Am I Too Liberal For “Liberaland”?

Pretty much since the thing started I have been a member of Alan Colmes’ website “Liberaland” as the user: EricG.

Both this username and all other usernames I create linked to my email have been deleted, or so it would seem.

Recently, I have tried posting on this website under my Facebook account under different usernames. All these attempts at posting on the this supposedly “come one, come all” political-talk website have been removed by website moderators, or so it would seem.

I seem to be free to access the Alan Colmes' Facebook page, as of now, and comment in that fashion rather than on the original blog post.

I sent an angry email that I already feel bad about. The Alan Colmes Radio Show is one of the few worthwhile programs on all of Fox News Talk, entirely thanks to the primary author of the blog in question. In terms of confronting real social issues and covering politics, I have no issue whatsoever with Alan Colmes or his website.

What I am saying is rather simple: warn me or block me. Don’t let me post my truthful thoughts and then continuously delete all my comments because I expressed opinions you didn’t enjoy. (Not like web-admins give a damn anyway.)

This is very much like my problems with Fox News (that seem to be the real reason I am being moderated while neoconservatives are perfectly welcome) in that it is fine to be exclusionary and rigid in your website / radio show / television show but completely dishonest and completely unethical to claim you have open doors when in fact you close them shut if you see specific issues being brought to the forum.

The Alan Colmes Radio Show is another matter entirely.

If I want to whine in Alan’s ear about this later tonight, nothing is stopping me.

If you call that show, most likely, you will be on Fox News Talk not long thereafter. Alan puts everyone on the air, just about.

I commend his radio efforts, fully.

However, I warn other liberal-bloggers out there that you may be moderated in your comments as I have and fed the round-about in terms of the whole matter.

I am not removing Alan Colmes from my Blogroll, but I might suggest only that the website is not as much as an open-forum on politics & issues as my own blog is. Which is a shame because it is an excellent website in every other respect.

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The unspoken big rule here is:

Don’t talk about the network.

Hush child.

Didn’t you hear? Fox News and Fox News Talk are not held accountable to the public like the rest. They get a special pass to spread misinformation, misquote former-presidents, spread hatred and race bait.

Here is what disturbs me:

Liberalism is about speaking truth to power.

So what does one do when that power is wielded by the network?

I’m supposed to ignore that, am I?

No thanks. I love this country and love the truth too much to stand silent as a radical right-wing lobby disguised as a news network lies to public in every promo, in every slogan, and in any possible clever way they can.

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It is always possible I am mistaken, but I believe “Liberaland” has become one more Fox News Apologist Hotbed. You are welcome to come and chat stream or comment on a post, but if you want to talk about Fox News or any version of it you will be pulled without notice.

I suppose I am making a Net-Neutrality argument more than I am trying to drive anyone away from a fun blog. Hardcore Net-Neutrality, though, it most certainly is not.

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I cannot control another’s work nor would I want to, but my weblog is entirely open-forum and I practice Net-Neutrality. The only thing I truly moderate would be spam and the incitement of violence against others. As you may or may not have noticed, I have comments of all types of opinions other than my own approved. I leave them open as long as possible and try to reply to everyone.

I can claim the “come one, come all” were I ever to promote this website the way Alan Colmes does on his Fox Radio time-slot.

This is also true of his radio show as well.

But my experiences with his website are more like: “come here, go away.”

Perhaps they should re-name it: “Don‘tTalkAboutFoxLand”

…

It just rings to me of this Fox-Conservative way of politics and dealing with people:

You came come in the tent and even not fawn all over me too, but if you say certain things I believe are not true with stern conviction then you are banned.

And like I’ve said before many times: you just hear people out and if they have nothing but flames to share they have nothing to say and the people who are making fact-based arguments that you don’t like are very, and obviously, different from screaming nut-jobs.

Anyway, that’s my beef. I feel it to be a very dishonest thing to do.

Some people do need to be called out when they have the facts plain wrong and refuse to even address the matter rationally, but they are merely misinformed and adamant about remaining as such.

None of this involves throwing them out of the tent. It’s more about addressing matters like Joe Wilson’s unpatriotic outburst and venomous tongue, and the blind-hatred stewed up for liberals everywhere than it is about whatever the tea-baggers have to say.

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This is just my little internet-tale of woe.

It is a minor one, at that.

Chances are they want me transferred to the Facebook section of his internet handiwork because I am a self-admitted “radical.”

Radical peace and radical disarmament.

So all this label-bashing coming from the people that Alan Colmes sits across the table from on Fox News applies to me just fine.

Here I am destroying his whole point about “liberals are not radicals.”

I realized long ago there are many definitions and degrees of liberalism.

I guess I am just too liberal for Liberaland these days.

So be it.

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UPDATE:

Joel, the moderator who "could give a damn" according to me, has sent me an email that closes the matter for me.

If anyone reads my comments you'll see this was what I was asking for the moment they started treating me differently than the other users of the website.

Joel is a good man. I wish him well.

