WaPo's Colbert King Takes Up NB's Item on Mike Malloy Asking About a SEAL Shooting of Bush

May 7th, 2011 9:40 AM

Our item on radical radio host Mike Malloy wondering when a Navy SEAL team would shoot George W. Bush is getting mentioned far and wide, including  The Washington Times and the "Grapevine" on Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier. In Saturday's Washington Post, liberal columnist Colbert King took Malloy to task:

I would not have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself. Monday night, Mike Malloy, host of a nationally syndicated show on satellite radio, took freedom of expression to a really ugly level. Malloy, described on his Web site as a "traditional Liberal Democrat doing his part to return the Democratic Party to its Liberal roots," talked about the death of Osama bin Laden and the lives lost in the war on terrorism. Malloy said former president George W. Bush was responsible for more deaths than bin Laden, and he asked "So when does SEAL Unit 6, or whatever it’s called, drop in on George Bush?"

Whoa.

Did Malloy suggest that Navy SEALs treat the former president of the United States the same way they did the founder of al-Qaeda in that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan? Forget for a moment the absurdly false and offensive likening of Bush to bin Laden or the body count charge. The suggestion by a talk radio host that Bush should be executed is abhorrent. It warrants, at the very least, condemnation across the political spectrum.

But, unfortunately, tirades such as Malloy’s have become almost commonplace in this country. And they’re heard on the left and right.

"Almost commonplace?" No. King naturally turned to Glenn Beck later in the column talking about Obama (but ahem, not wishing him dead). He spent the middle talking about how incredibly harsh talk against presidents like Abraham Lincoln led to assassinations. (Of course, he also mentioned in passing the two attempts on Gerald Ford, a man you couldn't easily describe as harsh about anything.)

It's one thing to say a president has an agenda that is damaging the country (say, exploding the national debt by more than a trillion dollars per year). It's another to insist the president is so monstrous that the country would be better off if he were dead (or for the vice presidential version, see Bill Maher on Dick Cheney.) Kudos to King for bringing Malloy around for a scolding -- and every other media outlet that's drawn attention to these horrendous remarks.