Why are we losing to these idiots?
The American right has been absolutely outdoing itself this week. Today’s nugget of lunacy has me following Instapundit to James Taranto’s Opinion Journal where, summing up four days of rightwing caterwauling about Al Gore’s latest speech in Saudi Arabia, Taranto offers this bit of meta-analysis:
Usually when Al Gore gives a speech, left-wing blogs are filled with enthusiastic reviews. But we haven't noticed a single plaudit for, or even defense of, Gore's weekend speech in Saudi Arabia, which we noted Monday.
The rest of Taranto’s attempt at being clever isn’t worth worrying with; but it’s worth pointing out that, beyond the fact that liberal bloggers don’t have the time or energy to follow the action every time a big Dem makes a speech at some international conference, the main reason the liberal blogs haven’t exactly been “full of enthusiastic reviews” is because we have no idea what Gore said in Saudi Arabia. There’s nothing to review. Incredibly, the massive wall of outrage that has towered over the right blogosphere over the past three days is built from a single short AP story. Ezra dug up a tonally conflicting (and more detailed) account of what Gore said from Arab News, but nobody to my knowledge has seen a transcript of the actual speech or the q&a in question. Jeddah didn’t make them available online.
My take is this: from the Arab News account and the AP account, Gore’s comments on the Danish cartoon controversy and the Gulf region’s stance on Iranian nuclear ambitions were perfectly mainstream and, better, right on the money. His complaints about visas and Ashcroft’s post-911 policy read like diplomatic pandering, something the Bushies are pretty familiar with themselves. But Gore has been making these same complaints about post-911 domestic policy toward Muslims for years. Given our globalized media, any business-class Saudi citizen of the sort he was addressing at the forum would already have had plenty of opportunity to know his – or any U.S. figure’s for that matter – positions on the subject. This just ain’t the stuff of sedition. It’s a nothing-burger – exactly the sort of nothing-burger the right would like us to believe Cheney’s hunting accident is – except for real. The reality-based community, in our relatively infinite wisdom, has treated it as such.
Usually when Al Gore gives a speech, left-wing blogs are filled with enthusiastic reviews. But we haven't noticed a single plaudit for, or even defense of, Gore's weekend speech in Saudi Arabia, which we noted Monday.
The rest of Taranto’s attempt at being clever isn’t worth worrying with; but it’s worth pointing out that, beyond the fact that liberal bloggers don’t have the time or energy to follow the action every time a big Dem makes a speech at some international conference, the main reason the liberal blogs haven’t exactly been “full of enthusiastic reviews” is because we have no idea what Gore said in Saudi Arabia. There’s nothing to review. Incredibly, the massive wall of outrage that has towered over the right blogosphere over the past three days is built from a single short AP story. Ezra dug up a tonally conflicting (and more detailed) account of what Gore said from Arab News, but nobody to my knowledge has seen a transcript of the actual speech or the q&a in question. Jeddah didn’t make them available online.
My take is this: from the Arab News account and the AP account, Gore’s comments on the Danish cartoon controversy and the Gulf region’s stance on Iranian nuclear ambitions were perfectly mainstream and, better, right on the money. His complaints about visas and Ashcroft’s post-911 policy read like diplomatic pandering, something the Bushies are pretty familiar with themselves. But Gore has been making these same complaints about post-911 domestic policy toward Muslims for years. Given our globalized media, any business-class Saudi citizen of the sort he was addressing at the forum would already have had plenty of opportunity to know his – or any U.S. figure’s for that matter – positions on the subject. This just ain’t the stuff of sedition. It’s a nothing-burger – exactly the sort of nothing-burger the right would like us to believe Cheney’s hunting accident is – except for real. The reality-based community, in our relatively infinite wisdom, has treated it as such.
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