Civility Update

OK, the pattern is clear now and it's pretty simple.   Any effective, or even merely heartfelt, expression of a conservative point of view equals incivility.

Hence this morning's Democrat and Chronicle headline "Vile Rhetoric Spares Few at CPAC Event," referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Here's a small recap of the Left's idea of "civility."   To keep it manageable we'll limit todays listing to death threats only:

■ Palin Death Threats at ‘Unprecedented Level’ -- US News, January 2011

■ White Political Ralliers Call for Lynching of Black Jurist, February 2011

■ Bush was routinely called Hitler, and received innumerable death threats from media figures.   Not just criticism, but calling for Bush or someone else deemed "conservative" to die, usually in a nasty way.

■ “I’m waiting for the day when I pick it up, pick up a newspaper or click on the Internet and find out he’s choked to death on his own throat fat . . . or something, you know, whatever. Go away, Rush, you make me sick!” — Mike Malloy on January 4, 2010 Mike Malloy Show.

■ “Rush Limbaugh is beginning to look more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet, but we’ll be there to watch.” — Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, October 13, 2009.

■ “So, Michele, slit your wrist! Go ahead! [chuckles] I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to — or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.” — Montel Williams talking about Representative Michele Bachmann on Air America’s Montel Across America, September 2, 2009.

■ “He is an enemy of the country, in my opinion, Dick Cheney is, he is an enemy of the country…. You know, Lord, take him to the Promised Land, will you? See, I don’t even wish the guy goes to Hell, I just want to get him the hell out of here.” — Ed Schultz, The Ed Schultz Show, May 11, 2009.

■ “I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer NOT grow in you. Work for Fox News, spinning the truth in to a billion knots and how can your gut not rot?” — San Francisco radio talk show host Charles Karel Bouley in a March 27, 2007 article at The Huffington Post that was later pulled “at the request of the author.”

■ “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Host Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, 2007, discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset that an attempt to kill Vice President Cheney in Afghanistan had failed.

■ “Earlier today, a rental truck carried a half a million ballots from Palm Beach to the Florida Supreme Court there in Tallahassee. CNN had live helicopter coverage from the truck making its way up the Florida highway, and for a few brief moments, America held the hope that O.J. Simpson had murdered Katherine Harris.” — Bill Maher on ABC’s Politically Incorrect, November 30, 2000.

■ Host Tina Gulland: “I don’t think I have any Jesse Helms defenders here. Nina?”
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “Not me. I think he ought to be worried about what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.” — Exchange on the July 8, 1995 Inside Washington, after Helms said the government spends too much on AIDS.

■ “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease….He is an absolutely reprehensible person.” — USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4, 1994, on the PBS show To the Contrary.

■ “Michelle Malkin [is just] a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” -- Keith Olbermann, October 13, 2009.