He's worse than a nobody.
I'll skip the comparison to Paul because I don't want to point out certain things that are not relevant to this thread.

Funneh! I frequent blogs of former left wingers. Got any statistics to back up your dubious assertion that love is a one-way street?

EDIT: I forgot to add, to paraphrase Henny Youngman: "Take David Brock - PLEASE!"
I didn't say that.
Because they get lots of things (not everything) wrong and getting things wrong often makes things worse. Take my cooking years back, for example. :oops: :p
You missed my point. I admired Murdoch for being candid and not hiding behind a non-existant mantle of righteousness. Many other media emperors are naked in comparison.

You mean like Media Matters?

Seriously, a fair, balanced and unbiased news organization is going to to provide support to one party's agenda about half the time.

Not surprisingly, Media Matters has an article about Discover The Networks' founder David Horowitz.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200511110013

There's a certain irony here. Brock is a conservative turned liberal and Horowitz is a Marxist turned movement conservative. However, what's really high-larious to me is how the conservative movement that embraced Brock's trashy smears of liberals now seeks to decry him for renouncing them, and points to them as proof that he's a character not to be trusted.

Did anyone watch the Simpson's last night?

They poked fun a Fox News a little bit, but they do quite often. Or Rupert Murdoch.

I want to start watching House. I loved Hugh Laurie on Blackadder. "Seven of your best, trousers down!"

It does seem a little scary that a foreigner, which Murdoch is, has so much influence on American Media. No matter the persons viewpoint, this is potentially dangerous.

Did you bother reading what you linked to? Other than a disdain for Horowitz's opinion, is there anything else there that is based on negative facts? Compare with the article I posted to above, showing point by point Brock's shoddy and shallow arguments.
I don't find anything ironic about people having done 180 degree turns in opinion. Whats important is why.
1. Funny that you don't find it funny what the leftists have to say about Horowitz.

2. Where and when was Brock "embraced" by the "conservative movement"?

You're providing me with a very juicy and slow moving target but to really have fun tearing up your response I'd likely need to go on a bit of a tear. Since I'm new here, what's the proper protocol? Should we engage in a new thread or continue taking this one off topic?

Huff(ington) and puff wherever you please.

Not sure about where people watch the news on TV, but I think it's safe to say that if the Dems continue their boycott by not putting their talking head political commercial ads on Fox, they'll be shooting themselves in the foot considering the easily amused voters who watch American Idol and happen to catch the commercial smear spots. It could make a difference. *shrug*

I better shaddap, else I'll be tried for sedition by my fellow conservatives for trying to give the other side some sense in their decisions. ;)

Reading is fundamental, dear Avon Lady. Let's sort out whose comprehension carries the day here. I suss out more than disdain for for Horowitz's opinion in the Media Matters piece, I detect a disdain for the man himself which makes me suspect Brock wrote it personally. Likewise, the identical situation holds true in the Networks bit on Brock. Both men hate each other and they take it out through their political jabs online. On the Media Matters site, via a link in the article, you can read all about the back and forth between Brock and Horowitz about a particularly creepy conspiracy mongering article Horowitz and a coauthor cobbled together, "The Shadow Government" or something like that, about how how Darth Soros is taking over the world.

Personally, I wouldn't let either guy date my daughters, if I had any. But let's be more specific about your claims. First off I need to understand what you mean by "negative facts". Are you saying facts which aren't flattering about Horowitz aren't fair game? I can't believe that. I've read some other stuff of yours on this forum and I know you're no fool.

We'll move on to the point-by-point refutation of Brock's shoddy and shallow arguments by Horowitz or his cadre that wrote the article. Here's one of Horowitz's claims:

In reality what Horowitz was excerpting from, the "About Us" section of the Media Matters site reads:

There you see the tactic used throughout the article, don't you? Media Matters explicitly defines its purpose as going after information that's "not accurate, reliable or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda." It's not saying all conservative claims and points are a pack of lies and distortions only that this does happen and they're going to expose these to scruitiny. Now, they come out and claim frankly that they're not a neutral outlet. Isn't that the sort of honesty you like? On the other hand Horowitz wants you to think they're out to smear all conservative discourse as automatically lies. Isn't that the sort of dishonesty you don't respect?

Hell, you're a conservative. You tell me if you think statements we've seen coming from the Republican side of the aisle over the last six years and from their PACs over the last six years square with reality or honest debate. Bragging that you're better than the "reality based" community, that is those of us who pay attention to science and human history, doesn't strike me as a good basis for truth telling.

You tell me if you even think all conservatives are on the same page with each other. I tend towards liberalism though I am an independant but I find I have much more in common with libertarian and even some Goldwater conservatives than they have with the Bush administration and the neocon and social conservative dominated GOP. Those guys are about ready to start burning effigies in the streets and rightly so.

