Jon Stewart takes apart Jonah Goldberg, a.k.a. Doughy McPantload (with video)

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Goldbergs_Liberal_Fascism_argument_panned_Like_0117_af.html

Goldberg's Liberal Fascism argument panned: 'Like saying mustaches are fascist,' Stewart tells author

You write a book whose title and symbology implicitly ties liberals to Nazis, and you should expect to get a little bit of heat.

Jonah Goldberg, says the Hitler-mustachioed smiley face and title, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, are based on ideas espoused by others. He bristles at critics -- most recently The Daily Show's Jon Stewart -- who call him out, accusing them of not having read his latest tome.

"As far as I can see, what you're saying is you don't like the ease with which people throw around the word fascism," Stewart charged. "So what you've done is, you basically have just done that."

Stewart accused Goldberg's attempt to equate modern liberal ideas with early 20th-century fascism of not holding any water.

"That's literally like saying mustaches are fascist Hitler had a mustache," Stewart said, accusing Goldberg of "unbelievably misrepresenting what they said in the progressive era."


Video at http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Goldbergs_Liberal_Fascism_argument_panned_Like_0117_af.html. (note audience openly laughing at Goldberg)

The time the Stewart got done that poor guy didn't know which end was up! Bet Goldberg's publisher was a tad upset after the interview.

I watched it over at a friend's. I don't have TV and I've only seen JS a couple of times, but that was sublime. Granted, a lot of it was just that Goldberg is such an frickin' idiot. His insistence that the organic food movement is fascistic, was one for the ages.

"Michael Leeden, a conservative scholar who sometimes writes for Goldberg at National Review, says Liberal Fascism "trivializes Nazi racism, equating it with some American political rhetoric."

"The best that can be said about this is that it’s imaginative," he writes. "But it’s what happens when you are bound and determined to put liberals, Socialists, Communists, fascists and Nazis into a common political home."

:rofl:

Of course, calling that imaginarian Ledeen a scholar is like calling * a peacemaker

At least not his usual writers.

Goldberg http://disaffectedanditfeelssogood.blogspot.com/2007/12/true-cowardice.html">Give War a Chance.

I loved Jon's mustache analogy so much, I'm going to use it in class. Right-wingers frequently claim that environmental protection (and even anti-smoking legislation and organic foods) were started by Hitler, but actually those ideas were around much earlier, in the 1800s. Groups as diverse as the Boy Scouts of America and the Catholic Church's youth organizations were keen to get young people visiting wilderness areas and learning about nature, and improving their health through exercise and healthy foods. The Nazis were copying this, with the Hitler Youth etc., because they wanted to appear trendy. Historian Simon Schama has written a lot about this.

Seriously.

who pulled himself up by his mother's bootstraps, or garterbelt, to enlist and help his rePubs fight the war on terrorism?