Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Enabling McCarthy

Commentary By Ron Beasley




We have been silent here at Hoggers on the Shirley Sherrod controversy but I did do a post over at The Moderate Voice where I explained that Andrew Breitbart, FOX "News" and the right wing talk radio circuit are the 21st century equivalent of Joseph McCarthy.  We are tribal creatures by nature and those seeking power have used fear of the "other tribe" as a tool.  It was McCarthy in the 50s and Breitbart and the right wing media today.  In the 50s Joseph McCarthy was not the real problem - it was those who enabled him.  There is really no reason that FOX and Breitbart should have the power the wield.  Only about one and a half percent of the population watch FOX.  When Breitbart's false charges were picked up by FOX he was enabled by both the NAACP and the Obama administration.  The NAACP realized the mistake yesterday and the Obama administration did the same today but the damage was done both to Sherrod and the credibility of both the NAACP and the Obama administration. 



Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt was eventually identified as such and we can only hope that the same thing will happen to Breitbart and FOX and the enabling will stop.  This should be a wake up call for the enablers.

UPDATE



FOX's Shepard Smith is not an enabler:





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