WRITERS AT JOURNOLIST WANTED TO BAN FOX NEWS

For the second day in a row, the Daily Caller has released explosive and damaging posts from liberal / independent writers who belonged to the listserv, JourNolist, started by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. This time, we see one of them - Sarah Spitz - talking about how she'd love to see Rush Limbaugh die of a heart attack while refusing to help; she then is struck with the realization of just how much hate she's consumed with.

Via the Daily Caller

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Other posts show that these journalists spent quite a bit of time obsessing about the Tea Party movement, scheming ways to smear it and its members. Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg, compared "teabaggers" to "brownshirts".

Interestingly, Fox News became a target among the JourNolisters, providing a glimpse into what truly scares them.

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

I'm sure none of these people would admit publicly, that they're afraid of Fox News. The reason for that is it would expose what they view as threatening. These revelations are extremely damaging to the left for a number of reasons. Many of these writers want to be portrayed and perceived as objective; these posts reveal they're anything but. More important, however, is their admissions to each other that the Tea Party and Fox News are threats to their agenda.

Conservatives often get frustrated because they feel helpless and want to know what they can actually do to fight back. These posts show that knowledge is power. They also serve as the blueprint for what people can do. Get informed, get educated, and simply get engaged. The rest will take care of itself. It's what birthed the Tea Party movement. It's a grass roots, non-violent movement that is armed with the truth. That is what the left fears most.

h/t to Free Republic