I haven't been watching Lawrence O'Donnell, the gent who now has Keith Olbermann's time slot on MSNBC. I actually haven't been watching MSNBC much, if at all lately. I often agree with the politics of its prime-time commentators but that's not enough to get me to tune in.
I'm increasingly aware that a key selling point for that kind of programming — and for talk radio and certain websites — is reinforcement. It's like: Give us your business and we'll endorse every political prejudice you have and shield you from facts that conflict, plus we'll give you more reasons to hate the people you hate, even if we have to make them up. I don't want that and if you don't, good for you. There are way too many people out there, Liberal or Conservative, who do.
Olbermann did some of that but not enough to lose my business. I felt I got something out of watching his show, including a presentation of some issues that was complete enough that I sometimes came to different conclusions than the host's. I like some of Rachel Maddow's show but can only abide her for an hour when I'm in the mood to be lectured, which is almost never. Chris Matthews seems to enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing…and O'Donnell and Ed Schultz are trying too hard to work the Fox News model in a left-wing context. If I were right of center, I'd like to think I had too much respect for facts and mature discussion to watch much of Hannity or Beck. Being generally left of center, I'm not going to avidly tune in to their Liberal knock-offs.
So I missed it yesterday when O'Donnell went after two friends of mine, James Hudnall and Batton Lash, for a recent cartoon they did which depicted the Obamas in a manner he decried as racist and disgusting. Even if he'd been right about that, I thought O'Donnell's segment was overkill and needlessly personal. But I also don't think the cartoon was racist or disgusting, especially compared to a lot of what's said about the Obamas on the web these days. What set O'Donnell off was probably not so much what Jim and Bat said but where they said it…that particular website.
There's loads of stuff there that is racist, hysterical and constructed of outright lies about the Obamas and Democrats. Its operator recently got up at CPAC and said of Liberals, "They're not Americans, they're animals" and he has often said how much he hates and wants to destroy them. This is Andrew Breitbart we're talking about…he of the deceptively-edited videotapes and other smears that responsible Conservatives disavow or at least distance themselves from. In his silly scolding of Jim and Bat, O'Donnell went after what may be the least offensive thing on that site and one that clearly falls within this nation's tradition of political commentary by cartoon. He oughta be ashamed of that.
He wanted the friends and acquaintances of Hudnall and Lash to perform an intervention and get them to stop doing their cartoons. I sure won't do that. If they want to keep doing them, they should keep doing them. What I will suggest to them is that they're doing it on a website that frequently engages in the kind of attacks O'Donnell made (including bogus accusations of racism) and therefore invites them in return. I think Breitbart deliberately provokes that sort of thing. I mean, you don't call people "animals" unless you want them to bark at you. Jim and Batton may well feel that it's worth occasionally wandering into the line of fire in order to reach that site's large readership…but Breitbart's site does throw mud. Hudnall and Lash shouldn't be surprised when others throw it back and some of it, however unfairly, splatters on the political cartoonists.