“This is crazy,” Erickson said last week on WMAC’s In the Morning with Erick Erickson of the census. “What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.”
I recognize that a news network has a right to hire whom it chooses. Then again, it also has an obligation to provide a range of views to its listeners, and reasonable people have a right to expect that reasonable people will be presented by a network as authorities. When CNN hired Erick Erickson, who is to reasonable, rational discourse what Timothy McVeigh was to nonviolence, I found myself pretty much done with CNN. I can handle the fact that I disagree with his politics, which I generally find reprehensible. It’s a free country, and an open dialogue makes this a better and more vibrant society. What I refuse to condone is Erickson finding something resembling humor in blithely threatening census workers with physical violence. Sure, later he claimed his statement was “misconstrued” (though he certainly seemed unambiguous)…but even other right wing pundits have been calling Erickson out. As I’ve said many times before free speech can be, and often is, patently offensive speech…and Erickson has jumped over that line with both feet. If he was smart, he’d recognize that he went too far and apologize. Like so many of his ilk, though, Erickson is far too arrogant to admit that he’s stepped in a minefield of his own construction. No, it’s SO much easier to blame Liberals for his problems…as if us Lefties held a gun to his temple and force him to read from a script. Moron….
In a day and age when the general state of Right-wing lunacy is at a full boil, the idea that a Right-wing pundit could turn up the heat is reprehensible. Erickson can claim that he was “misconstrued” all he wants, but the reality is that he said what he wanted to say, and he clearly meant what he said. Yes, Erickson is little more than just another Far Right-wing blowhard in love with the sound of his own voice and enamored of his self-professed brilliance. What he fails to realize is that there are people out there (e.g.- Scott Roeder, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph) who are willing and able to turn hateful words into actions.
Last week, Erickson told CNN’s Howie Kurtz that he regrets some of his past controversial statements and that he has “definitely had to grow up.”
In Erickson’s case, “growing up” would entail making it clear that he neither condones nor endorses violence against census workers (or anyone else, for that matter). He also needs to drop the superior, belligerent tone so typical of his writing and his public statements. Typically, Erickson will hold forth with an absolute belief in the correctness of his views, facts be damned. Conservatives like Erickson have a contribution to make, but they cannot make a claim to being taken seriously when they continually engage in the smug dismissal of viewpoints that differ from their own. Traffic in truth and reality, and people like me will accord you the serious consideration you demonstrate yourself worthy of. Continue to hold forth like a smug know-it-all who knows little of, and cares little for, the facts, and you’ll be laughed at and treated like the morons you demonstrate yourselves to be.
It’s your choice, Mr. Erickson. If you don’t want to be counted, that’s your call. Ultimately, you and your party will be hurt by being undercounted and therefore underrepresented. But if you want to cling to your silly conspiracy theories…hey, knock yourself out. I’m pretty OK with the idea of you and yours being undercounted. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of intellectual midgets.
Party on, Garth….
