The Hollywood lefties are surpassing their customary standards for lunacy in the Cheney hunting episode. Take Alec Baldwin for example. Mr. Baldwin is the compassionate liberal who once announced on the Conan O'Brien show that:
"If we were living in another country, what we, all of us together, would go down to Washington and stone (Republican Congressman) Henry Hyde to death, stone him to death, stone him to death!" said Baldwin. "Then we would go to their house and we'd kill the family, kill the children."
Now this sweet man has this to say about Dick Cheney:
"Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought Harry Whittington would be the answer to America's prayers. Finally, someone who might get that lying, thieving Cheney into a courtroom to answer some direct questions."
Imagine that. The same fellow who called for the murder of one of the most gentle men in American public life, Henry Hyde, and the slaughter of Hyde's wife and children is calling Dick Cheney a terrorist. Not only is Baldwin a morally ugly man and a hypocrite, he's also not very bright. After all, isn't terrorizing one's enemies abroad what one is supposed to do when one is at war?
Andrew Sullivan noted recently that although he gets mean, hateful e-mail from both left and right, the stuff he gets from the left is much more vicious than what he receives from the other side. He writes:
....I've experienced vitriol from both sides in my time. I will say this: the hate and viciousness directed toward me from the left in the 1990s for daring to be a gay man who was not a liberal does indeed exceed the hate and viciousness of the right for a small-c conservative who has become alarmed by the excesses and errors of the Bush administration. No right-wing group has picketed a book-signing with posters depicting my face behind the cross-hairs of a gun, as the gay left did. No one on the right has gone nuclear on my private life, as the gay left did. No one on the right has threatened to find me in P-town and split my skull open, or called me the anti-Christ, as some on the gay left have. Yes, I get homophobic hate mail from the right all the time; and many conservative blogs have blackballed or slimed or smeared me in various ways. But that's, sadly, what you get for being provocative and opinionated on the web. Bottom line: Hugh Hewitt is not as hateful as Eric Alterman, as any reader can see for themselves.
Haters are ugly people. One need only to have watched the astonishing performance of Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's Scarborough Country in October of 2004, when O'Donnell went into a name-calling frenzy at John O'Neill of the Swift-Vets, to see that these people are teetering on the brink of insanity and the slightest nudge often pushes them right over.
They're not the sort of individuals who can be trusted with the kitchen cutlery much less the levers of power in our government.