Molly Ivins complains that the right twists liberals’ positions around:
Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of “argument” for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what “liberals” think, and then demonstrate how silly it is. Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I’ve ever heard those on the right claim “liberals” believe, I’d be richer than Bill Gates.
So she clarifies things with this boner:
I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.
I think we should take Molly’s wishes to heart and carefully and correctly state her positions and those of people who think as she does.
It’s much more damning to use direct quotes like this one. Jeff Bishop has more.
Happy Independence Day.
Molly is an idiot. If I had a nickel for every time NPR & Air America & kos dumped “Haliburton”, “Karl Rove”, “Lee Atwater” or “Fox News” into a totally unrelated discussion, I’d have a lot of nickels. And yes, I do listen to Air America every once in a while – they are fun to laugh at.
Molly’s friends (presuming she even has any) need to do an intervention. She’d be in a rented trailer in Junction selling deer corn by now if another man named Bush hadn’t been elected.
An all too common case of someone being very guilty of the very thing she accuses others of.
Molly Ivins deserves beatification. Who after all invented ‘shrub’ as the lesser Bush’s acronym?
And she’s right on about the ‘straw man’ approach by the right. I run into it constantly in comments on other posts.
I went back to pick one up for you:
“The left wants an American defeat so that we will voluntarily surrender our national sovereignty. The terrorists want to defeat us to destroy us.
By failing to answer the question, you forfeit the debate.
Posted by HA at June 28, 2005 07:28 AM ” – from a Buzzmachine comment on “Stuck in the fringes’ tug of war: We’re the rope”.
However, this is far from the first such ‘straw man’ approach I’ve encountered. Molly’s point is correct.
Molly has said so many silly, outrageous, and false things about stuff that goes on in the world it’s not necessary to lump her in with more extreme folks to make her look bad – she is the extreme folk.
And no, the US has not killed more Iraqis than Saddam did, and no, none of our real allies have abandoned us.
What a depressing thought, Richard. With all the nations deserting us, right now including Britain in the face of a refusal to do anything to head off global warming, that the nations remaining constitute our great influence …. as I said, depressing.
France and Germany haven’t been allies for a really long time, and if we have to sign Kyoto to keep Britain the price is too high.