Centrist writer John Avlon has given two more deserving partisans his highly coveted “Wingnut of the Week” award on CNN. This time the honors go to Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (who said Republicans opposing President Barack Obama’s policies are “rooting against the country”) and to Republican Audra Shay (who says if you think Obama is anything but anti-American you’re “igorant” and who seemingly approved of blatantly racist comments left on her Facebook page).
Here’s how the author and Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani sets it up on the CNN website:
Here’s one mistake wingnuts always make: they view political opponents as their enemies, not well-intentioned fellow Americans. They demonize disagreement.
He gives more details on Waxman, then:
Waxman’s comments underscore a problem for Democrats that began creeping into polling numbers this week: The election of 2008 was not a blank check liberal ideological mandate. President Obama is broadly popular, but the Democrat-controlled Congress is not. One of the reasons for this gap is the president’s post-partisan approach to problem-solving. In contrast, hyper-partisans end up being their own side’s worst enemy because they alienate the moderate majority of Americans.
But speaking of calling your opponents anti-American, few can outdo the leading candidate to be the next chairman of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay. “I think that you are ignorant if you believe this man is anything but anti-American,” she wrote about President Obama on her Facebook page.
(Avlon did a lot of research on this particular story and even wrote extensively linked posts on it) Read the entire post.
Here’s the video version of this post (not totally the same) as it aired on CNN:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.