Vulture Culture

The political Left and mainstream media have a new hero...and his name is Jared Lee Loughner.

Like the born-again Christians these groups so frequently mock, they "hate the sin (of the shootings), but love the sinner" because he's become the latest vehicle they can use to attack Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Talk Radio, and conservatives in general.

This despite the fact that evidence (currently being erased from the Internet) seems to indicate that Loughner was actually a "left-leaning liberal." Which shouldn't matter; this wasn't about politics - it was about insanity. And whatever Loughner's personal demons or schizophrenic belief system, it would be preposterous to try to saddle either the Left or the Right with the blame.

But it's happening anyway. Jane Fonda, who famously posed with North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns, now says that Sarah Palin's symbolic use of crosshairs on a campaign map caused the violence. NY Times columnist Paul Krugman blames a "culture of hate" fomented by Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and the like. And in a particularly transparent bit of journalistic masturbation, Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic seems to suggest that the "incandescent rage" exhibited in the Palin camp's denial of involvement is proof that they're capable of incandescent rage...and therefore guilty as charged.

By the way, the use of "therefore" and "thus" appear a lot in the tortured writings of Jared Lee Loughner. By following any two oxymoronic and unrelated statements with the word "thus," he thought he was achieving some sort of logical truism. But logic doesn't work that way - even if the Leftwing media does.

For instance, should we believe: "Liberals hate George Bush. Judge Moll was appointed by George Bush. Thus Judge Moll's killer was a liberal."

Or: "Liberals hated Ronald Reagan. John Hinckley shot Reagan to impress a Hollywood actress. Thus liberals will attempt to kill because they think Hollywood wants them to."

Or maybe: "Squeaky Fromme tried to kill a conservative President. Squeaky Fromme was a member of the Manson family. Thus anti-conservatives share the murderous beliefs of the Manson family."

We could go on for days...but like the vulture in today's cartoon, and unlike the mainstream media, we don't have the stomach for it.
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