Here we go again with more false equivalencies from the media and pretending all sides are equal when it comes to the threats of violence we've seen escalating in the past year and egged on by Republican politicians and these Tea Party leaders. First Mika Brzezinski talks about a death threat that Eric Cantor received and conveniently omits the fact that this same man threatened a number of other politicians as well.
From TPM -- What To Make of Norman Leboon?:
The initial portrait emerging of the man charged with threatening to kill Eric Cantor and his family suggests he's made similar, if not criminally actionable, threats on dozens of occasions against an ideologically diverse array of public figures.
According to the federal complaint against him, Norman Leboon of Philadelphia has admitted making some 2,000 videos that contained threats. A sampling of his "work" reveals rambling incoherent videos that mix pseudo-religious incantations with random warnings and threats. In one video he addresses President Obama, Vice President Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by name and says, "Your punishment is coming, the swine, it will be severe, and you will beg for mercy to your god, it will be severe, you will know god's swine, god has warned you." (Some conservatives are already chortling over the fact that Leboon contributed to Obama's 2008 campaign, though it's not clear what that's supposed to signify.)
Pat Buchanan defends the Tea Party movement and says the left is just trying to demonize them for political reasons. Brzezinski goes on to read from some of Eugene Robinson's recent op-ed in the Washington Post -- The Hutaree militia and the rising risk of far-right violence:
It is dishonest for right-wing commentators to insist on an equivalence that does not exist. The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction -- the right, not the left. The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day -- and, quite regularly, at Tea Party rallies -- is calibrated not to inform but to incite.
Buchanan responds to Robinson's column by calling the L.A. riots after the Rodney King incident the "greatest act of anti-government violence" that he can recall "in recent years". Uh Pat... the name Tim McVeigh ring a bell? Hello. Then he starts howling about violence that took place in the 60's. And the hackery goes on from there. To his credit at least Dylan Ratigan corrects Pat Buchanan when he attempts to portray the stray bullet that hit Cantor's office as "someone firing at" the window. Joe Scarborough wasn't even there for this show but I'm not sure how he could have made this segment much worse. Brzezinski and Buchanan more than made up for his absence.
