What's with the "Cling" thing?

I always feel a little dumber, and a little dirty (as in "unclean") after clicking on a progressive link. It's a little like whenever I watch something like, say, "The Bachelor". Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd are on my "don't click" list after having read a few too many of their spewings. Of course, every now and then I get that "oh, what are they sayin' now? bit of curiosity and click. I always regret it.

I wish I could say I didn't click on this one: McCain Clings to Old Republican Mantra ... but I can't. Yes, I saw that it was on one of my "don't click" sites, The Progressive ... and I did it anyway. I'm pleading a WTF? moment.

Why is it that when Republicans stick to what the believe, they're "clinging" and when Democrats stick to what they believe, they're steadfast and true and brave and all?

Of course, the actual headline once you get there is "Grandpa and Barbie on the Economy".

I hear time and again from liberals that conservatives are "mean" and "sexist" and "racists" and "x-ophobes" and make personal attacks instead of talking about The Issues™. I've gotta ask, where is the similar conservative headline? In any major conservative publication? Where's the "Sambo and the Geezer" headline? There isn't one.

I watched an "interview" (if you can call it that) with John Fund on whatever the heck Bill Maher's show is (Real Time, Episode 132). No, I didn't tune in on purpose ahead of time, I heard Fund on Dennis Miller and went out to YouTube to watch the Maher ... uh ... thingy.

It looks like that stuff's been pulled from YouTube today due to HBO copyright violations. But here's some of what I remember. In Maher's monologue he referred to Palin's daughter's pubic hair. That was the low point, but there was plenty more such base "humor" directed at the Mrs. Palin and her family.

During the "discussion", every time John was asked a question, he was interrupted -- typically within the first two sentences of his answer. It was kind of like, "We're going to ask you a question and then keep changing the question and introduce one red herring after another before you get a chance to answer them, all the while hurling cliches and snarky comments at you from all sides."

And then we got web headlines like "Maher and Garafalo Destroy Fund's Defense of Palin". What? What did they destroy? Fund wasn't allowed to get a word in edgewise to defend Palin.

Talking about Sarah Palin herself, we got:

"...stewardess ... beauty pagent ... 'I shot one once' ... when you're a hockey mom with five kids you don't have time to read the newspaper ...she couldn't talk about an issue to save her life ... doesn't know shit from shinola ... "

There was a lot more of this terribly "substantial" mockery, but like I said the video is unavaliable to me now.

And in there somewhere Garafalo (who I used to like) said "You guys are the kings of petty, nasty rhetoric". Then ticks off the litany of her religion:

What do they stand for? Torture as a policy. They stand for homophobia. They stand for no reproductive justice. They stand for denying global warming.

Well ... like Morgan said... we do look pretty silly when people pretend we believe things we don't believe.