Mark Crispin Miller has a simply brilliant rebuttal of Salon’s so-called election fraud expert, Farhad Manjoo, and his recent scurrilous attack of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article in Rolling Stone Magazine, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Miller’s takedown of both Manjoo and Salon is posted at Huffington Post because Salon’s editor, Joan Walsh, refused to publish it.
A small, but telling excerpt:
In his dogged effort to explain away the massive evidence of fraud by the Republicans, Manjoo has based his case not on the facts but, finally, on denial — as he himself made very clear in his review of Fooled Again [Note: this is Miller’s book on the 2004 election]. “If you want to improve how Americans vote, here’s one piece of advice,” he wrote:
Don’t alienate half the country by arguing, as Miller does here, that the president and his followers — whom Miller labels “Busheviks” — think of their political enemies as “subhuman beings” and believe they must “slaughter” their opponents in the same way that religious fanatics slaughter their holy foes. Even if you believe this to be true, and even if it is in fact true, shut up about it; this sort of unhinged rhetoric can’t help, and can only hurt, our capacity to solve the problem of voting in America [emphasis added].
That an American reporter would make such a statement, and that any liberal magazine would publish it, suggests how thoroughly we have repressed all memory of what America was once supposed to mean. “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816, in a spirit of scientific progress and republican self-liberation. “Even if it’s true, shut up about it,” Farhad Manjoo wrote in 2005, in the spirit of Bill O’Reilly. Luckily, Manjoo was not a major player when the colonies were trying to get their act together, or we’d all be subjects of the House of Windsor. Although they once were a minority, the first republicans did not “shut up,” but made their case until the people came around and finally took the crucial step toward liberty for all. In any case, Manjoo’s command is as illogical as it is craven, for there is no convincing evidence that “half the country” voted for Bush/Cheney’s re-election, nor is it clear how “shutting up” about the theocratic threat to our democracy could help “improve how Americans vote.” The assumption there is that the theocratic movement might somehow be lulled into allowing us to have a functioning democracy, if we’re very careful not to tell the truth about them, which will only make them mad. “Even if it’s true, shut up about it.” That is not the statement of “an open mind,” but a plea for willful ignorance and wishful thinking.
If that were just Farhad Manjoo’s position, Joan, I certainly would not have written you this letter. I write because that view of his, and yours, has paralyzed the whole political establishment, the press included; and Manjoo’s latest piece, and your defense of it, provide a fitting opportunity to point that out. If, as you say, you want to see the system fixed, you must admit that it needs fixing now — a great step forward that has just been taken by Bob Herbert of The New York Times as well as Robert Kennedy and other reputable people. It is past time to take that step, for there is every indication — as Salon should now be pointing out — that the Republicans are readier than ever to subvert the process once more on this next Election Day.
