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MSNBC: Hate Forward

March 24, 2014

MSNBC has made no secret of its sincere disdain for conservatives in any form: Republicans, the Tea Party, the Right, for starters. Obviously. These are terribly unserious people, gripped with a "hate" for President Obama, as the above SuperCut shows.

MSNBC's entire primetime lineup is stacked with liberal journalists and pundits, who in turn have on more liberal journalists, pundits, and Democratic lawmakers as their guests more than 90 percent of the time. The subject matter, as anyone who watches MSNBC knows, is nearly always to gleefully and freely shred Republicans. One common point of contention: Daring to oppose the commander in chief.

Yet, rather than engage Republican and conservative criticisms of Obama, anchors and guests often dismiss nearly all of them as stemming from a "hate" for the president. Hardball's Chris Matthews is frequently guilty of this, but others, such as Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O'Donnell, and a gamut of hosts and guests, also head straight to that talking point at the first sign of trouble.

Not dislike or disagreement. "Hate." That is a powerful word. It implies such an intense aversion that clearly there can be no rational thinking to any Republican critiques of Obamacare or minimum wage hikes or green energy cronyism or any other liberal causes worthy of debate.

The objective is clear. This requires no advanced analysis, as any child could simply sputter that a peer's disagreement simply stemmed from their "hatred." Also, it demonstrates not only the network's obvious inability to cover the White House with anything approaching objectivity, but further proof of a bizarrely intense loathing of conservatives.

This is, after all, the same network that tweeted from its official account that "maybe the right wing will hate" a Cheerios ad depicting a bi-racial family, had to dismiss an anchor for telling Sarah Palin to do a particularly vile act during a planned monologue, and had another lead a tone-deaf chuckle-fest at Mitt Romney's adopted black grandchild for looking so funny among his new white family members. That's all just since November.

So why debate people you so obviously hold in low esteem when one can de-legitimize you as a hater, infuriated over an election loss and clearly not to be discussed seriously? The Washington Free Beacon's Sonny Bunch touched on this earlier:

There are two ways to win an argument. The first is to calmly and rationally argue your position, gathering evidence and presenting it in a reasonable way that considers all the tradeoffs of various policy options.

The other is to stamp your feet and scream and denounce and ban and delegitimize.

[...]

This is, of course, one of the uglier aspects of the politicized life. When those with whom you disagree are not just wrong but also evil they and their ideas are unworthy of debating with. They are to be mocked and vitriol is to be heaped upon them—but their arguments are not to be touched. To do so would be to grant them a veneer of validity and run the risk of having their ideas contaminate the public at large.

As former employee Martin Bashir might say, "Indeed."