By Any Means Necessary

The heckling of President Obama by a Daily Caller reporter today is just the beginning, I fear. Make no mistake; this episode had nothing to do with getting a question answered. The Right will do whatever it takes to make the President seem weak and small and inept, and the reporter, Neil Munro, was just playing his part for the Cause.

The Daily Caller is unrepentant, btw. Their excuse is that the reporter thought the President was finishing his remarks. Tucker Carlson added,

“A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”

I sincerely hope the Daily Caller doesn’t get a White House press pass for the next decade. But this is going to keep happening, in any venue into which the Right can get an operative.

Brian Stelter, New York Times:

By shouting out and repeatedly interrupting the president during a speech, Mr. Munro violated decorum at the White House and generated online shouts of disapproval from other reporters, analysts and historians. The incident took place two weeks after the president’s top strategist, David Axelrod, was nearly drowned out at a campaign event by hecklers who had come to support Mitt Romney. …

…Mr. Obama had only been speaking for about five minutes when Mr. Munro first shouted. He continued speaking for another five minutes afterward.

Mr. Munro did not specify what he shouted, but other reporters who were present said the initial question was, “Mr. President, why do you favor foreign workers over Americans?”

Earlier, the editor in chief of The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson, defended Mr. Munro’s behavior as an act of journalism. Mr. Carlson, who was on an airplane at the time of the presidential statement, said he had not seen the incident, but “as far as I’m concerned, not having seen it, as a general matter, reporters are there to ask questions.”

He added, “No politician wants to answer questions, but that’s not our concern.”

Mr. Carlson, whose site has highlighted what it calls liberal media bias, said he expected the “Obama worshipers in the press” to attack Mr. Munro. When told that his reporter was being called a heckler, Mr. Carlson answered, “That’s what it’s called when you try to get the president to answer your question?”

Joan Walsh:

I’m not one to revere the imperial presidency, but it’s unbelievable how wingnuts treat this man with such unprecedented and bullying disrespect: from Rep. Joe Wilson screaming “You lie” during Obama’s 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress, to Speaker John Boehner denying him his choice of dates for another congressional address (for the first time in history) last fall, to Donald Trump’s persistent, humiliating demands for the president to show him his papers (with no rebuke from ally Mitt Romney). And for right-wingers who insist Democrats are too quick to cry racism: Really, what else explains this constant, in-your-face (literally) contempt for a president?

Certainly they disrespected President Clinton, too, but never with such in-person abuse. Clinton was impeached after a political witch hunt and treated poorly even by the so-called liberal media, but he was never stalked into the Rose Garden or congressional chambers and heckled, as Obama has been.

The Right thinks it is justified in disrespecting the President, because liberals are mean to them. This is going to keep happening.

The Children Are Easily Amused

Mikey Wilson, Sports Fan

Movement Conservatism in One Graphic

Yesterday the Romney campaign sent a bus to circle the venue where President Obama was speaking and honk at supporters waiting online. Metrosexual Black AbeJ explains this tactic in the first sentence of this post.

I realize most of us would look on the circling bus episode and think, “WTF?” It looks silly and desperate. But Josh Marshall nails this — what looks like a pointless, juvenile stunt to most people speaks to the very heart and soul of movement conservatism. Because, basically, all movement conservatism amounts to any more is a great acting-out of juvenile rebellion. And the children are eating it up.

For example, from Facebook, pulled from Buzzfeed

your kidding me, Guerilla tactics, the dumycrats invented this. You know the more Romney fights back, the more I’m coming around to supporting him, ive always said why don’t republicans play by the same rules that the dumycrats use, and finally somebody is doing it.

I have no idea when this meathead thinks Democrats did anything like this, but then juveniles do have a distorted view of the grownup world. Ultimately, it won’t matter whether Romney’s policy proposals are true to “movement conservatism” or not, any more than was the case with George W. Bush. Deep down, all the children really want is someone to be their proxy middle finger, waved at the world.