DonVito said:
Since when does Rosie O'Donnell speak for "all left wingers," and why are you browsing her blog in the first place? By your logic, Ann Coulter speaks for "all right wingers" when she calls the 9/11 widows "grieferazzi" and calls John Edwards a "lovely human." At least Coulter, unlike Rosie O'Donnell, makes her living as a political pundit, and enjoys a sizable audience in doing so.
Is English not your first language? Your posts are just bizarre.
It is a manipulative and slothful - though highly effective - means of assigning attributes to a large political movement based on nothing other than cherry-picked and highly unrepresentative examples.
It's not just assiging attributes, it's also inventing an entire movement. There is no liberal movement, there is no progressive movement. There are people who oppose Iraq, or various measures taken by BushCo., but this does not comprise an organized, funded, large political movement with specific goals and an infrastructure to achieve those goals.
What "the Left" has come to mean is "anyone who opposes the extremist policies of the Bush movement." The collection of people referred to as "the Left" have not really had any affirmative agenda or anything in common beyond that, because everything has been devoted to trying to limit and fight against everything from more Middle East invasions to torture and lawlessness at home.
That's why people who have quite disparate political views on a whole range of matters end up as full-scale political allies - there has been very little ability for any Bush opponents to do much of anything politically other than work against the damage they have wrought on the country.
O'Reilly's comment that "there isn't much of a far right in this country" and that's why he spends so much time talking about "the far left."
He has it completely opposite. Would the BushCo. noise machine be able to function if it became clear to everyone that there is no larger "left" or "liberal" or "progressive" movement? That's where their real war is. I guess that's why they had to manufacture a movement. Movement Conservatives need an enemy to push their policies. If they don't have one, they'll just create one.
These people are cunning at dividing people with using "emotions" and "confusion" as their silver bullets.
The practice of divide and conquer I need not dwell on as this is what is practiced every day in all main stream media. Left vs. right, democrat vs. republican and so on.
This is to create confusion and despair for the average person in order to keep them out of the debate altogether. The one thing the beltway crowd does not want is for the average citizen to have a voice in this country's debate. The main stream media and the politicians are most aware of the average citizens view since the mid term elections and they certainly do not want them entering the debate.
The tactic of name calling, confusion, are all fruits of a desperate persons attempt to "change the subject" from the real issue at hand which of course is an old debating tactic itself and by doing this time and time again they alienate the masses in general from ever getting into the debate. They ( mainstream news ) people are very successful at this.
The OP, useing Rosie ODonnell and her opinions is somehow legitimately shown to be that held by some segment of a larger group - only the opinion holders, the segment, not the larger group - are the proper subjects of the critique.
For example, it is not fair to critique the entire Democratic Party and its supporters based upon opinions expressed by Rev. Al Sharpton. Tempting as it might be because it puts a face on what often is a superb sound-bite and eliminates the need of the MSM to actually do some work and research their subject. Members of the larger group (again, the amorphous "left") may often agree, and probably often disagree with the Rev. Sharpton.
But the MSM (and in the OP Rosie ODonnell) using Rev. Sharpton does not create the larger problem - simply because Rev. Sharpton is so universally recognized to be a somtimes-polarizing person having strong (and sometimes unusual) opinions. It is when less-recognizable, or even anonymously held opinions are attributed to the larger group that the purist form of sophistry occurs.
First, that the opinions held by Rosie ODonnell et al are not demonstrably held by very many persons, or by anybody at all in the group being criticized. The opinions, for example, are certainly not held by representatives of "the left" in a position of authority, power, or influence, nor has it been shown (by a qualified reputable poll, for example) to be a consensus view of "the left." Until that occurs, critiquing that opinion, and by extension, "the left," is pure sophistry.
And completly laughable and irrelevant...
