On Friday's edition of her MSNBC program Rachel Maddow highlighted a variety of right-wing extremist activities on gun related issues, including National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre's increasingly infamous suggestion that because President Obama hasn't pursued gun control he must be secretly plotting to "erase the Second Amendment." Maddow also highlighted Fox News mainstreaming right-wing blogger Mike Vanderboegh, who gained notoriety last year for advocating throwing bricks through the windows of Democratic offices in response to the health care reform bill.
Maddow reviewed the NRA's factually challenged assertion that Obama had a “ten point plan to change the second amendment” that the NRA crafted as part of their anti-Obama political push in 2008. That claim was rated "pants on fire" by PolitFact in 2008 and in no way resembles the actual Obama record on gun control. Now LaPierre is asserting a “conspiracy” against the Second Amendment. Maddow explains the absurdity of LaPierre's comments:
MADDOW: The NRA says the way you can tell Obama is coming for your guns, is that he's not coming for you guns. It's genius! That is the insane paranoid message from the NRA this year.
Maddow also called out Fox News for featuring right-wing blogger Mike Vanderboegh, who in addition to advocating vandalism has pushed conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma city bombing, advocated for militias, the Minutemen movement and the anti-government three percenters. Last week Media Matters reported on Fox mainstreaming Vanderboegh and noted that his call to vandalism has been widely denounced:
After the Post profile, Vanderboegh drew fire from the left, right, and center. MSNBC's Ed Schultz described him a “whacko,” while colleague Rachel Maddow pointed to how Vanderboegh's “efforts to inspire violent action around the country [are] apparently derived from his belief that he leads millions of people who think the same things he does.” Jonah Goldberg called him an “idiot” and a “buffoon” whose behavior “is simply wrong, reprehensible, and childish.” The Daily Beast's John Avlon wrote that the “parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis' heinous 1938 kristallnacht ... are hard to ignore.”
Fox News doesn't seem to care.
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LaPierre's conspiratorial accusations were also derided on Hardball with Chris Matthews and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last week.