Two of the most popular liberal news sites are calling for violence against Republicans for obstructing the radical agenda of President
Barack Obama.
CNN and Huffington Post have each published op-eds this past week
by regular contributors with headlines that explicitly call for
Obama to use violent gangland tactics against his political opponents.
CNN published a column by Roland Martin on February 11 with the headline, Time for Obama
to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.
Martin concluded the article with a plea for Obama to emulate the
violent tactics of the Prohibition-era Chicago mob boss Al Capone.
Obama’s critics keep blasting him for Chicago-style politics.
So, fine. Channel your inner Al Capone and go gangsta against your foes. Let ‘em know that if they aren’t with you, they are against you,
and will pay the price.
The Huffington Post followed-up with their own call for gangland
violence against Republicans with the publication on February 14
of a column by David Bourgeois with the title, Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps.
Bourgeois concludes his article with this call for gangland violence.
You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve tried numerous
times to talk with the Republicans, to negotiate, to meet them
halfway on every single matter before the American people. But
they hate you for many reasons. It’s time you break kneecaps.
It’s time to destroy the Republican Party. They don’t deserve
a seat at the table when all they want to do is score political
points by being the Party of No.
call to violence with a wooden baseball bat with Obama’s first
name on it in large letters.
Fox News chief Roger Ailes for allegedly provocative rhetoric by
Fox host Glenn Beck.
HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it’s not a question of picking a fight.
And aren’t you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is
using, which is, after all, inciting the American people?
There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he
talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be
the next in the killing spree……It’s not about the word police. It’s about something deeper.
It’s about the fact that there is a tradition as the historian
Richard Hofstetter said, in American politics, of the paranoid
style. And the paranoid style is dangerous when there is real
pain out there.
Ailes defended Beck, saying he was accurately talking about the governments of Hitler and Stalin.
Violent rhetoric such as that espoused by CNN and the Huffington
Post is usually found in the bowels of Internet discussion forums,
not as sanctioned op-ed headlines on news sites with White House
press passes.
CNN and Huffington Post would be well-advised to retract the calls
to violence and issue apologies to Republicans before Obama
supporters are incited by their violent rhetoric and start going
gangsta and break kneecaps of Republicans.
press secretary Robert Gibbs should shame them into doing so.
Surely the Obama administration does not countenance violence
against their domestic political opponents.
