Mad Rants From the Right Wing

A BuzzFlash Interview. Posted March 16, 2004.

This is what you've been waiting for. Bruce J. Miller's Take Them At Their Words: Shocking, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the G.O.P. and Their Friends, 1994-2004 (Academy Chicago) is a compendium of hundreds of right-wing GOP quotations. Miller, brother of Mark Crispin Miller, has assembled the bitter, spiteful and downright bizarre ranting and ravings of the people who now rule America, along with their supporters.

Who could forget Barbara Bush on Good Morning America: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many...It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Or Ann Coulter, opining: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

Or George W. Bush to the Palestinian Prime Minister: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you can help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

At first you will laugh, but keep in mind what Sidney Blumenthal, who wrote an insightful introduction, noted: "You may read and laugh, but, remember, they mean it."

BuzzFlash: You just edited a book, "Take Them At Their Words: Shocking, Amusing and Baffling Quotations from the G.O.P and Their Friends, 1994-2004." When you say, "Take them at their words," what do you mean?

There's a double standard about this, because if Democrats say anything that's the least bit controversial, they're hammered on it by the right wing media chorus. But should we take Republicans at their words? Does Ann Coulter mean that Timothy McVeigh would have been bettering off targeting The New York Times building? Are we to take them literally? Are they as dangerous, violent and bilious as they often sound?

Bruce J. Miller: That's a good question. In the book, there are really two kinds of quotes -- there's the sort that is deliberately sensational, like the one you mention by Ann Coulter, or talk radio people saying that Clinton should be assassinated. And then there are the quotes that are sort of policy declarations, something as mundane as Colin Powell writing a letter to Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Arms Services Committee, supporting the development of low-yield nuclear weapons.

I think that what happens is that there's a vast gray area where the two kinds of quotes sort of run together, and you find elected officials sounding like talk-radio people, or sounding like Ann Coulter, or the other way around. They're overstating things to get attention. But, then, how do you tell ultimately? And how do you tell when, in fact, some of the words of talk-radio people, for example, have actually inspired people to commit violent acts?

So, yes, I do think we should take them seriously when they say these things. There's a book on the bestseller list now, Michael Savage's "The Enemy Within." You can't go for 10, 15, 20 years of vilifying anybody that doesn't agree with you and talk about killing them or exiling them, all the things that they talk about, and not take them seriously.

We recall a quote by a writer for the National Review in which he talked -- this was about two years ago -- about how evil the Clintons are. And he implied that Chelsea Clinton came of bad seed and should be killed, following an old Chinese ritual that if you rid yourself of an evil empire, you have to murder the whole family and their servants. The author, John Derbyshire, of this rather strange and implicitly violent commentary backed off, saying he was being satirical.

I had that quote right in front of me because it's in the book. And it makes a really interesting question because -- and I hate to keep relating that to talk radio, but to me, talk radio is kind of the perfect example, and even a perfect metaphor, for what the Republicans do. Right-wing talk-radio people, whenever they're called on something, they always say: Oh, it's just entertainment. Oh, it's satire. And then they back off a little bit, and maybe they tone it down for a period of time. But then it inevitably comes back to the same kind of virulent attack.

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