The Fringe Festival
(AP)
The dustup sheds a light on an unfortunate habit of partisans on both sides, who love to publicize nasty rhetoric in order to illustrate the wrong-headedness of their ideological opponents. You might call it the Ward Churchill strategy. Churchill, as you may know, is a (once) obscure professor who wrote a ridiculous essay comparing the victims of the September 11th attacks to Nazis. As I noted in CJR Daily in 2005, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly decided that the Churchill affair was a huge story – he covered it an astounding 25 times in a four-month period.
Churchill is the kind of guy who makes liberals look like wackos – just like the commenters who expressed sadness when the vice president wasn't killed. There is a reason partisans might want to think twice before employing the Ward Churchill strategy, however – a reason aside from the inherent intellectual dishonesty of shining a light on unimportant figures in order to push an agenda. There are Ward Churchills on both sides, after all, as a visit to the comments section of a site like Free Republic quickly reveals. And I'm not sure how getting into a your-freaks-are-worse-then-ours tit-for-tat benefits anyone in the long run.
So, the situation is hardly comparable. The reason Hannity, with his multi-million dollar contracts, book deals, radio and TV shows, has to find anonymous comments is because there are no rude liberals given a forum on your "free speech" segments or Sunday morning talk shows, as Limbaugh and Coulter are. During all the many hours of blog reading I've done, I have yet to read a comment by someone that even comes close to approaching the calls for the assassination of Demoratic leaders, as one radio show host did, or the bombing of the NYT's, as your Good Morning fave Coulter does. When you put up a prominent liberal calling for the death of Cheney instead of some dork posting from a public library to stay warm, then you can complain.
Wouldn't one think that the enemy of our enemy would be our friend? George Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney only continue to want to fight wars against everyone in the Middle East in effort to sustain their Private War Contractor Affirmative Action.
"A number of commenters expressed their disappointment that Cheney hadn't been killed"
as
"A large number of commenters on a comment
moderated blog expressed their disappointment that Cheney hadn't been killed".
Since the postings have been removed it's impossible to quantify the number of posters wishing for the Vice President's death.
Typical liberal BS thats come to be expected from you hacks at CBS