If you needed anymore evidence that the right-wing really is clogged with people who are little more than authoritarians with a built-up need to be servile to their leadership, check out this Captain Ed post in which he agrees that the reporter I linked last night was right on the facts, but still was wrong:
Earlier this week, AP reporter Glen Johnson acted unprofessionally by essentially heckling Mitt Romney during a press conference when Romney said that he would not be beholden to lobbyists if elected President. Even a bystander called Johnson “rude and ugly”, a moment caught on YouTube. However, the Boston Herald — a paper with a rightward bent — believes that Johnson may have won on the facts while losing on the visuals…
Does this make Johnson look any better? No, but it makes Romney look a little worse. Politicians like to deride lobbyists and claim that they will have no favors to repay when they get to Washington, but it’s hard to make that argument when more than a dozen of them raise funds for the candidate. Regardless of whether they “run” the campaign, these lobbyists have helped fund it, and that makes the anti-lobbyist rhetoric somewhat hypocritical, regardless of the parsing of the word “run”.
Got it? Romney lied out his ass, even right-wing newspapers are calling him on his bullshit, and Ed claims it was Johnson who was “rude and unprofessional.”
Apparently, the professional response would have been to swallow Romney’s bullshit and say nothing like a good little stenographer. I mean, how dare someone have the temerity to call a liar a liar? So rude!
This attitude really is appalling. It is not rude and unprofessinal to ask tough questions. it is not rude and unprofessional to argue with a candidate when they are lying (or, if you prefer it, “spinning.”). It is not rude to call bullshit. Mitt Romney is asking us for OUR vote. We owe him nothing, and he has to earn our respect.
He could start earning that respect by being honest. Until then, I encourage some more “unprofessional” and “rude” behavior.
