-old colleague accused of forcing himself on a friend’s daughter?
On one side, an entire caucus watching a film about violent thieves going to "hurt some people" for inspiration. On the other, a political party with one Congressman involved in a sex scandal, temporarily holding off a resignation while we deal with an important vote on a (trumped up) fiscal crisis.
Milbank gets a two-fer here: claim that Democrats, who are overwhelmingly favored by women at the ballot box and passed the Ledbetter Act in the face of conservative opposition, are somehow the party of dirty old man misogynists, and claim that a sex scandal involving one Congressman that may or may not rise to the level of criminal activity is somehow on a par with an entire political party holding America hostage and fetishizing criminal violence while promising to "hurt some people."
Of course, Milbank is considered one of the "liberal" columnists at the Post.
The American press establishment isn't just dead weight in failing to expose the corporate takeover of the country's politics and the sheer lunacy of its right-wing flank. As with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, it is playing an actively complicit, damaging role in our democracy. The entire industry might as well shrivel up and die for all the good it does in informing the public.