FOX "News" Hosts Blame America First

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September 11, 2001 is simultaneously a recent event in American history, and a very long time ago. And it is difficult to put yourself back into the mindset we had and lived with that day, and in the days, weeks, months and years that followed. While we got a little reminder this week with the events in Boston, there were marked differences.

Now, obviously, the events are not directly comparable. We don't know the motives of the two bombers, and we don't even know if they are tied to any particular movement, or if they are just a couple of assholes with their own agenda. The scale of the attack was also much smaller, and the loss of life much more restricted. But if 9/11 hadn't happened, think of how it would have hit us. But beyond the scale, there were differences in how people reacted.

C'mon, admit it. These Chicks took a lot of
undeserved shit.

After 9/11, there was no right, no left. There were no Republicans or Democrats. There may have been a few rogue contrarians, but they were in the extreme minority. Those of us who did not vote for and were no fans of Bush/Cheney held our tongues. For a long time. We may have muttered under our breath (and Bill Maher lost his job for saying something "too soon"), but the general consensus was that we were Americans first, and all else was secondary. This ultimately became opressive, as--I
think--partisan conservatives took this to be the new normal, and expected everyone to play along with their agenda from then on.

So, as people started to chafe at some of the Bush/Cheney policies, and the two wars (particularly Iraq), and many of the new perceived losses of freedom (Patriot Act, Torture, Guantanamo), dissent was met with swift and viscous condemnation. We were un-American. Unpatriotic. "Blame America firsters." People who criticized the Bush Administration were chastened for attacking America, during wartime. The Dixie Chicks weathered a wholly out-of-scale attack by conservatives after a mild insult of Bush one of them uttered on stage. Even as late as 2008, conservatives blasted Barack Obama for not being sufficiently patriotic, for not wearing a flag pin, for not (apparently) standing at attention for the National Anthem, and other things.

Nuge the stooge, conservative hero.

But these days, with Obama in the White House, none of those things matter at all. We are still at war, but there is no attack of the President, his administration, or even the entire government, that is out of bounds for conservatives. They can accuse him of being an un-American, evil, Marxist, socialist, Maoist, communist, homosexual, adulterous, Nazi, statist, Kenyan Muslim who has as his explicit agenda destroying America. Notable celebrities such as Ted Nugent--quite unlike the Dixie Chicks--can come this|close to threatening to assassinate the President, and still draw air, but no condemnation from the right. And after an attack on this country as happened this week, the right is ready and eager to blame the government and the President for it. And then of course, there is FOX "News."

[Excerpt]

Fox News Hosts Join The ‘Blame America’ Firsters

Shortly after the attacks on 9/11, a stunned nation struggled to explain how such noxious hatred could have formed and congealed into the heinous plot that took the lives of so many innocent people. In a statement that still ranks amongst the most feeble-minded insults to America’s intelligence, George W. Bush proclaimed that “they hate us for our freedom. . .”

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