What to do with Michael Moore?

Last week some prominent members of the Democrat Leadership Council, an extremely moderate, pro-business Democrat group took some potshots at Michael Moore. Al From, the organizations CEO, said "We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left... We can't have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values."

Matt Taibbi of New York Press asked why. Why slam into Michael Moore? For one thing, complaining about how closely allied Michael Moore is with the Democratic Party only highlights that they are allied. If it's a public-relations problem, why draw attention to it? More to the point, the Democratic Party isn't that closely allied with Mr. Moore. To the contrary the candidates, excepting Wesley Clark, steered well clear of him.

Mr. Taibbi has an answer and it isn't very pretty.

It's one thing to avoid public appearances with a Michael Moore, and to accept his support only tacitly. But it's another thing entirely to openly denounce him as anti-American, which is what Al From did last week.

What From, Marshall and the other DLC speakers were doing last week was not just ruminating out loud about the need to shy away from certain demonized liberal icons. They were, instead, announcing their willingness to embrace the other side's tactic?I hate to lean on this overused word, but it is a McCarthyite tactic?of branding certain individuals as traitors and anti-Americans. What they were doing was sending up a trial balloon, to see if anyone noticed this chilling affirmative shift in strategy and tactics.

I can say, as a student of the Red Scare, that he's not wrong. McCarthy would never have been as powerful as he was if President Truman and other Democrats hadn't basically ceded the argument to them.

I also think that this is a pretty distasteful tactic and stands in stark contrast to how Republicans treat their "extremists." As I've mentioned before, President Bush and Vice President Cheney both appeared on Rush Limbaugh's program. And there certainly haven't been calls on the Republican Party to distance themselves from such anti-American people as Ann Coulter and Michael Savage.

Oh and if you want to know how dangerous and anti-American Michael Moore is, you might go look at his book, "Will They Ever Trust Us Again?" A collection of letters from soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah, that's definitely something to be ashamed of.