The firing of Howard Kurtz by The Daily Beasties has unleashed some interesting speculation and commentary…
While “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is rather simplistic, the venom directed at Kurtz from the Angry Young Left is significant. Kurtz likely represents to them the liberal who tries to be fair to Republicans, whereas the Marcusean ethos of “liberating tolerance” permits only unrelenting hostility toward “movements from the Right.”
As recently as February, Media Matters was excoriating “Howard Kurtz’s Hollow Defense Of Fox News.” and you can examine the rest of the Media Matters dossier on him as a guide to understanding that the Left viewed Kurtz as an unreliable ally — a Menshevik, as it were — useful to them when he attacked their chosen enemies, but susceptible to occasional errors of fairness toward those enemies.
Actually, Kurtz is more like one of the Trudoviks [trans: Laborists] — a moderate Socialist party in pre-Revolutionary Russia. In other words, he’s more of a Dupe than a Fellow Traveller. They’re touchy-feely types who actually think Leftist ideas are pretty neat, but refuse to see that said ideas require brute force to implement and maintain.
-TOM commentator and Friend In The Either GaryM remarks:
…It will be interesting to see if Kurtz keeps his current ethic, or is he going to change due to the brow beating he is taking from the left.
He wants to be part of the Cool Kids Clique, so I expect Howie to ‘adapt’.
The Trudoniks tried…and Lenin had them shot. The Mensheviks fared batter and survived…for a while and then they were shot.
Man…it’s tough being a Totalitarian sometimes.
-Mark Steyn, in his regular appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s show:
HEWITT: Well that, but you touched on it at the beginning and it makes me tear up, actually, is that there is this department of that which cannot be said at any time in every liberal media organization. And you have to go there and get certain, yeah, Howard made a mistake. Big deal. It’s the occasion, though, of dumping him, and it makes it look like it’s because of this, when they might have just said he’s got too many irons in the fire, and he’s gone.
STEYN: Well, I think it was the suggestion that he had attempted, in a way, to take the Earth-shattering significance of the occasion, that we had here some pristine, gay trailblazer, and that Howie Kurtz had somehow attempted to muddy that picture, and so had taken away from this iconic gay moment that was so iconically gay in all its fabulous iconic gayness, that the president of the United States took time off from not doing anything about Syria, and not doing anything about Benghazi, and not doing anything about the Boston bombers, and not doing anything about anything else, to personally call this guy and congratulate him on his courage and heroism in becoming the first, if I understand it correctly, I think he’s the first American to proclaim himself openly gay. And that is a historic moment.
It was a historic bowel movement, actually.
-Ace [tip of the fedora to Ed Driscoll, via Wombat-Socho's Live At Five]:
Clearly Kurtz erred, and rather dumbly. But he does this a lot, and no one’s had a problem with it in the past.
Why now?
I think it’s pretty obvious — Jason Collins is now the Gay Black Sandra Fluke, and therefore now An Hero, and the Left protects its heroes.
And so Howie Kurtz, who did not face even a whit of criticism for proclaiming, without facts or even any reading, that Anthony Weiner was completely innocent and obviously framed, gets fired for a mistake.
But when you make a mistake against the left, it’s not a mistake. It’s a crime.
One might call it…oh, I don’t know...uh…a ‘Thought Crime’, perhaps?
Ace then hits on this aspect:
The problem is the same one regarding Michelle Obama’s much-vaunted beauty. I’ve said this and I’ll say it again: I would never say Michelle Obama is unattractive. I think she’s reasonably attractive. Dividing up women of her age, I’d say she’s on the "more attractive" side of things. Maybe, I don’t know, top 33%. [BOB: Ace, my man, time to see the eye doctor...and to learn about the superior concealing quality of today's makeup products]
She’s not an unattractive woman at all.
The problem comes when someone who is modestly attractive, and yet beloved by the left as An Hero For Us All, gets the Full Tonguebath treatment [BOB: The image Lady Michbeth getting a tonguebath (shiver) will be in my head for the rest of that day — thanks, pal] and we have to hear again, and again, and again, and again, and again until our ears begin to bleed, that this is not merely a modestly attractive woman, but in fact one of the most sublimely and incandescently beautiful women to ever bless the soil of the earth with the sweat of her lovely foot.
This is where Truth becomes Lie — and furthermore, it’s truth that becomes a highly politicized lie, not an inoffensive or anodyne white lie, but a Lie With An Agenda. And that agenda is forcing you to assent to the Group’s Lie in order to demonstrate yourself as Loyal to the Group or as an Outsider who is to be Ostracized for Failing to Demonstrate His Loyalty Upon Request.
It’s a Weaponized Falsehood, a Shibboleth, a Loyalty Oath, that requires you to Assent to Falsehood or become a Martyr for Honesty.
It’s coming to believe that two plus two equals five., although, one must remember that:
Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
In a world viewed through a funhouse mirror, this is certainly the case.
…Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
—George Orwell, Looking Back On The Spanish War
Yeah…I went there.
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