Swamps… that’s real good abb. Just challenging presumptions, attacking the priveleged “cosmopolitan” view. Taking it to Casper Milquetoast, if you will. And now subject to such razor sharp whit…I am just crushed.

So, if there’s a serious point here which I kind of doubt, it’s that when rightists start shouting about “Chimpy McHitlerburton” or “BUSHITLERMCCHIMPY” they’re trying to automatically discredit criticism of Bush from the left by claiming that it is all completely unhinged. But this is not so; those criticizing Bush often have actual substantive points to make. (Note Steve furiously trying to change the subject from whether Snow really was defending racism.) The blogosphere would be a nicer place if Glenn Reynolds and others would recognize that, and if I had a pony.

(And even “President Toonces” is based on the idea that he’s driving the country off a cliff.)

On the other hand I would claim that while much mainstream criticism of Clinton was based on substantive differences, but a fair amount was irrational and lacking in substance—-I mean, things like the WSJ editorial page and Dan Burton on Vince Foster suicide. And those folks are more mainstream than Cynthia McKinney’s 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But there isn’t much of a real point here. Just a scholarly note about which names were originated by the left and which by the right.

There isn’t much to say to asdf, who seems to have endorsed racial purity and white supremacy and gone on to explicitly endorse anti-Semitism. But I do want to bring something up about stripping references to Christianity from the public square. I live somewhere where, a couple of years ago, an innocuous bit of public art was destroyed because some felt it might conceivably reflect a non-Christian religion. That’s one religion driving others out of the public square. The fact that the government isn’t allowed to give pride of place to Christianity on public property, not so much.

(Which reminds me, Nat, I saw this a few days later; I’m not in Utah anymore but I left some comments at the end. I did not actually wind up asking my friends still at Utah about the issue.)

“Not to deny that Democrats do come up with immature names for the President. ‘President Toonces’ is my favorite.”

What was your favorite immature Republican name for President Clinton?

Nat, the first appearance of “Chimpy McHitlerburton” on Daily Kos was a quote from Glenn Reynolds (the dates are in the URLs; click second link). Most of the top hits are for right-wing blogs, but the earliest I could find was this comment by RC Dean on Hit and Run, which I’d call neither right nor left. Not to deny that Democrats do come up with immature names for the President. “President Toonces” is my favorite.

As for ‘resentment’ against Jews; again we must look at the situation from both sides. Christian America has seen most references to its religion systematically stripped from the public square—many times at the behest of Jewish organizations. Disproportionately Christian soldiers are dying in the Iraq war, which arguably was promoted in part to serve the interests of Israel. So is this ‘resentment’ or a legitimate complaint.

Let us be honest.

To be clear, I’m not actually asserting (nor denying) that Farrakhan is as bad as Duke or that McKinney and Moran routinely channel him the way Snow is channeling Duke here; I’m saying that even if both of those were true, it wouldn’t prove that Democrats are as bad as Republicans in this sense, because Snow is absolutely central to their power structure and the M’s are marginal.

“I believe the imaginary epithet most preferred by our friends on the right is ‘Chimpy McHitlerburton.’”

Why “imaginary”? Are the posts on sites like dailykos.com that use phrases of this sort generated by AI bots, not by real persons?

Do you hear Hillary Clinton or John Kerry talking about this? Sure you do, and they are for more military spending.

Hey, what do you expect – sleep of reason produces monsters – David Duke comes and makes it all about the blacks.

If you do accept that Farrakhan is indeed an equivalent of Duke, then your point seems weak because David Duke is not exactly mainstream either.

And pace Lemuel, the important question is not whether there are equivalent extremists on both sides—I’m not even sure the NoI count as on the left—but the extent to which the mainstream of each side has adopted the views of extremists. Snow is currently as mainstream as mainstream gets, and he seems to have had no problem using coded racist appeals to excuse voting for an uncoded white supremacist. That’s worrisome. The Democrats don’t have any similar problem.

[I don’t know if there are still commenters here who think that ffirmative action is just racist as anything Duke said, but in case they are, I preemptively ask them to give me a break.]