Jimmy Breslin: Damn These Rightwingers Again For Stirring Up Rightwing Assassins, Like the Rightwing Palestinian Extremist Sirhan Sirhan and the Rightwing Marxist/Castro Extremist/Soviet Defector Lee Harvey Oswald

I can't take it. I just can't take it.

For what it's worth, I do agree that dark chatter about assassination can in fact increase the likelihood of it happening. That's why I'm so absolutist about insisting that none of it -- none -- occur here. The whole point, I think, of such chatter is to establish that such a heinous crime would in fact be socially acceptable -- or a least understandable -- and possibly even heroic. I find it immoral in the extreme to have anything to do with what seems to me to be a kind of psych-up session for would-be assassins.

I went berserk when I saw this happening on the left all the time under Bush, a bunch of immoral, murder-minded cowards trying to psych up the one lunatic among them with rifle training to take that ecstatic shot. And I cannot countenance it on the right, either.

That said: Peaceful but vigorous and even shrill agitation for one's political beliefs, and against one's political opponent, can never be off limits.

The left never says a goddamn thing in protest of movies or novels that agitate for the assassination of George Bush. They buy them, support them. But if Glenn Beck says "Barack Obama is a socialist," well then, goddamnit, that's "extremist rhetoric" that could incite a crazy rightwinger to violence.

What about their own extremist rhetoric inciting their own demented partisans? (Link to Hot Air.) Not a word -- the Discovery Channel gunman just wanted "better programming," and of course was an anti-immigrant extremist.

So who gets trotted out as examples of rightwing lunatics incited by rightwing rhetoric to political violence? No shock, it's members of the violent, murderous, coddled, supported, encouraged left, the same as militant Communist Joseph Stack becoming, in the media's telling, an "anti-government" conservative extremist.

Example One: John F. Kennedy, gunned down by a committed Marxist who agitated for "Fair Play for Cuba" (that is, Castro's gulag), who once applied for Soviet citizenship.

Tell me: Was Lee Harvey Oswald listening to rightwing chatter as he wrote applications to the Soviet Union for defector status? Was he being steeped in rightwing cant as he attended pro-Castro demonstrations?

Example Two: Robert F. Kennedy, gunned down by committed Palestinian extremist Sirhan Sirhan -- the left likes to pretend this guy isn't one of their own (same thing with Oswald, actually -- thus all the conspiracy theories claiming the CIA killed him), but as far as I can tell the Palestinian cause has always been associated with the left. Vanessa Redgrave, all the fashionably-left celebrities.

When Sirhan Sirhan turned to American media or spokesmen for support of his extremist position, I'll tell you one goddamned thing: He wasn't opening up National Review or watching William F. Buckley on t.v. No, he was turning to Gore Vidal and other leftwingers.

But these assassins -- one expressly Marxist/Communist, the other swimming in the sea of fashionable late-sixties leftist extremism -- are somehow to be blamed on rightist agitation?

Two leftwing assassins are our fault?

How so? Run that by me again, and make sure you do so slowly and with citations, because I really need it explained to me how both of these dead men should not properly be laid at the feet of Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and, frankly, if you want to paint with a broad brush -- Jimmy Fuckin' Breslin.

Incidentally: Waddling Cliche Chris Matthews already talked this up a month ago, talking about the "dark chatter" in rightwing circles in the fall of 1963.

True. There was dark chatter in rightwing (really, reactionary racist, but whatever) circles then.

You know where else there was dark chatter? In leftwing/Marxist circles.

You know which style of dark chatter Lee Harvey Oswald was actually listening to?

Hint: He was not a "monitor" for the Rush Limbaugh show.

Let Me See If I Have This Right...

Gore Vidal: Damn the entire American imperial establishment and Jewish fascist state for enslaving the Palestinians.

Sirhan Sirhan: Come on, not the entire American establishment. Bobby Kennedy's okay. It's a new dawn in politics.

Gore Vidal: Bobby Kennedy is not "okay"! Both parties are interrelated plutocratic families united in a the shared family business of Empire. Furthermore, the rightwing conspiratorial John Birch Society, in fact, says he's part of the global Communist conspiracy.

Sirhan Sirhan: Whoa...! No way dude! The John Birch Society said he's pink?! The JBS has a great deal of credibility with me, my good man, a great deal of credibility! Hang on, I need to get a ticket to Los Angeles.

Or was it:

Lee Harvey Oswald: Marina, by beautiful White Russian wife. I am so pleased that I have come back to America after my defection to the Soviet Union so that I was here to witness this very good president whom I admire greatly, John F. Kennedy, ordering the Bay of Pigs invasion against my personal hero, Fidel Castro.

Marina Oswald: William F. Buckley said it was a poorly-planned operation and the CIA wouldn't commit the necessary airpower to protect the anti-Castro insurgents.

Lee Harvey Oswald: W-w-w-what?! That son-of-a-bitch Kennedy did what? to those Cuban patriots? Quick, get the camera, I want you to take a picture of me on the lawn with this newspaper and my lucky rifle.

Really guys?

Is this how it went down? Is this how you figure it all happened, pretty much?

posted by Ace at 04:56 PM

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