"Anyone care to bet the protagonist is a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party (aka nutroot) who is frustrated that
Hillary hasn't personally defunded the War in Iraq yet? Might even be a member over at Daily Kos?"
---Rotarymunkey, commenter at MichelleMalkin.com
I have to admit, I never really understood the right-wing sense of humor.
Like when Ronald Reagan joked in 1964 about the 17 million people who then went to bed hungry every night in America,
saying that "they were all on a diet."
Or when Rush Limbaugh called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton a "dog."
Or when George W. Bush yucked it up over the issue of the non-existent WMDs in Iraq during a "comedy" skit in the Oval
Office.
I don't know---maybe I just don't have much of a sense of humor, because I saw nothing funny about yesterday's hostage crisis, in which a distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb walked into the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in New
Hampshire.
However, plenty of right-wing folks thought the whole episode was real funny. Take (please) the wingnuts who hang out at
the blog of right-wing nutcase Michelle Malkin.
As of Friday night, Malkin's comments section was full of posters who were joking about the crisis and speculating about
how the "liberal" media and the Democrats would conspire to spin the episode to Hillary's advantage.
A poster by the name of "Fodder Jack" seemed to find humor in the crisis, writing, "Maybe it is a last ditch effort by the press to get an interview with Hillary."
Another writer called "Reppac122" was (like many across the right-wing blogosphere) already using the occasion to attack
the Clintons. "My cynical political thinking here is that the Clintons (yes, both of them) will use this horrible situation for their
political benefit."
Another writer, using the handle, "RetFireman," raised the issue of conspiracy: "Now be honest...with all that has come out lately, and I am not saying it is staged, but how many people would be that
surprised to find out at some later date that it was? Be honest with yourself, and consider who we are talking about."
Commenter "Eric CharlotteNC" sarcastically mocked Liberals in his post. "If our troops weren't in Iraq this never would have happened! Or maybe global warming got this guy very hot!"
"Blacktygrrrr" added his own two cents: "The bottom line is if the hostage taker is a liberal, he will be dismissed as deranged, since many liberals are
deranged anyway."
"Rotarymunkey" had this to say: "Anyone care to bet the protagonist is a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party (aka nutroot) who is frustrated that
Hillary hasn't personally defunded the War in Iraq yet? Might even be a member over at Daily Kos?"
And so it goes, on and on.
Of course, none of this comes as much of a surprise to those of us who are at all familiar with the vicious
hatemongering in the right-wing blogosphere.
The scary thing is Malkin's blog supposedly has a policy of screening out "offensive" remarks. If the above comments
weren't screened out, one can only wonder what truly deranged nutcase comments were deleted. The mind boggles.
I'm sure there are those who would argue that Malkin isn't responsible for the deranged posters who comment on her blog.
But anyone familiar with Malkin's own writings knows that she herself is a truly psychotic nutcase whose babblings over
the years have been far scarier than any of the comments above.
As prominent Malkin critic Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Malkin once wrote a book "defending the ethnicity-based
imprisonment of innocent American citizens in internment camps."
As media watchdog site Media Matters pointed out, the mainstream media has given, on numerous occasions in the past, significant coverage to episodes in which
controversial comments appeared on progressive blogs.
How much do you want to bet that the MSM ignores the right-wing hatemongering that appeared in the aftermath of the
Clinton office hostage crisis?
*************
The creator of the progressive site, BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, Marc McDonald is an award-winning journalist who worked for 15 years for several Texas newspapers, including the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared
in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including OpEdNews.com, BuzzFlash.com, Crooks and Liars, Salon.com,
Progressive Daily Beacon, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and
reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, the Washington Post, USA
Today and many more.