THE NEW CONSERVATIVE CONSPIRACY THEORY…. This week, far-right blogs were all aflutter about President Obama calling on a young girl at a town-hall event in New Hampshire. For conservatives, the girl was a “plant,” arranged in advance. It was a silly argument, and while O’Reilly seemed excited about it, the “story” didn’t go anywhere.
Don’t worry, though, now there’s a new conspiracy far-right blogs are excited about. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has the scoop.
[T]he new development is [the White House’s] potential use of closely affiliated groups, like one recently operated by top White House advisor Van Jones, to launch organized attacks on commentators like Glenn Beck and Fox News. Apparently Beck, certainly no friend of the Obama administration and never advertised as such, said something that the White House chorus deemed offensive enough to launch an underground attack on his show’s advertisers. Whether Beck said something controversial or not about the President’s reaction to the Henry Louis Gates arrest is not the question. But is it appropriate for the White House to be judge and jury of the fourth estate, and are they using Chicago-style tactics to silence their critics?
It’s not, by the way, just Heritage. Human Events is on this, as are a variety of conservative bloggers.
What evidence is there of the White House “using” ColorOfChange to “attack” Glenn Beck? Well, there isn’t any. Van Jones used to work with ColorOfChange, and now he works on environmental policy for Obama. Based on literally nothing else, conservatives believe the White House is going after the media and trying to “silence” critics. Seriously.
Adam Serwer explained the problem nicely.
The simplest explanation is that CoC is a black grassroots organization that is comprised of Obama’s strongest and most motivated supporters — black folks. They didn’t like what Beck said and they took the terribly time-consuming step of signing an online petition that lands in their inbox with their names and contact information already filled in. This is absolutely outrageous, if, like Sarah Palin and apparently [the Heritage Foundation’s] Rory Cooper, you believe the First Amendment only protects the right of conservatives to say outrageous things without being criticized. If conservatives don’t stand up to the dire threat to free speech comprised by online petitions and sternly worded letters, who will?
Far-right bloggers pick the strangest things to get excited about.
