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Jewish World Review
Apr. 4, 2013/ 24 Nissan, 5773
When the Government Goes Bankrupt
By
Bernard Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There was a time when I was invited by a well-known conservative magazine to speak on cruises that the magazine organized. Conservatives from all over America paid good money to visit far away places and listen to the likes of me talk about how corrupt the liberal media had become. But one evening, while cruising the Caribbean, I said there was also a problem with conservative bias in the media. The crowd literally hissed and booed and I was never invited on another cruise.
There was also a time when I was a regular at a yearly conference of conservatives at a fancy hotel in Florida. When I talked about the excesses of liberalism the crowd cheered. But one time I talked about the insanity of the "Birthers," those geniuses who think Barack Obama was born someplace outside the United States. Turns out a "Birther," who was a big contributor to this conservative conclave, was in the audience. I never got invited back.
When I'm on the O'Reilly show I get two kinds of reaction from my conservative friends: love emails and hate emails. When I talk about liberal dopiness I get the love kind. When I say conservatives at times can be just as bad as the lefties, I get hate mail.
Let me be very clear … conservative groups can invite anyone they want to be part of their events. I have no constitutional right to speak to people who don't want to hear what I have to say. And truth be told, I was never comfortable being in the same place at the same time with so many like-minded people. And people who watch Fox can like me or hate me. That comes with the territory.
Conservatives complain about liberal orthodoxy all the time. When liberals call some black conservative an Uncle Tom, we bristle and say liberals can't stand it when a black man "strays from the liberal plantation." We talk about how close-minded liberals can be.
Well, my friends, conservatives can be, and too often are, just as orthodox — and it's starting to really annoy me.
As some of you may know I used to be a liberal Democrat. I grew up in a blue-collar family so the Democrat part was a given. The liberal part came with age. Most young people are liberals.
Then when I got older I realized how crazy liberals had gotten. Being for civil rights wasn't good enough. You had to also be for affirmative action, even if the kid getting the advantage was the son or daughter of a well-to-do black professional. How was that fair to poor white kids, I wondered. Did a white coal miner's kid have more advantages that the son of a black lawyer?
And being a supporter of women's rights wasn't enough, either. You also had to support a woman's right to be a firefighter even if she wasn't strong enough to carry a man out of burning building.
And abortion? Being pro-choice is one thing; supporting late term abortion in the name of "choice" is something else all together.
So I moved right. Or more accurately, the left moved so far left that they left me, not the other way around.
Now I find myself more and more uncomfortable on the other side. I don't like conservative orthodoxy any more than I like liberal orthodoxy. I'm no fan of President Obama, but the constant, non-stop bashing from conservatives in the media is getting downright boring. I've never been a fan of one-note sambas.
I mean, is Mr. Obama really responsible for what some left-wing minister says about social conservatives on Easter Sunday … just because the president was in his church at the time?
There are those on the Right, as Peter Wehner describes them in a piece for Commentary magazine, who seem "to be in a near-constant state of agitation, ever alert to identify and excommunicate from the ranks those they perceive as apostates. One day it is Chris Christie; the next day it is Bob McDonnell, or Jeb Bush, or Mitch Daniels, or Eric Cantor, or Lindsay Graham, or Mitch McConnell, or someone somewhere who has gone crosswise of those who view themselves as prefects of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."
That kind of conservatism leaves me cold. But if I sit home on Election Day because I've had it with the right-wing purists, I'm in effect voting for the Democrats … and I can't do that, not as long as they think we don't have a spending problem and taxing the "rich" is a sensible policy.
So what to do? I'm not sure at this point. But if conservatives demand purity, if they don't want to hear from anyone who doesn't toe the conservative line, if they see social moderates as wimps or sell-outs, they will lose election after election and they will have only themselves to blame.
That's one more thing the purists on the right don't want to hear.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
JWR contributor Bernard Goldberg, the television news reporter and author of several bestselling books, among them, Bias, a New York Times number one bestseller about how the media distort the news. He is widely seen as one of the most original writers and thinkers in broadcast journalism. Mr. Goldberg covered stories all over the world for CBS News and has won 10 Emmy awards for excellence in journalism. He now reports for the widely acclaimed HBO broadcast Real Sports.
He is a graduate of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey and a member of the school's Hall of Distinguished Alumni and proprietor of BernardGoldberg.com.
Previously:
• 03/18/13: Don't Blame Him --- He's Only the President
• 03/12/13: Sun Still Rises After Sequester So Prez Comes Up With Plan B To Insure Hardship
• 03/11/13: A President We Can't Be Proud Of
• 03/05/13: New Poll: Nation on Wrong Track . . . So Which Party Gets the Blame?
