"Mainstreaming" The Crazy (updates)

In Matt Taibbi's fine profile of John Boehner in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, we have the following (here, pg. 4)...

Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize."

Of course not. Rules and common standards of decent behavior are for the "little people." And Democrats, of course.

To quote Boehner, it's "chicken crap" to allege that this stuff happens anywhere on "the left." If it does, prove it to me.

And by the way, here is more on this (and I'd forgotten about Michele Bachmann's role in this, and yes, she has one).

Update: Not surprising that corporate media pundit David Gergen says that this is "no time for finger-pointing" here.

Wrong. Armed with concrete facts and evidence, this is exactly the time for finger-pointing.

Update 1 1/10/11: More from the "accessories after the fact" here...

Update 2 1/10/11: To get an idea as to the utter depravity of our corporate media (assuming we didn’t know that already), I give you the following from Ross Douthat of the New York Times here…

…the attempted murder of a Democratic congresswoman is a potential gift to liberalism.

I cannot imagine how he sleeps at night.

Also in his column, Douthat says that “(It took conservative bloggers about five minutes to come up with Democratic campaign materials that employed targets and crosshairs against Republican politicians).”

If you click on the “targets” link in Douthat’s paragraph, it takes you to a map of what I suppose is the congressional district of House Repug Thaddeus McCotter that indeed shows targets (which, to me, are a far cry from the gun sights of Palin’s map…oh, excuse me, I mean “surveyor’s symbols”…riiiiight – if you’re going to victimize someone for the symbol on McCotter’s map, then you might as well impugn an entire chain of retail department stores). And I can’t comment on the link from “cross hairs” because it takes you to a You Tube video that I cannot watch at the moment (Update: I watched it later - it shows what could easily pass as a photographer's camera lens photographing J.D. Hayworth of Arizona for a campaign commercial by a Democrat named Harry Mitchell, for all of eight seconds...please).

Here is more faux equivalency – I did a simple Google search and ended up at the site of someone called Ace of Spades with another video link that I’ll have to watch later (Update 1/11/11: It also showed the Mitchell ad - it is to laugh), and I also ended up reading a blog post from someone called Aaron Goldstein decrying the statement from veep Joe Biden that he wanted to “strangle” the next congressional Republican who wanted to balance the budget – he also chastised Obama for describing the “hand-to-hand combat” of dealing with Republicans. Goldstein also criticized the idiotic stunt of Dem Joe Manchin shooting at something that was supposed to be “cap and trade” legislation…no argument from me that what Manchin did was moronic, but he wasn’t shooting a person, was he?

There is no equivalency between any of this stuff and the shooting of a Democratic member of Congress who was clearing targeted by a completely-unhinged right-wing nut.

Update 2 1/10/11: And yes, I’m going to “go there” on the assault weapons ban here (and yes, I will admit that, even with the ban, it’s possible Loughner would have gotten the gun illegally anyway). Also, here is more from kos.

And by the way, I also give you this from kos…