re: #197 John Neverbend

OT - an interesting offering from VDH in today’s NRO.

The Obsolescence of a Slur

1) Is the criticism of Barack Obama unusual by recent presidential standards?

No. Bush hatred was even more intense. Furthermore, it very soon went from fierce partisanship into a deviant desire for the president’s injury or death. Such derangement was tolerated or indeed enhanced by mainstream liberal establishment figures.

Alfred A. Knopf published a novel speculating about killing the president. The Toronto Film Festival gave a prize to a docudrama about an envisioned assassination of George W. Bush. His death became the stuff of a New York play, the dream of a Guardian columnist, and a common theme in the left-wing blogosphere.

A certain amount of this kind of venom was evident in the opposition to Bill Clinton, who was accused of everything from covering up murders to being a serial rapist. By any fair standard, nothing so far in the health-care pushback has approached the smears and dirt directed at Presidents Bush and Clinton.