"You so Ugly" (plus update reference)

Media Matters takes up another column in Time magazine by self-hating liberal, Joe Klein. He starts out with an anticipation of the likely Republican campaign strategy of the fall, to tar-and-feather Democratic candidates and positions. And then:

While purportedly critical of Rove's controversial campaign tactics, however, Klein argued that Rove will "be aided by those on the noisome left who believe that the U.S. is a malignant, imperialistic force in the world," and singled out three prominent African-American House Democrats -- Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Charles Rangel (D-NY), and Alcee Hastings (D-FL) -- as particularly susceptible to such attacks.

There is a lot more worth reading, but I more or less stopped at "those on the noisome left who believe that the U.S. is a malignant, imperialistic force in the world." Well, hey!, under the greedy, militaristic actions, diplomacies and policies of The Regime, I think that this is precisely what the U.S. has become. My son-in-law yesterday sent me this link to a Baltimore Sun article, according to which it is not just we "noisome lefties" who think this. It is borne out by numerous international public opinion researchers:

In 2002, a Pew survey of 38,000 people in 44 countries found that the U.S. global image had slipped when contrasted with the results of comparable prior polls conducted by the U.S. State Department. Favorable attitudes toward America had declined most sharply in majority-Muslim countries, but slippage was also observed among longtime NATO allies, in Eastern Europe, and in most regions of the world. By the following spring, after the March 2003 launch of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a follow-up Pew survey of 16,000 people in 20 countries found that favorable opinions had more than slipped.

They had plummeted.The most striking feature was how broadly anti-Americanism had spread geographically by 2003. It was no longer limited to Western Europe or to the Muslim world. In Brazil, for example, where 52 percent of the public expressed a favorable opinion of the United States in 2002, the pro-American portion of the population had dropped to 34 percent. In Russia, there was a 25-percentage-point decline in the U.S. favorability rating, from 61 percent to 36 percent, in the course of
less than a year. ...

A Eurobarometer survey conducted in 15 European Union countries in October 2003 found that people saw the United States and Iran to be equal threats to world peace. And in four countries - Greece, Spain, Finland and Sweden - the United States was viewed as the greatest threat to stability, more menacing than Iran or North Korea. Even in the United Kingdom, America's most trusted ally, 55 percent considered the United States to be a danger. ...

Now it's true, these folk will not vote here this fall. But Klein needs to do a bit of thinking before he starts marginallizing fellow "liberals". They are not the parochial ones.

UPDATE: a more harsh assessment of Klein's article has been released on DailyKos, entitled "Joe Klein Hates Black Members of Congress."