Why are we fixated on (fill in the name of right-winger)?

[Scuba]

It seem those of us on the left spend an inordimate amount of our energy responding to people who are wasting oxygen.

Somehow we have to find a way to better channel this energy.

In my mind, our immediate goals should be limited to two: Educating the American public about what's really going on and ensuring that we have honest elections.

Spending our time re-proving that Glen Bekkk and Sara Failin are wrong is a waste.

Thoughts/comments welcomed.

[RKP5637]

1. MSM fixation on them for pure profit... and often a RW agenda. It's contagious to

the masses and more profit, hence the branding of certain RW'ers as profitable products to merchandise. Outrageousness sells well, a big attention getter... tabloid journalism sells well...

[Scuba]

2. That's expected. But the people on this blog?

[RKP5637]

3. It's often a spill over onto this blog IMO from MSM pushing certain political

characters as topical ... It's contagious.

[Scuba]

4. Yep. Now how do we change it?

[RKP5637]

7. It needs to be a collective mind set change. I think some of it is unique with

the rapid and personal level of communication today. ...maybe, the novelty of it will eventually wear off. On DU, short of nearing censorship, it's difficult to make an across the board change in a public forum. That said, I do see people saying knock it off after the trillionth redundant posting about something Palin or Beck, for example, said or did. IMO that's probably the best way of having it taper off... eventually.

[Pholus]

5. How can you NOT fixate upon them? They're what makes it personal!

Our friends, neighbors and relatives have bought into their snake oil these talking heads have sold. And the thing that makes politics so rotten is that the people you like or love try have been convinced by these high profile cretins that your difference of opinion means that you're ignorant, misguided and/or flat out evil. So it's high stakes for you because it's at your dinner table or in your living room and your personal relationships are what you can lose by not fighting back or even by being too aggressive in fighting back.

When we have to deal with "What Beck said" and "Sarah got it right when she said" it is a shorthand reference for the hours and hours of a worldview that has been lovingly programmed into these people by "the good folks at Fox." And you have a couple of minutes or a few seconds to try to defend yourself and all your values. Hell, most of the time you're defending yourself against some ridiculous strawman you've been tied to that has NOTHING to do with your beliefs. So of course you try to discredit the talking head -- they REPRESENT a HUGE unspoken series of arguments laying just beneath the surface of the conversation. It just feels right -- "If I can just SHOW them that Rush is a fool or has contradicted himself they'll have to come around."

Yet it doesn't work. I've been just about ready to use complete and utter disdain as the next tool and tell them that if they're that damn gullible that they'll buy that crap then get the hell away from me. But, obviously, the end result is that Fox killed your relationship -- which might just be part of the plan I guess -- and that real world price is a lot to pay. I remember my parents being friends with all sorts of different people but I guess they knew when to agree to disagree more than we do.

Just a few thoughts on this.

[Scuba]

8. But aren't they really just a diversion? Can't we talk about the issues?

[Pholus]

9. I don't think you can -- the personalities are a shorthand for an argument you already lost.

You cannot get into the issues since by the time you're being hit by the talking points your winger friend has already seen the case tried in a kangaroo court on TV or on the radio and you lost in absentia.

In fact, to even disagree with them after you lost *so* badly you are either

1) A clueless do-gooder who doesn't understand how the "real world" works
2) Someone who wants to see America fail because you hate it

How can you discuss the issue from this starting point?

[elocs]

6. DU always obsesses and fixates on the latest right winger du jour.

I can remember when Obama gave a great acceptance speech after getting the nomination. The next day at DU what was there to read? Probably hundreds of threads about Sarah Palin and not much about the speech.

It is still the same with many DUers believing they have something new or clever to say about the popular right wing targets here, but in reality repeating the same things over and over, giving them far more attention here than they deserve.