Artfully Placed Nazi References

(Cross-posted at Blanton's and Ashton's.)

Larry Johnson at No Quarter writes:

Leave it to the Porcine Draft Dodger--Karl Rove--to impugn the character of combat veterans. Can't blame him for trotting out the same playbook that worked so well in 2004 against the candidacy of John Kerry. If it worked once it should work again.

Of course I am referring to Karl's speech Tuesday night to Republicans in New Hampshire. According to a piece in Wednesday's Washington Post:

In a speech to New Hampshire Republican officials here Monday night, the White House deputy chief of staff attacked Democrats who have criticized the U.S. war effort in Iraq, such as Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), who he said advocate "cutting and running."

"They may be with you for the first shots," Rove said of such opponents. "But they're not going . . . to be with you for the tough battles."

Karl is a shameless bastard. This could explain why his mother killed herself. Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out. It would be one thing if his vile tactics were simply mere smears of politicians like Kerry and Murtha. They are big boys and should be able to defend themselves quite ably against this turd. But Rove, like Josef Goebbels, has used fear and smear as his primary tools to keep George Bush in power. ...

Jeff Goldstein responds:

This, my friends, is the conjoining of conspiracy-minded paleocons with the face of the modern deranged leftwing of the Democratic party -- where a former intelligence officer writes publicly that a Republican strategist's inveterate evil was responsible for his own mother's suicide, and where even the spokesperson for the last presidential candidate is unhinged enough to suggest, on the record, that Karl Rove should be concerned about getting cornholed in prison.

And yet these people -- thanks mostly to their enablers in the press -- are often trotted out as serious critics of the administration, and seldom shown for the vile and vicious anti-intellectual thugs that they are. Whether it's Howard Dean calling Republicans evil and saying he "hates" them; or John Murtha convicting soldiers of murder in advance of a full investigation; or a low-rent castoffs like Johnson, who the MSM routinely turns to when they need a good anti-war intelligence source, mustering up the guts to say that Karl Rove is responsible for his own mother's suicide -- the bile is there for all to sample, if only the MSM weren't so good at controlling the information flow.
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Personally, I think the addition of a Goebbels comparison really takes away the sting from the earlier draft [an earlier version of Johnson's blog post].

But then, I've always been a fan of an artfully-placed Nazi reference.

On one point, I agree with Jeff: Larry Johnson's crack about Karl Rove's mother's suicide was cruel, vicious, and completely out of line. And yes, Karl Rove is a cruel, vicious, and ruthless man himself, so some people may feel he doesn't deserve consideration. But it's not about Rove. It's about us. Unlike right-wingers, I do not subscribe to the philosophy that morality is relative to your political ideology, religious or ethnic identity, or national origin. And having lost a close family member to suicide almost 30 years ago, I can say with some authority that I am certain the pain of that particular experience is the same whether your politics are left-wing or right-wing.

Also, on a purely pragmatic level, throwing in a totally gratuitous comment about Rove's mother killing herself because Rove was her son, seriously detracts from an otherwise excellent post.

Having said this, I want to point out that the Josef Goebbels analogy was used less than a month ago -- by Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Burnett compared Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," to a Nazi propaganda film by Josef Goebbels. If Jeff made any comment about this, I missed it.

Jeff sarcastically titles his Larry Johnson post "When You Care, It's Okay To Say 'Controversial' Things" -- which is almost exactly what right-wing rag "News Copy New York" wrote about Ann Coulter's performance on the Today show, in which she called a group of 9/11 widows who oppose Bush's policies "witches" and declared, "I've never seen women enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

She's a rough one with her words but she does it to gain attention to problems otherwise ignored. Unfortunately, it is what a non-liberal has to do to get the coverage by the news outlets.

And what did Jeff himself have to say about Ann Coulter telling five women whose husbands were killed in the flames of the World Trade Center on 9/11 that they were "witches" who "enjoyed their husbands' deaths" -- simply because they spoke out against the way George W. Bush has handled the war on terror?

A search on Memeorandum, Technorati, and other right-wing blogs that did write about Coulter's comments turned up .... nothing. Nada. Zip.