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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