worst people in the world

From ThinkProgress:

Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”

Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.

What did Ledger do to deserve this? Is it just because he played a gay cowboy?

Gibson represents a certain mindset that you see commonly with these movement conservative, scorched earth fanatics. Their ability to empathize with another person is dependent entirely on whether that person is "one of us" or "the other side." And it takes almost nothing to make you persona non grata to these brownshirts; all Heath Ledger did was play a gay guy in a movie and develop an addiction to sleeping pills to become a "weirdo" with "a serious drug problem" whose untimely death merits only derisive laughter.

Thankfully, it's not a pan-conservative phenomenon, however. Joe Scarborough of "Morning Joe," a former Republican congressman during the Gingrich years, heard this clip, and apparently it blew his mind. He goes on and on for 5 or 10 minutes about the "stunning" inappropriateness of these comments.

And in other news, another radio care bear, Michael Savage, is quickly losing his advertisers. A campaign by Brave New Films to shame Savage's sponsors into pulling their ads from his show has gotten 4 of his 10 advertisers to drop him, and another (GEICO Insurance) is expected to follow suit. Some choice Savage-isms highlighted by Brave New Films:

"90 percent of the people on the Nobel Committee are into child pornography and molestation, according to the latest scientific studies"

Savage advocating "kill[ing] 100 million" Muslims

Savage on immigrant students' hunger strike: "[L]et them fast until they starve to death. ... Go make a bomb where you came from"

Citing more sex-change operations, increased lesbian fertility clinics, Savage said of 9-11: "That was God speaking"

On MLK Day, Savage called civil rights a "racket" designed to steal "white males' birthright"

To "save the United States," lawmakers should institute "outright ban on Muslim immigration" and on "the construction of mosques"

U.S. Senate "more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because women have been injected into" it

"Jimmy Carter is like Hitler"

"Burn the Mexican Flag!"

Savage on the tsunami: "I wouldn't call it a tragedy. ... We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this"

There's something wrong with these people psychologically. They're emotionally broken. How damaged to you have to be to say these things, to laugh over and over at the death of a young, talented actor, or to advocate the indiscriminate slaughter of 100 million people? This is the kind of behavior we're used to seeing in junior high kids who lack a fully developed sense of empathy, but it's pretty stunning to see gray-haired old men display such inhumanity.

And they're spokesmen for a whole "movement."

inside baseball-- on the myth of "doing well while doing good"

I call this post "inside baseball" because it's about blogger/"netroots" scuttlebutt and insider issues. I try to stay out of this crap normally because, frankly, for most people it's not that interesting, but I had to say something here.

Most of us starry-eyed idealists have a cause that we believe in, a vision of "the greater good" to which we commit ourselves, be it religious, political, social, or all 3. We join together in common cause and form movements to change society for the better. Some of us, however, get too wrapped up in, say, personal ambition and the desire for "fame" in whatever size circle that may be along the way, and it almost inevitably comes at odds with the work we originally set out to do. And for many, myself included, our abilities don't quite match our ambitions. In some cases, such people grow envious of others who have been more successful in the cause, and manage to lose all perspective in seeking to supplant that person instead of working together for the greater good (call this the "Cain and Abel" complex).

And the smarter members of the opposition are always ready to capitalize on it to strike a blow against the whole movement.

Maryscott's "cry me a river" act has been needing calling out for a long time. MLW gets way more traffic than a lot of sites, and is quite successful for what it is (i.e., a political blog). That being said, it will never be near the size of dKos because Maryscott and the writers there got hung up on their cliquish condescension of all bigger, less ideologically pure blogs and their needless offending of every demographic that isn't stereotypically "left." In my opinion, the scatterspray tactics and self-centered whining do more harm than good at the end of the day, but hey, it's her blog. Anyway, I'm no fan, but even I never thought she'd actually do this.

I can't imagine that interview going any better for Gibson, FOX News, and conservatism, and all he had to do was let her talk.

And, for the record: if you think Daily Kos is "centrist," you need to get out more.