Well, it ain’t “Macaca,” or a racist rock in the Texas wilderness, but you can’t say The Washington Post isn’t trying. Instead of George Allen or Rick Perry, the target is Jeb Bush.
Bush tweeted a photo of a custom .45 semi-auto that gun-manufacturer FN America gave him during a plant visit in South Carolina this week, adding the caption, “America.” Of course plenty of liberals wet themselves and howled in horror, including living caricature Michael Moore and the delicate buttercups at The New York Daily News. But only the intrepid journalists at the Post thought to link the episode to the Nazis.
After reminding Post readers that Republicans don’t share their antipathy toward guns (“with each candidate touting their record with the NRA and history of firearm ownership.”) T. Rees Shapiro set about detailing FN’s “long and fascinating history.” It’s so long and fascinating that it begins and ends with World War II. The entirety of Shapiro’s FN saga? The Belgium-based company formerly know as Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre:
was requisitioned by the Nazi military and its factories produced thousands of weapons for Axis troops, including pistols carried by Nazi officers and pilots. One model, the Browning-designed Hi-Power, was used by both the Allies and Axis powers during the war, with FN factories manufacturing a version of the popular handgun for the German military.
Spellbinding, no? Having exhausted his Tolstoyan account, Shapiro reassured:
But that was in the past. Today, FN Herstal supplies countless arms to the U.S. military, including the popular M4 carbine as well as the M240 machine gun and the MK19 automatic grenade launcher.
So the company makes a whole lot of other stuff civilized liberals are uncomfortable with. Check.
Again, this isn’t really isn’t even a shadow of the Post’s classic Republican smears (and it’s hard to see any other point to Shapiro’s piece). Times are tough in the newspaper biz. Resources are scarce and good help is hard to find. But it's sad to see a once-great Democratic Party newsletter fallen on such hard times.