• 02/26/13: A President Who Is Rooting for Chaos
• 02/22/13: Obama: The World Is About to End . . . (Or Not)
• 02/19/13: Rubio Reaches for Water --- Crime of the Century
• 02/13/13: Drones, Double Standards and the So-Called Mainstream Media
• 02/06/13: One Small Step for Man, One Giant Step for Nut Jobs
• 01/30/13: Obama and Fox: Here We Go Again
• 01/25/13: CBS News Political Director to Barack Obama: Destroy the GOP
• 01/21/13: Just a Thought . . .
• 01/15/13: Al Gore is No Run of the Mill Hypocrite
• 01/14/13: The High Cost of Obama's America
• 01/08/13: Another Reason Libs Make Me Laugh
• 01/07/13: Al Gore Hates Oil But Loves Oil Money
• 12/31/12: Memo to GOP: Make Obama Own the Mess He's Created
• 12/24/12: GOP In More Trouble Than They Probably Know
• 12/18/12: Taking on Guns Will Be the Easy Part
• 12/17/12: When Obama's Words Mean Nothing
• 12/10/12: Do You Believe in Magic?
• 12/04/12: Obama and the Dolts Deserve Each Other
• 11/27/12: When the Ends Justify the Meanness
• 11/20/12: Our Mesmerizer-in-Chief
• 11/19/12: This Pretty Much Sums It Up . . .
• 11/12/12: Santa Claus and the GOP Civil War
• 11/07/12: Obama Wins . . . and Loses
• 11/01/12: Out on a Limb, Predicting A Big Victory For . . .
• 11/01/12: Should Mitt Talk to Bill?
• 10/30/12: Really Dumb Conservatives . . .
• 10/23/12: Debate #3: How Much Does Foreign Policy Matter If You Can't Find a Job?
• 10/22/12: When Conservatives Are As Dopey as Liberals . . .
• 10/19/12: Journalists' Who Don't Even Try to Hide Their Bias
• 10/17/12: Obama Stopped the Bleeding --- But Was That Enough to Change the Momentum?
• 10/15/12: No Winner in the Debate --- But Maybe a Loser
• 10/08/12: The October Surprise
• 10/04/12: Civil War in the GOP Could Go Nuclear on Nov 7
• 10/01/12: Even If He Wins, Obama Will Lose
• 09/27/12: Obama Picks Up a Crucial Demographic
• 09/26/12: If Obama Thinks He Inherited a Mess Four Years Ago . . .
• 09/24/12: A Good Way to Kill Free Speech
• 08/30/12: Facts I Have Uncovered About the Real Mitt Romney
• 08/23/12: Hope and Change, R.I.P.s
• 08/16/12: Who's Smarter: Joe Biden or Yogi Berra?
• 08/13/12: His Silence Makes Him Complicit
• 08/07/12: Did You Know that Harry Reid Got Rich Pimping Out HOs?
• 08/02/12: Like Birds on a Telephone Wire
• 07/30/12: What Me Worry? YES!
• 07/26/27: The Mystery Continues --- A Tale of Two Polls
• 07/16/27: We've Set a Low Bar for 'Courage'
• 07/11/27: Will Class Warfare Work?
• 07/09/27: A Brave New World
• 07/02/27: Now the Fun Really Starts
• 06/19/27: You Can't Make This Stuff Up . . .
• 06/19/12: I Would Have Fired Him Before He Got Back to the Office
• 06/12/12: Time to Crush the Myth about Gender Pay Inequality
• 06/06/12: The Desperate Campaign of Barack Obama
• 06/01/12: Hey Fatso! Listen Up!
• 05/25/12: Going After the Stupid Vote
• 05/22/12: The X Factor(s)!
• 05/15/12: Obama Has a Halo; Newsweek Has No Shame
• 05/10/12: Authoritarians on Campus
• 05/08/12: Obama's Path to Victory: Divide and Conquer
• 05/01/12: President Cool Meets Reality
• 04/25/12: Why Media Bias Matters
• 04/17/12: NYT: At It Again
• 04/13/12: Kissing up to the Rev. Al
• 04/10/12: This Just In: War Breaks Out --- Thank You, Lord
• 04/03/12: In Cold Blood?
• 03/27/12: Trayvon Martin and Media Hypocrisy
• 03/26/12: Time to Go, Rick
• 03/22/12: Obama's Mantra: Don't Blame Me
• 03/19/12: The U.N. Human Rights Council --- and other Jokes
• 03/13/12: Bias in the News: Blame it on Their Zip Code
• 03/06/12: Thank Heaven for Rich People --- a Second Look
• 02/29/12: Some Free Advice for the Republican Field
• 02/28/12: Do We Have a Right to Lie?
