Lean Backward

by Ben Crystal 
After the past week, I’m almost surprised MSNBC is showing more than a test pattern. The “talent” that now serves as the tip of the Democratic Party’s media spear has managed, in the past seven days, to plumb depths that are normally inhabited by leftist hate speech sites funded by former Nazi collaborator George Soros. First, Alec Baldwin, who earned his prime-time slot on MSNBC by spewing racist and homophobic invective at a former New York City detective and a Daily Mail columnist, found another way to disgrace himself.  As he exited a Manhattan courtroom on last week, Baldwin called a photographer a “c*cks*cking f*g.” Apparently, Baldwin’s latest violent homophobic rant finally pushed him over the liberal media Rubicon: He’s been suspended for two weeks and may well be looking at the end of his short cable career.

But Baldwin is hardly the only MSNBC mouthpiece to fumble the ball like a butterfingered tailback (or like President Barack Obama trying to squirm out of another lie). Last Thursday, one of the MSNBC daytime fillers, a British fellow named Martin Bashir, grew so enraged at former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s refusal to chain herself to the nearest stove and get to makin’ babies that he wished aloud for someone to defecate in Palin’s mouth and urinate in her eyes. The actual reason Bashir joined the ranks of fellow MSNBC circus freaks like Al Sharpton in the scatological sideshow was apparently her comparison of the runaway debt with which Obama has saddled America to slavery, a comparison which hardly lacks merit. Essentially, Bashir wants someone to do to Palin what Sharpton did to Tawana Brawley — only without the racist extortion plot. That means Bashir is describing a fetish, as opposed to Sharpton, who was simply running another scam.

On the rare occasions I actually turn to the boob tube for anything related to current events, I tend to tune to one of the less-reputable channels — even MSNBC. Mostly, I get a kick out of watching liberals denounce conservatives for all manner of imagined slights, all the while demonstrating the sort of behavior and language that, if ever actually demonstrated by a conservative, would generate a five-alarm riot. I also enjoy watching the supposed leading lights of media liberalism act like junior-high schoolchildren who found the key to their parents’ liquor cabinet. Granted, neither Baldwin nor Bashir threatens the position of the president of the he-man woman haters’ club, so-called “comedian” Bill Maher, primarily because they can’t deploy the sort of verbal sewage on basic cable that Maher can — and does — use in place of intelligent discourse on HBO.
Nonetheless, try to imagine the peals of self-righteous fury from the left if Glenn Beck made a habit of physically assaulting people while spewing racist venom. Of course, Sean Hannity has done neither, so liberals simply pretend that he has.

Try to imagine the jet-engine level volume of liberal rage the left would unleash if some conservative were to suggest someone do to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton what Bashir hoped someone would do to Palin. Of course, conservative objections to Clinton stem from political disagreement, not twisted misogynistic fetishism; and it’s unlikely any conservative could come up with anything more shudder-worthy than whatever Clinton’s husband did last weekend.
The left erupted in paroxysm of outrage when Rush Limbaugh called fake Congressional witness Sandra Fluke a “slut” for demanding the taxpayers subsidize her rather healthy libido. Limbaugh’s remark was artless, but it wasn’t incorrect. He certainly didn’t describe Fluke in grossly anatomical terms, nor assault her physically, nor wish for her to endure the sort of perversions that Bashir imagines for Palin.
Here at Personal Liberty Digest™, we don’t use the sort of language Baldwin, Bashir and the rest of the Democratic elite default to when discussing conservatives. In fact, if Mr. Livingston did decide to allow it, I would still avoid poop and pee references — partially because I find them icky and partially because I’m not 5 years old. At least I have the luxury of knowing that when I finally run out of better metaphors, I can get my gross on at MSNBC.