Andrew O'Hehir

Michael Moore: The Republican Party Is ‘Dead,’ and Self-Righteous America Needs a ‘Timeout’
By Tom Johnson | December 28, 2015 | 10:06 PM EST

In his new documentary, Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore jaunts around Europe showcasing what he deems enlightened social and economic policies, including Italy’s lengthy paid vacations, Norway’s treatment of prison inmates, and France’s school-lunch program. New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden observed that Moore’s “examples…are cherry-picked to make American audiences feel envious and guilty.”

On Monday, Salon ran an interview with Moore in which he talked about the movie as well as the U.S. presidential campaign. One of his comments: "I also think it’s a little gauche for Americans to point out to anybody in the world what their problems are at this point…I think we need a little time in the timeout room, you know what I’m saying? A little chill-down from running around the world: ‘You need democracy! Now you need democracy!’”

Salon Writer: Wes Craven’s Freddy Krueger Hinted at Dark Side of Reagan’s ‘Right-Wing Counterrevolution’
By Tom Johnson | September 5, 2015 | 1:26 PM EDT

Gordon Gekko of Wall Street would be a popular choice of liberals for the 1980s movie character who best illuminated the supposedly ugly truth about the Reagan era, but he’s not Andrew O’Hehir’s choice. In a Monday analysis of the films of the late Wes Craven, O'Hehir stated that Freddy Krueger, from Craven’s 1984 movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, was “the most potent pop-culture signifier of the Reagan years.”

Salon Writer: Koch Brothers Baking a GOP Cake of ‘Soft Corporate Fascism’ and ‘Imitation Democracy’
By Tom Johnson | July 19, 2015 | 5:39 PM EDT

A movie dramatization of the Stanford prison experiment opened this weekend, but if you believe Andrew O’Hehir, that’s not the first time the 1971 psychological study has been restaged in some manner. O’Hehir asserted in a Saturday piece that over the past few decades, “the Republican Party has been the subject, willing or otherwise, of a version” of the Stanford experiment, with the result that the GOP is now “a xenophobic, all-white party of hate that seeks to roll back not just the Civil Rights movement and feminism, but the entire Enlightenment.”

Salon Pundit: ‘Hillary-zilla,’ Friend of the Oligarchy, Dominates Dems' 2016 Landscape
By Tom Johnson | August 6, 2014 | 7:55 AM EDT

Conservatives seeking a potential president who’s like Ronald Reagan might be interested to know that Andrew O’Hehir of Salon thinks he’s found such a person. True, they might then be surprised to learn that he's talking about Hillary Clinton.

O’Hehir, who’s well to the left of Hillary on economic issues, doesn’t intend the Clinton-Reagan comparison as a compliment to either. He believes that she is and he was propelled by “the force of money and those who wield it,” and that these days, plutocrats control the whole political process: “You can’t separate the fact that only rich people can run for president from the fact that both parties are fueled by rich people’s money, or from the fact that beneath all their partisan bickering Democrats and Republicans have vigorously collaborated for more than 20 years on a set of deregulatory, low-tax and cheap-credit economic policies that have made rich people a whole lot richer.” From O’Hehir’s Saturday piece (emphasis added):

Salon: 'White Rage in America' Best Exemplified By 'Red-Faced Irish Dude on Fox News'
By Tom Johnson | March 16, 2014 | 1:57 PM EDT

On this St. Patrick's Day weekend, if you're in the mood for a lamentation of Irish-Americans' ongoing shift to the political right, you're in luck. Andrew O'Hehir provided that and much else in a Saturday piece for the liberal online magazine Salon.

While O'Hehir believes that the 1998 Northern Ireland peace deal was "unambiguously a good thing for the people of Ireland and their British next-door neighbors," it had a downside stateside: "[T]he last connection between Irish-American identity and genuine history was severed...On one hand, Irishness [now] is a nonspecific global brand of pseudo-old pubs, watered-down Guinness, 'Celtic' tattoos and vague New Age spirituality...On the other, it’s Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan and Rep. Peter King...consistently representing the most stereotypical grade of racist, xenophobic, small-minded, right-wing Irish-American intolerance. When you think of the face of white rage in America, it belongs to a red-faced Irish dude on Fox News."

Salon.com Compares White America's Shutdown Rage to Philly Fire-bombing
By Tim Graham | October 6, 2013 | 9:08 AM EDT

MRC’s Dan Gainor passed on a nominee for wacky-weed blog of the weekend. Salon.com posted an article Saturday titled “White America says ‘Let the Fire Burn’: What the Philadelphia firebombing of 1985 can tell us about the culture of white rage that led to the shutdown.”

For the young people, in 1985, a radical-left black group called MOVE had repeated bouts of violence with police. After refusing an order to vacate their property, the police fire-bombed the house, killing 11. Despite Philadelphia having a black mayor at the time, Andrew O’Hehir thinks this is a metaphor for Unhinged White Conservatism:

Salon: Detroit is Bankrupt Because Racists Like Sean Hannity Hate Motown Music
By Geoffrey Dickens | August 2, 2013 | 5:30 PM EDT

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has fingered the main culprits behind Detroit’s bankruptcy. According to him, it’s none other than Fox News host Sean Hannity and all his fellow racist conservatives who were threatened by Smokey Robinson.

In his July 27 screed for Salon headlined “Why the Right Hates Detroit” O’Hehir claimed the fall of big cities like Detroit and New Orleans had less to do with longtime Democratic rule and more to do with the right’s desire, as seen in the “coded racism of Sean Hannity” to punish the cities that spawned “the worldwide revolution symbolized by hot jazz, Smokey Robinson dancin’ to keep from cryin’ and Eminem trading verses with Rihanna.”