Frank Rich Loses Me at Kristallnacht

I'm beginning to think Frank Rich does does this stuff for laughs. I mean, seriously, to invoke Kristallnacht to describe opponents of ObamaCare? Can you get any more obtuse? Does he even have the slightest remembrance of the Bush years and the countless times he was likened to Hitler?

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

Let's not remind Rich not a single arrest has been made related to any of these alleged incidents. Going so far as to invoke a pogrom against Jews is beyond intellectual dishonesty. Never mind the facts there still not the slightest shred of evidence any "goons" hurled "venomous slurs" at Lewis or Barney Frank. If there was it's would have been plastered across the media 24/7 the past week.

Beyond the odious Kristallnacht reference, it actually gets worse, if you can stomach it.

Mr. Rich, have you no decency? Or better yet, having seen a week's worth of this pants-wetting hysteria from your media comrades, have you not the slightest ability to be original?