Whenever a Democrat is elected president, the media’s standard response is to start looking for armed rebellion in the red states. With mob savagery woven into the history of the Left, they use their media mobs to broadcast stories about the omnipresent threat of right-wing violence, hoping that no one will notice that the actual violence—as opposed to the supposed threat of violence—has always come from the Left.
Consider that liberals have been citing Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber, as a right-wing terrorist for fifteen years. Liberals simply assumed that McVeigh was a conservative because he was a white male who knew how to use a gun. After a century of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, the labor unions, the communists, the anarchists, the anti-war protesters, the Weathermen, the SDS, the Black Panthers, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple, Squeaky Fromme, and Earth First!, liberals were desperate for any hooligan who looked like a Republican.
But McVeigh was neither conservative nor Christian. This alleged right-winger was a drug-taking self-proclaimed agnostic, who was thrown out of the Michigan militia and who declared, “Science is my religion,” sounding more like Janeane Garofalo than Wayne LaPierre.
Liberals were undeterred. McVeigh was white and he was male: he had to be a Republican. (To liberals, we all look alike.) In Harper’s Magazine, Lewis Lapham said McVeigh’s views were “not unlike those expressed by the members of the nation’s better country clubs.” Time senior writer Richard Lacayo called talk radio “an unindicted co-conspirator in the blast.” Today show host Bryant Gumbel said, “The bombing in Oklahoma City has focused renewed attention on the rhetoric that’s been coming from the right and those who cater to angry white men.” Then-representative (now senator) Chuck Schumer blamed the bombing on the National Rifle Association.
(Luckily, McVeigh was captured before the Unabomber, so liberals didn’t have to explain how the Green movement wasn’t responsible for Ted Kaczynski’s bombing spree.)
Even the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on talk-radio hosts, accusing them of “fostering hatred, division and encouraging violence.” He said some rhetoric “pushes fragile people over the edge,” adding, “their bitter words have consequences.… They leave the impression, by their words, that violence is acceptable.”
In response, Brent Bozell, Media Research Center chairman, offered $100,000 to Clinton’s favorite charity if he named a single credible radio talk-show host who had called for violence against the American people or the government. The reward remains uncollected.1
Again, in January 2011, when twenty-two-year-old, left-wing pothead Jared Loughner shot up a Gabrielle Giffords political event at a Tucson Safeway, killing six people, liberals immediately blamed the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and all conservatives for inspiring the shooter.
To make their case, they needed to prove:
But as more information came out, the truth was nearly the opposite. Loughner’s attack would have gone down in history as another act of terroristic violence by a right-winger, just like McVeigh, except this time conservatives had the Internet and other media outlets to publicize the truth.
No conservative had called for violence against anyone. Nor had any conservative engaged in any “rhetoric” that was likely to lead to violence. Every putative example of “violent rhetoric” these squeamish liberals produced kept being matched by an identical example from the Democrats.
Sarah Palin, for example, was accused of complicity in murder for having produced a map with crosshairs over the congressional districts being targeted by Republicans. So did the Democratic Leadership Committee. Indeed, Democratic consultant Bob Beckel went on Fox News and said he invented the bull’s-eye maps.
Similarly, every time liberals produced an example of military lingo from a Republican—“we’re going to target this district”—Republicans produced five more from the Democrats. President “whose asses to kick” Obama had warned of “hand-to-hand combat” with his political opponents and said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”—making Obama the first American president to advocate gunfights since Andrew Jackson.
These are figures of speech known as “metaphors.” (Do liberals know where we got the word “campaign”?) It’s not that both sides did something wrong, neither side did anything wrong. But the drama queens ran riot for weeks after the Tucson shooting. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews recalled Palin’s statement “We’re not retreating, we’re reloading” and then he said—I quote—“That’s not a metaphor.” If it wasn’t a metaphor, whom did she shoot?
By blaming a mass killing on figures of speech, liberals sounded as crazy as Loughner with his complaints about people’s grammar. After insisting that we drop metaphors, liberals were on the verge of demanding a ban on metonymies—until they realized no one was buying it. (Wait until they find out about gerund phrases!)
As for Loughner being influenced by Tea Partiers, Fox News, and talk radio—oops, another dead end. According to all available evidence, Loughner was a liberal. Every friend of Loughner who characterized his politics described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative. One friend said Loughner never listened to talk radio or watched the TV news. Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.
According to voluminous Twitter postings the day of the shooting by Caitie Parker, one of Loughner’s friends since high school, he was “left wing,” “a political radical,” “quite liberal,” and “a pot head.”2 If any public figure influenced this guy, my money’s on Bill Maher.
