Sunday, February 14, 2010

Why Dana Loesch Won't Respond To Me

Two days ago, right-wing radio host Dana Loesch baselessly attacked me in a series of comments on Twitter, suggesting that I was "stealing her intellectual property" when I debunked her talking points or reported on local tea party events.  I pointed out that she was completely wrong, and all of a sudden she "didn't have time to respond to every criticism."  She also attacked me by name on her facebook account.  Her husband also accused me of "libel" and "stealing intellectual property" on Twitter, spending hours arguing with people.  When I responded to him, all of a sudden he "didn't have time to respond to every criticism."  He also accused me of lying on his facebook account.  For some reason he had added me as a friend a while ago, so I posted my response to his attack.  He immediately blocked me on facebook, not allowing me to comment.  I guess he "didn't have time to respond to every criticism."  This is in fact part of a long pattern of behavior, where Loesch will make vague, unsubstantiated criticisms of me, and then categorically refuse to engage in discussion when I point out the inaccuracies of her claims.  I'm pretty sure that I know why. 
Before offering my hypothesis, let me point out a series of things that are definitely not the reason why she won't respond:
  1. She's too honorable to use her wide reach to attack specific individuals.  This is certainly not the case.  In addition to the her numerous personal attacks on other people (detailed below), she is willing to use my full name when she attacks me.  Furthermore, she even was willing to state my place of employment and suggest that I was somehow violating my school's policy.  In other words, not only is she willing to use her media to personally attack people, she's willing to use it to try to get people fired who criticize her (which btw, I am not at all worried about).  The only things she's not willing to mention are my blog and my Twitter account, because she knows that doing so would allow her readers to see my responses.
  2. She's unwilling to engage in debate with people who disagree with her: This is also not true.  Loesch has argued on Twitter with the St. Louis Young Dems, with a blogger named The Queen of Spain, and with David Shuster.  
  3. She won't validate people who personally attack her.  First of all, she will in fact argue with people who personally attack her.  I think it fits nicely into the whole conservative victimhood complex.  But more to the point, I actually don't personally attack her.  I have pointed out here and elsewhere numerous falsehoods and contradictions in her publicly stated political rhetoric, just as I have done with many other bloggers and politicians. But pointing out that someone is wrong is not the same as personally attacking that person.  In fact, I delete quite a few comments on my blog that are personally attacking her: claims that she is "a hick" or "didn't go to a good school."  I delete these claims both because they are unsubstantiated and because they are not relevant to evaluating Loesch's political stance.
  4. She doesn't have time.  She apparently has time to read my blog posts and tweets and to accuse me of "stealing intellectual property."  She also has time to attack me by name.  So why wouldn't she have time to respond to anything else?
So much for that.  But this leads us back to the question of why is it that she's unwilling to engage in actual debate or discussions, and particularly to give her readers any hint of where to find me on the internet?  I think there are two pretty obvious reasons:
First, her attacks are baseless, and she knows that I could point that out if she linked to my blog or Twitter account.  To be a little more specific:
  1. She claims that I make personal attacks.  As stated above, I focus on her political positions and do not care at all about her personal life.
  2. She claims that I am a stalker.  My responses are to her public content.  The whole point of blogs and twitter are to make your opinions public (at least in cases where they are kept public), so you can hardly complain when someone responds to them.  Compare this to true stalkerish behavior, like that of right-winger Jim Durbin, threatening to "release personal information" of people who disagree with him.  She also claims that I "stalk" other right-wing bloggers Durbin, Bill Hennessy, Gina Loudon, and John Loudon.  The only way someone could "stalk" all those people is if the word "stalk" simply means, "reads some the blog posts of."
  3. She claims I steal her intellectual property.  Nope, everything I do is protected by the fair use doctrine of copyright law.
  4. She claims that I'm a liar.  I document all of my posts with links and screenshots so that people can make up their own minds.  In some cases I might not post screenshots for the sake of readability, but I'm happy to provide them if people ask.  This is in stark contrast to Loesch and her husband who attack me without providing any evidence whatsoever.  If they want to accuse me of lying, or any of the above character flaws, they have an obligation to provide evidence.
So an inability to back up her attacks is one huge reason she won't engage in discussion with me.  But an ever bigger reason, in my opinion, is that she knows that I am able to point out the falsehoods, personal attacks, and hypocrisy that basically are the bread and butter of her public persona:
  1. Personal attacks.  Dana falsely accused St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Reddington of not looking at medical records before filing charges.  Last week, she mindlessly attacked my friend Melanie Shouse, a recent victim of breast cancer, without knowing anything about Melanie's situation.  She called a woman a "union thug" last year and accused her of attacking a tea partier when in fact the man attacked her.  All of these people are human beings with families who would be wounded by Loesch's smears, yet Loesch somehow thinks it's perfectly OK to personally attack people with whom she disagrees.
  2. Falsehoods.  All of the above cases involve blatant falsehoods.  Loesch also completely fabricated a story claiming that the federal government was funneling people to ACORN.  She also claimed that an HCAN rally was "astroturf" because it had people with Obama shirts, but she actually used video from an OFA rally two weeks before.  
  3. Intellectual dishonesty. In none of the above cases does Loesch ever acknowledge that she was wrong or inaccurate.  In the case where she called the woman a "union thug," she simply deleted her original post without mentioning a word about it being false.  Even Fox News apologizes for using video from the wrong rally, but Loesch simply ignored the fact that her video was from the wrong rally when it was pointed out to her.  She continually provides false information to her fans, and she is unwilling to correct herself even when the claims are shown to be false beyond all reasonable doubt.
  4. Hypocrisy.  Several of the above are great examples of blatant hypocrisy, since Loesch falsely accuses me of doing things she does on  regular basis.  There are others as well.  Loesch constantly rails against "political correctness," yet she's willing to accuse people of racism simply for not believing right-wing story-lines about events.  Similarly, she makes jokes about "tea bags," but she acts as if it's a "slur" when Democratic politicians or liberals use the term.
  5. Astroturfing and Phony Bluster.  Loesch pretends that the leaders of the local tea party (including herself) are committed to conservative principles rather than carrying water for the Republican Party, but her actions speak differently.  Loesch screamed and threatened that the tea party would be "coming for Blunt" if he didn't endorse conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.  Blunt ignored them, and they simply quieted down and have been carrying water for Blunt ever since
So I certainly don't expect Dana Loesch to be responding to me anytime soon.  If she did, she would be exposing her sheltered listeners and readers to volumes of documentation of her falsehoods and hypocrisy.   So instead she'll probably continue to make her attacks from the safety of her blog and radio show, worrying every day that people might actually start to get informed about the emptiness of St. Louis Tea Party leaders' rhetoric.  I'm an optimist though: I think the truth has a way of coming out, even when people like her do everything they can to avoid it.

