Over the past week, I’ve watched the feud between Daily Kos and O’Reilly with some amusement. It’s almost a symbolic representation of our political discourse these days. No matter how much the David Broders and Broder wannabees of the Beltway media want to return to some imagined era of bipartisan centrism, the truth is that we live in an era of name-calling, ad hominem, nasty political infighting, and have since time immemorial. FDR was reviled beyond measure in the newspapers, Nixon was a McCarthy tag-a-long attack artist, Spiro Agnew threw his verbal spit bombs at anyone to the left of Barry Goldwater, Reagan had an entire litany of fabricated fantasies of hate, Bush I pulled Willie Horton out of Lee Atwater’s ass, and we all remember the enduring saga of Monicagate, do we not?
So what we are witnessing with O’Reilly is nothing new. He’s merely the biggest face on a mountain of right wing hatred. Mock him? Yes. Despise him? Yes. Refute his nonsense? Every chance we get. But drop everything to attack his advertisers and defend the honor of Daily Kos? I’m not so sure that’s a valuable use of our time or efforts.
Much as we like to imagine that the liberal blogosphere is sooo powerful, the truth is that we are a minority of people in this country. We can, it’s true, create buzz for a candidate (Ned Lamont being the best example) but to think we can truly effect O’Reilly’s popularity is ludicrous. His hard-core, liberal hating audience is not going to be affected by what we do, nor are enough advertisers going to abandon him to make a difference. And even if he loses a few, there will be others to take their place. Until his core audience starts to die off (and they will, since the majority of them are over 55), there’s very little that we can do to change that in my view. When O’Reilly finally falls from grace, it won’t be because of anything the Kossacks or other liberal bloggers do. It will be because, like his hero McCarthy, he will have done the dirty deed himself. That is always how demagogues are taken down, by self inflicted wounds. Not by picking fights with their ideological enemies.
The only thing the Kos-O’Reilly contretemps creates is a distraction. Sure, it generates a lot of publicity, but that benefits O’Reilly as much (or more) as it benefits Daily Kos and the liberal blogosphere. And let’s face it. There are better things we can and should be doing right now. An organized campaign to get Pelosi and Reid to consider impeachment, for example. I’m sure you can think of a few dozen other issues that better deserve our attention than a pie fight between Markos and Billo.
So, take the poll below, please. Tell me if you think I’m right or wrong and why. Because I think defending Markos against the Falafel Boy is a tremendous waste of our time and energy. Especially now, in the throes of a Constitutional crisis with a President just itching to pull his trigger finger on Iran.
(Poll below the fold)