But liberals were so determined to exploit the massacre to get conservatives to stop talking, they told calculated lies about Loughner’s politics. In a shocking example, the New York Times implied—against all evidence—that Loughner was a pro-life zealot. Only because numerous other news outlets, including ABC News and the AP, reported the exact same incident in much greater detail—with eyewitness quotes—do we know that the Times rendition was complete bunk.
ABC News reported:
One Pima Community College student, who had a poetry class with Loughner later in his college career, said he would often act “wildly inappropriate.” “One day [Loughner] started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby,” classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, referring to a discussion about abortions. “The rest of us were looking at him in shock.… I thought this young man was troubled.”
Another classmate, Lydian Ali, recalled the incident as well. “A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,” Ali said.
Here’s the Times version: “After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a ‘terrorist for killing the baby.’ ” That’s how the Times transformed Loughner from a sicko laughing about a dead fetus to a deadly earnest pro-life fanatic. (Never believe a news story written by Eric Lipton, Charlie Savage, or Scott Shane of the New York Times—or, for simplicity, anything in the Times.)
Loughner’s liberal worldview might have passed unnoticed, as it has with other random nuts committing violence. But liberals opened the door by blaming what they hoped would be Loughner’s right-wing politics.
The New York Times’s Paul Krugman got the ball rolling two days after the shooting spree in a column titled “Climate of Hate,” announcing that the cause of the shooting was “toxic rhetoric” coming “overwhelmingly, from the right.”3 This was followed by the usual torrent of exactly zero examples.
Rather, Krugman cited the McVeigh canard, as well as this crucial evidence: Other liberals saying right-wing rhetoric is dangerous! This would be like one birther citing another birther as proof that Obama was born in Kenya.
Thus, Krugman said the Obama administration had issued reports claiming “right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.” Liberals spend a lot of time worrying about the “potential” of violence from the right, whereas conservatives have to worry about actual violence from liberals.
But according to Krugman: “[T]here’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at the Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.”
Only a complete zealot like Krugman could say black is white and white is black—not even gray!
Krugman was referring to a remark Bill O’Reilly made about Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank that had roiled the mainstream media for weeks in 2010.
To be fair to O’Reilly, which he wouldn’t be to me, he was joking. We know that because he specifically said so. Milbank had flat-out lied in a column, claiming that Fox News’s election night coverage included only one Democrat. There were, in fact, at least six. O’Reilly called him out on it, then switched to a story about Sharia law in Oklahoma and asked his guest: “Does Sharia law say we can behead Dana Milbank? That was a joke for you ‘Media Matters’ people out there, because you know—‘O’Reilly says we want to behead Dana!’ ”4
In response, Milbank wrote what has already been recorded as the gayest column in world history that didn’t include a picture of the cast of Glee:
Bill O’Reilly wants my head—literally. On Thursday night, the Fox News host asked, as part of a show that would be seen by 5.5 million people: ‘Does Sharia law say we can behead Dana Milbank?’ He then added, ‘That was a joke.’ Hilarious! Decapitation jokes just slay me, and this one had all the more hilarity because the topic of journalist beheadings brings to mind my late friend and colleague Danny Pearl, who replaced me in the Wall Street Journal’s London bureau and later was murdered in Pakistan by people who thought Sharia justified it.… But what was he trying to say? That America would be better if it were more like Iran?5
The liberal blogs soon lit up with red-hot indignation over O’Reilly’s direct threat to personally behead Milbank. It was even discussed on CNN’s Reliable Sources, with Milbank again bleating, “I think it’s a serious issue when people are suggesting violent imagery … as Bill O’Reilly did.”
When host Howard Kurtz pointed out that Milbank was, in fact, wrong about how many Democrats had appeared on Fox News election night, Milbank said, “That’s a fair argument. Maybe I should have written it differently, but let’s not talk about cutting off heads.”6 Yes, he should have “written it differently” by not lying.
Now, here’s some of that lighthearted “mockery aimed at Republicans” Krugman sees from Keith Olbermann. After Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade chastised the media for refusing to identify Muslim terrorists as Muslims, Keith commented: “There is ‘stupid’ and there is ‘bigoted’ and there is ‘paranoid’ and there is ‘Islamophobic’—though it takes a big man to combine all four of them.… Not every un-American bastard is Brian Kilmeade, but all Brian Kilmeades are un-American bastards and tonight’s ‘Worst Person in the World.’ ”7
The mind reels at such dazzling, frothy wordplay. If you close your eyes, it’s almost like you’re listening to Oscar Wilde!
A few years earlier, Keith accused Bush of inspiring the anthrax attacks (in his wry, Noel Coward–like way).
