whottt
10-25-2004, 12:02 PM
Euro-Socialists Say: Assassinate Bush
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 25, 2004
The Left’s campaign of hate and defamation against the American president has hit a new low: a major media organ of the international Left, edited by an associate of Bill Clinton, has called for President Bush’s assassination.
On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?
So his bloodlust would not be missed, earlier in the column Brooker (who can be e-mailed at [email protected]) advocated the Most Powerful Man in the Free World be “tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts.” He also compared our president to “a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement,” then deemed Bush “a lying, s######ing, drink-driving [sic.], selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat.” (You can view the entire hate screed here.)
The Guardian has since has since pulled the incitement to murder and tendered a hollow apology “for any offense caused.” Although the newspaper calls Brooker’s incitements “flippant” and “tasteless,” it assures concerned readers, “his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action.”
England has not heard such a lethal aspiration since Henry II bellowed, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”
This counsel issues from the same peaceniks who carried signs spouting such loving slogans as, “Bush is the disease. Death is the cure”; and “We Support Our Troops, When They Shoot their Officers.” These fanatics regularly call Bush the new Hitler – and their more insightful followers may have deduced that no one would have shed a tear if Hitler had been assassinated in 1933. Yet it appears no one on the Left has denounced this call-to-arms.
In 1995, a sagging President Clinton seized the Oklahoma City bombing for his political rebound and opportunistically blamed “anti-government rhetoric” and “talk radio.” His theories were instantly parroted in the liberal media, although Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich never said anything remotely violent, unlike the modern Left.
Even imaginary threats were treated with the utmost severity in the Clinton White House. At a rally shortly after the (unanswered) bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, Glenn and Patricia Mendoza told President Clinton, “You suck, and those boys died.” Agents promptly arrested the elderly couple and gave them the third degree. Three years earlier, William Kelly was arrested and stripsearched after he shouted the highly threatening phrase, “What you need to do is abide by your original campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut,” at a business meeting attended by Clinton in July 1993.
Yet, despite the Left’s hand-wringing about mythical “Clinton-haters,” never did millions of neo-Nazis march on Washington carrying placards calling for Bill Clinton’s death, only to be joined by Hollywood’s elite, be granted tens of millions of dollars by messianic billionaires, and have their shrillest rhetoric repeated by the senior leadership of a major political party. That, roughly, is the difference between violent extremists on the “Right” and Left. [1]
Five years ago, The Interfaith Alliance – a start-up group meant to counter the Christian Coalition – declared, “This year, public discourse has been marked by an unprecedented level of incivility.” This weekend’s death threat notwithstanding, nothing short of divine intervention would cause this Religious Left front, supported by liberal anchor Walter Cronkite, to repeat this call.
Brooker’s column confirms what many have long sensed: The Left’s all-consuming hatred has led it outside the bounds of rational discourse. Its love of conspiracy theories is one sign. Its avowal of brownshirt-style intimidation, whether couched in “humor” or not, is another. In recent years, the Left has wished for its opponents’ deaths with disturbing frequency. Columnist Julianne Malveaux publicly cast a pox on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying, “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease.” During the Reagan administration, comedian “Fr. Guido Sarducci” (Don Novello), dressed in full clerical garb, once asked a Saturday Night Live audience, “Don’t you think Jodie Foster liked John Hinckley just a little bit?” Tammy Bruce revealed in The Death of Right and Wrong that when gay and feminist activists heard Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s Disease a decade later, they rejoiced that they might be “opening up that champagne sooner than later!” Vitriolic left-winger Ted Rall’s “cartoons” are a regular assault on human decency.
Naturally, the Guardian insists, this column was but a joke. But the laughter that echoes from the Left sounds in tones most ominous. All the more so as this call comes after Guardian editors showed embarrassment at their failure to impact this presidential election.
Operation Clark County, post-mortem
The Guardian launched an ambitious program to swing the election for Kerry by having its readers write to “undecided” voters in Clark County, Ohio (county seat: Springfield, just west of Columbus). Clark County had narrowly voted for Al Gore in 2000, although Ohio went to George W. Bush. In this, Guardian editors saw promise. They obtained the list of supposed “undecided” voters (the voters had actually not voted in the previous two primaries; they were not “undecided”) and paired 14,000 Buckeye addresses up with 14,000 willing leftists itching to put pen to paper. (They have also seemingly failed to pay for the use of the voter list as of yet.) They intended to send 42,000 such letters to the county’s voters.
Having Euro-socialists write anti-American diatribes to heartland Midwesterners had predictable results: the county recoiled in horror.
A Kerry voter threw her letter away, thinking it the work of a terrorist, as a “Neil Evans” warned her if Bush won the election she would have to “put on a Canadian accent when traveling abroad.” (He apparently cribbed this phrase from novelist Richard Dawkins, whose published letter uses the same image. So much for originality, eh?)
