[published on July 16, 2006 in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog]
I'm inclined to treat the latest developments in Lunatic Fringe Queen Bee vs. Lunatic Fringe Queen Bee Wannabe with the amusement their antics usually evoke, but it's really too disturbing.
You know, I was really concerned that Morgan might actually have out-Coultered La Coulter with that first round of nonsense about sending Keller to the gas chamber, but OF COURSE AC wasn't going to sit still and let this Coulter-come-lately. Nope, she jumped right in the ring, and now the two are duking it out to see who can be the most 'outrageous' under the guise of a 'friendly' exchange of death penalty preferences.
Clearly my girl Ann---the Dems' secret weapon---is becoming desperate as more and more women rush in to compete for her place as Queen of the Lunatic Fringe. This Melanie Morgan---how dare she?!--- is clearly trying to wrestle for Ann's scepter.
Not in this lifetime, Mel! Left-wing Coulterphiles everywhere agree that even the most extreme crazy-ass fascist-type statement that an aspiring capital W wingnut can utter falls flat and sounds stupid if not backed up by Coulter's enormous, seemingly limitless rage at all things liberal. Not to say that Coulter's rants don't sound stupid, but they sound stupid in the scary way that hatred backed by real rage. Morgan is an amateur at the shock-the-donkey game compared to AC and I refuse to take her seriously as competition for La Coulter. I really get the feeling that she is TRYING to be offensive; but to beat out AC, you have to BE offensive and we Dems, damn it, can tell the difference.
According to this article by Joe Conason in Salon, Morgan seems too thin-skinned to carry off Coulter's crown.
[quote from Conason's Salon Article begins]
Like many right-wingers, the KSFO crew can dish it out, but they can't take it. Their feelings get hurt when anyone slaps back. On July 10, New York Times columnist Frank Rich published a Sunday column identifying Morgan as part of a "get the press lynch mob." Although Rich didn't urge any summary punishment for her, Morgan reacted the next day by calling him "one of the meanest liberals that's on staff there in the columns department" and wrongly accused him and other Times staffers of having "lied about what I've actually said." (In the same breath she made a similar bogus complaint about a column I wrote for Salon.)
[quote from Conason's Salon Article ends; links in original]
I'm usually quite pleased to hear that the dear ladies of the Extreme Right are sounding off because having them masquerade as normal Republicans so appalls and outrages the actual Republicans I know that they begin to feel themselves shift involuntarily back to the center where good Republicans belong. [I'm talking about the many, many people who still touchingly believe that Republicans are against big government (Hahahaha), the intrusion of government into private life (BWAHhahahaha) or are fiscal conservatives (MWAHhahahahahahhah).]
So I normally am not in favor of silencing even the stupidest and most grotesque extremism from the
Right. But a merry debate about the merits of one gruesome form of execution over another for a supposed 'traitor' is really beyond the pale.
In their eagerness to be Top, er, Lady Dog, the ladies in question really are getting into potentially dangerous waters. Do they really want the morons who listen to them and take them seriously to start debating the merits of one form of death for the alleged traitor over another? It's in this way that lynch mobs are formed, my angels.
Here's a sample of the witty and intellectual dialogue on offer by Morgan and her co-host, again according to Joe Conason's article:
[quote from Conason's Salon article begins]
Then she and her crew came up with a new position regarding what should happen to those journalists whom she deems traitors. Not what should happen, actually, but how it should happen.
"I really do believe that anybody who publishes classified information that results in a charge of treason should be fried! Fry 'em! Trial, conviction, death penalty!"
At that point one of her co-hosts cheerfully interjects, "You originally called for the gas chamber ... but we kind of like Ole Sparky," meaning the electric chair. To shrieks of laughter from Morgan, he launched into a gruesome description of execution by electrocution: "Their hair would go up and everything, smoke, electrical jets shooting out of their eyeballs ... We'd take Bill Keller, put him in the electric chair -- after a trial -- and then fire it up." He then launched into a series of oral sound effects -- buzzing, screeching, hissing and blubbering sounds meant to simulate the high-voltage end of the Times editor.
[quote from Conason's Salon article ends]
Wow, that is some awesome trailer park-style "wit and intellect" there, Morgan and co-hosts! High fives!
I note that MM prefaces each heartfelt wish for the death of a human being (even including an editor) with a reference to "trial" and "conviction"---as though conviction is a foregone conclusion---in an attempt, I infer, to cover her butt in the event that one of the loonies in the listening audience decides that she is broadcasting special instructions to him to make her dreams of electrocution and asphyxiation a reality. Which just goes to show---and this is the UNFUNNY part---that she is aware that this is at least a possibility. It's happened before.
And permitting these two 'pundits' to merrily debate death penalty preferences ("if he were legally tried and convicted as a traitor in a court of law, this would be the punishment I'd enjoy most!") creates not only the danger that someone will take them literally as to the person in question, but the CERTAINTY that a certain number of yuck-yuckers who are listening in are going to learn that it's acceptable to find joy and humor in contemplating the violent death of another human being.
And that is not funny at ALL.
I've been a bit pissed off at my fellow Dems lately, but this latest is enough to cause me to renew my cry:
THANK GOD I'M A DEMOCRAT.
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