Given this man's track record when it comes to spewing hate, he's hardly in a position to judge when he perceives it coming from others.
Attorney and "Ring of Fire" radio show co-host Mike Papantonio has been filling in for Ed Schultz this week and wasting no time demonstrating that he can be just as over the top as Schultz. (Audio after the jump)
Listen to what he had to say about conservative commentators Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter (h/t for audio, Brian Maloney, mrctv.org) --
PAPANTONIO: Hate talk radio is experiencing a sea change and that's what we're going to be talking about and what, what does it mean inevitably to rats eating rats? The best example, you and I have covered this story before, Rick (Outzen, Daily Beast contributor) , is Michelle Malkin and the Ann Coulter story. If you spend much time in the weblog world, you probably have noticed, certainly over the last year and a half, the hate hags have become more creepier (sic) than usual. I mean, they're already creepy but now they've moved the dial on creepy. Michelle Malkin has stepped up her putrid hate language against immigrants, suggesting that they need to be punished, that militia border patrols should keep immigrant vermin, as she puts it, out of her country, even though -- this is a story you did, Rick -- even though it was less than 40 years ago that her parents, Apolo and Rafaela Maglalang, they were citizens of Philippines, they became immigrants, they got their green cards and they made a better life for themselves in that little bundle of hate known as Michelle. Michelle Maglalang, now Malkin, has spread so much anti-immigration hate that it's become, it's come just full circle within her own Filipino immigrant community. This is a woman who was so despised by immigrants that she had to leave (chuckles), she had to leave LA -- remember this story, Rick?
OUTZEN: Right.PAPANTONIO: She had to leave LA in a hurry in 1996 because the Mexican Mafia had threatened her life. She has that special kind of personality that people love to hate! So why would the little malignant Malkin be so willing to keep turning up her immigrant hate message along with the dozens of other hate lines that she uses every day? Well, it's the same story, it's the Rush Limbaugh story, it's simple. Even the lunatic cable TV and right-wing crazy radio networks, they only have so much time that they can devote to female hate freaks or any kind of hate freaks, like Malkin or her gutter-mouthed sister Ann Coulter. There's a limited amount of real freakish hate time available. That's the case with all the hate talkers, whether you're talking about Rush, whether you're talking about Hannity, whether you're talking about Savage, all of 'em.
Got that? Malkin is clearly reprehensible because those upstanding citizens in the Mexican Mafia were out to get her. Professional thugs found Malkin offensive and stalwart barrister Papantonio actually cites this to bolster his case. Priceless.
Papantonio doesn't actually think hate is a bad thing because he so obviously hates Malkin, Coulter, et al. Ergo, it can't be bad as far as Papantonio is concerned because he embodies it. I'd have an easier time finding him credible if he didn't condemn those whose opinions he doesn't share with his charming version of a two-minute hate.
Papantonio comes across all the more laughable as his spittle accumulates when one looks back on the unhinged things he's said over the years.
Papantonio alleged this past March, without a shred of evidence, that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia's grandfather was head of something called the "New York Fascist Party." Papantonio is so lazy or indifferent to accuracy that his dubious asssertion conflicted with what he claimed in a Huffington Post article three years ago that Scalia's father, not grandfather, was active in the "American-Italian fascist party."
One of my favorite Papantonio screeds came in May 2012 when he whined about weak-kneed Democrats unwilling to "inflict pain first" on Republicans and "never let up." Odd thing is, all four Democrats he cited were women -- campaign managers Mary Beth Cahill (Kerry '04), Donna Brazile (Gore '00) and Susan Estrich (Dukakis '88) and strategist Laura Schwartz.
All of which comes into clearer focus when you survey the attorney profiles on the website for Papantonio's law firm. Of 37 attorneys shown, only seven are women. Not only does Papantonio have a problem with "hags" he disagrees with, looks like he doesn't want to work with them either.
