You don't have to be a head-in-the-sand, Imagine-singing, America-hating leftist to be worried about the cracking down on political dissent -- and even harmless speech -- that has occurred in this country since September 11. The California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the lone representative to vote "nay" on a resolution authorizing the use of force, later received death threats. And now a slew of incidents further suggest a dark underside to our near-unanimous flag-waving and monolithic support for George W. Bush.
On Sunday The Boston Globe reported that Massachusetts representative Marty Meehan was picketed by protesters for having criticized Bush's failure to return to Washington immediately during the crisis. According to the Globe, Meehan was widely quoted as saying, "I don't buy the notion Air Force One was a target. That's just PR. That's just spin." This apparently off-the-cuff remark sent right-wing radio talk show hosts into a frenzy, leading to the recent mobilization against Meehan by the Massachusetts Republican Society, one of whose members explained, "This is a time to stand together." What's incredible about the whole affair is the utter innocuousness -- nay, triviality -- of what Meehan said. Still, facing the forces of political homogenization, the congressman felt he had to apologize.
Meanwhile, conservative radio hordes -- many of them whipped up by Rightwatch's good friend Rush Limbaugh -- were doling out the same treatment to ABC's newscaster Peter Jennings. Again, the issue was whether Bush should or shouldn't have returned to the White House immediately after September 11th's tragic attacks. Somehow it got out that Jennings, too, had criticized Bush. Ten thousand complaints later, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports, it turns out Jennings didn't even make the Bush-bashing remark attributed to him. That didn't stop Limbaugh from coming up with all sorts of clever attributions:
Rush Limbaugh, relying on a friend's e-mail message, denounced Jennings -- "this fine son of Canada" -- for "insulting comments toward President Bush." He said that "Little Peter couldn't understand why George Bush didn't address the nation sooner than he did, and even made snide comments like, 'Well, some presidents are just better at it than others,' and 'Maybe it's wise that certain presidents just not try to address the people of the country.' "
If this is how Limbaugh sources his materials, then the notion that CNN might give him a show truly does have a unique place in the history of bad ideas.
One final example: The great Bill Maher of ABC's Politically Incorrect is also under fire for a . . . politically incorrect comment made post-September 11th. This one is really disturbing because Politically Incorrect advertisers FedEx and Sears, Roebuck and Co. have pulled their ads from the show after viewers called to complain, thus potentially threatening the continuation of Maher's program. And what exactly did Maher say? He called U.S. military tactics cowardly. "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Only in a highly sensitive political environment could this comment provoke a scandal. But it was anathema to a Houston radio talk show demagogue named Dan Patrick, who mobilized listeners to call in against Maher. As Patrick explained to The Houston Chronicle: "When you call our men in the [armed forces] cowards and our military policy cowardly, and when you call these hijackers 'warriors,' that should not be tolerated."
So, as of September 11th, did criticizing George W. Bush, or simply speaking your mind in an unconventional way, become a lot more dangerous? Sure, this is a time when our nation has -- perhaps rightfully -- given up much of its characteristic partisan bickering. But it may also be a time when Congress, its civil libertarians cowed at last, finally manages to pass the idiotic but resilient flag burning amendment. Are liberals really so off base for fearing the way America tends to behave when it considers itself at war?
President Bush and many others have been chanting the mantra that we must not do just what the terrorists wanted, abandoning our democratic values and thereby letting them win. But as with repeated warnings about persecuting Arab and Muslim Americans, the current prevalence of this mot apparently says very little about how well it has registered.
Copyright © 2001 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Chris Mooney, "Dissent, Anyone? ," The American Prospect Online, September 25, 2001. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED].
emailbutton.gif
Description: GIF image
printerbutton.gif
Description: GIF image
