A Modest Proposal for the Next Presidential Debate.

Despite the predictable Fine White Whine about liberal media bias from Reince Priebus and Ted Cruz and others, the real problem with the debate questions, whether on CNBC or CNN or Fox, is the lack of follow-up questions when questions are evaded or the answers are obviously lies. Even conservative commentator David Brooks pointed this out on PBS NewsHour on Friday:

"I think the questioners were not prepared for the brazenness of the lies. [...] there was a certain brazenness to it. And that’s been true of this year, that you — somehow, there is no political price."

So here's my proposal. If the network questioners can't keep up and do the research on the lies and follow up in real time, or are scared that they will be accused of being (gasp!) "Liberal" if they do so, the least we can ask for is instant on-screen commentary from Politifact.com or FactCheck.org:

The Fine White Whine of the Day is Emanating from My Alma Mater

A little bit of background first: Rutgers University invited one of the Iraq War principals, Condoleezza Rice, to be the 2014 commencement speaker. She may not ooze the same stench of pure evil that follows Donald Rumsfeld and Dick "Dick" Cheney in a thick visible cloud, but there should have been no surprise that offering her an honorary degree and $35,000 to speak would engender some protest from students and faculty and alumni. The invitation to Dr. Rice was not withdrawn by the University after growing protests, but she withdrew magnanimously over the weekend, "Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time."

Her supporters are shocked and stunned. In the following video we have a right-wing hack Steve Malzberg interviewing the head of the Rutgers College Republicans, Donald P. Coughlan, who states that "an overwhelming majority of students seemed to be really excited to see her" and that there was only a small vocal minority of 50-100 students protesting her appearance in the past week:
 

Even better is the young Republican's open letter to the University President Robert Barchi itself in which this statement appears: "As the protests escalated to your office, university property was damaged further frightening students who do not share the opinion of the protestors and preventing them from voicing a counter opinion." The "overwhelming majority" of more than 30,000 Rutgers students were "frightened" to speak in defense of Dr. Rice because of the actions a handful of people who broke a pane of glass and wrote on a wall? That's some fine white whine. (Maybe not a fine as the vintage white whine coming from Rutgers' New Jersey neighbor Princeton this week, but still some good stuff.)

Oh, unsurprisingly, Fox is all over the young Republicans' outrage and Newt Gingrich has piped in to say that Dr. Rice's decision not to appear at Rutgers is a result of "liberal fascism." Those liberals at Rutgers should just forget, or at least remain silent about, the hundreds of thousands killed and wounded and tortured under the Bush administration's wars (in the same way conservatives are forgetting the four Americans personally killed by Hillary Clinton in Benghazi).

Michele Bachmann proves she can still make the finest White Whine

"I think the thing that is getting a little tiresome, the gay community, they have so bullied the American people, and they've so intimidated politicians. The politicians fear them, so that they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere." 

-- Michele Bachmann, March 2014

Today's Fine White Whine Comes With a Southern Accent (and an extra pinch of sugar in the whine)

After you've lost your position on The Food Network for past statements involving the N-word, this is probably not the right quote to have appearing in print in People Magazine during your comeback tour.

"I feel like 'embattled' or 'disgraced' will always follow my name. It's like that black football player who recently came out. He said, 'I just want to be known as a football player. I don't want to be known as a gay football player.' I know exactly what he's saying." --Paula Deen

 Always one to follow a recipe correctly, Paula's Fine White Whine does have just the perfect proportion of self pity mixed with the mandatory grabbing of the picked-on underdog's mantle.

The Fine White Whine You Hear Today Is Coming from The Garden State.

"Over the past few weeks, the liberal media and Trenton Democrats have relentlessly attacked the Governor despite his strong, decisive leadership. It's time to stand up to MSNBC, the liberal media and their attacks."

This quote from the NJ GOP looking for money is going straight to the crooked New Jersey Governor's only possible defense, whining about the big bad liberal meanies of the so-called liberal media picking on America's Favorite Fat Fuck, Christopher "Christ" Christie. It seems clear now that if he manages to stay out of court, he will run for the GOP Presidential nod in 2016. His main campaign strategy to appeal to the rabid right-wing base? It's obvious. More whining about how attacks on Christ Christie by the bullying elitist atheistic eastern liberal press (and liberal blogs that label him America's Favorite Fat Fuck) mean that he must be doing something right.