Rachel Maddow’s caustic repartee includes her making up stories about right-wingers killing a census-taker and a Republican congressman being warned in advance about the Oklahoma City bombing—both stories requiring subsequent corrections.8
Maddow has also tied Republican Senate candidates to the killing of late-term abortionist George Tiller by describing her documentary on the shooting as important because “there are five Senate candidates running right now who have a position on abortion that has never really been seen in mainstream politics before.”9 Apart from “for” or “against,” one wonders what the other positions on abortion might be. (Pro, but feel really bad about it? Against, except in cases where Charlie Sheen might be the father?)
Claims of “toxic rhetoric” invariably mean a conservative is talking. We just passed this wonderful health care bill and it really debases the tone to hear all this criticism. Liberals are blind with rage that conservatives get to talk now, too. They would prefer to return to a kinder world when there were just three TV networks and no Internet, back when Walter Cronkite told everyone what to believe and liberals didn’t have to win arguments.
Krugman is not exactly a sardonic bon mot–dropping wit himself. He’s more of an angry, red-faced ranter. His 2008 election-night party included effigy burnings of conservative politicians, according to an admiring profile in the New Yorker magazine.10 Evidently, it’s mocking, rakish wit when liberals burn political figures in effigy, but an incitement to murder when conservatives do it.
Democratic ex-congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania wrote a column for the New York Times calling for “an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.” Just months earlier Kanjorski had called for a Republican candidate to be shot: “That [Rick] Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.”11 I’m not from around here, but that sounds like toxic rhetoric to me.
As much as the media stacked the deck with lies, they still couldn’t win a hand.
In our next Portrait of Scumbag,* two days after the shooting, former congressman Alan Grayson was all over the networks blaming conservatives for inciting violence.
Grayson was most famous for the “Taliban Dan” video about his congressional opponent, Daniel Webster, in which Grayson edited Webster’s remarks to precisely reverse their meaning. Webster had told a men’s church group to pick a verse from the Bible that required something of them, such as “Love your wife even as Christ loved the church,” adding “Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘She should submit to me.’ ” Grayson’s campaign ad showed Webster saying only, “She should submit to me,” playing “submit to me” over and over again, and helpfully adding, “Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq and right here in central Florida.”12
Appearing on MSNBC two days after Jared Loughner’s shooting spree, Grayson claimed there had been attacks or “threats of attacks” against Democrats “for two years now.” Apparently, it was all gentlemanly disagreement until Obama became president.
Note how many lies Grayson packs in to prove his point:
1. “[Democratic Rep.] Tom Perriello is burned in effigy.”
Big deal—but also, by the way, a lie. One guy thought it would be a fun part of the bonfire, other Tea Partiers objected, so it never happened.13
2. “Frank Kratovil was hung in effigy.”
Again: big deal—but it was done by one guy, who was promptly denounced for doing it by the official Tea Party group.14
3. “Debbie Wasserman Schultz had her initials used for target practice by one of her Republican opponents.”
Yes, and the opponent who shot at the letters “DWS” went on to lose the primary. The organizer of the event where it happened immediately sent a handwritten apology to the congresswoman and resigned from his position with the local Republicans.15
4. “[Black congressman] Emanuel Cleaver was spat on.”
To be fair, that was not a distortion or half-truth. It was a complete lie.
5. “When you show a picture of someone, use her name, or represent her district and use it with the rifle sight the way Sarah Palin did, that is inexcusable. That is inviting people to commit violence on another human being.”
Here we have a despicable, sneaky lie. Sarah Palin did not put crosshairs over Giffords’s face. She did not put crosshairs on Giffords’s name. She put crosshairs on a map of Giffords’s district—just like the Democratic Leadership Committee and a million others have done with their political opponents. But notice how Grayson sleazily throws in three alternative claims—crosshairs were put on Giffords’s face, name, or district—just to release the two false allegations into the atmosphere. This is on the order of saying, “Alan Grayson has engaged in child rape, murder, or bad taste.”
6. “[Michele Bachmann’s comment, she wants her constituents armed and dangerous] that’s over the line.”
The rest of the sentence was “I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax.” Her full quote was: “But you can get all the latest information on this event, this … a must-go-to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn … it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, twenty members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”
She was telling people to arm themselves with information, nothing more.
7. “So is [Sarah Palin’s statement] ‘don’t retreat but reload.’ ”
That, also, is a metaphor, you complete moron. But anticipating princess-and-the-pea liberals like Grayson, Milbank, Matthews, and Krugman, nearly a year earlier, Palin had told a political rally, “When we take up our arms, we’re talking about our vote. We’re talking about being involved in a contested primary like this and picking the right candidate, too.”16
8. “Dan Gainor (ph), a Republican operative, telling people that he paid them $100 to punch me in the nose—that’s all over the line.”17
That, frankly, is shocking. I would have paid them at least $1,000.
