A Proposal for a Rapid Response Mechanism

Stephen's reccent posting of Rabbi Lerner's statement on the neeed for rapid response with regard to the issue of Gay Rights made me think. Here is what I propose as a Left model for answering the agents of intolerance.

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Movement conservatives are correct about one thing: there is an organized political war on Christianity. However it is not being carried out by liberals, but by the New Right. Its targets are not so much atheists and agnostics, but progressive and tolerant Christianities as well the nuanced teachings of Judaism, Islam as of well as the non-Abrahamic beliefs. Its shock troops are the Institute on Religion and Democracy trying to destroy the traditional social justice mission of the mainline protestant denominations as well as the Catholic League’s boorish assaults on progressive Catholics and “secular� Jews.

In a broader sense it is a war on both spirituality and loyal religious dissent. The Golden Rule does not serve but conflicts with the aims of neoconservatism and its like-minded causes. Thus, religious philosophies that were intended to be based upon acts of conscience are presently being manipulated by appealing to the believers’ sense of obedience to God. It is a slight of the hand designed to substitute the authority of powerful persons for the authority of the Almighty. The New Right fully understands that if a given faith’s congregants can be made to see religion as “unapologetically dogmatic,� they can more easily made to see government in the same light.

This war on progressive faith is being conducted by New Right groups that Joe Conason keenly observed as having “…overlapping personnel and total reliance on the largesse of conservative foundations and corporations.� A good example of such overlap is an organization known as the Institute for Religion and Democracy (“IRD�). The names of its advisors and directors, as well as their funding sources, appear over and over again on many of the New Right’s political agent organizations. As Media Transparency observed, “IRD directors are on the boards and actively involved in other ultra-conservative groups including the Project for the New American Century, Institute on Religion and Public Life, National Taxpayers Union, Concerned Women for America, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and American Enterprise Institute .� The IRD’s links to Kristol and other PNAC operators just are too numerous and strategically placed to be merely coincidental.

It is no accident that those who fund the American Enterprise Institute and the PNAC also fund the message of today’s religious fundamentalism. They are mutually reliant allies. The imposition of a more authoritarian Christianity it is very much part of the neoconservative vision for a more orthodox America where dissent is stifled and free thought gives way to conformity.

The New Right approaches the advocacy of its message with both dedication and precision. They generate unified conservative talking points. The designated message is then handed to both their pundits and their political candidates whose job it is to inject the precisely chosen words into the public discourse; this is usually done by playing the media like a fiddle; conservative spinners know that lazy “mainstream� reporters who abstain from fact-checking are the perfect tool for selling policy positions. To further ensure that their message spreads, they even have available media outlets that share a common political agenda such as NewsMax, Fox News and MSNBC/CNBC/NBC; and most cynically, they are now attempting to hijack religious dominations in order to put an authoritative, moral stamp upon their laissez-faire economic dogma.

Liberalism’s task is to create a mechanism that would function as Todd Gitlin’s “complicator� to the Right’s spin machine. It must learn how to effectively refute their endless parade of myths and half-truths while simultaneously eviscerating their anti-hero status. Liberal “truth-squads� must be developed and maintained to prevent conservative urban legends from becoming accepted fact. And most of all, the credibility of the New Right’s fact-challenged punditry most be constantly challenged so that whenever they make one of their usual choreographed outrageous charges its credibility will immediately be called into question by the vital center. Fast and accurate rebuttal is necessary to winning hearts and minds of voters who are now not part of the liberal base, the vital center.

The answer is quite simple: go directly to the people. Instead of going head on with the likes of Coulter, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, they should be outflanked by a campaign of media advertising, direct mailing and press releases. If the millionaire liberals who are now forming Democracy Alliance truly want to get the biggest bang for the buck, this is the way to go.

Already there are entities such as David Brock’s Media Matters.com as well as Media Transparency, but they are not enough. The answer is to fund them so that when Mr. O’Reilly starts another Christmas jihad describing Agape’s inaccurately describing La Befana as a Christmas witch or “The Little Christmas Tree’s Gift� as being anti-religious both the press releases and media spots that would set the record straight will be in action within the very same twenty-four hour news cycle. Better yet, if such a rapid response were to come from a progressively religious PAC, the effects would be even more devastating. That will accomplish two necessary tasks: inject a quick response into the mainstream press’s bloodstream while eroding the credibility of talking heads such as Rush, O’Reilly and Sean.

Here is how it would work. Take the aforementioned Bill O’Reilly distortion of the Dodgeville, Wisconsin Christmas pageant. Within one twenty-four hour news cycle of his diatribe citing the Agape News Service’s version as undisputed fact, press releases that accompany television advertising disputing the charge citing reliable sources such as the AP. The ads would explain the real significance of La Befana and explain that it was the choir director of Ronald Reagan’s Bel-Air, California congregation who wrote “The Little Tree’s Christmas Gift� and how it contains tradition Yuletide songs. If doable, employ interviews with the actual participants in the controversy. Frame it with the tagline, “Bill O’Reilly is at it again.� Run the rebuttal and close it with the statement; “Can’t Bill ever get anything right?�

For a more lethal response, humor should be employed. There is nothing that disarms a punk like Bill O’Reilly or a windbag like Rush Limbaugh better than ridicule. This is evidenced by how hostile O’Reilly was in his last appearance on The Daily Show, knowing that The Cobert Report, Comedy Central’s’s send-up of self-important blowhards such as O’Reilly, began it run that very same day. Many of these folks are so nasty that they are often unable to laugh at themselves. Quick responses laced with humor will not only get them off their game, but will rapidly inject an aura of their unreliability into the minds of many Americans.

Imagine how Jon Stewart’s “Continental Skiff Boat Oarsmen for Veracity� would have effectively disarmed the Swift Vets distortion campaign against John Kerry had it been part of an immediate nationally televised rebuttal instead of just being a skit during the 2004 Emmy Awards. Sometimes mockery is the best form of rebuttal.

This is the very type of response that often finds it way into the mainstream press’s topic of conversation. Unfortunately today’s fifth estate is more impressed with the entertainment value of a story instead of its newsworthiness. It is merely a matter of playing to lower standards in order to convey a vital message that the press would not otherwise cover.

Imagine the quandary Senator Rick Santorum would face if he had to face attack ads from a liberal religious PAC, an attack he would hardly expect.. A significant portion of his religious base would begin to rethink just how “Christian� his receipt of $67,000 in tobacco industry contributions, his assault on Social Security and ambiguous Opus Dei connections truly are.

Such an attack on Senator Rick Santorum would not only send shivers through his campaign, but through the entire New Right movement. It would be a clear signal that the non-Socialist Left has ended its period of self-marginalization and has earnestly begun its process of reasserting itself as mainstream American political philosophy.

In the final analysis it wasn’t the fundamentalist Christian voter turnout that cost Kerry the White House; instead it was that he allowed Swift boat campaign to inaccurately define him as a lying traitor. Kerry simply waited far too long before hitting back. By the time the Democratic nominee responded after the Republican convention, he had been attacked for a whole month: the damage was done.

The American people would have kicked Mr. Bush out of office by a solid five percent margin if Senator Kerry had immediately refuted on the Swift Boat Vets. No matter how strongly he closed in during October, John Kerry’s inaction in August forced him to make up more ground than necessary. And that may have been just enough to ensure George W. Bush’s reelection.