• 02/16/12: Can Obama Win Re-Election by Promising Free Stuff?
• 02/06/12: The 5 Stages of Mitt
• 02/02/12: Florida Has Spoken; Cue the Fat Lady
• 01/30/12: The Other Global Warming Story
• 01/26/12: They See Racists Everywhere . . .
• 01/24/12: The Arrogant and Clueless Mainstream Media
• 01/23/12: Gingrich Wins SC --- Media Help Big Time
• 01/18/12: A New Entry for 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America
• 01/12/12: The Dream Ticket Could Be a Conservative Nightmare
• 01/11/12: Now 'Anybody But Romney' Has a Name
• 12/30/11: I Have a Confession to Make . . .
• 12/27/11: Know When to Hold 'em and Know When to Fold 'em
• 12/20/11: NBC News, the KKK and the State of Journalism
• 12/19/11: Mitt and Newt: Two Rich Guys Arguing Over Money
• 12/13/11: Donald Trump Is the Greatest; Just Ask Him
• 12/12/11: Rob Peter to Pay Paul: Bad Economics! Good Politics?
• 12/07/11: Yeah . . . and Fish Don't Know They're Wet, Either
• 12/06/11: Did the Media Play Fair with Herman Cain?
• 12/05/11: Obama to Blue-Collar America: Adios!
• 11/29/11: We Can Stop the Crazy Train Before It Gets to Greece
• 11/22/11: Who Can Beat Obama?
• 11/15/11: The Dumbest Media Question I've Ever Heard
• 11/09/11: What If Herman Cain Did It?
• 11/08/11: What If Herman Cain Were a Lib?
• 11/02/11: Who Can Beat Obama?
• 11/01/11: We're Approaching the Tipping Point
• 10/25/11: A Response to the Angry Purists
• 10/18/11: They're Waiting for Reagan to Hit the Campaign Trail
• 10/12/11: Read This!!! --- But Only If You Have Nothing Better To Do
• 10/04/11: Can Obama Win Re-Election?
• 09/27/11: It's NOT the Economy Stupid, It's Theology
• 09/20/11: Bad News on the Doorstep
• 09/09/11: Hypocrisy!
• 09/06/11: Back to the Future
• 08/24/11: Hillary vs. Obama in 2012? It'll Never Happen --- I Don't Think
• 08/22/11: Warning: Conservatives May Be Harmful to Your Mental Health
• 08/17/11: Warren Buffett, Coddled Billionaire
• 08/11/11: Too Much Balance in the Media?
• 08/04/11: All Aboard the Crazy Train
• 08/01/11: Liberal Hate Speech
• 07/25/11: With All Due Respect, Go Fly a Kite
• 07/20/11: Who Is A ‘Natural Born Citizen’?
• 07/18/11: Guess Who's Not Paying Their Fair Share
• 07/12/11: Against More Taxes? You May Be a Terrorist!
• 07/11/11: Casey Anthony: The TV Show
• 07/06/11: Standards and Double Standards at MSNBC
• 06/29/11: Is Jon Stewart A Racist?
• 06/21/11: Let's Play the Race Card --- Just for Fun Of Course
• 06/20/11: Sarah Palin and Weiner's Weiner
• 06/03/11: Memo to GOP: Turn Mr. Obama into Mr. Yesterday
• 05/20/11: I Get Letters From People Who Should Be Locked Up
• 05/09/11: Is ‘Torture’ Ever Justified?
• 05/02/11: The Promiscuous Use of the R Word
• 04/19/11: The Man Behind the Million Dollar Smile
• 04/12/11: What's the Difference Between Libs in Politics and Libs in the Media?
• 04/08/11: An Idea Whose Time Has Come — and Gone
• 03/28/11: The Pundits Are Driving Me Crazy --- And You Thought Qadaffi Is Nuts
• 03/14/11: No Liberal Bias at NPR — Just Ask NPR
• 03/10/11: The media's frustration
• 03/01/11: Progressives Lost in Time . . .
• 02/23/11: The Lamestreams Strike Again --- This Time in Madison
• 02/03/11: You MUST Own a Gun --- Or Else!
• 01/20/11: It Was Horrible, I tell you … HORRIBLE!
• 01/11/11: Here We Go Again . . .
• 01/06/11: You Go, Oprah
• 12/28/10: A Year-Ender --- The MSM and Obama's Fall from Grace
• 12/14/10: Thank Heaven for Rich People
• 12/02/10: The Phony Nobility of Wikileaks
© 2011, Bernard Goldberg
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