The C-SPAN Right-wing Loon Call of the Day

The second most frequent caller is a man I refer to as West Virginny Coot, and he, too, has been mentioned in a previous page. There's something perverted about his level of stupidity, the way he sneaks in a slur against Democrats, though the comment has nothing to do with the discussion. During a segment discussing Bush's changing policy toward immigration, Virginny Coot called to offer his two-cents worth, and slipped in at the end an explanation as to why Washington Journal gets more calls from Democrats than Republicans: "Democrats," he opines, "are at home getting their government checks, and Republicans are out working, taking all their personal responsibility." The comment didn't belong in that discussion, and as in this remark, there is a skulking quality to almost all of his calls, as he steers for that opening, like a pervert at a playground angling for a peak at prepubescent panties. What made the comment even more ridiculous was that he was at home at that very minute, able to make that call, thanks to a government check. That's right. From another call, we know he's seventy years old and living on Social Security, a program currently eyed by Republicans for privatization, but safeguarded by Democrats. But Virginny Coot doesn't have to worry about what his party is planning, because he's a crusty old fart and his entitlement is secure. The only thing that would deter delivery of his monthly check is if Democrats get soft on terrorists, allowing them to set off a dirty bomb in New York, but he "thanks God for President Bush."

Virginny Coot has called six times already this year, and when he's not being intellectually perverted, he's espousing some tired right-wing talking point, taking cheap shots at the people and organizations targeted by right-wing pie-hole talk shows, such as Bill Clinton, the ACLU, Ted Kennedy, and on and on, the never-ending tirade.

The next caller to prove the maxim is a sniveling pisser from Los Angeles, California. He exhibits the primary symptom of the right-wing disease — a form of Tourette's Syndrome — in that he can't confine his remarks to the subject at hand, but strays into liberal bashing. He's not shrill with rage like the LaSalle Loon, or as perverted as West Virginny Coot. Instead his style is like one who has no concept of individual words. The first word out of his mouth is connected to every other word in his vocabulary; if, that is, it can be useful toward the narrow agenda of bashing that beloved talk-radio liberal caricature. On January 28th, the guest on Washington Journal was William Blum, author of Rogue State, a book that is harshly critical of both Democratic and Republican foreign policy. As it happened, Osama bin Laden recommended that Americans read this book to

understand what's really going on. Such an off-handed endorsement is bound to trigger the cocked bitterness of right-wing loons, who by nature don't require an excuse to spew; it's a palpable hatred when they think they have one. He begins, "Yes, Mr. Blum, how proud you must be that you get such a great review from the man that Democrats admire so much, Osama bin Laden." Then he goes on with some more nonsense, before adding, "You know you're putting the final nail in the Democratic coffin, and for that I'm grateful." His time is nearly up, but uncertain of the success of his vileness, he's lobs one more insult: "And, uh, have you ever worked on your lisp?"

Yes, the ugliness in this man's black soul is uncontrollable. He did exactly the same thing when he called during Arianna Huffington's guest appearance last year (covered in a previous column). Arianna was once married to a wealthy California Republican until he came out of the closet. This smarmy ass segues into that subject by first feigning an interest in what Michael Huffington is up to these days, then dropping

the pretense to say, "and seeing your personality, I'm really not surprised he went gay." Pure inexcusable bile, which makes this past call in which he asks a professor of psychiatry if he found any correlation between liberalism and mental illness just ridiculous. Pot, kettle, black.

Further proving our new maxim by obsessively contributing unfettered hostility, the diseased viewer from Los Angeles has called three times the first month of the new year. After his attack on William Blum, he phoned the very next day, using the same final-nail metaphor — his new wet dream — in the mix of exactly the same irrational diatribe against Democrats as being on the side of terrorists, and blah, blah, blah — just

plain stupid gibberish. Like most extreme right-wing conservatives, his ego misleads him to believe that even the dimmest of his thoughts become blazing manifestos. This man lives in the the cast-iron cavern of his own hallucinations, where all his squiggling and twisting nationalistic imagery converge and disappear into a psychedelic vortex.

All of the callers presented above are only the most egregious examples of the maxim. But it is alarmingly typical of right-wing participants to C-SPAN. They talk about politics without any appreciation of subtleties, with a zealotry akin to a religious fundamentalist's simplistic embrace of absolutes.

