Nick Confessore writes:
Frequent readers of Tapped know that there are few arguments that I detest more in political punditry than the one that your opponents are crazy. And the evidence is that big-name conservatives do this far more than their liberal equivalents. Among allegedly respectable conservatives, alleged psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer is one of the repeat offenders. Among less respectable pundits, Ann Coulter is an obvious candidate. But you see this pretty much throughout the right-wing press.
Me: Fair enough, I say. It’s a legitimate gripe, though I think he might be too quick to over-read a stylistic fluorish for an actual charge of mental illness. Still, considering Tapped’s — and progressives’ — far more entrenched tendency to ascribe racism to their opponents, you would think there’d be a little less righteousness on the point. After all, I would certainly prefer to be called crazy than racist, and I should know since I get called both all the time.
But even more to the point, I assume Nick condemns the five decades old tradition in the social and medical sciences in (liberal) academia (starting with Adorno) to brand political conservatism a mental defect. See, here for example. Or, wait for my book.