Fetch the Smelling Salts

Michael Kinsley looks at the pearl-clutching by the righties over MoveOn.org.

Goodness gracious. oh, my paws and whiskers. Some of the meanest, most ornery hombres around are suddenly feeling faint. Notorious tough guys are swooning with the vapors. The biggest beasts in the barnyard are all aflutter over something they read in the New York Times. It's that ad from MoveOn.org — the one that calls General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, general betray us. All across the radio spectrum, right-wing shock jocks are themselves shocked. How could anybody say such a thing? It's horrifying. It's outrageous. It's disgraceful. It's just beyond the pale ... It's ... oh, my heavens ... say, is it a bit stuffy in here? ... I think I'm going to ... Could I have a glass of ... oh, dear [thud].

These, of course, are the same people who never shy away from saying all sorts of impolite things about the Democrats or who, like Ann Coulter, have no problem calling people "faggot" and thinking that's perfectly acceptable. They can certainly dish it out, but in true bully fashion, can't take it, so they end up wasting their time and the taxpayer's money on bullshit like the Senate resolution denouncing MoveOn.org -- and handing MoveOn.org priceless publicity in the process (and probably giving them a huge bump in their fundraising) -- or jerking off over outrage about the president of Iran's expressed desire to visit Ground Zero.

It's all phony, of course. The war's backers are obviously delighted to have this ad from which they can make an issue. They wouldn't trade it for a week in Anbar province (a formerly troubled area of Iraq that is now, thanks to us, an Eden of peace and tranquillity where barely a car bomb disturbs the perfumed silence — or so they say). These days, mock outrage is used by every side of every dispute. It's fair enough to criticize something your opponent said while secretly thanking your lucky stars that he said it. The fuss over this MoveOn.org ad is something else: it is the result of a desperate scavenging for umbrage material. When so many people are clamoring for a chance to swoon that they each have to take a number and when the landscape is so littered with folks lying prostrate and pretending to be dead that it starts to look like the end of a Civil War battle re-enactment, this isn't spontaneous mass outrage. This is choreography.

And it's all perfectly timed to distract the country's attention from the fact that the war is grinding on and people are still dying. Anything that draws attention away from that is a godsend to the president and his backers; it's much easier to condemn a newspaper ad at a press conference than to discuss the reason they ran the ad in the first place.

By the way, in all of this, I haven't heard a word of outrage or a tearful plea for mercy from General Petraeus himself. I'm pretty sure that he didn't get to be a general in the United States Army by letting a schoolyard name-calling taunt get to him.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.