RIGHT-WING FANATICS & 1963 & DALLAS & TODAY

Eric Boehlert writes about his fears of the climate being created by the right-wing forces regarding our President. He sees and feels Dallas 1963.

“The radical right, aided by a GOP Noise Machine that positively dwarfs what existed in 1963, has turned to demonizing Obama – making him into a vile object of disgust – into a crusade. It’s a demented national jihad, the likes of which this country has not seen in modern times,” he writes.

 

Scary times and we’ve seen it before.

 

Boehlert writes about media and politics and is a senior fellow for Media Matters for America. He wrote “Lapdog: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.” 

He comments via a piece in this month in Vanity Fair. It details the hatred that “ran wild in Dallas” in 1963.

 

The Vanity Fair cover story quotes President John Kennedy saying to Jacqueline, his wife, “Oh, you know we’re heading into nut country today.”

 

Well, today “nut country” far outdistances Dallas.

 

You can read Boehlert’s full article here: http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909180004 [1]) 

 

Vanity Fair’s article by Sam Kashner covers the fight over the book written by William Manchester at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy though not with her later approval. It can be found here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/10/death-of-a-president200910 [2]   

 

And while you are at Vanity Fair I’d suggest a look at an article by James Steele and Donald Barlett, a former Plain Dealer reporter, about the Bush administration and the TARP funding of banks. Barlett and Steele are two-time Pulitzer winners and considered the best of investigative reporting teams in the U. S.

 

It includes an uncomplimentary look at Key Bank of Cleveland, recipient of $2.5 billion in bailout funds, and its questionable lending practices on student loans. It can be found here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/10/bailout200910 [3]

 

There’s also a Lebron James piece but you can look for that yourself.