Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [26]
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann won the prize for best imitation of a North Korean talk-show host, calling Rush Limbaugh a “damned liar” for claiming Valle’s shoulder was merely stepped on—as the video ran showing her shoulder being merely stepped on:
Olbermann: The bronze to Tokyo Rose Limbaugh, rationalizing the assault on Lauren Valle by lying about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
Rush Limbaugh: … [N]ow in the video that AP itself posted, the man put his foot down on her shoulder in what looked to me like an effort to help restrain her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Olbermann: You’re not only a damned liar, Limbaugh, you’re a damned bad liar. 4
That’s ideology trumping the process of your five senses. As Le Bon says, the “simplicity and exaggeration of the sentiments of crowds” result in the crowd’s knowing “neither doubt nor uncertainty. Like women, it goes at once to extremes. A suspicion transforms itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence.”5
MSNBC was also Hoax Central for the claim, during the 2008 campaign, that someone in the crowd had yelled “Kill him!” in reference to Obama at a Palin campaign rally. Olbermann spent most of October 2008 issuing blistering denunciations of John McCain and Sarah Palin based on this absurdity. “There’s a fine line between a smear campaign and an incitement to violence,” Olbermann lectured. “If Senator McCain and Governor Palin have not previously crossed it, this week, today even, they most certainly did.”
Guest-hysteric Richard Wolffe, then of Newsweek, said it was “no excuse” that Palin couldn’t hear what the crowd was shouting, because “what you’re seeing here is a very conscious attempt to paint Obama as un-American, as unpatriotic and, yes, consorting with what they call ‘domestic terrorists.’ ” (Liberals reject the label “domestic terrorists” for former Weathermen, preferring to call them “future Cabinet members.”)
After beating the “Kill him!” story to death, Olbermann delivered one of his prissy “Special Comments” about the nonincident, demanding that McCain stop campaigning. He railed, “Suspend your campaign now until you or somebody else gets some control over it. And it ceases to be a clear and present danger to the peace of this nation.” Anything else, Keith? Should I just concede the election now—or would next week be all right? While I’m up, can I get you a sandwich? How about a hot towel?
As has now been conclusively established, no one ever shouted “Kill him!” at a Palin campaign rally. The Secret Service takes even frivolous threats against a presidential candidate seriously. In 1997, for example, the Secret Service searched the apartment of a student journalist at Berkeley for writing a column about the upcoming football game against Stanford that included the line “Show your spirit on Chelsea’s bloodied carcass, because as the Stanford Daily lets us know, she is just another student.”6
Needless to say, the Secret Service undertook a complete investigation of the claim that someone at a Palin rally had shouted “Kill him!” on hearing Obama’s name. They listened to tapes of the event, interviewed attendees, and interrogated the boatloads of law enforcement officers who had been spread throughout the crowd. The Secret Service’s conclusion was: It never happened. As even an article on the left-wing site Salon noted, “The Secret Service takes this sort of thing very, very seriously. If it says it doesn’t think anyone shouted ‘kill him,’ it’s a good bet that it didn’t happen.”7
Because liberals passionately believe their own myths, this wasn’t the only time they embarrassed themselves in public. Here are a couple of examples in just one week’s time during the 2010 midterms:
After Sarah Palin told a Tea Party crowd to wait for the November election returns before partying “like it’s 1773,” liberals instantly concluded that Palin meant “1776” but was too stupid to know when the Declaration of