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July 09, 2007

Stop the Presses! Hart Wants to Shoot Rush!

I had to laugh right out loud when I saw the blaring headline on Worldnet Daily, "Democrat blogger wants to shoot Rush Limbaugh, Also calls for volunteer to assassinate Ted Nugent." Said blogger is none other than Oregon's own Hart Williams, the guy who spent last year exposing the Howie Rich machine. Could it be retribution? Where was Worldnet Daily when Anne Coulter called John Edwards a faggot and later said she wanted him to be murdered by terrorists? Or when she called for New York Times editor Bill Keller's execution ("I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution")? Answer: Nowhere. They didn't mention it. She sells her books on their website, don't you know.

South City Mouth wrote about a similar hullaballoo almost exactly a year ago. He listed several outlandish quotes from right-wingers during the prior two weeks, including Coulter's statement on Keller above and these two calls for death:

July 18, 2006: "So glad to hear that The New York Times got my letter." -Anne Coulter on The Times' receipt of a powdery substance in the mail that turned out to be corn starch.

July 13, 2006: "Couldn't he have killed Jerry Springer?" -Bill O'Reilly on mafioso Tommy "Horsehead" Scafidi, who allegedly was ordered to rub out Geraldo Rivera.

So, what was Hart's crime? He complained about an apparently ghost-written article by Ted Nugent that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on the 4th of July – an article which Hart characterized as retroactively rewriting history for the purpose of burnishing Nugent's "conservative" bona fides. In that article, "Nugent" slams the "Summer of Love," in which "hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco," rejected their parents' "work ethic and productive American Dream values" and "instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle." Hart takes great offense to the hatred displayed by Nugent for his own generation and his inability to appreciate the good that came out of the '60s. He sees it as part of an effort by people like the WSJ editorial board to turn Americans against each other.

"How we can remain 'civil' in the face of this is beyond my ken," wrote Williams. "I will only reiterate what I've said WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war (for there is no other place that this hatred of American against American can go), well ... I've got dibs on Rush, as soon as it's legal and lawful to shoot him. Whoever wants Ted Nugent is welcome to him, but I would prefer that you would call it now, so as to conserve on ammunition. We will need to manage it prudently. But when the day comes that they have finally set brother against brother, and sister against sister in the name of their pocketbooks, I won't approach exterminating them with anything approaching remorse. They've already told me what they think of me, of my friends and of my peers. Now, I'm returning the favor. Put that in your pipe and have the WSJ editorial staff show you how to smoke it, Nugent."

Hart wasn't the only one to take offense at Nugent's article. Down With Tyranny has a great piece on the article, too, in which the pseudo-paragon of virtue is quoted having wished death on a few of his own pet enemies:

He was well-received when he spoke at the NRA's 2005 convention in Houston when he advocated killing suspects pulled over by the police. "I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

Okay, so can we agree that passionate creative people like Hart Williams and Ted Nugent have a tendency to use colorful language to express their points of view? Is it necessary for Worldnet Daily to publish an article attempting to personally smear Hart for his comments? And by the way, why did they do it, and yet refrain from expressing any indignance about Coulter's comments – or Nugent's own comments?

I can't help but think back to Hart's body of work last year, in which he spent literally months researching to uncover a small right-wing cabal's complex scheme to create the appearance of a massive grass-roots movement across several states in order to pass legislation they could not get elected representatives to touch. I believe they have been watching and waiting for their opportunity to discredit him.

I very much enjoyed Hart's response this morning: "Hopefully, we didn't make them cry."

Posted by Becky at July 9, 2007 11:21 AM