In a Washington Examiner column last night, Gregory Kane made several quite valid points in comparing the media firestorm over Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sarah Fluke to the virtual silence over Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul, who, if he were in charge, "would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner ... to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control." Kaul also wrote that he would, "If some people refused to give up their guns," make "that 'prying the guns from their cold, dead hands' thing" operative.
Confirming what readers here would expect, a search at the Associated Press's national web site on Kaul's last name comes up empty. Key paragraphs from Kane's column follow the jump (HT Instapundit; bolds are mine):
Let's go back to 2012, when talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh called "women's reproductive rights" advocate Sandra Fluke a slut. Remember the reaction?
There were calls for Limbaugh's head. Some sponsors pulled out of his show. He was soundly criticized, and rightly so. I was one of the critics.
Fast-forward to late December of 2012, when an American newspaper published an op-ed piece in which the writer calls for the government to declare a perfectly legal organization whose members had broken no laws a terrorist group and make membership in it illegal.
The writer further suggests leaders of the opposition party in Congress be chained to pickup trucks and dragged around until they changed their views to those of the party in power.
As sort of a coup de grace, the writer then suggests that Americans unwilling to surrender their firearms to the government be summarily executed in their homes.
If that sounds like the writer was advocating a totalitarian state with a government that commits mass murder, that's because that's precisely what he was advocating.
... If some of Limbaugh's sponsors abandoned him, shouldn't the paper's advertisers yank their ads?
... Now let's briefly recap: Limbaugh calls Fluke a slut, gets universally condemned and has sponsors abandon his show. Fluke gets a call of support from President Obama.
Neither McConnell nor Boehner should hold their breath waiting for that call from Obama. Kaul's vitriolic invective will be viewed as good old left-wing civility.
Indeed. And I should empahasize that what Limbaugh said cannot be credibly construed as "hate speech." Sandra Fluke defined what she is for us in her own "testimony" at a bogus, non-official "hearing"; Limbaugh merely summarized it one questionably appropriate word.
Continuing Kane's final thought, I won't hold my breath for negative blowback at the Des Moines Register, where Kaul's column still resides, for Obama to consistently apply his calls for "civility," or for any more than a very few establishment press members to condemn Kaul.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
