PINKERTON: Here's scare tactics. Scare tactics is Rachel Maddow taking the first ten minutes of every show this week to denounce them and call them names and talk about Astroturf. By contrast, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat from Missouri, said in her Twitter account, listen, I think this is just real people. That's the choice. The real terrorism going on is MSNBC and the liberal media.... I can help with a key distinction. If you're Barack Obama, and you're a community organizer, whatever you do is good, according to the mainstream media. If you're a white middle-class American, who happens to be reading from the same Saul Alinsky, the patron saint of community organizer's play book, then you're, as Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post put it, a, quote, political terrorist.
There's ignorant. There's ill-informed. There's brain dead. And then there's Jim Pinkerton, who, if you hooked him up to an EEG monitor likely wouldn't budge the needle off zero. I don't mind the fact that I disagree with Pinkerton. If it was that simple, I wouldn't even feel the need to launch into this rant. No, what really get my knickers in a twist is the sheer audacity of Pinkerton's smug, self-satisfied ignorance. It's almost as if he's proud of being stupid...like he wears his ignorance and his mental inelasticity like some sort of freakin' Cub Scout merit badge. Stoopid, arrogant...and WAY too proud of it.
That ANYONE could in anything resembling seriousness refer to Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, and the "Liberal Media" as terrorists almost defies rational explanation. It also demonstrates and appalling and offensive lack of perspective. Terrorism is what brought down the World Trade Towers and dropped planes into both the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, PA. Terrorism is what killed almost 3,000 innocent Americans, one of them who was a friend and a college classmate of mine. Because of that, I will freely admit to not being the most objective of observers when it comes to defining terrorism. I can tell you, though, what terrorism is not. It's not the legitimate expression of a different viewpoint. It's not calling out faux, manufactured outrage that's being passed off as legitimate dissent. It's not the recognition that far too many town hall meetings have been transformed into pointless ragefests by Right-wing lies and propaganda. It's not calling out disinformation and "AstroTurf" for what it is.
Like I said, I'm not the most objective, disinterested observer when it comes to this sort of lunacy. I find it highly offensive that someone as morally and intellectually handicapped as Pinkerton could toss off accusations of "terrorism" as casually as if he was discussing last night's Dodgers-Giants game. Terrorism is not a matter to be taken lightly, not when you reflect on what 9.11 did to our understanding of what real terrorism is all about. There are times when I recognize the ageless wisdom of Georges Santayana- those who don't know history really ARE condemned to repeat it. The problem is that these folks are generally too smugly stupid to have any grasp of the lunacy they're advancing in the name of punditry. Pinkerton is so in love with his self-professed brilliance and the sound of his own voice that he's lost whatever grip on reality he may once have possessed.
Perhaps Pinkerton might do well to face up to the reality that words have meaning, and that disagreeing with someone doesn't automatically convey upon him the right to equate the "less enlightened" with those who would destroy America. When last I checked, this was still a democracy, and dissent is still part and parcel of conducting any sort of national political conversation. That intelligent, thoughtful people disagree with Jim Pinkerton doesn't mean they're bad people. It just means they possess a degree of intellectual maturity and a grip on reality that Pinkerton couldn't achieve in his wildest dreams.
Memo to Jim Pinkerton: You want to talk about terrorism? How about going to a NYFD or NYPD station in lower Manhattan and spewing your bile? Let's see how far you get before one of New York's finest stuffs you into a trash compactor. You add nothing. You contribute nothing of any value to the public discourse. Why not just do all of us a favor, go home, and spend an evening playing a rousing game of Seppuku. Then again, why would you? It's not as if you have any honor to preserve.
