Luckily, most vile people on this earth don't pick up on an ideology. And of those that do, few of them are well spoken enough to gather any attention.  Unfortunately, that still leaves us with a number of vile human beings that manage to get their despicable world views broadcast to the world. And most of these vile creatures tend to be from the far left.

I don't pretend to know why most of them are left wingers. Maybe it's because there are simply fewer nasty creatures on the right that are capable of putting thoughts and ideas together in a coherent form to earn any attention. Or maybe it's because the media, already sympathetic to the left, tends to be more willing to distribute nastiness that comes from left wingers and sewage from the right.

The fact is that while there are a few right wing ideologues that manage to get out there a lot (Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh to name two), there is no right wing equivalent to Michael Moore, Al Franken, or Ted Rall.  Feel free to disagree with me and name someone on the right that is remotely as nasty and hateful as any of three who get anywhere near the kind of coverage they do. The Christian Coalition can be pretty ideological but they get no where near the attention that kooky Hollywood celebrities get.  Jerry Falwell will occasionally say something nuts but over and over movie stars and singers such as Barbara Streisand, the Dixie Chicks, Susan Sarandon, etc. manage to get air time with their half-baked ideas and hatemongering.

The vile left can be summed up best by one of its own members, Ted Rall whose belief is simply that he and his kind are more enlightened than the rest of us and therefore he has a duty to try to educate us knuckle-draggers. His mission, like those of his peers, is to let others know that they're not alone. For they are convinced that their number are legion and if they can get the word out, they can change the course of this nation to follow a more enlightened course.

They seem to believe:

• They are intellectually superior to everyone else
• They are personally enlightened
• The average American is "sheep"
• Their cause is righteous and therefore any distortions to the facts are acceptable because they serve a higher purpose
• People who are patriotic or religious are saps, mindless, fools.
• You can't trust corporations but you can trust big government (as long as they're in charge anyway)
• The will of the "masses" doesn't matter. They know better and so any means necessary should be used to pursue their agenda.
• They see the courts and public media as more effective outlets to exercise their will than the ballot box.
• Conservatives aren't just incorrect, they're evil.
• Liberalism isn't just correct, it's more civilized, more humane.

They're more common than you may think. They're the smug guy in a political debate on-line who, instead of debating the issue will take time out to correct a misspelling or grammar error -- believing that in itself demonstrates their superiority. Or the guy who will selectively use "facts" in a debate to push their agenda believing a) it's okay to mislead because they're trying to lead us on the proper path and we're all too ignorant to realize that we're being fed BS.

But what bugs me isn't that they exist. Every news group or forum always has a few of these guys. What bugs me is that some of them manage to get so much attention. How does a guy like Michael Moore manage to get so much coverage when his material is so blatantly fabricated or misleading? No scandal over Bowling for Columbine where he misrepresented everything from the basic thesis (why gun violence in the US is so high) to little things like implying he got a gun at a bank. And yet people are ready to believe what's in Fahrenheit 9/11? No wonder he probably thinks people are sheep. Except maybe it's not all people who are sheep, maybe just his customers...

Al Franken is the same kind of thing. I saw him on Tim Russert spouting off left wing talking points as if he really believes that BS. Same sort of thing though, because he's better than us, smarter and us and dog gone it, people like him, he feels a license to crap on all those who don't share his ideology. I mean really, what kind of guy is so full of hate that he names his show to antagonize someone else (The O'Franken Factor, very classy)? As Palpatine put it, "Let the hate flow through you.."

Ted Rall of course is on record thinking that people like Pat Tillman are saps and idiots. He wrote this stuff after he was killed in combat btw. So I guess it's no surprise that he wrote this week his belief that if there is a hell, Reagan is there.

And again, I ask you, are there right wing versions of these guys who are remotely as well known?  Most people who are left of center are good decent people just like most people on the right are. A nut like Ann Coulter doesn't mean right wingers are a bunch of extremists. But on the other hand, Ann Coulter isn't wildly popular.  Meanwhile, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Ted Rall have large followings. It should make one wonder of the intellectual and moral character of your ideology when guys like these are increasingly being seen as the face of the left.