Tom&#39;s Journal

I thought Limbaugh was also a Bush campaign advisor? I was a little surprised at the further blurring of the line between media personality and political staff (not that there was really any reason to be in the modern day).

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I think they both suck, personally.

Sorry Tom, there is a big difference btwn Moore, and someone like Howard Dean. DFA would do well to distance themselves from Moore, honestly.

I would never defend Moore's propaganda machine, and I would never defend Bush or Limbaugh's propganda machine either, they're two sides of the same coin.

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You're wrong.

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we can agree to disagree, but both republicans and democrats have their zealots... Michael Moore, while he's got some points, is too fanatical to be able to attract the type of vote the democrats need to win an election. I know a lot of people the man turned off that usually vote democrat (my family, irish catholic) and they were appalled by some of the vocal democrat propgandists, now they still voted democrat, but felt that Michael Moore being embraced by the party was a Bad Sign(tm). In fact Moore did for the Democratic party what Limbaugh did for the GOP when Clinton was elected the second time.

People aren;t stupid, they know how to weed out extremist views when they see them. This time there was no "lesser of two evils" and Bush didn't win outright like everyone said, this election was as close as the last one.... Nobody likes either party. I really don;t think the votes were always along registered party lines...

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So you are saying that when someone stands up for progressive values we should shut them up?

I believe in the radical notion that we support people on our side and fight people on the opposite side.

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In case you didn't notice, I criticized both sides. I don;t see Moore as being on "my side", and I don;t see Limbaugh as being on "my side", if the above were true, I'd be fighting everyone!

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I don't disagree with you, but I'm also mindful of the fact that Moore is an *entertainer*, like the puppets on Fox, Jon Stewart, or Angelina Jolie. Not that it means it's OK to shut him up (I don't believe it is), but it does mean to me that I don't really see supporting him as quite the same thing as supporitng a policy maker or grass-roots organizer.

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Moore's redeeming feature for me is this: he's looking out for pretty much one group and one group only, and that's the working-class population of the United States. Being from a small working-class town, and being an educated, big-city yuppie now only through the grace of my parents' hard work, I respect what he's trying to show us there. In 1991 the kids being conned into going to war were my classmates and friends; the people hurting because their factories have moved in "Roger and Me" are the population of my hometown today.

Moore is loud and embarrassing at times, and he definitely does rub some people the wrong way. It does make me angry when people assume he's speaking for the left in general or me in particular, and I wish sometimes that he could as palatably as some of the other people who say some of the same things (Ed Schultz comes to mind)...but he wouldn't have the profile he has if he wasn't big and loud. And I'm glad someone *is* out there where people can hear him saying "the little guy in America is hurting."

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But the "little guy", by and large, doesn't want Moore speaking for them. My father is an upper-middle-aged person (approaching 60), who has worked as a carpenter all his life. He's a member of the local carpenter's union, he works his ass off, and did as I was growing up, to keep his family going. He couldn;t afford to send us to college, except for my sister, who is the youngest, and some real-estate investment in his own house paid off so he could send her to school (John Jay in NYC)...she will be the only one out of us three to have a college degree, even though my brother and I are wildly successful in our respective fields...

So I understand where you are coming from, but I don't agree. Most of the lower-middle-class and working class people have moral values that may actually be more reflected in the "Right"'s views. The problem with the Democratic party, and I know Tom will most likely at least agree with this, is that the party as a whole has forgotten who its contituents are. They've taken a hardline stance against everything, and then proceeded to doublespeak. (Abortion, Gay Marriage anyone?).

I really respect what Howard Dean and Democracy for America are trying to do for the democratic party, even though I don;t agree with thier platforms 100%, but its going to be hard to win votes unless you can appeal to those diosconnected during the last two elections. Michael Moore is unfortunately part of that separation. One rarely wins votes with Propaganda. The problem here is that IMO, neither side had a clear victory, both parties have alienated thier voters to the point where now elections are "cliffhangers" and people challenge the validity of counts.

Unfortunately the only party that appeals to me platform-wise, eats itself from within (the Libertarian Party), but I can't bring myself to vote for either "major party" candidate, because they are so disconnected from me, my family's values, and what I believe in. I believe that the choice of candidates in a big part of why the Democratic party lost, why the Ohio vote was so close (Gary Nolan would have commanded many more votes in Ohio specifically, taking away what my friend

alanesq has termed the "Libertarian Republicans", and may have actually swung the election in Ohio specifically.

When the two major parties realize that they both need massive reform, is when we may see the group of people who sit in the middle choose one side or the other. Right now, they're both for the birds, and I believe that both Limbaugh and Moore are a huge part of the problem, at least image-wise with either party.

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I disagree with this, too:
The problem with the Democratic party, and I know Tom will most likely at least agree with this, is that the party as a whole has forgotten who its contituents are. They've taken a hardline stance against everything, and then proceeded to doublespeak. (Abortion, Gay Marriage anyone?).

