Share the hate (moveon.org haters meet to hate)

Last night, at a claimed 3192 locations nationwide, Moveon.org held house parties to view the new film Outfoxed, an unfair and unbalanced attack on the Fox News Channel. Already hyped by the New York Times and discredited by Fox News, the film offered a chance for like-minded folk to gather and share the hate.

They feel hate for President Bush. They radiate hate for media outlets like Foxnews and talk radio, which dare break ranks with the dominant media liberalism. Most of all, they feel themselves ever so superior to conservatives, whom they hate and hold in contempt, those stupid, evil, primitive, and yet cunning malign beings.

You can still use their “action tool” to see the source of those hate vibes you might have been experiencing in your own home last night, while watching Rita Cosby. Just fill-in your zip code, and read the street addresses of the Outfoxed parties in your town. Act quickly, though, because sooner or later Moveon will take this page off of their server.

The internet was first used to organize local affinity groups, as part of a mass political movement, by the Howard Dean campaign. By hooking up with local people of like mind, the Deaniacs were able to amplify their enthusiasm, and reinforce their belief in their righteousness. It felt really, really good to the participants, but ultimately was of no use in winning an election. If anything, spending too much time in each others’ company seriously misled them about the extent to which their worldview was accepted, understood, or even regarded as sane. Non-joiners found them a bit, well, odd.

For the haters, the dangers are even greater. Most Americans do not see themselves as motivated by hate, and have little fellow-feeling for those who are. But among the haters themselves, at their video parties, in their faculty lounges or newsrooms, popularity is earned by the sharpness of the attack, the vitriol of the language, and the intensity of the revulsion at the way things are going in America. They have formed a subculture increasingly out of touch with the mainstream.

This strength and size new counterculture of disdain created the Radio City Music Hall fundraising debacle for Kerry-Edwards a couple of weeks ago. Surrounded by glamour and wealth united in their targeted disgust, it was easy for even the cautious Kerry to get caught-up in the enthusiasm, and praise the obscenity-hurling performers as the “heart and soul” of America.

There is a good word to describe groups based on common beliefs at variance with society at large, which tend to flock together socially, and which define themselves as smarter, better-informed, and more correct than everyone else. They are termed “cults.”

Cults can and do attract new members and grow, when they are tuned into a widely-felt need. But cults also tend to alienate non-members, precisely because the beliefs which bind cult members to one another gain social strength to degree that they are at variance with the rest of society. When a cult gains widespread support, it becomes a religion, a regime, or simply a common belief. But it loses its snob appeal.

There are enough hate cultists in America today to constitute the base audience for a successful polemical movie like Farenheit 911. Perhaps ten to fifteen million people, roughly five percent of Americans. They can make Al Franken and Richard Clarke into best-selling authors, and they can probably buy a lot of DVD copies of Outfoxed. So far, however, they have not been able to make Air America Radio into a successful talk radio operation.

In other circumstances, the hate cultists would be restrained in their public expressions, to avoid alienating too many “gentiles” (people who don’t share the core beliefs, that Bush is an idiot frontman/evil fanatic, that Foxnews and talk radio have no right to broadcast, and that conservatives are all bveneath contempt). Their principal warning mechanism, keeping them from going too far over the line and alienating the mainstream folk, would ordinarily be the press. Critical commentary, editorials, and arched eyebrows from newsreaders would let them know that they need to cool off a bit, when their rhetoric becomes overheated.

But a substantial portion of the press has joined the cult. They applaud vigorously when a Whoopi Goldberg spews. They are useless as a feedback mechanism to keep the cult moving in the direction of majority rule, rather than in the direction of Jonestown.

The hate cultists are going to discredit the Democrats before the election is over. Remember how the country reacted to attacks on President Clinton, even those which were founded in fact. Blatant hatred is repellant outside the subculture which produced it.

Michael Reagan on the 4 th of July came out with a great oped about the hatred of the Rats being exposed during this campaign:

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/070404/opi_blindhate.shtml

Web posted Sunday, July 4, 2004

Democrats lead hate campaign
By MICHAEL REAGAN

America is witnessing one of the most despicable political campaigns in our long history - a presidential race filled with lies, distortions and outright hatred - and the offender is not the mythical Republican attack machine the Democrats keep talking about. It's the national Democrat party itself.

If anybody doubts the truth of this I invite them to look at one Michael Moore - slime master extraordinary, a practiced prevaricator, hater of America and radical socialist who has produced what nobody can deny is nothing less that a Democrat campaign commercial masquerading as a documentary.