Well done, Alan! That’s more lies per second than anyone in the history of television!
And finally, to top off a week of conservatives getting blamed for a left-wing pothead’s shooting spree, a liberal made a death threat to a conservative … at a televised town-hall meeting to discuss the shootings. Liberal J. Eric Fuller, who had been shot in the leg by Loughner the week before, was apparently enraged at a suggestion by Arizona Tea Party leader Trent Humphries that people not politicize the shooting. Fuller screamed at Humphries “You’re dead!” and was arrested on the spot. As he was being dragged from the room by the police, Fuller kept yelling at the crowd, “What’s the matter with you—whores!” according to the New York Times.18
A month later, during the government union strikes in Wisconsin, Democratic assemblyman and prostitute frequenter Gordon Hintz yelled at Republican assemblywoman Michelle Litjens, “You are F**king dead!”19
Liberals possess in abundance all the characteristics of mobs identified by Le Bon: “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others besides—which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution—in women, savages, and children, for instance.”20 I would add that liberal mobs are composed of individuals with an unresolved infantile disorder, resulting in humorlessness and rage.
So it’s particularly irresponsible for the mainstream media and elected Democrats to be ginning up these impulsive, prone-to-violence liberals by accusing conservatives of complicity in murder. We’d prefer it if you’d just make crosshair maps of our contested congressional districts, please. The false imputation of violence to conservatives is far more dangerous than anything Palin has ever done, particularly when processed by the primitive, mob-susceptible liberal brain. If Sarah Palin is inciting people to commit murder, wouldn’t it be an act of public service to kill her?
And when the violence comes, liberals will ignore it, defend it as harmless fun or “free speech,” or hoot with laughter about it. Then they will blame it on conservatives. A few years later, the perpetrators will be pardoned by a Democratic president and hired as university professors.
Liberals cite the killing of abortionists as an example of right-wing violence. For those of you keeping score at home, in the past four decades, abortion foes have killed eight abortion clinic workers, and abortion supporters have killed 53 million unborn babies. That score again, with we’re not sure how much time left to play, is 53 million to eight.
Besides the numbers, another difference is that fans of unborn babies don’t praise the murders of abortionists or call such attacks a “constitutional right.” To the contrary, every person affiliated in any way with the pro-life movement has roundly condemned all abortion clinic violence, even when the target is a mass murderer like George Tiller.
But more important, abortion clinic violence should not be filed under “Political Violence” at all. It should be filed under “Things Liberals Won’t Let Americans Vote On.” As upset as liberals were by the Vietnam War, when JFK started that war, he was a president, duly elected by constitutional means—plus a little Daley machine magic. So was LBJ when he escalated the war, as was Nixon when he ended it.
Liberals invented a constitutional right to abortion out of thin air and, in one fell swoop, withdrew abortion policy from all democratic processes. Wishing very hard for something to be a constitutional right does not make it so. When there is no legal process for pro-lifers to pursue to outlaw abortion—unlike every policy liberals violently protest—some pro-lifers will inevitably respond to lawlessness with lawlessness.
Noticeably, the first abortion doctor was killed not after Roe, but twenty years later, immediately after the 1993 decision upholding Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In the first few years after Casey, about six more people were killed in attacks on abortion clinics. Most of the abortionists were shot or, depending upon your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle.
Americans opposed to abortion had spent two decades fighting within the law against a constitutionally groundless decision. They elected two Republican presidents, patiently waited for Supreme Court justices to retire, and fought bruising nomination battles to get conservative nominees on the Court. Then they passed an abortion law in Pennsylvania, which was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. But the Court upheld the utterly fraudulent “constitutional right” to abortion announced in Roe. There were no more constitutional options left to fight judicial tyranny on the little matter of mass murder.
Thus, abortion clinic violence is more akin to the Tiananmen Square protests in Communist China than any liberal riot in America. Want to stop violence at abortion clinics? Repeal Roe and let Americans vote.
Conservatives constitute about 40 percent of the population—compared with only 20 percent who are liberals.21 If “both sides” were equally guilty of committing political violence, there would be twice as much political violence coming from conservatives as liberals. Instead, there is none. All the political violence comes from either random lunatics or liberals—to the extent that those categories can be disaggregated.
*By “scumbag,” I do not mean that Grayson is literally a used condom, I mean he is a piece of garbage wrapped in skin, who lies whenever he talks.