Here are his words to me:

Eric, You’re not helping your case by falsely claiming that you were banned because of comments about Fox. That claim is easily disproven by countless posts that have been allowed – and continue to be allowed – on Alan.com by people of all views about the network. You were warned that you were crossing the line
on a post that had absolutely nothing to do with Fox. When another commenter mentioned that to you on another post, after you again went overboard, your response – instead of considering whether your own behavior was appropriate – was to make a personal insult about me. Obviously you have no interest in civil discourse, so your comments are no longer welcome.

Joel

We see here that he is stating that I am indeed banned but I have posted recently and admitted to my bad behavior.

Essentially I forgot that it wasn't time to impersonate Glenn Beck and I should reserve such banter for this website.

The truth is I was out of line in the first place, but I have also endured vicious attacks on that same website.

One does not negate the other any more than my feelings of justification only in my anger over the hate I allowed myself to spew forth.

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So am I too liberal for "Liberaland"?

We'll see ... looks like "no" but maybe not.

Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor

Former speech writer for the Bush White House, Matt Latimer, appeared on Alan Colmes Radio to give an interview regarding his new tell-all book "Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor" and talk a little about his experiences in the White House.

The following is an unofficial summary-transcript provided by value of a premium podcast subscriber and is not connected in any way to FOX News Talk or the staff of The Alan Colmes Show:

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LATIMER: I was a conservative son of two liberal parents from a union family in Flynt, Michigan. I wanted to talk about my personal journey through Washington. Which, as you know Alan, is a circus. I saw Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and the White House from high levels and it's a rare, unique perspective of Washington.

COLMES: But you knew you'd upset people.

LATIMER: Sometimes there were people who I saw in Washington who sort of forgot why they were sent there, and I didn't hesitate to have ancedotes that revealed that. I knew those people weren't going to like the way they came across.

COLMES: You think Lara Bush was a Democrat, right?

LATIMER: The prevailing wisdom in the White House--before she married him she was a Democrat and most people in the White believed that was certainly her sentiment.

COLMES: Some of the other things that have come out. The president's statements about Hillary Clinton's keister.

LATIMER: The media has kind of picked up the juiciest [parts of this book.] Yes, he did say something like that.

***

LATIMER: I found an appeal in Barack Obama. What I liked about him was he promised to be different from the usual Washington crowd. He spoke to people in a real language and, you know, once you get to Washington you kind of forget how to talk to people.

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Find a copy @ Amazon.com

Colmes Interviews

Alan Colmes -- Talk Radio

Frank Luntz is a Word-Weasel

Rightwing pollster Frank Luntz is out promoting his new book: “What Americans Really Want, Really” and getting his definitions completely wrong in regards to Political Science, which I seriously doubt is an amateurish mistake.

On Alan Colmes Radio, Luntz continued the conservative rhetoric that United States of America is a “center-right country” and his words in explanation of this were very revealing as to his own personal bias against getting the definitions right, even when those words might not serve your own political ends.

“This is a center-right country but the definition of ‘Center-Right‘ has changed. ‘Center-Right’ doesn‘t mean keeping government out of our lives anymore, .. now it means fighting corruption.”

This is the Word-Weasel at work.

Fighting corruption in both government and private sectors has always been the ideals of The Progressive Reformist Movement since it's inception and these ideals have remained as a fact of American Life since then. To attach his own ideological group to these values is outright inaccurate.

Frank Luntz is very good at catering messages that appeal to conservatives and work well for The Republican Party but I find the notion that he is not affected by political bias in most of his statements completely absurd.

Center-Right has, and always will, mean exactly what Luntz claimed on the air that it does not mean.

It is clear to me that he feels free to change the definitions of words as he sees fit in order to further his own personal political agenda. If he cannot admit that the nation obviously shifted to Center-Left with the election of a Democratic President, and the ambitions of sixty House seats being attained by The Democratic Party then I am left to question the very conclusions of his work.

No doubt he has attained a great deal of significant data in his 6,000+ focus groups he used to compile his recent book, but if the standards of recognizing professional bias and personal bias are ignored then the conclusions of the body of work become suspect.

This is a Radio-interview Review, not a Book Review, so that body of work is not my focus and I invite anyone interested to avail themselves of this literature.

My only point is that if Frank Luntz is going to change the definitions of sound science to fit his image on a radio show, it begs to question other matters of credibility as well.

In his credit, I don’t believe he ever joined in the hateful mantra of “socialist” aimed at liberals, Democrats and mainly Obama.

On the list of all the partisans out there, Luntz is a minor offender.

But I still find it the worst of offenses to change the words to fit your needs, and considering they call him ‘The Words That Work Guy’; I think maybe it should be elongated to ‘The Words That Work No Matter What Guy’.

Frank Luntz is a smart cookie. But I’d personally almost compared him to Karl Rove, myself. Dancing around the truth has never been part of The Scientific Approach.

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What Americans really want, really, is for pollsters to stop telling them what they think when it’s really just what the pollster thinks about what you think.

Alan Colmes on The O'Reilly Factor

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