Not surprising, but still unsettling.

In this case, the target is Mark Fiore, an online cartoonist for NPR who poked fun at the Tea Party movement. Apparently that's not allowed in RW America (free speech? what free speech?), so the RW PC police basically tagged Fiore as an enemy combatant, and naturally the death threats started to flow:

The death threats keep coming this fine morning. I guess the Tea Party crew is determined to have “death panels” one way or another.

To date, the failure to condemn the threat of physical attack on Fiore seems to be universal within the RW blogosphere, which isn't surprising since RW 'media critics' remain committed to little more than portraying journalists as evil and un-American. The dirty little secret has always been that RW press-haters don't want a better press corps. They want want a press corps that doesn't exist.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some RW bloggers, at least privately, approve of the death threats as a way to intimidate the free press.

For instance, thin-skinned, loud-mouthed press hater Andrew Breitbart tweeted that he'd condemn attacks on any writer. But of course, in the wake of the Fiore death threats Breitbart hasn't done that on his 'media criticism' site Big Journalism. What Breitbart routinely does though, is attack journalists as immoral, corrupt, and dangerous to democracy. But gee, why would any unhinged readers take those attacks literally and translate that hate speech into a call for physical action against journalists, right?

Breitbart tweeted that he'd condemn any RW death threats against the press: “Show me offenders, evidence & I'll condemn.” But Fiore has already come forward and confirmed he's received scores of death threats, yet Breitbart remains silent. So is Breitbart calling Fiore a liar? Does Breitbart not believe that the “all capital letters” death threats have been sent to Fiore? Is that Breitbart's response, to claim the death threats don't exist? To attack Fiore once again; to blame the victim?

It's just yet more proof that right-wing 'media critics' really need get control of their hatred for journalists. And and at the bare minimum they need to loudly and clearly condemn RW death threats; death threats that the RW blogosphere helped spark in the first place.