So what you do is point to the symbol – the flag, or a flag lapel pin, or a phrase like “God Bless America” — and you make those symbols sacrosanct, suggesting that words or acts calling those pristeen symbols into question or disrepute — regardless of what they really signify or are intended to mean — reflect a lack of loyalty or patriotism or fidelity to the values we cherish “as Americans” as if the symbols empbody some universal values that all Americans hold. When in fact, while sanctifying those symbols, the cultists who are subordinate theor own actions to those symbols and what they supposedly represent are acting in a way that is an affront to the real values that those symbols are supposed to represent — liberty, equality, justice, fairness, equity, respect and compassion.

I guess the media and the GOP both depend on an inattentive and intellectually lazy public to allow discourse at this warped level to continue in this way, relatively unchallenged. It makes all the sense in the world that Bush in an anti-intellectual, surrounded by people who accuse anybody who incorporates nuance into their thinking or words of being an “elitist.” It plays right to the wheelhouse of the inattentive and intellectually lazy. Time to stop listening to what they say, and start paying attention to what they do. And in the case of Wright, and his inflammatory comments, we are not at the point as a society where we can examine his words fairly and without emotion — too much political gain to be had from attacking them reflexively — and since the media has abidcated its role as a fourth estate which questions the conventional wisdom as imparted by those in power, in favor of serving their corporate masters, it is unlikely to change anytime soon.

So is the version of those most loudly denouncing Wright. The McCarthyite, Vince Foster-obsessed, Secret-Muslim-opposing right wing lives in a paranoid worldview so widely shared that it’s made the political equivalent of a jump from cult fringe to respected institutional religion. Wright’s ravings are no more ignorant than those of Bill Kristol, though his sermons can be uglier in tone.

I went and listened to some more of his sermons and enjoyed them. He’s a complex guy with some deep ideas, but he’s not a racist.

I also am constantly puzzled by the idea of loving or hating America. By themselves, they are absolutely meaningless ideas. And yet they seem to have so much meaning for so many.

White guy, agnostic, in the Deep South

I’d think most any journalist would hear the sweet, sweet sounds of controversy.

Does the lead-up to the sound bite soften it or contextualize it? Sure. Better then to cut it out.

Look, it’s not the sole province of conservative blogs to see and attempt to exploit something like this – political journalism these days often seems nothing more than the procession of ‘gotcha’ stories and reaction pieces to previous ‘gotchas.’ These stories seem to be highly prized by many in journalism… I do wonder if some of this due to some feeling that they’d dropped the ball on Trent Lott’s quote; they seem even more sensitive to gaffes/mis-statements/potentially embarrassing asides.

But let’s say we buy that, the reason then that Hagee’s comments on God creating the Holocaust so that Jews would go back to Israel is because … journalists didn’t find them tedious?

Second, a journalist of any moderate experience is likely to recognize that underlying critique as almost tediously familiar, even if worded more angrily than usual. And it’s easy to forget that plenty of Americans don’t ever hear this sort of attack, and certainly not worded this way.

I’d go so far as to say that this particular form of sophistication is more broadly based, and that not very many Americans are so completely unaware of the far left’s critique of foreign policy. In other words, it may be possible that some members of powerline’s audience hasn’t heard this before. Nevertheless, it’s pretty much certain that someone like John Hinderaker–educated at Dartmouth and Harvard Law–has heard this all before and does find it tediously familiar.

Hinderaker sees political advantage in this making a big deal out of it because the extremity of Wright’s expression makes it very difficult for more sober voices on the left to mount a limited defense of Wright’s underlying critique.