We could dwell on this aspect of your statement for a while if you like but this is getting long enough already. Let's move on.

Both of these cats seem to have turned with the tides and are accused of it. Horowitz flipped to Reagan when the Republicans were on top of things. Brock flipped over to court the other team in the 90's after his disasterous Clinton hack-job made elements of the conservative elite wary of him. They've both got similiar stories though - disgust with what they thought they believed in when it turned out to be something other than they thought. And let's face it, Horowitz getting disgusted with far left radicals like the Black Panthers, who never had any real power, is a far cry from Brock's revolt against the mainstream of movement conservatism. Those guys are still around and in the noise machine business and still running the GOP. What's more interesting to me is what attracted them to their original orientations. Brock was the victim of his own ambitions and the charm offensive of a professor. He also was annoyed with the smugness of his liberal campus. That last is a very common theme with conservative intellectuals and it's quite telling.

I had a PR professor once, a proud neoconservative, who told us in all confidence the only reason he became conservative was to buck a trend and have a good intellectual fight. Being a liberal on campus in the 70's was no real challenge. He went on to say that if conservatives had dominated the university he'd have been a liberal in a heartbeat for just the same reason. That's a psychology you see a good deal with the right's intelligensia. It's for the fun of it, to see what they can get away with. And this guy was charming as hell. It was impossible not to like him even when he was handing out "Ted Smith's Ten Commandments of Lying." Heck, you couldn't help but liking him even more for the cheekiness of it. But away from the classroom this guy was in the business of consulting for the chemical industry and trying to get them off the hook for all kinds of real damage that was being caused. He told us the war stories and thought it was hilarious what people would believe if you phrased it the right way.

To be honest, I don't quite know what got Horowitz in with the radicals of the sixties before he became a conservative and I'm not entirely clear on why he changed sides. You can look to the neoconservatives and follow their similiar evolution from communist Trotskyites wound up with a personal vendetta against Stalin's Russia to "Scoop" Jackson's Democratic cold warriors continuing the grudge match to Republican assets obsessed with exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to drum up political fervor to, well, Bush's crack team that helped him make Iraq such a success. I don't know enough about Horowitz to lump him in with that lot but he's not an isolated case.

Well, Horowitz is an ass. He's the guy who claimed blacks should thank whites because we saved them from slavery. They owed us a solid! And he goes on and on. The guy is a fruitloop.

I really don't know if you're old enough to remember Brock's book on Anita Hill but it was picked up and praised all over talk radio and in conservative magazines and it was a completely trumped up pile of horse**** - as they now happily attest because Brock is no longer in their good graces. The Clinton book was a bit different. Some conservatives saw it as over the line and decried it but your Rush Limbaughs and other outspoken mouthpieces worshipped Brock loudly, far more loudly than the isolated editorials of conservatives who genuinely were revolted and those who found this to be a good, if cynical, opportunity for a "Sister Souljah" moment of their own. If you like I can try to dig up more examples about how Brock was a favorite of the movement conservatives but we'll both save time if you accept this at face value.

Valid arguments, if they are indeed valid don't need to be buttressed by a rude demeanor...

Thank you, Oddjob. You made my points for me with far more insight than my own pathetic stabs at eloquence could. Apparently, real conservatives aren't too happy with this admin. either. Witness the following letter written to the White House by the American Freedom Agenda. They include such conserative luminaries as former Congressman Bob Barr & Republican direct mail guru Richard Vigurie:


Dear Mr. President and Attorney General:
We, the undersigned co-founders of the American Freedom Agenda, urge the Attorney General to submit his resignation and the President to accept.
Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances.
He has brought the rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm.
He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice.
He has embraced legal theories that could be employed by a successor to obliterate the conservative philosophy of individual liberty and limited government celebrated by the Founding Fathers.
In sum, Attorney General Gonzales has proven an unsuitable steward of the law and should resign for the good of the country.
The President should accept the resignation, and set a standard to which the wise and honest might repair in nominating a successor, who will keep the law, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion.
Sincerely, Bruce Fein, Chairman Richard Viguerie David Keene Bob Barr John Whitehead

comments?

I think we all tend to put the aggressive demeanor on in political debates. Largely I think I've conducted myself politely. If you think this is rough trade you should check out political forums. Or not. I've got a thick skin and I tend to find most associated with them, on every side, over-the-top and nasty.

You should have searched a little more and you may have found a better example. The poll he cited was what I said it was, but note that I wasn't commenting on him...

We don't do over-the-top or nasty on SubSim.

Thanks,
The Management