A Scottish writer called Operation Iraqi Freedom a “farce” in a letter addressed to Sean Brown. Sean’s father, Tony, opened the letter, as his son was currently fighting in that “farce.” “My son will have choice words to say about this that you can’t print,” he assured reporters.
It is clear to see why readers might be alarmed, perusing a collection of these letters published in the Guardian under the headline “America, Let Us Love You Again….” (Again?)
One assumes eyebrows were raised upon receiving a letter from “Mohsin Talukdar from Bangladesh, currently residing in great Britain [sic.],” who describes himself as a “non-practising Muslim by faith; although faith is very important to me, I feel comfortable believing in God and being a human being practising humanity.” (Keep practicing.)
A Brit named Stuart Riches told his Ohio counterpart although the two may not seem to have much in common, “we share the pretext that we are both citizens of the free world, living in a democracy.” (Emphasis added.)
In a move that could not have helped Sen. Kerry, Ilona Bossanyi of France told her pen pal Americans live in a “country built upon the principles of democracy but whose very might is in danger of disenfranchising the rest of the world.”
A blacklash ensued. The Springfield News-Sun soon carried banner headlines like, “Butt Out Brits, Voters Say.” Angry Americans sent thousands of e-mails telling the Europeans to mind their own business. Dan Harkins, Chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, summarized, “What the Guardian has done is firm up the Republican base. What a gift.” Last Thursday, Editor Ian Katz packed it in, claiming editors had been the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy which had hacked into their site and made assigning the rest of the 42,000 Clark County addresses impossible.
The Clinton Connection
There is a Clinton connection to the most recent attack, as well: Guardian Executive News Editor Albert Scardino served as media advisor to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. He is also a former press editor for NYC Mayor David Dinkins. This certainly raises questions about whether any domestic figures were involved in planning this effort, and all the legal implications thereof. Thus, the most unwarranted, partisan foreign intrusion in American election history was launched by a Clinton crony. Before pulling the plug, Scardino proclaimed the effort “an overwhelming triumph.”
Two days later, one of his paper’s columnists was screaming for Dubya’s blood.
This final American connection lays everything in place: The president’s leftist opponents – foreign and domestic – feel they have a sacred duty to rig elections around the world to their liking. And if their advice is scorned, they have the right to pursue what Clausewitz called “politics by other means”: physical warfare. The development is not a healthy one for democracies on either side of the Atlantic.
ENDNOTES:
1. It should be noted the neo-Nazis and their racialist ilk, often associated with the “right-wing,” actually share a worldview more compatible with the Left, emphasizing collectivism, regimentation, and tribal identity politics.
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 25, 2004
The Left’s campaign of hate and defamation against the American president has hit a new low: a major media organ of the international Left, edited by an associate of Bill Clinton, has called for President Bush’s assassination.
On Saturday, columnist Charlie Brooker told the readers of the far-Left British newspaper Guardian:
On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?
So his bloodlust would not be missed, earlier in the column Brooker (who can be e-mailed at [email protected]) advocated the Most Powerful Man in the Free World be “tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts.” He also compared our president to “a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement,” then deemed Bush “a lying, s######ing, drink-driving [sic.], selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat.” (You can view the entire hate screed here.)
The Guardian has since has since pulled the incitement to murder and tendered a hollow apology “for any offense caused.” Although the newspaper calls Brooker’s incitements “flippant” and “tasteless,” it assures concerned readers, “his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action.”
England has not heard such a lethal aspiration since Henry II bellowed, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”
This counsel issues from the same peaceniks who carried signs spouting such loving slogans as, “Bush is the disease. Death is the cure”; and “We Support Our Troops, When They Shoot their Officers.” These fanatics regularly call Bush the new Hitler – and their more insightful followers may have deduced that no one would have shed a tear if Hitler had been assassinated in 1933. Yet it appears no one on the Left has denounced this call-to-arms.
In 1995, a sagging President Clinton seized the Oklahoma City bombing for his political rebound and opportunistically blamed “anti-government rhetoric” and “talk radio.” His theories were instantly parroted in the liberal media, although Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich never said anything remotely violent, unlike the modern Left.
Even imaginary threats were treated with the utmost severity in the Clinton White House. At a rally shortly after the (unanswered) bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, Glenn and Patricia Mendoza told President Clinton, “You suck, and those boys died.” Agents promptly arrested the elderly couple and gave them the third degree. Three years earlier, William Kelly was arrested and stripsearched after he shouted the highly threatening phrase, “What you need to do is abide by your original campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut,” at a business meeting attended by Clinton in July 1993.
Yet, despite the Left’s hand-wringing about mythical “Clinton-haters,” never did millions of neo-Nazis march on Washington carrying placards calling for Bill Clinton’s death, only to be joined by Hollywood’s elite, be granted tens of millions of dollars by messianic billionaires, and have their shrillest rhetoric repeated by the senior leadership of a major political party. That, roughly, is the difference between violent extremists on the “Right” and Left. [1]
Five years ago, The Interfaith Alliance – a start-up group meant to counter the Christian Coalition – declared, “This year, public discourse has been marked by an unprecedented level of incivility.” This weekend’s death threat notwithstanding, nothing short of divine intervention would cause this Religious Left front, supported by liberal anchor Walter Cronkite, to repeat this call.
