Dennis Miller is no Keith Olbermann

Other than Miller, who else fits this neat little USA Today-style "trend."

Also, some people becoming more conservative as they get older isn't exactly a fresh new story.

 

My best friend from college. There were a few moderate Dems who became suddenly very right-wing, law-and-order conservatives after 9/11.

Then there are the people like my father who became Republican when they got money, and like Charles Barkley, now say "I used to be a Rebublican, but then they got crazy" (or something like that).

 

There are a couple of talk show hosts on KGO radio in San Francisco that fit the bill. You can throw Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on the list. And El Presidente vowed pre-9/11 that the US would have a "humble" foreign policy and not get into nation building. Actor Ron Silver was a lefty pre-9/11 too.

 

Michael Medved, for starters.

Although he was a converted progressive long before 9/11, which meant perhaps, he was the model for Miller, et al.

 

Well, in fairness, something DID happen on Sept. 11 that made law and order an awfully high priority for a lot of folks. Just sayin'...it's not like these people just decided one day to change their minds.

You don't have to support the war to have believed on Sept. 12 that we weren't safe enough on Sept. 10. (Did that make any sense?)

 

It does.

But to completely change your worldview overnight is a radical notion on any level. And in Miller's case, the cynic in me says it had little to do with 9/11 and more to do with the political landscape drifting rightward as Miller's career drifted downward.

 

If that reasoning were true, wouldn't Miller have made another heel turn to the left after the '06 midterms?

Look, Sept. 11 was a pretty big freakin' deal. I was 19 years old when it happened, and it changed my whole worldview. It's not hard for me to believe it changed someone else's.

 

C'mon, Medved had already made the switch to the conservative side many years before 9/11.

The only one I can think of who made the switch specifically because of 9/11 is Miller, and I suspect that was nothing but a cynical career miscalculation. I increasingly doubt that Miller believes in anything but himself. He played the liberal guy back when he thought that was best for his image/career. Then nearly instantly changed to the conservative guy after 9/11 when he mistakenly thought the public mood was permanently shifting that way and he'd be able to advance his image/career playing the niche of the right wing comic.

He miscalculated and probably wishes he could switch back but knows he can't now without thoroughly exposing himself as a fraud.

 

Seeing him on the 1/2 Hour News Hour on Fox News at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday Night was quite sad.
And I understand the outrage and shock of 9/11. I just don't see how you can become a pro-war hawk and stand by and not be upset about the muddling war in Iraq. Must be selective-outrage syndrome.

 

No way, he knew he couldn't credibly get away with another abrupt switch like that again. People with intelligence were already skeptical enough of the abrupt right turn he took after 9/11, but if he'd gone from outspoken liberal to outspoken conservative right after 9/11, then right back to liberal right after the dems won in 06, do you think there's ANYBODY that wouldn't see through his transparent motives? It would've killed his credibility with both sides. Miller might be a cynical opportunist, but he's smart enough to see that.

He's now painted himself into a right wing box, and what's left of his career depends on him staying there.

 

I think you might be underestimating the egomania in some precincts of the left...I think there are plenty of folks in the "netroots" who'd be willing to believe he'd just "seen the light" and become fed up with the "fascists" on the right.

Maybe not.

But it's not as if there's been a huge groundswell of opposition to Lou Dobbs' lunatic re-invention of himself as a crazed nativist, for example.

 

You know the one who creeps me out?

Joe Scarborough. He was a Gingrich '94 guy. Now he tries to play it fairly down the middle of the road, at least when I see him.

When did that happen?

Joe, we're all happy with you in the role of mindless GOP shill. Don't go thinking on your own and messing with my sense of reality...