Ever since Hugo Chavez's over-the-top comments about President Bush at the UN, the right wing message machine has been in a lather, trying to make the case that Chavez's rantings are somehow emblematic of the lunacy of the left (conveniently letting pass that dyed-in-the-wool liberals such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel have also condemned Chavez).
The fact is, disgust for that kind of harangue is not the province of either the right or the left. For me, it's just a lazy form of argument -- the rhetorical equivalent of a school yard taunt. It's a way of avoiding engaging in a real debate. And it is also utterly self-defeating. Chavez undermined whatever valid points he might have made about the U.S.'s tragic foreign policy mistakes, and also undercut his hopes of Venezuela gaining a seat on the UN Security Council. While the sulfurous smell of Chavez's odious diatribe still hung in the air, the likelihood of Guatemala gaining that spot instead increased dramatically.
Unless the goal of Chavez's speech was to propel Noam Chomsky to the top of the Amazon bestseller chart or to temporarily unseat John Bolton as the craziest guy at the UN, his appearance was an utter failure.
But, as a lover of irony, I can't help but notice how conveniently myopic is the right wing's outrage about over-the-top rhetoric-- and how selective its memory.
I don't remember the right foaming at the collective mouth when Pat Robertson suggested on a broadcast of the 700 Club last August that Chavez should be assassinated, saying "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."
And I don't remember the right calling for blood in February of this year when Don Rumsfeld likened Chavez to Adolf Hitler.
And, aside from a few dissenting voices raised in defense of the 9/11 widows, I don't remember the right condemning Ann Coulter for her constant output of hyperbolic vitriol and over-the-top invective -- including her assertion that Democrats like Jack Murtha "long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle" or her claim that "conventions of civilized behavior, personal hygiene, and grooming" are "inapplicable when Muslims are involved."
At what point will the masters of high dudgeon on the right allow themselves to be outraged not just when the verbal Katyushas are being fired at someone they love but also when they are being aimed at someone they hate?