This article from AlterNet -- "Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight Tim Phillips Spoke at Norweigan Killer's Political Party Event" (sic) -- is as dishonest as anything you'd find in Commentary back when tying anti-war protesters to International Communism was all the rage. Reading the actual news stories upon which the piece is based, one finds that the event in question was not personally hosted by a mass murderer, as strongly suggested by the headline, but by Norway's right-wing Progress Party, which has the second most seats in parliament.
Another small problem: though the headline refers toit as the "Killer's Political Party," upon closer reading we learn that he in fact only "claimed to be a disgruntled former member." But hey, if you've already got the "Koch-Funded Tea Party Heavyweight" template ready to go, why let the silly truth screw up a good smear?
Another good post. One correction, though: the magazine that led the red-baiting during the early days of the anti-war movement in the run-up to Iraq was actually The Nation, via David Corn, Eric Alterman and Marc Cooper.
ReplyDeleteI think it's safe to say that a lot of publications, nominally left and nominally right, tried to play that red-baiting card. I've never been able to make it though the opening paragraph of an Eric Alterman article without gagging, however, so I'm not terribly familiar with his role in the smearing.
ReplyDeleteI dig AlterNet for the most part, but like virtually every left-wing political site I frequent, they spend way too much time pandering to partisan Democrats and establishment-thinking liberals. Admittedly it's not hard to stoke progressives into an apopleptic frenzy; just include "Tea Party" and "Koch Brothers" in the headline somewhere.
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