Gore and Daschle's Black Helicopters

Add the First Amendment to the list of constitutional rights that the Democratic Party no longer supports. The two heaviest of heavyweights for the political left have recently come out full force against those who dare to dissent from their worldview.
Most recently, it was the bloated loser from the 2000 presidential race who bristled under criticism.
"The media is kind of weird these days on politics,” spoke the swollen one, “and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party.”
My goodness, Al, and just which party is it that the New York Times, The Washington Post, the three major broadcast networks, and this newspaper belong to, part and parcel?
Soon-to-be former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle also has problems with dissent. The man who helped engineer his party’s disaster at the polls whines that the "very shrill edge" that criticism aimed at him represents an actual threat to his life.
"What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren't satisfied just to listen," he theorized. "They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that's very disconcerting."
And, just what sort of edge did Democratic Party rhetoric have when Al Gore claimed that Republican environmental policies would kill more Americans? And how sharp was the edge when ex-president Clinton’s press secretary declared that, as a matter of public policy, Republicans wanted the elderly to sicken and die in the gutter? Was it responsible for the former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt to go on the Sunday morning television talk shows and claim that Newt Gingrich and the rest of Republican Congressional leadership huddled behind closed doors with the CEO’s of industrial giants and plotted new ways to pollute the air and water?
All of these things were said and are easily verified. Were these statements meant to elevate and dignify the debate? Or, were they intended to provoke and incite?
Al Gore also points his barbs at Rush Limbaugh, claiming that he is part of a cabal financed by the evil super-rich. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh-there's a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media .... Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks-that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective as stated by the news media as a whole."
Al has the whole plot all figured out. "Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, The Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they'll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these R.N.C. talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist."
About the only thing that distinguishes Al Gore’s rant from those once heard from the skinheads who formerly haunted Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations compound is that he did not claim that the conspirators were Jews. Does Al believe that the marching orders that this new right wing media follow arrive on black helicopters?
Al Gore’s interview was printed by the New York Observer, one of the most reliable organs of the ideological Left. As much as they might have wished to, they could not make Al Gore sound like anything but a raving, paranoid lunatic. The Observer must have joined the vast right wing conspiracy too.
The Democratic Party’s conflict with a free press is not recent. About 10 years ago, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley tried to impose federal controls on talk radio for conveying the wrong message.
If Al Gore and Tom Daschle’s tirades mean anything, it’s that stifling criticism remains on the Democratic Party’s wish list.