The Right's Violent Fantasies

The left has been railing against Dubya II with renewed vigor — make that despair — since November 3. Inevitably it's all gotten a bit heated, what with the already infamous Fuck the South rant and various impotent calls for a blue-state/red-state secession. And yet, all the bile directed at the president and his 59 million supporters doesn't begin to match the white hot hatred that a range of right-wing media pundits habitually direct at the left. Don't believe me?

• Just yesterday, in this portrait of right-wing talkshow host G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate felon said he has no problem with the killing of prominent Americans who oppose one of America's righteous wars — Vietnam, Iraq, whatever. To this day, he defends the planned murder of columnist Jack Andersen that he once did his best to bring about.

• Popular blogger Adam Yoshida wants to "curb-stomp" non-Bush voters. (For those who don't know, that's breaking their jaws by stomping on their heads as they're forced to bite the curb.) He then wants his right-wing audience to rape Democratic female politicians (at least the "cute ones") by forcing them to be "comfort women" for the Republicans. You can read it here (look for the post headlined "Four More Years!").

• Talkshow host Michael Savage addresses gay activists as "stinking rats who hide in the sewers," and derided a gay caller for being a "sodomite who should get AIDS and die."

• The New York Post's Adam Brodsky holds that Kerry voters are Jew-haters who are no better than the terrorists of Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.

• And speaking of violent extremists, best-selling author Ann Coulter fervently wishes that Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building in Manhattan's Times Square, presumably killing the paper's entire staff.

This kind of no-holds-barred hate has been building, I think, since the early nineties. I remember an episode of Rush Limbaugh's TV show where he referred to the Clintons' cat, Socks, only to cleverly ask "But did you know the White House also has a dog?" And he held up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, then about thirteen years old. I thought that was mean-spirited, but things have gotten ten times worse.

I'm genuinely puzzled. Am I missing something? Is there an author on the left who, in shrillness and reach, is the equivalent of Ann Coulter, or even Sean Hannity? No, sorry — Michael Moore, though a demagogue at times, hardly counts, as he doesn't call people "stinking rats" and "whores" and "maggots" and other epithets that Coulter c.s. not only get away with but are celebrated for. So let's hear it: Where in the left-leaning popular media do people call for the mutilation and murder of conservatives? Forward me your links. (I don't want to hear about hysterical lefty bloggers with an audience of six, or sixty — but about bona fide mass media, akin in size to the ones I mention in this post.)

And pardon me for asking, but where are the protests of moderate rightists? Why don't fair-minded conservatives — Colin Powell, say, or John McCain, or Christopher Shays, or Arnold Schwarzenegger — call for a voluntary end to all this extremist nastiness? Why don't they at least distance themselves from the orgy of hateful noise, just once? Come to think of it, why doesn't president Bush? After all, he's a "uniter, not a divider," right? I'd hate to think these guys are doing nothing to stop calls for rape, assassination, and terrorist bloodbaths because of some perceived advantage the violent invective gives their side.