A reader forwarded me the link to this Village Voice article defending New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I encourage you to check it out. It’s hilarious in how it elides all the substantive arguments against Krugman’s knee-jerk, fact-free attempt to blame the Tucson shooting on the political right.

The author, Roy Edroso, quotes the Rep. Michelle Bachmann “armed and dangerous” line that Krugman quoted as an example of “eliminationist rhetoric” but fails to note that the context of the quote had Bachman telling people to pick up fact-sheets so that they would be “armed and dangerous” with facts and information.

Krugman is described by Edroso as “mild-mannered” despite the fact that Krugman himself started a column in 2010 by urging readers to hang Joe Lieberman in effigy.

I loved this one:

Sheffield also wrote, "Read any random left-wing website and you'll see countless rants about how Democrats need to be more like Alan Grayson," without giving any examples and in contradiction to the results of a simple Google search, which shows rightbloggers far more obsessed with Grayson than liberals.

Edroso’s google search was merely for the words “alan grayson” and turned up 197,000 results when limiting it only to blogs. It also is sorted by date, and since Grayson lost his re-election bid in November, it’s unsurprising that many of the recent references to Grayson and his hateful rhetoric would be by right-of-center bloggers pointing out the hypocrisy of the left in the wake of the Tucson shooting.

On the contrary, doing the same search with “more like Alan Grayson,” a far more restrictive search, turns up 41 results, including blog and blog commentors at places like Crooks and Liars, FireDogLake and DailyKos.

It may not be countless, but there really should be little doubt that Grayson, and his outrageous rhetoric, was a favorite of the left. How else would one explain how he was a regular guest on MSNBC?

And then there’s this line:

We're moved to ask at this point: Why are rightbloggers so bent out of shape? You'd think they'd be calmer than this; after all, they regularly assure their readers, and themselves, that the public agrees with them that conservative chest-thumping didn't motivate the Tucson shooter.

So, Edroso’s perplexed at why Republicans would defend themselves against the slurs of the left, when the slurs aren’t working according to polls. Is this guy serious?

Let’s try this one: Edroso’s a crap writer.

And if he ever defends himself against the charge…then he’s just being bent out of shape.

Of course, this may be a bad analogy, because Edroso is a crap writer.

UPDATE

Oh it gets better. Edroso linked here from his blog to make the point that if you put Rep. Bachmann's "armed and dangerous" quote in context that it makes them "more provocative." Let me tell you how you can tell this is a lie: Not in his Village Voice piece nor his personal blog (which is not subject to editors or space constraints) does he ever post or link to the full Bachmann quote. He just says it's more provocative and you have to trust him. The ellipses below reflect pauses, not omissions.

But you can get all the latest information on this event, this . . . a must-go-to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn . . . it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people--we the people--are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information.

So, now that Obama's president, quoting Jefferson's beyond the pale. These references weren't so outrageous when the left was calling for the execution of President George W. Bush.

Word to the wise: Don't trust Edroso.

Edroso also dismisses conservative complaints about media bias as conspiracymongering and claims that poor underpaid writers couldn't pull off such a conspiracy. He's right, they couldn't and they don't have to. As I've pointed out before--and as nearly every conservative critic of media bias has pointed out--media bias isn't a conspiracy; it's a group-think. The media is overwhelmingly liberal and they overwhelmingly all think the same way. The read the same books and magazines, they watch the same news shows, they watch the same movies. They exist in their own milieu. No conspiracy needed.