New York Sportswriter Attacks Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin

New York sportswriter Mike Lupica Monday went on a full-frontal assault of Tea Party members, Sarah Palin, and every American currently voicing dissent about the direction of the nation.

For those unfamiliar with the name, Lupica has been a highly-regarded sportswriter for decades, and regularly shows his brash, New York outspokenness on ESPN's weekly program "The Sports Reporters."

Of late, he has been publishing a political column at the News called "Mondays with Mike," a feature that even the left-leaning Wikipedia described as "strongly liberal in orientation."

This Monday, Lupica's column clearly fit that description (h/t Cubachi):

As always, you wonder where this patriotism and righteousness and Tea Party activism was during Bush-Cheney. You wonder if all the people who want to take to the streets - and to the television cameras now - decided they weren't needed for eight years because they thought the country was going so good. Or maybe they have just convinced themselves that the Obama who must now be stopped didn't just inherit this America, he created it.

This is no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate. This isn't the kind of honest debate on which our system of government has been built. It is vile, back-alley fighting, getting worse by the day, with no end in sight. People say that opposition to all Presidents, even the most unpopular white ones, sounds like this. No, it doesn't.

Is Lupica ignorant or dishonest? Did he miss the hatred expressed towards George W. Bush last decade, or is he conveniently ignoring it?

Maybe some truly disgraceful anti-Bush signs reported by NewsBusters last August will clue this man in:

Did you miss this, Mike? Were you out of the country the entire last decade, or were you just asleep?

Whatever the answer, readers are advised that what precipitated Lupica's disgust was a graffitied stop sign:

We are 100 yards, no more than that, from the front entrance to the school. There is a stop sign here, and underneath the word "Stop" someone has spray-painted "Obama."

Stop Obama.

Why has somebody done it? Because in the current climate, people have been convinced they can. Or, more likely, that they should.

My son is in the seat next to me in the car. He says, "This isn't the only one. There are others in different parts of town."

Oh, heavens. Someone actually spray-painted "Obama" under the word "Stop" on a stop sign.

Well, let me clue you in, Mike: the first time I saw this done was BEFORE I was in elementary school. Then, it was "LBJ."

After that, it was "Stop Nixon." Then "Stop Ford." Then "Stop Carter."

Of course, in the 80s, "Stop Reagan" was all the rage.

As for Bush, well:

Never saw one of these, Mike?

Alas, folks like Lupica and others in the media currently carping about what they see as hate speech not only have conveniently forgotten what happened just a few years ago, but also don't realize that it was their Bush Derangement Syndrome that fostered much of the Right's response to Obama.

Having watched Bush get viciously attacked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it became apparent that vitriolic demonstrations against the White House and its policies -- regardless of how vulgar and inflammatory -- are now totally acceptable.

As such, what's happening around America today is partially a predictable reaction to years of vile anti-Bush protests not just from citizens but also those that call themselves journalists.

Not surprisingly, we've learned in the past eighteen months that such people can dish it out, but they can't take it.

With this in mind, maybe Lupica should have attended school with his son that morning, for he was certainly not acting like an adult when he wrote this pathetic column.

Much like the example of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, this seems to happen to sports reporters when they crossover into political commentary.

Must be an occupational hazard.