Brooker’s column confirms what many have long sensed: The Left’s all-consuming hatred has led it outside the bounds of rational discourse. Its love of conspiracy theories is one sign. Its avowal of brownshirt-style intimidation, whether couched in “humor” or not, is another. In recent years, the Left has wished for its opponents’ deaths with disturbing frequency. Columnist Julianne Malveaux publicly cast a pox on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying, “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease.” During the Reagan administration, comedian “Fr. Guido Sarducci” (Don Novello), dressed in full clerical garb, once asked a Saturday Night Live audience, “Don’t you think Jodie Foster liked John Hinckley just a little bit?” Tammy Bruce revealed in The Death of Right and Wrong that when gay and feminist activists heard Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s Disease a decade later, they rejoiced that they might be “opening up that champagne sooner than later!” Vitriolic left-winger Ted Rall’s “cartoons” are a regular assault on human decency.
Naturally, the Guardian insists, this column was but a joke. But the laughter that echoes from the Left sounds in tones most ominous. All the more so as this call comes after Guardian editors showed embarrassment at their failure to impact this presidential election.
Operation Clark County, post-mortem
The Guardian launched an ambitious program to swing the election for Kerry by having its readers write to “undecided” voters in Clark County, Ohio (county seat: Springfield, just west of Columbus). Clark County had narrowly voted for Al Gore in 2000, although Ohio went to George W. Bush. In this, Guardian editors saw promise. They obtained the list of supposed “undecided” voters (the voters had actually not voted in the previous two primaries; they were not “undecided”) and paired 14,000 Buckeye addresses up with 14,000 willing leftists itching to put pen to paper. (They have also seemingly failed to pay for the use of the voter list as of yet.) They intended to send 42,000 such letters to the county’s voters.
Having Euro-socialists write anti-American diatribes to heartland Midwesterners had predictable results: the county recoiled in horror.
A Kerry voter threw her letter away, thinking it the work of a terrorist, as a “Neil Evans” warned her if Bush won the election she would have to “put on a Canadian accent when traveling abroad.” (He apparently cribbed this phrase from novelist Richard Dawkins, whose published letter uses the same image. So much for originality, eh?)
A Scottish writer called Operation Iraqi Freedom a “farce” in a letter addressed to Sean Brown. Sean’s father, Tony, opened the letter, as his son was currently fighting in that “farce.” “My son will have choice words to say about this that you can’t print,” he assured reporters.
It is clear to see why readers might be alarmed, perusing a collection of these letters published in the Guardian under the headline “America, Let Us Love You Again….” (Again?)
One assumes eyebrows were raised upon receiving a letter from “Mohsin Talukdar from Bangladesh, currently residing in great Britain [sic.],” who describes himself as a “non-practising Muslim by faith; although faith is very important to me, I feel comfortable believing in God and being a human being practising humanity.” (Keep practicing.)
A Brit named Stuart Riches told his Ohio counterpart although the two may not seem to have much in common, “we share the pretext that we are both citizens of the free world, living in a democracy.” (Emphasis added.)
In a move that could not have helped Sen. Kerry, Ilona Bossanyi of France told her pen pal Americans live in a “country built upon the principles of democracy but whose very might is in danger of disenfranchising the rest of the world.”
A blacklash ensued. The Springfield News-Sun soon carried banner headlines like, “Butt Out Brits, Voters Say.” Angry Americans sent thousands of e-mails telling the Europeans to mind their own business. Dan Harkins, Chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, summarized, “What the Guardian has done is firm up the Republican base. What a gift.” Last Thursday, Editor Ian Katz packed it in, claiming editors had been the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy which had hacked into their site and made assigning the rest of the 42,000 Clark County addresses impossible.
The Clinton Connection
There is a Clinton connection to the most recent attack, as well: Guardian Executive News Editor Albert Scardino served as media advisor to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. He is also a former press editor for NYC Mayor David Dinkins. This certainly raises questions about whether any domestic figures were involved in planning this effort, and all the legal implications thereof. Thus, the most unwarranted, partisan foreign intrusion in American election history was launched by a Clinton crony. Before pulling the plug, Scardino proclaimed the effort “an overwhelming triumph.”
Two days later, one of his paper’s columnists was screaming for Dubya’s blood.
This final American connection lays everything in place: The president’s leftist opponents – foreign and domestic – feel they have a sacred duty to rig elections around the world to their liking. And if their advice is scorned, they have the right to pursue what Clausewitz called “politics by other means”: physical warfare. The development is not a healthy one for democracies on either side of the Atlantic.
ENDNOTES:
1. It should be noted the neo-Nazis and their racialist ilk, often associated with the “right-wing,” actually share a worldview more compatible with the Left, emphasizing collectivism, regimentation, and tribal identity politics.