And that's really what it's about, the purposeful depiction by right-wing pundits of Democrats as moral relativists. From there, the right-wing pundits guide their fans to the notion that Democrats lack real values, and from there, to the judgment that Democrats are not deserving of respect. Right-wing pundits have painted their rhetorical dung heap as a moral high ground. All we Democrats can do at this point is reciprocate the vitriol and derision. Counting on idealism and turning the other cheek has proven to be a detrimental tack to our progressive ideals.

alric@cableone.net

All Columns 11/26/06 05/12/06 02/13/06 07/06/05 06/03/05 05/19/05	Establishing a Maxim for C-SPAN Right-wing Callers One need but watch C-SPAN's Washington Journal for a few months before it becomes clear that the most frequent callers are the ones with the least to add to the political dialogue. Not that there's much real dialogue these days, especially from the right, who address nothing but a right-wing pie-hole's caricature of liberalism. That this caricature took hold in the imagination of so many people bereft of imagination can be blamed to some degree on Democrats themselves, whose naiveté permitted the assumption that the term average intelligence meant at least that — intelligence — and the general public couldn't possibly fall for the hyperbole of some fat, lying pooper. But Democrats would have been wise to note the ratings bonanza WWE Wrestling is for some cable channels, replete with shouting matches and combatants sporting primary colors and allegorical personas. This is what sells, and though it's one of the crassest forms of entertainment, viewers of average intelligence really dig it. Right-wing pundits know this, and know how to exploit it. For your average right-wing loon (homo quasi-erectus), politics is a slick game, a pageant in which their action heroes vie for the center of the ring, a constant shoving and breast-beating of shifting outcome, culminating in a decisive Smackdown for who'll actually walk away with the beltway. As in most competitive sports, it's not so much the winning in and of itself, or of what to do with the prize; it's as the villainous Robert Vaughn said in that god-awful Superman III movie: "It's not that I win, but everyone else must lose" — sibilating the delectable ooze of lose. Harboring a vice of sneering contempt and anger has its downside. The cathexis of winning can't sustain homo quasi-erectus for four years. He'll need a fix of some sort, an opportunity to gloat and snarl. This is where Washington Journal comes in. To pursue further our apropos Smackdown analogy, you can liken this call-in program to the noisy ringside, the cheering and jeering of the mob as they watch the matches, maintaining their pitch for the quadrennial big-ticket event, Captain All-America versus Comrade Spawn. They're a mad crowd, just short of lighting torches to run the liberal out of town. Such rage must be vented. Which leads me back to the beginning. There's a 30-day call-in policy for Washington Journal. That means you wait thirty days between calls. Not everyone follows it. After years of watching and listening, I can propose a maxim. Here's the maxim: "A caller's contribution to intelligent political discourse is in inverse proportion to the frequency of his calls." What this means is, when a person can't follow the 30-day policy — which is really just a suggestion of civility — the caller is likely in the thrall of some savage emotion, and his or her opinion will be comprised almost entirely of snideness and contempt, bereft — and even contemptuous of — facts, preferring instead the furnace of his or her pent anger. Inarguably application of the maxim is purely subjective, since one man's thrashing electroshock candidate is another man's prophet. All we can do is examine the evidence to see if the maxim applies. And here it is. Easily the most frequent caller, and a previous star of one of these pages, the man from LaSalle, Michigan exemplifies the maxim. If ever I decide to name it, and out of humility let the name commemorate someone else besides myself, I might consider naming it after the city this lunatic most often admits to be calling from (when he thinks he doesn't have to lie to violate the policy). This example of his vocal stylings is typical of him, in that he opens with an initial thrust, then his shrillness leaps an octave as he let's fly the invectives, all the while getting more worked up. His language is so laden with impotent rage, I'm reminded of those comical telephone conversations in cartoons, where the hump of dialogue surges along the phone line until it comes out as a fist in the receiver. In another call in which he claims to be from Nashville, Tennessee, he takes on a CIA operative. The operative claimed that the intelligence supporting the president's contention for the war in Iraq had been coaxed and cooked. The LaSalle caller was furious for two reasons: first, that the operative claimed to be a conservative, thereby lending credibility to his criticisms of the Bush administration while simultaneously shielding him from accusations of a liberal partisanship; second, as a CIA operative, his claim of dishonest intelligence had some inside authority, and it plays right into the alleged agenda of the vast liberal media. The LaSalle Loon was so mad, he concluded his remakes by calling the operative a "horse's ass." And this leads me to present a second maxim, but this one relating specifically to this caller: The LaSalle Loon's rage is in direct proportion to how influential a guest is. He's proven this again and again, and when I'd see a guest with serious liberal academic credentials, I know that this maniac is stabbing that redial button with one of his extended claws. Like the day Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, was the guest. I anticipated LaSalle's call, and he delivered. His rant was all over the place, covering the entire presumed benevolent history of the United States in just a little over a minute, a scattershot of verbiage. Then there was the time the moderator read an article from a newspaper on Colin Powell's criticism of Bush, to which this lunatic concludes that Powell was a "duplicitous bastard." And lastly there's this unintentionally ironic call he made on New Year's Day of last year, in which he criticizes the "vitriol" coming from the left, and recommends that C-SPAN screen the calls better. Don't we all wish.	