Let’s go back to 2012, when talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh called “women’s reproductive rights” advocate Sandra Fluke a slut. Remember the reaction?
There were calls for Limbaugh’s head. Some sponsors pulled out of his show. He was soundly criticized, and rightly so. I was one of the critics.
Fast-forward to late December of 2012, when an American newspaper published an op-ed piece in which the writer calls for the government to declare a perfectly legal organization whose members had broken no laws a terrorist group and make membership in it illegal.
The writer further suggests leaders of the opposition party in Congress be chained to pickup trucks and dragged around until they changed their views to those of the party in power.
As sort of a coup de grace, the writer then suggests that Americans unwilling to surrender their firearms to the government be summarily executed in their homes.
If that sounds like the writer was advocating a totalitarian state with a government that commits mass murder, that’s because that’s precisely what he was advocating.
Now imagine a supposedly mainstream newspaper runs that column. If some of Limbaugh’s sponsors abandoned him, shouldn’t the paper’s advertisers yank their ads?
The paper in question here is the Des Moines Register. The writer is indeed one Donald Kaul.
So that I’m not accused of misquoting Kaul — as some have done, alleging that he advocated the government kill National Rifle Association leaders — I’ll cite verbatim portions of the column.
Anywhere wondering what happened to the soul of departed Soviet Union tyrant Josef Stalin after he died now knows where it went: straight into Donald Kaul’s body.
Now let’s briefly recap: Limbaugh calls Fluke a slut, gets universally condemned and has sponsors abandon his show. Fluke gets a call of support from President Obama.
Kaul falsely accuses NRA members of mass murder, suggests the NRA be declared a terrorist organization for no other reason than that the views of said members are different from his and wants membership declared illegal.
Then he suggests we give Senate Minority Leader McConnell and Speaker of the House Boehner the James Byrd treatment by having them dragged behind a pickup truck.
Neither Kaul nor the editors of the Des Moines Register have received the condemnation Limbaugh did. Neither McConnell nor Boehner should hold their breath waiting for that call from Obama. Kaul’s vitriolic invective will be viewed as good old left-wing civility.
If liberals and left-wingers get any more civil, conservatives and Republicans might have to start wearing body armor.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
