New York News Blog

Last week conservatives were telling us that the revolution was beginning in New York's 23rd Congressional District, where Conservative Party insurgent Doug Hoffman had knocked not-rightwing-enough Republican Dede Scozzafava off the ballot and was going to purify the GOP with a big victory.

This morning Hoffman conceded the race to Democrat Bill Owens, his remaining challenger.

The seat had been held by moderate Republicans since 1993, and Scozzafava held a 10-point lead on Owens a month ago. But, instigated by bloggers who called for her head on grounds of ideological impurity, national conservative Republicans, including Sarah Palin, rushed to endorse Hoffman.

Last weekend Scozzafava quit the race, and threw her support to Owens.

Update: Just for funsies, let's see how rightbloggers are reacting:

On the weekend before a nationally-covered upstate New York Congressional election, the Republican candidate endorsed the Democratic candidate. This is a rarity in American politics, if not a first.

Rightbloggers played a key role in this historical achievement. Let's step back several weeks and see what happened.

Once upon a time Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava was running for the 23rd Congressional District seat, which Republican John McHugh recently abandoned to serve as Obama's Secretary of the Army. Like McHugh and his predecessor Sherwood Boehlert, Scozzafava is (or was, depending on how you look at it) one of that vanishing breed known as moderate Republicans, with a mixed plate of positions. She's pro-choice and pro-gay-marriage, for example, but was endorsed in this race by the NRA.

She was challenged on the right by Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who called himself "the conservative Republican in this race." The Democrats nominated a rich lawyer, Bill Owens, who was a registered independent at the time of his selection.

In September Scozzafava was enjoying a comfortable 10-point lead on Owens, with Hoffman slightly behind him. Then conservatives, angered by Scozzafava's ideological impurities, started stirring the pot...

​On the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode aired on Sunday, Larry David took a leak, some of it got on a painting of Jesus, a Catholic saw the painting later and thought the painting had miraculously wept, etc. Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch readers find this (at present) the "cringe-iest"moment in the ep, beating "Larry grips belly fat to avoid death" by six points.

Some people are even more exercised and the profanation has the outrage mill in full churn.

"Would he think it comedic if someone urinated on a picture of his mother?" asks preeminent Catholic scold Bill Donohue. "This might be fun to watch, but since HBO only likes to dump on Catholics (it was just a couple of weeks ago that Sarah Silverman insulted Catholics on 'Real Time with Bill Maher'), and David is Jewish, we'll never know."

We'll probably never know how David's Judaism protects him in this case, either, but The Conservative Gentleman tries to provide a test case by painting a Hitler mustache on David's picture. "Now we have not had a serious axe to grind with Jews in the past," says the Gentleman, "but we are unsheathing and sharpening it for this one... Jews wonder why people around the world hate them, why they've been hated for thousands of years. Jews like Larry David are why." God, we've been waiting years for that explanation!...

A story floated by Glenn Beck claiming Nancy Pelosi is preparing to ban Fox News reporters from "the halls of Congress" has made its way to the pages of Hugh Hewitt and other citizen journalists. "Talk about an abuse of power!" cries In My Opinion. "Has Nancy Pelosi lost her mind," asks Patriot Mom. "There Goes Freedom of the Press," says Branden Espinoza. "Unbelievably shocking abuse of power!" roars The Recliner Commentaries. Etc.

Mass email and poster versions should be available soon, as should the inevitable post-debunking claims that it sounds like something Pelosi would do and therefore deserves wide dissemination.

Much has been written in recent days about the White House's War on Fox News, in which Administration officials have called the Republican-friendly network "the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party" and such like, excluded it from the President's media tours, and even tried unsuccessfully to remove it from pool interviews of other officials.

This cold-shouldering is generally seen as a mistake even by reporters presumed sympathetic to the Administration. We've had some trouble seeing the point ourselves, as has our colleague Ward Harkavy.

But a few observers cautiously approve the strategy. "I think they want us to take sides," says Michael Woolf. "Are you a Fox person or not a Fox person? And I think they want to identify Fox as the standard bearer of American conservatism. If you're a conservative, you're for Fox (ie, is that who you want to be?)."

That's an interesting angle. Suppose a citizen were sufficiently interested in this conflict to visit the opinion site Fox launched in March, Fox Nation. At this writing he would find an invitation to join the Tea Party Express ("Are You On It?"), "Teleprompter Declares War on Obama" with video from TownHall, and links to American Thinker, Radio Equalizer, and Michelle Malkin.

In other words, he'd be directed into the world of the rightbloggers, the shadowy terrain that is this column's bailiwick, and apparently a major part of Fox Nation. If Obama were trying to marginalize his media opposition, as Woolf suggests, he could hardly have picked better sources with which to do it.

