ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

A sampler from a Howard Dean fund raiser on Monday night.

Take a moment to go read the whole thing...because I think you will be surprised. And while reading it imagine in your mind's eye what reaction you might expect if this had been a Republican fund raiser...

So there were no TV cameras last Monday night when pro-Dean comics took the stage on West 18th St. in Chelsea at a $250-a-head Dean fund-raiser (reduced from $500) and competed to see how often they could use the F-word in the same sentence.

Comic Judy Gold dissed President Bush as "this piece of living, breathing s---" and Janeane Garofalo ridiculed the Medicare prescription-drug bill that Bush had just signed as the "you can go f--- yourself, Grandma" bill.

Just a few days before, rival John Kerry had used the F-word to attack Bush in Rolling Stone magazine in an apparent bid to sound hip, but Dean's event was "enough to make John Kerry blush," as rival Dick Gephardt's spokesman Erik Smith tartly put it.

And the Dean event got a lot worse. Comedian David Cross used the N-word for blacks in a disjointed "joke" apparently based on the premise that it's fine for a pro-Dean comic to use racial epithets as long as the goal is to claim Republicans are racists.

Comic Kate Clinton evoked Michael Jackson (hit with new child-sex-abuse charges) and said: "Frankly, I'm far more frightened of Condoleezza Rice" - the Bush national security adviser who has nothing in common with Jackson except being black.

I found this via trying to grok. And I found Sarah's comments here and here intriguing.

If you aren't paying attention perhaps you are under the misimpression that the right is racist, exclusive and intolerant.

But if you are paying attention you see these in fact to be traits exhibited in the Howard Dean fund raiser, reportedly about as far left as left gets.

As the article points out...Dean made sure there were no cameras there. Just as he has made sure we can't see his records as Vermont's governor.

And Sarah makes this point:

When you are told flat out on the Democratic Underground that "If you think overall that George W. Bush is doing a swell job, or if you wish to see Republicans win, or if you are generally supportive of conservative ideals, please do not register to post, as you will likely be banned", then there's a problem of accepting differing opinions under one political party.

Lots of people I know are "hesitant Republicans": those who wish there were a Democrat they liked but just can't seem to find one who doesn't make them want to barf or throw the TV through the window. Many have said so on their blogs. No one is claiming they're traitors to the party or banning them from posting because they have conflicting ideas.

I just don't see the shades of grey in the Democrats that I see in the Republicans.

Amen Sarah. As I've told close friends...I'm hoping that Senator Lieberman gets the Democrat's nomination...not that I'm in love with his positions, but he strikes me as the only intellectually honest one on his side of the aisle. And I can respect that.

But it is intellectually dishonest for Howard Dean not to have interceded. A man of principles would have. Abandoning one's principles in order to raise money...well, that's called whoring where I come from.

And if you aren't paying attention...he'll get away with it.

And if we all pay attention we'll find the right has an awfully big tent.