“My Sweet Lord” by Cosimo Cavallaro

It never fails. Whenever the Bush administration gets into trouble, the outrage mongers of the right start waving their arms around, trying to distract the media. Here are the latest examples of manufactured outrage:

***Chocolate Jesus***

Gay-bashing anti-semite Bill Donohue of the Catholic League decided to kick up some trouble over a sculpture of Jesus made out of milk chocolate. Jill of Feministe reports that the outrage produced included death threats that were called in to the hotel where the sculpture was to have been displayed. Those folks at the Catholic League are fine Christians, aren’t they?

Jill also points out that there are several examples of chocolate representations of Christ that Donohue chose not to get worked up over. Maybe he’s running low on cash, and needs to generate some donations.

***Pelosi the Terrorist***

House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will soon visit Syria, and president Bush accused her of sending “mixed signals” by visiting a nation that he accuses of sponsoring terrorism. Of course, “journalist” William Kristol injected the White House talking point into a panel discussion on Fox News:

Nancy Pelosi, having undercut our troops in the field, is now going off to see — to Syria to pay her respects to Bashar Assad, who’s allowing terrorists to come across the [Iraqi] border to kill American troops.

Unfortunately, Kristol “forgot” to mention that there is currently a Republican delegation meeting with Assad, and that the Iraq Study Group recommended bringing Iran and Syria into discussions on ending the Iraq war.

You might think that this is just another example of Kristol’s rabid partisanship, but in fact he has ignored earlier visits to Syria by Democrats. So why is he suddenly outraged?

***Hecklers in the Press***

Since most people haven’t gotten very outraged over Chocolate Jesus and Pelosi’s trip to Syria, the wingnuts are trotting out yet another item: journalist Michael Ware’s alleged heckling of Senator John McCain. Citing a single, anonymous source, serial liar Matt Drudge (link link link link link link link) claimed that CNN’s Michael Ware heckled Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a recent news conference.

Despite Ware’s denials and his long track record as a responsible journalist, the Washington Times ran with the dubious story, including this unintentionally hilarious quote from blogger John Hinderaker:

Ware is an extreme manifestation of an all-too-common phenomenon — the journalist who wants to make the news, not report it. One of the many problems with a reporter who becomes an activist, agitating for a particular side of a public issue, is that he loses any hope of objective.

Of course, it isn’t Ware who manufactured this story, but Matt Drudge and the “journalists” at the Washington Times. Raw Story has footage of McCain’s press conference, and at no time does Ware speak, let alone heckle the senator.

So why was the Washington Times, which has been burned by Drudge-generated stories in the past, so eager to jump on Outrage Express? Could it be that the right wing media is looking for an outrage, ANY outrage, that might distract the public from the failed war in Iraq and the criminality of the Bush administration?

Let’s have a look at the stories that the outrage merchants would rather you didn’t see:

***McCain’s Mission***

John McCain visited a Baghdad marketplace in order to demonstrate that the security situation has improved in Baghdad, but wound up proving just the opposite. First of all, he needed to wear a flak jacket and take along more than 100 soldiers. And the day after he left, sniper fire peppered the market. But Iraqis are used to hearing sniper fire as they shop, and seemed unfazed.

You can see why Matt Drudge and the Washington Times would rather have people talking about McCain being heckled, instead of talking about the lack of security in Baghdad.

***The Bush Crime Syndicate***

Evidence that the Bush administration tried to politicize the Justice Department continues to mount. Also, it appears that Bush’s Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, lied when he spoke to senators on the subject.

Gonzales promised Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) that the administration would not appoint US Attorneys without seeking Senate approval. But a lengthy internal e-mail sent out a couple of days later outlines a strategy for bypassing the confirmation process.

Also, the Washington Post learned that the Pentagon approved a nine-month sentence Australian David Hicks. Hicks confessed to supporting a terrorist organization, support that included traveling to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in order to fight for al-Qaeda. Hicks was offered the light sentence over the objections of prosecutors. In exchange, Hicks agreed not to speak of mistreatment during his captivity for a period of one year, and agreed not to sue the United States for torturing him.

Long story short, the Bush administration is turning loose a confessed terrorist as part of a scheme to cover up its own misdeeds.

***Bush Screws Up British Hostage Negotiations***

While negotiating for the release of 15 sailors taken prisoner by the Iranian Navy, UK officials have gotten no help from President Bush:

But Britain’s delicate diplomatic efforts were set back by U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a statement Saturday in which he characterized the imprisoned sailors as “hostages” — a phrase that Britain has been carefully avoiding to prevent the crisis from becoming a broader political or military conflict…

Meanwhile, UK officials haven’t been completely honest about the crisis, a fact that might also be hindering negotiations.

So you decide: is the sudden burst of fake outrage a coincidence, or is it another example of the Politics of Personal Distraction?

***General Outrages***

Of course, there’s plenty of outrage that doesn’t relate directly to the Bush administration. The fine folks at the Pentagon seem capable of generating genuine outrages, but somehow the wingnuts never seem to get too worked up about those:

B-52s can deliver smart bombs more cheaply than modern fighters, and with less risk. So naturally, the Air Farce is decommissioning those B-52s and spending hundreds of billions on new fighters.

Naval academy cadets groped several women and offered alcohol to underage girls, including a 15-year-old, during a recent Carnival cruise. The academy investigated, and concluded that the gropings constituted behavior that was immature, but not criminal.

***

The abstinence-only crowd is pulling out all the stops in an attempt to make teenagers afraid of sex. Amanda Marcotte reports that “lessons” include dangling concrete blocks over boys’ crotches and ripping out kids’ arm hair with duct tape. They say it’s education, I say it’s sadism.

And as someone who has actually experienced pre-marital sex, let me assure all the teens who are reading this that it’s absolutely nothing like getting your hair ripped out or getting smacked in the crotch with a brick.

***

With all the terrible things that are happening in the world, isn’t it nice to know that it’s still legal to discriminate against gays? This particular form of hatred has been supported by the good folks at the Republican Party for more than 23 years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Outrage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.