McIlheran Watch: Even when he's right, he's so, so wrong

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel op-edist Patrick McIlheran doesn't make a habit of it, but occasionally he comes down on the right side of an issue. Today, for example, when faced with choosing between the "God Hates Fags" crowd and the families of soldiers, even he can't help but see the light.

Fred Phelps--he of the Westboro Baptist Church and the kind of viscious hate that would make a Klansman blush under his hood--was in Wisconsin last week to protest at the funeral of a Fox Lake National Guardsman killed in Iraq. He and his brainwashed followers somehow have it in their heads that our soldiers are dying to protect a nation of heathens. So whereas they used to travel the country protesting anything gay-postive, they now protest the funerals of those who died in service of our country.

And Pat Mac recognizes that this is, as he puts it, noxious.

But even when he's right, McIlheran manages to include his regular bugaboos--namely, peaceniks and Ted Kennedy:

It is often said that we suffer from incivility fostered by the rise of talk radio and blogs. [Ed.: What is it with this newspaper and blogs? Is this a shot at me?] Yet an equal case could be made that our public life has grown rude as people took to heart the older impulse to speak out. The more direct antecedents of Phelps' "God hates fags" signs are the protest signs saying unheard-of things about Nixon. And all of it is enabled by a feeling that the world is improved when crude feelings are expressed crudely.

It's not just that a polite society's more pleasant. It is that it permits disagreement. When a senator refers to another as "the distinguished gentleman" rather than the more sincere, "the obese drunkard," conversation may still ensue since the obese drunkard, having heard no fighting words, can pretend at peace.

And he had been doing so well up to that point! But then he slipped into his pattern--a bad joke, a misstatement of fact, and Republican spin. I could just as easily trace incivility, especially in the Senate, to, say, Joe McCarthy. Or that one guy 200 years ago who hit that other guy with a cane.

It is noxious to me that in this week of Alito hearings (featuring Ted Kennedy) and another Bush plea for "responsible" (i.e., not disagreeing with him) debate over Iraq, McIlheran uses a cause for real moral outrage--the Fred Phelps travesty--to push the Republican agenda. (And I haven't even talked about the part of the op-ed where he pimps the "ex-gay" movement!)

I don't know why I thought McIlheran would have stopped while he was ahead; he never does. It is right to be outraged at Fred Phelps; indeed, it is inhuman not to be. But it is wrong to use that outrage for base politics--that is the sort of thing that really does cheapen our discourse.

(See robola for his take, too.)