It never fails.
We get videos of angry, threatening right wing mobs screaming at people and inevitably, some conservative pundit will get invited on the news shows to be very concerned about violence on "both sides".
And Sunday, it was left to AM Joy's perpetual conservative balance, former SC GOP chairman Katon Dawson, to take the horrifying mob videos of Republican officials and their Proud Boys compatriots beating on doors, screaming after Nancy Pelosi and turn it into a both sides concern.
"It's the toxic nature of what's happening now on both sides and everybody's sort of culpable. I agree with the congressman that everybody has their right to protest. You have your right to organize. You also have your right and responsibility to keep it within the realms of the law."
Oh no, buddy, you're not going to blame the left for the violence and threats of The Proud Boys, who have been embraced by the party. You don't see any Democratic Party officials inviting antifa protesters to join them. There is no equivalence to this.
And Joy Reid knows it too, and calls Dawson out on his weak sauce:
"The problem with characterizing it as a 'both sides' thing, Katon. On this side, we're talking about staffers to members of the United States Congress participating in this, number one, and then the second thing is, you know, there isn't an equivalent of, you know, 'we don't have to advertise them.' They are showing up at conservative events called 'Unite the Right.' They're showing up at Republican events and feeling comfortable there.
The so-called alt-Right, which is basically white nationalists, have succeeded in just blending right in and being welcomed. Somebody who called himself the home of the alt right was in the administration. There are people inside the Trump administration with these sympathies. That is very different from what's going on on the Democratic side where a lady shows up with a baby on her hip and says women should not be assaulted. Those are not the same."
Damn straight. Dean Obeidallah:
Donald Trump has apparently decided that the best way to energize his base to vote this November is to paint the other side as an "angry mob." In fact, on Saturday at a rally in Nevada, Trump ratcheted up the scare tactics by hysterically declaring that Democrats are an "angry, ruthless, unhinged mob."
Well, Trump is partly right -- many of the people planning to vote against the GOP this election day are angry. But they aren't an "angry mob." They're "angry moms." And these outraged mothers appear ready to vote in big numbers for Democrats this midterm in order to send a message that they strongly disapprove of Trump.
Keeping in mind that the Republican majority represents an increasingly smaller and smaller percentage of the population and that they have therefore been ignoring the majority of their constituents' actual values.
If they further refuse to hold Town Halls or meet with their constituents, what exactly is left for citizens between elections?
The Root contributer Terrell J. Star has some advice for the pundits eager to tell us to stay civil in the face of what's happening:
The problem with white journalists’ calls for civility isn’t that they are white. It is that they refuse to do the personal work to understand how their white skin protects them from the uncivil, violent nature of the racist politicians they cover.
Civility is a false notion in a white supremacist framework. Most white journalists (even some black ones) refuse to acknowledge America’s laws are based on white supremacist ideology. If they did, they’d know that the oppressed cannot be civil because their society is uncivil.
Most white journalists refuse to call a racist a racist, preferring “racially tinged,” “racial insensitive,” and other empty wording that doesn’t accurately describe what they are covering. They do this because they refuse to see America as it is: an uncivil national.
If you are a public official, you belong to the public. And the public doesn’t have to like its government. You can’t confirm an alleged sexual abuser to the Supreme Court and expect sexual abuse survivors to let you eat dinner in peace.
You cannot be an elected official who OK’s separating children from their parents and expect to walk in your district without folks getting in your face about it. You can’t vote OK islamophobic policies and not expect citizens to interrupt your lunch with family.
White journalists calling for civility would not be so willfully naive if they interrogated their own whiteness. But they don’t have to because, well, they are white. That’s the truth and they will never admit that.
But white reporters will continue calling for civility towards racist, sexist elected officials because their white skin protects them from the uncivil behavior of the politicians they cover.
