Posted on 05/01/2007 10:16:47 PM PDT by FlyVet
Death threats. Harassing phone calls. Threatening e-mails. Such was a day in the life of Drew Johnson a few weeks ago.
His crime? Johnson is president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank that broke one of the juiciest stories of 2007. A day after the Academy Awards, on Feb. 26, Johnson’s organization reported details of Al Gore’s enormous utility bill. The former vice president had consumed nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in a single year -- more than 20 times the national average.
The story skyrocketed to the top headline on the Drudge Report, sending tens of thousands of visitors to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s Web site. With Gore facing charges of hypocrisy just a day after winning an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," the news traveled fast.
Unfortunately for Johnson, it meant enduring days of attacks from liberals -- even though the facts of the story came directly from public records.
Last week he visited Washington, D.C., to share his story. Johnson told a group of conservative bloggers at The Heritage Foundation that he heard from hundreds of angry callers, many of whom used profane language. The research center’s vice president, whose phone number was listed on the Web page, eventually had to change her number when the attacks became so persistent and threatening.
The phone blitz was only one avenue liberals used to intimidate. Johnson said his organization received thousands of e-mails, the vast majority of them negative and hate-filled.
Shortly after the story made headlines, popular liberal blogs Daily Kos and Huffington Post, laid out their plan of attack. A blogger called NeuvoLiberal wrote on Daily Kos, "please post any specific (action oriented) ideas you have for fighting back…. We'd like to target every person out there that is spinning in various rightwing and other outlet for this kind of smear job (the damage is done before you wake and smell the coffee)."
Over at Huffington Post, bloggers Dave Johnson and James Boyce issued another call to action: "Al Gore is a hero. Even heroes need help - join us, add to the comments, let's find out everything we can about these guys and stop them in their tracks. Now."
Their pleas were answered. Liberal blog Think Progress led the way with 655 comments on a post about the Gore story. Daily Kos was close behind with 481 comments. And 125 comments are attached to the Johnson-Boyce call-to-action post.
All this added up to one giant headache for Drew Johnson, who didn’t know where to turn to respond to the attacks being lodged at him personally, his employees and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. While the initial Gore story received favorable coverage from conservative bloggers, these same people were silent when liberals began to distort the record.
One of the most outrageous charges, Johnson said, had to do with his background. The liberal "watchdog" Media Matters dug into Johnson’s past, noting that he had been a Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Since ExxonMobil has contributed to AEI, that bit of information was enough for Media Matters to assert that Johnson was bought and paid for by ExxonMobil. Immediately, the liberal echo chamber began to hype the allegation, though Johnson swiftly denied it. Johnson had merely interned at AEI. Neither he nor the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has ever received money from ExxonMobil. But that didn’t stop MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann from playing up the mythical connection.
Instead of backing down and retreating, the episode has inspired Johnson. His three days of meetings in the nation’s capital introduced him to a wider network of contacts and left him eager to help build a network of bloggers who could defend conservatives under attack.
He has also hired an investigative reporter to produce more stories similar to the one about Gore -- an unorthodox tactic for a think tank. But Johnson said sometimes that’s what it takes to discover the truth, no matter how inconvenient it may be for him personally.
Robert B. Bluey is director of the Center for Media & Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation and maintains a blog at RobertBluey.com
Moonbats sure get upset when someone tells them the truth.
Johnson was on Glenn Beck's show today, reading some of the *expletives deleted* emails he and his staff received. A lot of insulting references toward Southerners (he lives three miles from Algore).
Sometimes the way libs act almost convinces me that evolution is true, and even Geico is too tough for them to figure out.
These people are filled with so much hate, it will be their undoing. And the thing they hate the most...THE TRUTH.
One of the biggest canards that Big Media has foisted on the public is the idea that all the hate in America is exhibited on the right side of the political spectrum. I invite any liberal lurkers out there who haven't done so to go to a few liberal websites/talk forums and sample the "polite" conservation that takes place on those sites. Then come back and talk about hateful conservatives. If we want to talk about rage and unfettered hate speech, one only has to read a little bit of DummyUnderground or the Daily Kos to see what spluttering, raging, hate speech looks like.
They are filled with so much hate, there is no way that it doesn’t affect every part of their life. Home, family, work, everything. I did not like and still don’t like the Clintons, but I never hated them. This hatred of Bush is not normal. They have become un hinged and they can’t even see it.
It has been my experience more than a few times to be in a conversation with a friend, relative, or co-worker talking about mundane issues when suddenly the person/liberal I was talking to would go into a tirade directed at Bush and Republicans. My first reaction was to be somewhat stunned because we were not talking anything close to politics.
I swear to God one time I was consoling a close friend over the death of his ex-wife when he chose the occasion to launch into an attack on Bush. Again I was so stunned I hurriedly finished our talk and hung up. Libs are so afflicted by BDS that many of them can barely function. What must it be like to be filled with such rage?
I’ve noticed that, too. We can be in the middle of a congenial dinner party with both leftists and conservatives, talking about something, ANYTHING else, and one of the leftists will drop some sarcastic, snarky comment about President Bush into the mix, like a t*rd into soup, and then wonder why everyone else hurries up to leave or changes the topic to ignore them. It is truly amazing self-absorbtion.
I have noticed this too-
I was invited to be with guests in las vegas for
a birthday party- I saw our guest of honor’s wife at
a blackjack table -so sat down and started to play -
general conversation -good weather-having fun- the restaurant
we were going to go to- the dealer was reshuffling cards and
had not said 2 words - the wife -staring off into the casino
blurts out “ STUPID REPUBLICANS !” the dealer stops shuffling
she is monkeying now with her hand bag the 1 other person gets up and leaves- I shrug my shoulders at the dealer- to this day
I do not think she has any idea of blurting this out
most of what she says is crazy stuff like this- some of her
friends are worse- all the people that have seen these
tirades -just walk away -I think I will challenge next time
this happens
Turnabout, fair play, all that.
It sounds like tourettes syndrome. Maybe there is a connection between BDS and TS?
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