Even Dead Fish Deserve Better Than the Courant

I picked up a copy of the Hartford Courant last Monday (July 26 2010) for the first time in years and was actually considering getting a subscription. I had momentarily forgiven the past transgressions of their journalistic malpractice, as I am a forgiving soul (perhaps too much so). I have been feeling unsatisfied by the local papers lately. I had the practical goal of keeping up with proposed legislation at the state capital.

Then I opened up to the opinion section and saw the most intellectually unredeemable cartoon I have seen in a long time. It was a drawing by “Tote’s View” of a conservative with a copy of the Constitution in his hands and he is saying, “I’m not racist. I just want to go back to the Constitution as it was written”. On the Constitution is says “Slavery OK”.

No one needs to say it but I will anyway. How tunnel-visioned and shrilly partisan do you have to be to think this cartoon has any kind of point? It is certainly not funny.

Conservatives do not want to bring slavery back, and as I recall it, the Republican Party came into existence to abolish it and the Democrats that wanted to keep it. What we do want is for the court's to obey the clear textual parameters of the Constitution as it exists at the time. Stop reading stuff that isn't there and stop ignoring stuff that is -- like the Second Amendment for one. It is apparent the Hartford Courant has taken a page from “Journolist” and is calling anyone who opposes the Obama Agenda as racist.

"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares –- and call them racists".

-- Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent

What is truly racist is using the authentic past racism of the past and present to further a political view that has nothing to do with racism. In effect they are calling wolf and the result is we all become deaf to allegations of racism even on the occasions that it is real.

I will not be subscribing to the Courant after all. I really and truly hope they go out of business. That is exactly what they deserve for being so Neanderthal and engaging in gutter politics that is not only reprehensibly lowbrow but so much so that it insults the intelligence of all of us. Themselves most of all.

Shame on them.