Diana West calls out Brent Bozell on his double standards

art credit: mediacriminaljustice.blogspot.com

I used to like Brent Bozell. I always looked forward to his guest spot on Thursdays with Sean Hannity. He’s spoken at Tea Party events. I thought he was a good guy.

Diana West just published an open letter to him on his support of networks banning Roger Stone (h/t Breitbart Big Journalism; see Ralph's earlier CTPP blog on Stone here).  And in light of the just-in reports of Cruz’s very dirty tricks in the Colorado GOP delegate selection process (see here and here), I thought I would share her article in full (WARNING: X-rated Bad language alert):  

The PCE, Pt. 16: Brent Bozell and the Stone Standard

Written by: Diana West 

Friday, April 08, 2016 6:11 AM  

To: Brent Bozell

I read the statement you made as president of the Media Research Center, applauding CNN and MSNBC for banning Trump supporter Roger Stone from their presidential election coverage.

CNN, Politico reports, banned Stone in February over his tweets about Jeb Bush supporter and CNN analyst Ana Navarro (Stone called her “Entitled Diva Bitch,” “Borderline retarded,” and “dumber than dog s---” [stet]). The MSNBC ban follows Stone's recent radio discussion of his planned Stop the Steal movement at the upcoming GOP convention in Cleveland, in which, as Breitbart reports, he said there would be protests, demonstrations and that

we will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are.

We urge you to visit their hotel and find them. You have a right to discuss this, if you voted in the Pennsylvania primary, for example, and your votes are being disallowed.

You then wrote that such threats

and his [Stone's] long history of incendiary and offensive rhetoric add no value to the national discourse. ... Stone is a thug who relishes personal insults, character assassination, and offensive gestapo-like tactics that should be unequivocally dismissed by civil society, most especially those who might give him a platform from which to spew his hatred.

The news media have for far too long ignored Stone’s inflammatory words. I hope all media outlets that lament the debasement of political dialogue and the gutter politics for which Stone is infamous follow the lead of CNN and MSNBC. The media should shun him. He is the David Duke of politics. Those with whom he is affiliated should denounce him in no uncertain terms.

Having seized these non-partisan heights of rhetorical-cleansing -- which has nothing to do with your visceral opposition to Donald Trump (whom Stone supports) -- I will assume this is only your first step.

That is, Stone Standard in hand, you must be now turning your cleansing energies toward the rest of the Right, where public rhetoric of crudity and intimidation very often exceeds that of former CNN and MSNBC commentator Roger Stone, Hated One.

No? Not yet? You're not aware? Allow me to be of help. I have been creating what I call the Right's Anti-Trump Lexicon by logging the vile, the vicious, the violent, the demonizing, the patronizing, the vexed, the childish, the angry, the dehumanizing language used by GOP and conservative commentators and professionals to revile Trump and millions of Trump voters.

As an example, I can offer you two excellent candidates for your consideration, according to your own Stone Standard.  

The first is Rick Wilson, top GOP strategist, Rubio supporter and, reportedly, speech-writer of Mitt "Family Values" Romney's CPAC denunciation of Donald Trump.

Exhibit A.

With this one vicious, deviant tweet, well-known GOP professional Wilson has hit virtually every lowest marker of the Stone Standard -- "incendiary and offensive rhetoric," "personal insults," "character assassination," etc. -- instantly resulting in "the debasement of politicial dialogue." Indeed, the public square is forever rancid.

There's more.

Wilson uses irresponsibly violent language to discuss the Trump candidacy, actually invoking the assassination of Donald Trump and the summary execution of his supporters. 

For example: The donor class "are still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. And that’s a fact,” Wilson said on MSNBC.

A "bullet"? I'm sure you find this not only "incendiary and offensive," but also dangerously "inflammatory."

Wilson, among others, has further corrupted our democratic discourse with bizarre revenge scenarios. Trump supporters, Wilson has tweeted, are no better than "collaborators" "Vichy Republicans," who may face "epuration sauvage" (summary executions) "up against a wall."   

Where Roger Stone denigrated the intelligence of his CNN colleagues, Rick Wilson does the exact same thing to Trump supporters, dismissing them all as "low-information voters." Further: "Most of them [Trump supporters]," Wilson stated on MSNBC, "are childless single men who masturbate to anime."

Is there not something wrong with political "analysis" that makes a viewer want to take a bath?

A second candidate for your consideration is National Review's Kevin Williamson, a regular commentator on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. Like Wilson, Williamson is another one who has exceeded the Stone Standard, and with similar sicko touches. "The gross thing is, you can kind of imagine a Trump sex tape," he wrote in National Review.

Since you took exception to Roger Stone tweeting that his CNN colleague was a "bitch," I am sure you will be similarly outraged by Williamson tweeting that Donald Trump was a "bitch." And not just any kind of a "bitch."

 

Such talk -- and there is much more -- from the director of the "William F. Buckley fellowship in political journalism" debases more than political dialogue, no? 

In an essay originally titled "Father-Fuhrer" (Trump -- get it??), Williamson expresses more group-rancor, more group-hatred than I've seen from any other "thought leader" -- outside Black Lives Matter or the Cultural Revolution, that is -- asserting that white working class communities, where support for Trump is strong,  "deserve to die."

"Deserve to die"? Once again, we see the Stone Standard exceeded. Stone, after all, called for Trump voters to "discuss" the possible steal of their votes with delegates who may do the stealing -- fraught and ill-advised enough, to be sure. He has not, however, asserted that anyone -- including delegates breaking trust with primary voters -- "deserve to die."

If this is not beyond the pale, what is?

Williamson, too, castigates Trump supporters, calling these Americans he disagrees with, "bad citizens with defective judgement." Further, he has written in the pages of National Review that they are "engaged in the political version of masturbation: sterile, fruitless self-indulgence." 

What it is with these two men and masturbation is not, Glory Be, our concern; rather, it is their hellish level of discourse. I am wondering whether you will be issuing another righteous statement, as you did regarding Roger Stone, calling for "the media to shun" this noxious pair (and others, as you will see) and "denounce [them] in no uncertain terms"?

Somehow, I doubt it. 

It is similarly sickening to see the primary process corrupted, whether by intimidation, interference, or payoffs, and those we thought were conservative-value commentators have little, if anything to say about that corruption. 

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