It’s time to denounce this misconduct: Hillary Clinton stands accused of murder all over again!
Monday night, speaking with Greta van Susteren, Lindsey Graham took the nation down a repulsive old road.
“I haven’t forgotten about Benghazi,” Senator Graham dimwittedly said. “Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view.”
What makes this a repulsive old road? At Salon, Joan Walsh remembers:
WALSH (1/30/13): Now, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s using “got away with murder” figuratively, rather than saying Clinton murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens or the three other Americans who died in Benghazi last fall.Obviously, Graham doesn’t mean that Clinton was in Benghazi that night firing the RPGs. But that doesn’t mean that we should give him the benefit of any doubt at all.
You can never be sure, though, since wing-nuts have accused Clinton and her husband of murder before, from vicious theories disputing the suicide of Vince Foster to Rev. Jerry Falwell’s “Clinton Chronicles,” which accused the president of responsibility for “countless” murders. Even if Graham is just talking overexcitedly about last week’s hearings, he can count on the lunatic fringe of his target Tea Party base hearing the charge that the outgoing secretary of state “got away with murder” any way they like. And applauding.
It would seem that Graham’s short stint as one of eight “reasonable” senators had to be immediately followed by his return to crazy, in order to keep away the potential Tea Party primary challenge he fears most next year.
The nation has been down this ugly old road before, just as Walsh recalls. During the 2008 campaign and thereafter, many pseudo-liberal leaders acted like the crackpot insults aimed at Obama were some sort of new phenomenon. This let us delight as we played the race card, the only card our team knows.
As Walsh recalls, murder charges were remarkably common during the Clinton years. By the summer of 1999, the foolishness had reached its zenith. Gennifer Flowers was invited on Hardball and Hannity to advance these disgraceful claims in half-hour and hour-long appearances—and to tell us that Hillary Clinton was the world’s most gigantic known lesbo.
At that time, the mainstream press corps refused to speak up, and our liberal leaders hid in the woods. Go ahead! Search the world for one word of complaint which ever escaped Walsh’s lips.
Around that same time, the usual suspects moved on; they began inventing ridiculous shit about Candidate Gore. Our “leaders” ran and hid from that too. Even today, they refuse to discuss what happened.
Now, the cry of murder rings out again. This time, our multimillionaire pseudo-journalists and their handmaidens need to stand like the big boys and girls they aren’t to denounce this repulsive conduct.
They also need to remind the public that this shit has happened before.
Presumably, Walsh’s speculation is correct. Graham is one of the Republican senators who is willing to negotiate and (gasp!) compromise concerning immigration. This makes him especially vulnerable to a primary challenge.
Presumably, his screaming and yelling about Benghazi has always been a way to demonstrate his crackpot good faith to those who might challenge him from the right. If we have one brain cell in all our heads, this can’t be accepted as an excuse for the return of this sort of language.
There’s only one problem here, of course. Last fall, Graham and his walkin’ boss, John McCain, aimed their ugly Benghazi campaign at Ambassador Susan Rice. When they did, the mainstream press and the liberal world ran off and hid all over again! They behaved exactly as they had during the Clinton-Gore years.
Even the fiery children at The One Liberal Channel all knew they must keep their traps shut. Careers hung in the balance!
These are very, very bad people. It’s time for these horrible people to stand and denounce the return of this language.
Unfortunately, most of our fiery cable leaders have made fools of themselves in recent years. No one pays them any mind, except as sources of derision.
They will complain on cable tonight. Except for others who think as they do, nobody—no one—will care.
The abuse of Rice was condemned by virtually everyone on the left; though the specific points oft repeated by TDH were poorly argued and ignored. And yes, the weird kissy face Madow made with Andrea Mitchell were mixed signals indeed. Still this was a far cry from Clinton Time, IMHO, when Lindsey Graham made his bones. Thankful Bob takes the time to point out his general awfulness though.
ReplyDeleteAnd to put it more bluntly than Kevin Drum: the Good People of South Carolina are a sorry lot of drooling, knuckle dragging lowlifes indeed.
Also, way to steer clear of name-calling dehumanization of a few million people -- good call!
DeleteThank you, South Carolina, Bite Me!
DeleteIf someone sees what an ass you are (and everyone does, Greg!) you double down, guessing they must have been among the folk you hoped to insult.
DeleteWrong of course: I have no kith or kin there, irrelevantly.
You just smell bad, Greg. Nice people want nothing to do with your stink.
"The abuse of Rice was condemned by virtually everyone on the left"
ReplyDeleteHmmm.
That's certainly not true if we mean the abuse of Rice by the *press* -- abuse which was condemned by virtually no one on the left, and repeated by many supposed liberal voices.
And if a lefty commentator did say anything about Graham, then Bob could harangue them for joining the "Cult of the Offhand Comment"--because Bob doesn't actually think Graham is speaking literally, but rather using an idiom. I guess it's a fun game.
ReplyDeleteWhen Bob likes you, then it's called "inartful," when he doesn't like you then it's "Now, the cry of murder rings out again." Did Bob join his own Cult?
And for those who think you are kidding, I refer to the Aug. 22 "Mother of all offhand comments" post in which Bob held out the possibility that Todd Akin had merely spoken "offhand" and that "liberal" uber-reaction could very well make a "star" out of him.
DeleteMy family members always say that I am killing my time here at net, however
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