According to right-wing journalist Matthew Vadum, it's my fault -- along with my Media Matters colleagues, President Obama, and House Democrats -- that people are apparently vandalizing congressional offices over health care reform.
Yesterday, Vadum predicted “possibly violent civil unrest” as a result of health care reform -- and said we should “Blame Obama and the Ds” for such violence, rather than the people behaving violently. Later, Vadum wrote that “America is dying” and “Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America.”
Today, the Associated Press and Arizona Daily Star have reported vandalism at Democratic congressional offices, including a brick thrown through a window in Rep. Louise Slaughter's Niagara Falls office on Friday and a front door “smashed out” at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Tucson office last night -- in addition to a brick thrown through the glass doors of a county Democratic party headquarters in Rochester over the weekend.
In response to those acts of violence, Vadum wrote “You & MMFA are just as to blame as Obama is.”
Me?!? I've never even been to Tucson.
Then Vadum finally got around to noting “This does not excuse the violent behavior,” which is good of him, though he quickly added: “but let's not forget that Dem behavior set the stage for this.”
I'm still waiting for Vadum to announce whether President Obama and I are more or less to blame for the bricks thrown through the windows than the people who threw the bricks. I've never seen a conservative so desperate to blame everyone except the criminal for the crime -- Vadum says he doesn't excuse the violent behavior, but he has not yet said that the people who have actually behaved violently are in any way responsible for their actions, or that they should stop.
And that's a problem. Vadum can say he doesn't “excuse the violent behavior,” but he's busy rationalizing it, and suggesting that the people who commit the violence are not to blame -- that their actions are the understandable, even inevitable, consequences of health care reform. If there's a way to interpret that other than that Vadum is siding with those who commit acts of violence -- and, thus, encouraging violent actions -- I'd love to hear it. Not that Vadum is alone: As Ben Dimiero has pointed out, conservative blogger Connecticut Yankee “is openly calling for the torture and execution of Members of Congress.”
Vadum's recent rantings:
