THIS MODERN WORLD

Just a quick addendum to Greg’s post below: left wingers who “prefer osama to bush” are about as likely to exist as those little grey aliens whose primary purpose in life is to abduct humans in order to perform strange invasive surgical procedures. I am astonished that someone who professes to believe in the existence of either is taken seriously enough to be paid by Time magazine to blog, let alone given status as a featured columnist.

Also: it’s amusing to see Crazy Andy posing as a free speech absolutist, given the countless times he’s called for the censure of various opinions he finds momentarily disagreeable. But here’s the question: is Time magazine going to run those Danish cartoons? And if not, isn’t it a little weird for the Official Blogger of Time Magazine to be chastising the New York Times, and the “MSM” in general, for not running them either? Last time I looked, Time Magazine still had a relatively healthy circulation …

Y’know that post I did yesterday that included Andrew Sullivan’s infamous “fifth column” quote? Well, reader James forwarded the link to Andy, who had this to say :

u deny that there are some on the far left who would prefer osama to bush?
i’ve seen a couple of articles lately confessing exactly that.
andrew

Sullivan’s ridiculous strawman and lack of capitalization would be funny if he weren’t actually serious. Who are these traitors on the “far left”? Are they a well-organized group actively working to undermine the U.S. government or are they a couple of obscure, pissed-off bloggers who are venting a little steam? I’ve seen some pretty despicable things written by angry liberals and conservatives, but there’s a big difference between ranting against your government and collaborating with the enemy. Let’s go back to Sullivan’s original quote :

“The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.”

The irresponsible thing about his statement isn’t that he’s warning about fifth column movements, but that he’s implying that pretty much everyone who disagrees with the President is a traitor. You’re painting with pretty broad brush-strokes there, Andy. By citing “the great red zone that voted for Bush” in your first sentence, you’re essentially setting up a false dichotomy that implicates everyone else in this undefined “decadent Left”. If you weren’t trying to draw a parallel, then the quote you’re defending is poorly written and should be explained beyond hiding behind your intentionally vague wording.

But if you really do think the majority of us blue-state, coastal lefties “may” constitute a “fifth column”, then would it be equally valid to make a statement like this?

“In the densely-populated urban areas which are likely targets for future attacks – and heavily favored Democrats in the last election – are serious about capturing Osama Bin Laden. The religious extremists in the south and Midwest have other plans – for they might be more interested in firebombing abortion clinics.”

Would it be okay to contrast John Kerry voters and white supremacists? Or divide the country into secular humanists and hate-filled bastards like Rev. Fred Phelps? Singling out extremists to score points against your political opposition isn’t just unfair, it’s lazy reporting.

Besides that, the whole point of my post wasn’t to bash Andy for a stupid-ass comment he made four and a half years ago, but to spur a discussion (in a roundabout way) about what constitutes a “fifth column” movement, who gets to make those decisions, and what actions should be taken against them. Andy’s gone on record as saying that the “far left” (a relative term if ever these was one) should be under suspicion, Sen. Graham believes it’s acceptable to spy on those of us suspected of being in the “fifth column” without a warrant, and the President rode to victory by repeatedly suggesting that John Kerry and his allies “embolden our enemies” , so where do you draw the line between legitimate dissent and “fifth column” activity?

A sharp-eyed reader caught this article via the Yahoo homepage, though it apparently vanished from same pretty quickly:

Although the strife over the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten already feels like it’s been going on for a small eternity, new angles continue to pop up each day. The latest comes from the Danish daily Politiken, conservative Jyllands-Posten’s more left-leaning competitor.

On Saturday, Politiken printed a series of caricatures of Jesus on its editorial page. Next to them, the paper reprinted an e-mail exchange from April 2003 in which a leading Jyllands-Posten editor rejected publication of satirical cartoons depicting Jesus Christ. His reasoning? “I don’t think the readers of Jyllands-Posten would be pleased with the drawings. I think they would cause an outrage. That’s why I won’t use them.”

