Conservatives Love to Discuss Mythical "Angry Left," But Rarely Refer to Actual "Angry Right"

Conservative pundits and political operatives often rally against the mythical "angry left."

"The angry left should not drive the Democrat Party," Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said last month, responding to some Democrats calling for deputy chief of staff Karl Rove to be dumped, or stripped of security clearance, following speculation that he leaked the name or identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Before the Iowa caucus last year, Des Moines' conservative radio host, Jan Mickelson, termed Democratic caucus voters the "angry left." At about the same time, Andrew Roth of the conservative Club for Growth wrote a short piece referencing the "angry left." Washington Times columnist Greg Pierce wrote about Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and PBS' Bill Moyers under the heading "angry liberals." Earlier this year, Fox News Channel described Howard Dean as "a champion of the angry left." Michelle Malkin wrote an April column titled "When Angry Liberals Attack." MSNBC host Tucker Carlson referred to those defending a woman appealing a court case she lost as a "bunch of angry liberals" -- although he never makes clear which liberals he means. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto frequently refers to the "angry left," such as earlier this month, when he cited the "Angry Left Daily Kos site."

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Are there angry liberals? Sure. But conservatives give this anger mythic proportions. It's a game they have been playing for more than three decades -- since former vice president Spiro Agnew, working from a 1970 speech prepared by William Safire, told the California Republican state convention about "nattering nabobs of negativism" -- a reference to what conservatives now call "liberal media bias."

Conservatives need to promote concepts such as "angry liberals" and "liberal media bias" to justify the concept of "fair and balanced." If conservatives didn't suggest the "angry left" had mythic strength (able to overtake the Democratic Party, Mehlman and others argue), there would be no need for a conservative response. If conservatives didn't suggest liberal media bias was a problem of mythic proportions, there would be no justification for conservative talk radio, Fox News or the seemingly endless number of conservative pundits and columnists nationwide.

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What conservatives don't want to discuss, though, is the "angry right." For example, when Laura Ingraham suggests religious profiling of Muslims is an appropriate response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she overlooks terrorist attacks from the angry right -- such as the Oklahoma City bombing, or the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, or any number of attacks on Planned Parenthood and similar clinics.

This "ignore the angry right" approach has been evident over the past few days, with regard to the response from some locals to Cindy Sheehan's recent anti-war protest outside the "Western White House" in Crawford, Texas.

As Jamison Foser of MediaMatters for America wrote on Aug. 19: "(A) lunatic pulls up to a fence near some peaceful anti-war protestors and fires a gun into the air in an obvious attempt at intimidation the day before another lunatic ran a pickup truck over white crosses and flags commemorating casualties of war, and there isn't nearly as much outrage."

Do a Google search for "Larry Northern" or "Larry Mattage" and you'll find little commentary from the conservative punditry. I did find this Aug. 17 gem from Taranto, who provided something of a defense for Northern, who drove over the crosses: "(A)t the same time it's important to understand what motivates people to do things like this. After all, one man's vandal is another's freedom-fighter." Malkin, describing Northern as a "nutball," used the incident as evidence of liberal hypocrisy and an introduction to another attack against Sheehan.

You see, Northern and Mattage don't fit into the conservatives' pre-conceived stereotype of who is angry. The conservative punditry has no problem telling us about how angry Sheehan is, and how she has allied herself with angry liberals like Michael Moore and the folks at moveon.org. But Northern and Mattage? There is no room for a discussion of the "angry right" among conservative pundits.