The wingnuts from the far right not only seem to be naive, or better yet selectively ignorant, when it comes to historical fact, but apparently have managed to develop super powers making them impervious to reality.
The teabaggers had their tea parties to protest rising taxes, claiming they were doing it in honor of the original Boston Tea Party, which had very little to do with taxes or any rise in taxes, but that doesn't seem to matter to people like Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin, who ginned viewers up to go out and make asses of themselves by throwing tea bags and calling themselves teabaggers.
The tea party was American and by gosh the Teabaggers are real Americans and they do what Americans do. Like come out in clusters, sometimes nearing double digits, which Fox News reported as "massive crowds." They carry signs that say "Welcome to France" and "Is Obama French?" as if we were approaching the end of western civilization. These signs were held by people who had never been to France. If they had they would have seen the throngs of topless women walking the beaches, cheese lined streets, and wine fountains on every corner. They also forget that without the French, around the time of the Boston Tea Party, they never would have won the right to carry semi automatic weapons to rallies.
Michelle Malkin appeared on Hannity last week, in part to pimp her new book, yapping about the "regal" democrats, hardball politics, and slam the government for making the same remarks she defended in past administrations.
Hannity, in his Fox Newsy unbiased, innocent, and dejected way asks Malkin, "Is this the first time in our life time we've ever seen the government really attack people like this?"
Malkin, dejected and aghast, responds with, "I think it is."
Really? She can't think of a single instance when the government accused people of being anti-American? Is her knowledge or account of history that skewed that she can't shed a glimmer of truth on anything? Would it really be too much to ask for a little journalistic integrity? That rather than counting on your viewers being complete and total rubes, you show them a little respect and inform and educate them?
A more accurate statement from Malkin would have been something along the lines of, "Yes John I do remember the government attacking people and I don't have to go to back to the dark ages of McCarthyism. Bush/Cheney did it all throughout the WMD fiasco. During WWII we had internment camps for people who ... well ... people who looked like me John. Michelle Bachman called all liberals anti- American on Hardball, and Palin's done it so many times it's not even worth mentioning. But usually they're attacking commies, tree huggers, and wimps. Not us and it hurts John. It really hurts."
Malkin and her buddies on the right are defending and even inciting people to protest a bill that could help tens of millions of people. American people who drop at a rate of 18,000 every year because they don't have health care. Many of the same people who are protesting the bill could benefit from it.
Malkin's right though, these people aren't un-American. They're uneducated, ignorant, and uninformed and that's completely American.