My feeling is that what the Democratic party has lost is primarily control over setting their own message and course. They are left continuously reacting to the Right and the conservative end of the TV/radio entertainment industry, rather than setting their own agendas and explaining their own positions. Of course they end up sounding like they're "against everything" and engaging in doublespeak, when they're responding to someone else's assertions about them all the time. The big differences between how the Democratic party today and the party in 1990 are perceived are (in my opinion): 1) Clinton is a hugely charismatic man who can do "just folks" as well as Dubya and 2) conservative TV/radio entertainment was just getting started back then.

Gay marriage is a fabulous example to bring up, because it turns out NO ONE in this past election was in favor of gay marriage. People may argue Kerry was secretly pro-marriage but anti-marriage for expediency's sake, which I don't believe, but still: NO ONE. Even Dean, if he is pro-marriage now, evolved to that position over the last 2 years and was not there originally (according to an interview in the Advocate in early 2003 or so). Yet somehow the GOP plus the conservative entertainment personalities made it the issue that sunk the Democrats.

But in any case, Moore is not a part of the party. He isn't fed his talking points like Fox entertainment personalities, he makes up his own. And saying "the people he's trying to represent don't want him" to some extent just makes me shrug my shoulders -- they're welcome to pursue their own politics however they wish, but that doesn't make Moore's observations about what American corporate culture is doing to their standards of living, or about how their sons and daughters are sent to die preferentially, or how their communities are being gutted, any less valuable. I don't really care if the Chicago meatpackers of the turn of the century agreed with Upton Sinclair's politics, either -- "The Jungle" was still valuable work.

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"One rarely wins votes with Propaganda."

I would say that that is the only way people have ever won elections.

Clinton understood this. When asked about abortion he stated his VALUES: "We need to make abortion legal, safe and RARE". That's a value statement.

Kerry couldn't understand this. He would talk about policies and that made him cold and valueless.

Both the red and blue states were won by "values"... don't believe the media that says that Bush was the only one with values. Bush lost all the states DIRECTLY affected by terrorism because it is immoral to ignore terror warnings, it is immoral to send children into battle for a unjustified war. The morals of the "blue states" says that a moral person doesn't let people go hungry, homeless, or uncared for when ill.

It is propaganda that gets your catholic family to vote for pro-death penalty people like Bush, when their church is against it.

In the next year you will see the Democrats learn to talk about their morals and values instead of plans and policies. That will turn the party around.

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I think I made it pretty clear they still voted for Kerry, but were not overly happy about it. When are we going to stop having to vote for the lesser of two evils, and be able to vote for the better candidate?

Personally, I do not hold my family's values dear, I do believe in the death penalty, but I wouldn;t dream of voting for Bush, I wouldn;t have dreamed of voting for Kerry either. There was only one Democratic candidate that struck me as having balls enough to do the job fairly.

Unfortunately, he was criticized for his passion and beliefs.

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I should correct my statement

Nobody wins elections on obvious propaganda. It labels you as an extremist.

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I thought Bush's lies were pretty obvious. He only got away with it because of all the "yes men" at Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS who were afraid to disagree and have the FCC beat them up, or a future merger denied.

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You talk as if his win was overwhelming, it was so damned close, except this time the popular vote was just ahead. If thats a "clear victory" then I'm scared for the future... oh wait, I already am.

Honestly yes, Bush's lies were obvious, but only to the people who didn't live the nightmare... to everyone else, they really believe that he "saved" us because they weren't here when the attacks happened. To us, he's a charlatan.

But then why should I have had to "settle" for Kerry either? Why did both the Libertarian party and Democratic parties eat themselves from within?

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In the next year you will see the Democrats learn to talk about their morals and values instead of plans and policies. That will turn the party around.

I just hope their morals and values are remotely like mine. I really don't need TWO theocratic Xtian parties ramming their religion down my throat.

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Morals, while often founded in religion, aren't always. We have a moral responsibility to make sure that all people are treated fairly (thus, gay rights is important), and to help people live healthy lives (thus, anti-pollution laws are important), and so on, and so on. None of that has to be Xtian-based.

Tom

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Doesn't *have* to be, but I have a fear that the lesson the DNC types will take out of this election is that they should mouth the name of Jesus as much as possible.

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jim-p.livejournal.com

Funny, though, the Right has a whole kennel of attack dogs (e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter) and they think there's nothing wrong with that, but let the Left get one attack dog with real teeth and suddenly the Right is squealing like stuck pigs...

Payback is hell...

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It always reminds me of those studies from a decade or two ago that showed boys in a class started to complain that there was favoritism towards the girls if the girls started getting anything remotely near 50% of the class time...some segment of the Right certainly didn't learn everything they should've in elementary school.

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jim-p.livejournal.com

Oh they learned their lesson very well: when your advantage is threatened, raise holy hell...

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