The second most frequent caller is a man I refer to as West Virginny Coot, and he, too, has been mentioned in a previous page. There's something perverted about his level of stupidity, the way he sneaks in a slur against Democrats, though the comment has nothing to do with the discussion. During a segment discussing Bush's changing policy toward immigration, Virginny Coot called to offer his two-cents worth, and slipped in at the end an explanation as to why Washington Journal gets more calls from Democrats than Republicans: "Democrats," he opines, "are at home getting their government checks, and Republicans are out working, taking all their personal responsibility." The comment didn't belong in that discussion, and as in this remark, there is a skulking quality to almost all of his calls, as he steers for that opening, like a pervert at a playground angling for a peak at prepubescent panties. What made the comment even more ridiculous was that he was at home at that very minute, able to make that call, thanks to a government check. That's right. From another call, we know he's seventy years old and living on Social Security, a program currently eyed by Republicans for privatization, but safeguarded by Democrats. But Virginny Coot doesn't have to worry about what his party is planning, because he's a crusty old fart and his entitlement is secure. The only thing that would deter delivery of his monthly check is if Democrats get soft on terrorists, allowing them to set off a dirty bomb in New York, but he "thanks God for President Bush." Virginny Coot has called six times already this year, and when he's not being intellectually perverted, he's espousing some tired right-wing talking point, taking cheap shots at the people and organizations targeted by right-wing pie-hole talk shows, such as Bill Clinton, the ACLU, Ted Kennedy, and on and on, the never-ending tirade. The next caller to prove the maxim is a sniveling pisser from Los Angeles, California. He exhibits the primary symptom of the right-wing disease — a form of Tourette's Syndrome — in that he can't confine his remarks to the subject at hand, but strays into liberal bashing. He's not shrill with rage like the LaSalle Loon, or as perverted as West Virginny Coot. Instead his style is like one who has no concept of individual words. The first word out of his mouth is connected to every other word in his vocabulary; if, that is, it can be useful toward the narrow agenda of bashing that beloved talk-radio liberal caricature. On January 28th, the guest on Washington Journal was William Blum, author of Rogue State, a book that is harshly critical of both Democratic and Republican foreign policy. As it happened, Osama bin Laden recommended that Americans read this book to understand what's really going on. Such an off-handed endorsement is bound to trigger the cocked bitterness of right-wing loons, who by nature don't require an excuse to spew; it's a palpable hatred when they think they have one. He begins, "Yes, Mr. Blum, how proud you must be that you get such a great review from the man that Democrats admire so much, Osama bin Laden." Then he goes on with some more nonsense, before adding, "You know you're putting the final nail in the Democratic coffin, and for that I'm grateful." His time is nearly up, but uncertain of the success of his vileness, he's lobs one more insult: "And, uh, have you ever worked on your lisp?" Yes, the ugliness in this man's black soul is uncontrollable. He did exactly the same thing when he called during Arianna Huffington's guest appearance last year (covered in a previous column). Arianna was once married to a wealthy California Republican until he came out of the closet. This smarmy ass segues into that subject by first feigning an interest in what Michael Huffington is up to these days, then dropping the pretense to say, "and seeing your personality, I'm really not surprised he went gay." Pure inexcusable bile, which makes this past call in which he asks a professor of psychiatry if he found any correlation between liberalism and mental illness just ridiculous. Pot, kettle, black. Further proving our new maxim by obsessively contributing unfettered hostility, the diseased viewer from Los Angeles has called three times the first month of the new year. After his attack on William Blum, he phoned the very next day, using the same final-nail metaphor — his new wet dream — in the mix of exactly the same irrational diatribe against Democrats as being on the side of terrorists, and blah, blah, blah — just plain stupid gibberish. Like most extreme right-wing conservatives, his ego misleads him to believe that even the dimmest of his thoughts become blazing manifestos. This man lives in the the cast-iron cavern of his own hallucinations, where all his squiggling and twisting nationalistic imagery converge and disappear into a psychedelic vortex. All of the callers presented above are only the most egregious examples of the maxim. But it is alarmingly typical of right-wing participants to C-SPAN. They talk about politics without any appreciation of subtleties, with a zealotry akin to a religious fundamentalist's simplistic embrace of absolutes. And that's really what it's about, the purposeful depiction by right-wing pundits of Democrats as moral relativists. From there, the right-wing pundits guide their fans to the notion that Democrats lack real values, and from there, to the judgment that Democrats are not deserving of respect. Right-wing pundits have painted their rhetorical dung heap as a moral high ground. All we Democrats can do at this point is reciprocate the vitriol and derision. Counting on idealism and turning the other cheek has proven to be a detrimental tack to our progressive ideals. alric@cableone.net
This page is created for the primary purpose of entertainment and — to a much lesser degree — education, and has not been endorsed by, or is in anyway associated with, C-SPAN.
Iron Eye Foundation

Establishing a Maxim for C-SPAN Right-wing Callers