Moore, however, is simply a symbol for an angry party gone mad. Utterly convinced of the fiction that President Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, who by divine right as a Democrat was entitled to occupy the White House which his party regards as their private property, the Democrats are in a state of uncontrolled rage. The symbol of the Democrat party is no longer a donkey, it's a crazed jackal.

Consider the thrust of the Democrats' campaign rhetoric - that when it comes to the president, to his administration, and to Iraq there is no such thing as good news. To them, the only good news is bad news for America. They want us to fail in Iraq so they can blame the president. They want the economy to go into the tank so they can blame the president.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, they bash the president no matter what he does. They don't, of course, tell you how they'd do things differently. They only tell you that everything President Bush does is wrong and then assure us that they could do it better. They demand that the president pay more attention to the U.N., for example, and when he does work with the U.N. they give him no credit.

They demand that the president turn Iraq over to Iraqis, and when he does they growl and mutter because he didn't do it the way they say they would have done it - but they won't tell us how they would have done it.

They are giddy over Michael Moore's hate film. Yet they have the nerve to claim that the discourse in politics is getting meaner and meaner and they point their fingers at the Republicans as the culprits. It's not the Republicans, however, who are supporting films such as Moore's incredibly deceptive "Fahrenheit 9/11," filled with false charges and cleverly distorted images such as showing President Bush interrupted by reporters during a golf game allegedly attacking terrorism when he was really talking about the Palestinian bombings.

But the Democrats so hate George W. Bush that they are willing to believe anything negative about him, even to the extent of supporting Moore in his exercise of slander and deceit when they should be condemning it and disassociating themselves from the film as decent people would do when confronted with its deceptions.

The fact is, it has never been about truth with the Democrats - it's always been about lies because they still believe the Bush-stole-the-election canard, and as a result they are willing to believe anything about the president even if it goes beyond the realm of reason, as Moore's film does.

Face it, Michael Moore hates America. He goes abroad and tells the people in Europe that we are the dumbest people on earth. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance," he told the British press. "We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

He explained 9/11 by blaming the United States: "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

He insisted that the terrorists currently killing our soldiers in Iraq can be compared to our Revolutionary War heroes who fought off British oppression: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists or 'The Enemy.' They are the Revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win."

This goes beyond hate crime - it is nothing less than treason. And the Democrats, by aiding and abetting and praising this traitorous person, share his guilt.

That's how far their hatred has taken them.

• Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com.

Well a big fan of Michael Moore, Linda Ronstadt, just got fired, escorted off stage and out of the Aladian casino in Los Vegas for loving Michael!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1174096/posts?page=1#1

At Aladdin, singer rubs wrong way
Las Vegas Review-Journal ^ | 7-19-04 | Norm Clarke

Posted on 07/19/2004 7:12:24 AM PDT by Nevadan

Linda Ronstadt apparently got what she wanted -- to be 86'd from the Aladdin.

In a bizarre performance notable for its bridge-burning comments, Ronstadt inflamed more than her Aladdin audience on Saturday by taking potshots at Las Vegas and dedicating "Desperado" to "Fahrenheit 9/11" filmmaker Michael Moore.

When her show was over, the Aladdin had her checked out of her room and escorted off the premises.

Many walked out during the show, one concertgoer tossed a cocktail on her poster, others defaced her posters and the box office was "a mob scene" of people seeking refunds, according to an Aladdin spokeswoman.

"It's amazing how ugly it got," said Tyri Squyres, director of public relations at the Aladdin.

Ronstadt was a one-woman heat wave.

Early in the show she told the crowd not to expect her greatest hits and added a snide remark or two about Las Vegas and the Aladdin. Scores of fans filed out when Ronstadt made her dedication to Moore and his controversial political film.

"Our management is incredibly upset," Squyres said. "We're just very disappointed because we hired her for a good evening of entertainment for our guests.

"It was like she came in with a chip on her shoulder," Squyres said.

Ronstadt allowed no meet-and-greets and no photographers.

Squyres said Ronstadt "inaccurately" told the crowd she saw a billboard that promoted a greatest-hits show. Ronstadt's camp had provided and approved all ads, commercials, billboards and news releases, Squyres said.

"To be clear, the Aladdin does not condone the comments made by Ms. Ronstadt," Squyres said by e-mail. "Ms. Ronstadt was hired to entertain the guests of the Aladdin, not to espouse her political views. Following her performance she was escorted out of the hotel and immediately checked out of her room. And she will not be welcomed back."

In an interview with the R-J's Mike Weatherford before the show, Ronstadt said with a laugh: "I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back."

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