The Last Word on Hoffa

Jonah Goldberg's take on the Hoffa quote strikes the right tone...

... I do not think that Hoffa was deliberately committing the crime (yes, crime) of willfully inciting murder. However, given the absolutely ludicrous standard created by the Democratic Party and its media enablers after the Giffords shooting, what Hoffa said was absolutely beyond the pale. But, again, that’s only because of the idiotic, sanctimonious and plain stupid standard created by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Paul Krugman et al. You can’t bleat about Republican “eliminationist rhetoric” and a “climate of hate” and then say there’s nothing wrong with what Hoffa said, never mind find it outrageous that anybody is complaining about it. This is point I made with some pique not long ago here in the Corner, in what became the most viral post of my online career.


I think it would be a shame for conservatives to adopt the same asinine standard established by the folks at Media Matters simply because it embarrasses the Democratic Party. The issue here is not that Hoffa incited violence, but that Obama and all of his supporters and enablers are astoundingly hypocritical. If you could have ever believed that Sarah Palin’s Facebook map incited murder, you are forever disqualified from lecturing others from over-reading political rhetoric.


We can reject the standard while at the same time call out the hypocrisy.

This is what I'm referring to when I use the "civility is BS" tag. Jared Loughner (the man who shot Gabby Giffords) is a disturbed human being. Pretending that someone else is responsible for his actions based on their words -- when you don't even have a link between the two -- is disgusting, asinine, and a pathetic affront to common sense. If some jackass follows Hoffa's directive to "take some son of bitches out" by attacking a Tea Party member, that means the person who did it is a distrubed asshole and a criminal. Hoffa is just an asshole.  And that's me being civil in describing him.

Meanwhile, Tina Korbe points out that Joe Biden's decision to describe political opponents as "barbarians at the gates" isn't drawing much press.  To be fair, it's hard to cover every stupid comment by Joe Biden.