"The people of New Jersey deserve better than the partisan witch hunt they’re currently witnessing on television every night. Thank you for standing with Governor Christie..." Wah Wah Wah

The Fine White Whine of the Day Comes from the White-Whiner-in-Chief, Reince Priebus

"Until [Griffin] takes internal corrective action and personally apologizes—not just to the RNC but to all right-of-center Americans—I’m banning all RNC staff from appearing on, associating with, or booking any RNC surrogates on MSNBC."  Reince Priebus whined. "Wah wah."

And what caused this fit of pique?

It seems that there was an MSNBC tweet about a Superbowl advertisement that read "Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family".  It was taken down and MSNBC apologized (though neither action seems necessary), but Reincey had his reason to cry (even though the RNC and GOP were never mentioned by name). They are really reaching for things to be offended by now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE 1/31/2014:
I would like to thank MSNBC for reinforcing the stereotype of liberals as spineless wimps when confronted with the white whine of complaint. Network President Phil Griffin fired the writer of the offensive tweet and the RNC has lifted its boycott of the network.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today's Fine White Whine Comes from a Fracking Flack (and his right-wing media megaphone)

So, what does the right-wing media have to complain about today (other than the fact that Michelle Obama mentioned Jane Fonda)? It seems that a film festival being held this week at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota will not be showing the amateurish pro-fracking film FrackNation, so they are predictably being accused of liberal censorship of anti-environmental films by filmmaker Phelim McAleer.

"The film festival organizers seem to hate alternative points of view, they seem to want to quash diversity. They seem to be scared of the truth. Basically the Frozen River Film Festival organizers have given in to bullying and taken the easy way out and censored a film that might offend environmental elites who think they know best. These people are cultural censors and don't want the truth about fracking to be shown to audiences."

If that sounds familiar, he also accused the IMF of censoring him last year by not showing his film. "Basically [yes, he overuses 'basically'] they were censoring my presentation, they were censoring my speech," But this time a group other than 'environmental elites' got the blame. "They're trying to force people not to say terrible things because it could offend one of their senior members. They didn't want to offend Russia."

So, what do the the organizers of this week's Minnesota film festival have to say about giving in to bullying from liberal cultural censors? Here's the statement on the website of the Frozen River Film Festival:

"The Frozen River Film Festival regrets to inform its audience that we will not screen FRACKNATION. There is growing national consensus that the film does not qualify as a documentary and the filmmakers were unable to provide someone to stand-up for the film. Upon original acceptance we stated that a filmmaker attend with the film and join in a moderated public forum, as engagement is an important part of our mission. We offered to pay travel and lodging to anyone from the film who could attend. They declined to send someone, so we will not be screening the film."

Those monsters.

Today's Fine White Whine comes from a Great White Rhino Hunter

Today's Fine White Whine Comes from the Vineyard of Donald Trump

"...It was a terribly drawn suit, an incompetently drawn suit and they did it very quickly. ... Maybe this is a mini-IRS. Maybe we need to get the Tea Party after these people because this could maybe be a mini-IRS." 

--Donald Trump on Fox News, 26 Aug 2013

The Total Collapse of
Teaparty (#TCOT) flag.

Translation: Waah Waah Waah.  The Lightweight Attorney General of New York under orders from our Kenyan President Obama is going after me and my phony baloney "University" just like the IRS under Obama's marching orders harassed those poor non-political Tea Party groups, so now those non-political Tea Party groups should come to my aid. Waah Waah Waah.

In a logical world Donald Trump's fraudulent "Trump University" scam would be just one more reason for his disqualification for any type of public office, but there's still a good chance that we'll see him as the game-show-host clown in the 2016 GOP Clown Circus (and of course if he can't make it, the game-show-host clown-in-waiting Chuck Woolery will be happy to fill in that spot on the debate stage).

Today's Fine White Whine

"It's not really a bunch of whining, it's just us telling them what we're going to do about it, that's all," the man who uses the alias 'Reince Priebus' whined yesterday.