Our focus this week is a topic covered by Fox Nation and many others which the Obama Administration may have been glad to see spread around: the alleged revelation of Barack Obama's mysterious college thesis....

Think conservatives aren't funny? Pajamas TV star Andrew Klavan is here to prove you wrong. Klavan starts by saying he will "set aside the usual mirthful merry-making," but you can tell by the twinkle in his eye it's a set-up. Sure enough, he describes his "sexual relations with David Letterman's wife," during which Mrs. Letterman says things like "Here's a trick I've never shown Dave." Klavan then steps back: "Well, look, it's not like I'm Roman Polanski... and Hollywood defends Polanski." Wait, there's more: "A world without sexual shame soon becomes a world not, unfortunately, of endless physical pleasure, but of unrestrained predators, victims without recourse, and children without hope and support." (Pause for laugh.)

In closing, Klavan posits "four simple rules for running your sex life so it doesn't piss me off." One of them: "Rape is one of the lowest of crimes because it deprives others of their personal choices in order to satisfy your own craving for power. It's like being a Democrat!" Also like being a Democrat: Child rape. Klavan also doesn't want to pay for your abortions and sexually transmitted diseases. Thanks, try the veal. (h/t Rumproast)

The National Football League has a large millionaire population which predictably contributes overwhelmingly to Republicans over Democrats. Yet this week we learned from rightbloggers that the NFL is in fact a wing of the liberal conspiracy.

Early this month Rush Limbaugh and Dave Checketts collaborated on a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise. But after some people in the League -- including Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith -- raised objections to the controversial radio host's involvement, and Colts owner Jim Irsay said he'd vote against any bid involving him, Limbaugh found hmself off the team.

It was believed that comments Limbaugh had made about black people generally, and black people in the NFL specifically -- comparing NFL games to confrontations "between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons," for example -- influenced his critics in the League, leading to his ouster.

Bidding on pro sports franchises is usually subject to league review, which does not always go the bidders' way, as when Jim Balsillie unsuccessfully tried to take over the NHL Coyotes earlier this year. The fairness of such procedures may be disputed, but it's rare that anyone tries to make a Constitutional issue of them: sports business, like sports, has rules, and those that don't like them may go play somewhere else.

But the involvement of Limbaugh -- who quickly blamed his defenestration on Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who had opposed the bid -- elevated for rightbloggers this bit of inside-football to Code Red status, and the NFL to fellow travelers whom they proposed to punish with their ultimate, if unlikely, weapon: a conservative boycott of pro football...

In the annals of rightwing hubris, we haven't seen much to equal this: one of the conservatives enraged that Rush Limbaugh's ex-partners have excluded him from their plans to buy the Rams (which Limbaugh and his followers blame on liberals) has proposed that patriots counter-attack by... boycotting the NFL.

"I have cancelled my DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket package (including the Supercast)," declares "Teflon" of Moltenthought.com. "I will not watch ONE MINUTE of NFL games or coverage this season -- including the Super Bowl." He also says that, like all good Americans, "I have two official [Raiders] jerseys -- I will be following the suggestion to cut them up and sent them to [NFL Commissioner] Roger Goodell." That's going the extra mile, soldier!...

Fresh from disgusting the nation with his so-called "Nobel 'Peace' Prize," President Obama's latest outrage is that he will not meet with hippies in San Francisco, but will instead meet with rich people at a Democratic fundraiser there.

"Hiding from the leftists in San Francisco," says Michelle Malkin. "Obama to avoid the rabble on S.F. visit," says the San Francisco Chronicle. "Obama to Hide from Liberals in San Francisco," says New York magazine. "Obama fears Code Pink," says Don Surber, and other "groups that supported The Won. Bluck, bluck, bluck, bluck, bluck..."

This week Time magazine had an interesting feature on the Obama Administration's alleged realization that it needed to strike back at "what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims..." You have to wonder what took them so long -- and whether such a counter-attack could possibly do any good.

As we've shown here ceaselessly, the rightblogger wing of the anti-Obama offensive has been working since the Inauguration to publicize not only the President's failures, but also his successes as failures. Indeed, they even promote irrelevancies and their own fantasies as Obama failures. Answering this kind of thing with fact-checking and criticism seems beside the point, like arguing with a tape-recording of a Tourette Syndrome episode.

What sort of answer, for example, could be offered to the charge that winning the Nobel Peace Prize is a bad thing? Outside the context of the rightbloggers' war against Obama, the charge makes no sense; within that context, it makes no difference. To answer it would be like arguing that kittens are nice, or that fresh fruit is healthy.

All one can reasonably do is document the reaction and hope that, in some more enlightened age, our descendants can make something useful of it...