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the specifics, Adam. I used to think Ms. Loesch was a cute writer of mommyhood, until somehow she decided she was the midwestern Sarah Palin. Full of the same vague claims and innuendos, and using the same thought processes (that you detail quite clearly above) that I imagine led Ms. Palin to ban all recorded media from her upcoming speeches. So much easier to rant unrestrainted if no evidence of the inaccuracies and falsehoods exists - or, in Ms. Loesch's case, are easily accessible to your readers or listeners. Hopefully, some of them will take it upon themselves to become more educated than she wants them to be.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It becomes more painfully clear, with each passing week, that this 'revolutionary' movement (as described by Mrs. Palin) is only the natural revolution of cycles and nothing more. Americans have become quite effective at going to the polls to register their current disatisfaction with the here and now, but rarely even consider what it is that they have just done- which is of course to put the very same ineffectual 'leaders' back into office that got the country in this big mess in the first place. Quick with the ballot punching, and slow with the realization that nothing really seems to change with their votes. In all of this media-driven tea 'party' excitement, with each passing week seeing who is actually comprising this tea 'party', one is left wondering WHERE ALL OF THE TRUE LIBERTARIANS ARE????? Where the heck is Ron Paul and those like him? Why are we seeing NO ONE but rank and file Republicans and fringe right-wingers declaring a revolution while political independents just sit back and watch the ball pinging and ponging back and forth between the two nearly worthless political parties? It's just madness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Do not make the mistake of thinking because Loesch and her cronies don't attack Blunt, they are carrying his water. They aren't at all.

    They ARE opportunists, who quicky realized that they were marginalizing themselves by not appearing to be supportive of Republicans.

    The reality is, Loesch and her cronies are closer to libertarians, except when it comes to using government as a weapon against their perceived enemies.