That line of reasoning, of course, is raising eyebrows this week. Does the newspaper responsible for launching the battle over the Muhammad caricatures, which now presents itself as a champion of free speech, apply a different standard for its Christian readers? “It does look a little like hypocrisy,” said Politiken opinion page editor Jacob Fuglsand.

Reached by telephone, Jens Kaiser, the Jyllands-Posten editor responsible for the email said he now regrets the wording of the message. “I could not foresee that my kind refusal would be published three years later. My fault was that I didn’t tell him what I really meant. The cartoons were just bad.”

Ultimately, however, the Jesus cartoons were an unfortunate coincidence. The self-employed illustrator responsible for them, Christoffer Zieler, sent the unsolicited Jesus caricatures to the newspaper just before Easter 2003. “He suggested that we print them on Easter Sunday,” Kaiser recalled, but he rejected them, “like 95 percent of all submissions.” Kaiser also explained that he often tried to use more polite methods of brushing off illustrators than to simply tell them their work was lousy.

But in today’s loaded atmosphere, the e-mail is proving explosive. The decision showed a “double standard” a member of the Muslim interest group told Britain’s Guardian.

Politiken first learned of the drawings after the illustrator contacted the newspaper. “I found that it was a nice story that opens a new angle on the dilemmas an editor faces,” Fuglsand said. Of course, editors also love nothing better the opportunity to take a stab at the competition.

Conservatives are going batshit crazy because of this statement at the funeral for Coretta Scott King by Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery :

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. [Standing Ovation] But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

Pity the poor conservatives who hate being reminded that they’ve been on the wrong side of every civil rights struggle in our nation’s history. And in case there’s any doubt about whether these sentiments were in line with the beliefs of Mrs. King, here’s part of an interview she gave shortly before the Iraq war began :

BLITZER: Mrs. King, thank you so much for joining us. Let’s talk a little bit about the legacy of your husband. How much has the racial situation in our country improved since his death, if you believe, indeed, it has?

KING: Yes, I think it certainly has improved tremendously, but we still have much more to be done. Martin defined the evils and the injustices in our society in three areas — poverty, racism and war. And he said that we cannot solve one problem without solving the other, working to solve the other one. And I think we have remnants of all of those. We’ve made some small progress in some areas more than others, but we still very much have poverty. We still very much have racism. And we still very much have a threat of war.
. . .
BLITZER: You raised the issue earlier of war. Where do you think [your husband] would come down on the whole issue of possibly going to war with Iraq?

KING: You know, my husband always believed that there should be peaceful negotiations, and he believed in nonviolence. He was committed to it totally, and he believed that conflict should be handled through the United Nations, so strength in the United Nations, and let the United Nations take the leadership. And I believe that Martin would, if he were [alive] today — although I don’t normally speak for him, but I know what he was saying at the time of his death — is that war cannot serve any lasting good toward bringing about peace. If you use weapons of war to bring about peace, you’re going to have more war and destruction. You cannot have peaceful means — peaceful means will have to be used to bring about peaceful ends. If you use destructive means, you’re going to bring about destructive ends.

Face it conservatives, Coretta Scott King was a liberal. While civil rights heroes like the Kings were leading a non-violent struggle for equality, your political heroes were finding new ways to court southern racists away from the Democratic party. The Republican journey to victory was fueled by the votes of bigots, so it’s a little late in the game to start acting like you have the right to speak for the leaders of a movement you fought against.

“The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.”

– Andrew Sullivan, September 16, 2001

“The FISA statute, in a time of war, is a check and balance. But here’s where I think I’m your biggest fan. During the time of war, the administration has the inherent power, in my opinion, to surveil the enemy and to map the battlefield electronically — not just physical, but to electronically map what the enemy is up to by seizing information and putting that puzzle together.

And the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements.
. . .
So my friends on the other side, I stand by this president’s ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about fifth column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that.”

– Sen. Lindsey Graham, yesterday