I have lived in one of the blue-est areas of California for the better part of 20 years and as a result have developed a pretty strong left leaning slant. Moreover, most of the people I hang out with tend to have a similar slant. This post is education for those people.

Following is a round-up of the right wing press in the aftermath of the election.

I was actually was pretty surprised by the overall lack of vitriol in most of the “reporting” that these guys do. There was a lot of the standard FUDs about Obama (left-winger, socialist, inexperienced etc.) but the truly mean personal attacks that usually frequent these outlets seem to be missing.The overall frequency and ferocity of attacks on the Man was much lower than expected and perhaps an acknowledgment by even them of the change in tone that the country has taken.

Starting with something resembling mainstream we start at Fox News.

From eyeballing the headlines on the opinions pages, most of them weren’t even about Obama and centered around McCain: he shouldn’t have lost, why he lost, he has himself to blame for his loss, “Benedict Arnold Savages Palin” etc.

I was amused by the following story on the opinions page, mainly because I couldn’t tell if it was being sarcastic or not:

Obama Needs a Strong Foreign Policy
“Democrats need to spell out clearly the convictions that underlie their vision of American leadership in the post-9/11 world. Fortunately, in President-elect Barack Obama they have a supremely articulate messenger who is intellectually up to the task.”

The other quote which I found amusing (in a “you have got to be kidding me” kind of way) was from the jackass Bill O’Reilly:

“Uncertainty breeds fear, which is why Obama won, because people are so fearful and angry about the economy.”

What?? Mr Hope, Happiness and Sunshine won because of fear??

Shifting the dial to the right, we look to the grand messiah of mainstream conservative talk, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush seemed to fall back on familiar themes and not spend that much time lashing out at Obama. Some of his quotes with thoughts:

“I would like to congratulate President-Elect Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen. Without Obama, we would still be dealing with the specter of Hillary Clinton lurking around the Democrat Party, seeking the White House.”
[To Rush, Hillary is truly the anti-Christ, nothing in the world beats her.]

“I’ve just been handed a note here: ‘President Dmitri Medvedev orders missiles deployed in Europe as world hails Obama.’ No big deal. Another note: ‘Palestinians launch rocket attack into Israel as world hails Obama.’ No big deal.”

“As long as you start making excuses for your failure, you’re never going to get to the core of the problem, and the core of the problem today is that the Republican Party — for some inexplicable reason — decided to abandon conservatism.”
[This has been a favorite topic of Rush (pretty much since Newt Gingright left) and he seems to be returning to it with a passion.]

“Now, our road to rebuilding is going to be steep, but I know that as conservatives, we will get there. Can we oppose the belief that one’s earnings must be redistributed for the false promise of fairness? Yes, we can!”
[I thought this co-opting of the “yes we can” phrase to further a conservative agenda was a very interesting move and an implicit acknowledgment of Obama’s charisma, or at least oratorial powers. And let’s be honest, for Rush Limbaugh to pay a compliment of ANY sort, implicit or not, to anyone left of center is pretty darn amazing!]

“It’s patently obvious — looking at the election returns — that we have not risen above our own public education.”
[I want all who also had good public educations to join me in a “fuck you” to Rush on this one]

“Exit polls said that 48% of voters said Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket. Who the hell put that question together and for what purpose? Sarah Palin saved this campaign! Sarah Palin was the closest thing we had to conservatism on parade, and you saw the crowds that she drew!”

“Washington voters approve an assisted suicide initiative, but actually half the country voted for assisted suicide last night anyway, so it’s no big loss.”
[This was the worst thing he said about Obama, normally you would expect comments like this to be the mainstay of his broadcast, but I only found one lousy example.]

Next, we violently turn the dial as far to the right as possible until it breaks. Next we take a screwdriver, jam it in and crank it to the right some more. This gets us near to our friend Michael Savage (for those of you who are not familiar, is just a little to the left of Hitler).

That being said, I was shocked that the main banner quote on his website had the relatively benign quote:

‘Obama isn’t too black, he’s too green’ – Michael Savage, 2008

What?? This was the worse he could come up with??

Most of the rest of the links on his site were standard FUD articles associating Obama with Freddie Mac employees, Jews and (the anathema to all right-wingers) the Kennedys!

Finally, I don’t want to skip one of the standard bearers of conservative talk (note I say talk, not news)… Ann Counter.

Coulter’s just as vitriolic as Savage, but not as… well, mean. She lashes out at politicians and the evildoers (liberals), but tends to stay a little more abstract than Savage does. Savage gets very personal and is definitely a borderline (actually not really borderline) bigoted, racist asshole. When Coulter starts ranting (really, her only form of communication), she tends to start foaming at the mouth rather quickly which just makes what she is saying become nonsense very quickly. She is more of a fool than anything else. From perusing her website, she spreads her charm on a whole slew of both democrats and republicans ranting not so much about why democrats won, but why republicans lost.

I hope this trip on the right side of the dial has been educational for all you left-wing hippies and you will no longer oppress the poor hardworking souls working to bring you the conservative news.