    Loesch, Loudon, et al----are NOT SUPPORTIVE in any way to Republicans.

    They simply won't criticize in public to preserve the appearance of not being kooks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Comments made about Loesch being a hick, can absolutely be substantiated.

    She referred to herself as a bumpkin many times on her early "mamalogues" blog posts.

    Getting new teeth and free healthcare, maid service, free trips and gratuities, are absolutely relevant to discuss in the context that Dana Loesch rants against so much of that when it's not her benefiting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I read some of her stuff. She is plainly an idiot. Keep pointing out her frequent fallacious "facts" and all will be well. She would not be whining if your "attacks" did not have merit.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's not just her or her husband who do these things.

    The Tea Party loves to do two things:
    * YELL AT TOWN HALL MEETINGS LIKE THIS!
    * And break into people's computers and personal information than it would make the most black-hatted hacker blush with shame.

    Last year, a devoted Tea Party supporter smeared my Wikipedia profile page posting my full name, my parents names, and the names of my siblings, then wrote about my online surfing habits, most of which was false and fabricated.

    However, the dumb idiot failed to realize that on Wikipedia, unregistered users are logged by their IP address, and that there are also other users who prevent people from getting away with posting such blatant personal attacks.

    An IP Address lookup found out who this person was, as well as the list of website that had pointed him out to be blacklisted by several Internet Security websites due to his deepseated political beliefs and possible psychatric condition. (Oh, If only there was some organized group that would work to help him get the healthcare needed to cover his mental illness! *cough*HCAN*cough*)

    Needless to say, the police were called to resolve this issue, which in Missouri seems a little fruitless because most police departments still do not have a cybercrimes task force to deal with people like him.

    It should also be noted that this disturbed individual had been abusing the OFA Newsletters and blogs to threaten and smear OFA members as well as steal financial and personal information.

    The Tea Party believes they can use intimidation to silence Obama supporters and what remains of the center-right Republican Party that is being high-jacked by Fixxed Noise and the Tea Party to assimilate far-right political beliefs and obstructionism into the GOP.

    The party that we have gladly spared with for decades is having its identity stolen by radicals who support a neo-conservative ideology.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Re: "hicks." No, I think you're completely wrong. You use the term "hick" as a pejorative. But there's a wide variety of beliefs and values among both rural, urban, and suburban people, so your use of the term amounts to little more than name-calling. I don't care if Loesch was a Rhodes scholar; her argument style would still be just as ridiculous.

    Also, you don't provide any evidence for any of the other claims (teeth, maid service, etc), so it's basically just gossipy here-say. Her claims about global warming are just as misleading whether or not she has maid service. Please stick to the political content rather than personal attacks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anon at Feb. 15, 7:35, it seems like everything you say is simply speculation. If they're speaking in favor of Republican politicians, who cares whether they "secretly don't agree with them?" They are carrying water for them with their actions, and I'm not really interested in speculating about what their true motivations are.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Where are loesch and her cronies speaking for repubs? They do nothing but criticize and distance themselves. Thankfully! Because the repubs don't want them.

    Loesch mentions all the freebies she gets on air every week. Dental, health care , maid service, etc. She gets a lot of free perks from sponsors and wannabe- sponsors, now that her star is rising. She accepts the gratuities without shame-- yet criticizes others for doing the same.

    Hick is name- calling---true. In this case it's accurate. Loesch proves that she can't overcome her background. She ran a begathon for her inlaws before their medical fees were written off; she advocated keeping our kids home from school to protest Obama - without telling people she homeschooled her children; her values are very much from Hicksville; heck she just sent out an email saying she's been involved in politics her "whole life"! That's a blatant lie!!
    Loesch has deleted a lot of her history in order to rewrite it... Fortunately she didn't do it soon enough. I stand by my hick remark because I believe she exhibit s many of traits.

    Hope this helps!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Don't feel bad..Dana won't respond to me either, (her biological Dad) or her 84 year old grandmother. If you want the truth about her background or the truth about the false accusations she has made, just call me, Paul Eaton, Piedmont, MO. I am a 100% disabled vietnam vet. She stood in front of the Vietnam Memorial Wall and said she wished my name was on there..But I am still here and I am not very happy with her outrageous behavior and ridiculous accusations.

    ReplyDelete