"Them" in the above quotation are the CNN and NBC television networks.
"Us" is the Grand Old Political Party of which 'Reince Priebus' is the chairman.
What they're "going to do about it" is restrict those networks' rights to broadcast portions of the entertaining 2016 GOP Clown Circus if the networks continue with their plans to broadcast documentaries on Hillary Clinton.

"Waaaah Waaaah Waaaah," Mr. 'Priebus' concluded.

This Will Be The Only Time I Post on the IRS "Scandal"

There seems to be only one difference between the IRS scrutiny received by political groups on the left and right when they applied for tax-exempt status. One side went into the full Fine White Whine of spoiled privileged children and the other side knew they were asking the Internal Revenue Service for a special favor

The Gaspin' Flag commemorating the
2012 Total Collapse of Teaparty (a.k.a. #TCOT)

and were willing to endure the extra questioning to support their claims that they were "social welfare" organizations (probably an exception that shouldn't have been given to any of these political [or religious, but that's another argument] organizations) rather than purely political entities. 

One side fed Darrell Issa's televised Obama Witchhunt Committee with hours of sob stories about how their constitutional right to not pay taxes was interfered with by government questions, reaching an apex with a tearful Wetumpka (Alabama) Tea Party President Becky Gerritson proclaiming that she was not a 'serf or vassal' willing to answer too many questions or fill out lots of forms for her organization's tax-exempt status (which was not, after all, denied).

My favorite quote from the other side comes from the (non-whiny) executive director of one of the progressive groups that was also forced to fill out IRS paperwork (the horror):

“If you’re going to ask for exceptional treatment, you should expect to go through exceptional screening. We all play by the same rules, and if they don’t like the rules, they don’t have to play.”
--Ed Espinoza, Progress Texas (quoted on Politico, 7/22/13)

The Fine White Whine of the Day (about events under the Tuscan sun)

I couldn't help reproducing the text of this email from the Independence Hall Tea Party Association here in all its glory. I didn't do anything to the original press release but crop the white areas surrounding it and add the highlighting to the various spellings of Tuscan/Tuscon/Tucson (they finally got it right - temporarily - the third time).




This post isn't simply about the need for geography education among those who believe in home schooling. It's about the sense of victimization and entitlement among those who condemn victimization and entitlement in anyone other than themselves. It's about presenting another example of the constant Fine White Whine emanating from the political Right.

Finally, while they ask for Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down to atone for her criticism of the Tea Party, they are not above stating that "the perpetrator of the Tuscon [sic] shooting was an unstable individual with left wing sympathies, someone whose world views were more like Occupy than Tea Party."

"Whine and then blame someone else" could be the motto of these groups, but they should watch their spelling -- and study an atlas containing Italy and Arizona -- if they want to gain any credibility beyond their true believers.

Who knew that Sarah Palin was one of us?

Should we send her a True Blue Alaska Liberal mug and button, or lift a toast of commie vodka in her honor now that a blogger for a New Jersey newspaper that hasn't totally gone out of business yet has written a piece titled "Sarah Palin: Just another whiny liberal claiming victimization"?
Of course this writer, this Paul Mulshine fella -- "the sole genuinely conservative columnist on any major American newspaper" in his own words -- doesn't seem to admit that most of the whining and whinging (I love the Brit version, which seems more onomatopoeically correct) has been pouring from people on the right claiming victimization by godless public schools, the IRS, non-whites & have-nots, ObamaPelosi&Reid, the mean liberals who call the teabaggers on their racism, and the gays & lesbians who are attacking their holy unhappy marriages (and the Newark Star Ledger is a "major American newspaper"?).
The fine White Whine of victimization has become the background noise of our culture, but it's so much easier to take one of Sarah Palin's most common and unattractive features and attribute it -- without any evidence of any liberal feelings or thoughts on her part -- to her "liberalism". And, as we know from Glen Beck, Liberal = Communism = Fascism = Nazism. The conservatives have learned that their second greatest weapon (after an unrelenting appeal to irrational fears of those feeling victimized) is to treat words as if they have no meaning grounded in facts or history. After the success of the Swift Boat lies about John Kerry and the WMD lies of the Bush Regime, they've obviously come to the conclusion that the most effective way to win any argument is to simply destroy the meaning of our common language.