Joan Walsh was unable to name an extreme left-wing media figure yesterday while appearing on MSNBC and today she is digging in deeper on her blog.
Now she says that she wasn’t just talking about media figures, of which Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz are just the most obvious examples, but that she was talking also about violent nut jobs who threaten politicians.
The title of her post is “There is no liberal Rush Limbaugh,” and I guess she’s correct if she’s talking about ratings.
The problem on the right includes extremists who've made death threats against Democrats like Patty Murray, Bart Stupak, Nancy Pelosi and, of course, President Obama. There's no one on the left posing the same threat to leaders on the right -- or if there is, I'd like to know about it.
Interestingly, she says:
(The whack job who threatened the folks who made the movie "Babe," along with Obama and GOP whip Eric Cantor, doesn't count.)
Why doesn’t the guy who threatened to Eric Cantor count? Because he’s a whack job? Why yes, anyone who threatens to kill someone is a whack job.
Norman Leboon did threaten to kill hundreds of people including President Obama, in YouTube videos, under the account “shiamuslimcantbestop”. He did donate to the Democratic National Committee. He is not any more representative of liberal threats against conservatives than the few people whom Walsh listed are of conservative threats against liberals.
In addition, there have been multiple instances of GOP offices targeted with vandalism in recent weeks since the healthcare bill passed. A brick was thrown through the Ohio Republican office windows with the message “Stop the right wing,” attached. On September 10 last year, the offices of FreedomWorks were evacuated when they received a bomb threat.
There are many more examples of left-wing violence cited in this Newsbusters post, and threats against Republican offices are certainly not limited to just this year.
There will always be some kooks out there threatening people, and there are kooks on both sides. It’s not because Democrats put out a map with targets on selected Senators or because Ed Schultz told his viewers that “Republicans want to see you dead.”
Oh, and why didn’t Joe Scarborough name Keith Olbermann as an extremist liberal media figure? Perhaps that’s because he works for a network that just suspended Donny Deutsch for including Olbermann on his segment “America the angry.”
